An Elephant and the Environment

There’s a story about seeing an elephant. It goes something like this…

In the early days hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families loaded into canvas covered wagons and set out for the west. Can you imagine their sense of anticipation? Can you imagine their sense of discovery and potential? It must have been amazing. Amazing and epic.

The epicness is where the elephant comes into the story. It’s a long way from Jamestown to the Pacific. Anticipation, prospect, and hope can certainly fuel movement, but not forever. The slog westward was draining.

Of course some (the brave, the strong, the crazy) made it to the other side. But a lot of folks didn’t. At some point they paused and looked out across the infinite horizon and were overcome by the magnitude of their journey. They were swallowed by the vastness. And so they stopped; overcome by the endlessness of their journey. This, they said, was "seeing the elephant."

I’ve been thinking about this elephant recently.

What can we, as conservationists, learn from this story? To what extent does the elephant pose a problem today, as an obstacle to conservation and change?

Our scientific and technological capacity to analyze, model, measure, and quantify the world has expanded our understanding of the environment and environmental problems. And as a result we are more aware of the enormity of the problems we face then ever before.

Understanding is obviously important. We need to understand the science behind things like climate change. But our new awareness is a double-edged sword. Who hasn’t heard someone say, “It’s too late now,” or “We’re all screwed anyways"? Is this the same reaction some early settlers had?

This isn't the time to stop.