When the wick is spent

SAFE HAVENS: Restored and preserved lands provide a home for many of Illinois' endangered species. (Photo: tlindenbaum/Flickr)

"As humans, we have a tendency to consume whatever is given to us. If we have a candle, we burn it and it is only after, when the wick is spent and we find ourselves enveloped in darkness, that we remember how beautiful the light had been."

-- Anonymous

 

In the long history of America, nowhere is this more acutely illustrated than in our treatment of our land. We have shaped and reshaped it, first as explorers and pioneers and then, later, as entrepreneurs and industrialists.

 

In some ways the price of this progress is obvious: the great forests are gone, the prairies are tilled, the rivers are polluted. In other ways, the cost lies more quietly; it sneaks up on us as a sense of a loss, a quietness in the forest, a drabness in the fields, an emptiness in our lakes which might go unnoticed if we let it.

 

In the early spring of 1811, an ornithologist named Alexander Wilson was pushing through a swampy area near the Ohio River when he came across a flock of Carolina Parakeets gathering at a natural saline deposit. "They came screaming through the woods in the morning, about an hour after sunrise, to drink the salt water, of which they ... are remarkably fond. When they alighted on the ground, it appeared at a distance as if covered with a carpet of the richest green, orange, and yellow: they afterwards settled, in one body, on a neighboring tree, which stood detached from any other, covering almost every twig of it, and the sun, shining strongly on their gay and glossy plumage, produced a very beautiful and splendid appearance." (American Ornithology, 1839 edition)

 

At the time when Wilson wrote, the Carolina Parakeet, also called an Illinois Parakeet, was the only species of parrot native to the United States, roosting in deciduous forests and river valleys from the eastern coast to the central plains. As farms expanded and forest was lost, however, the birds turned to crops and orchards for their food. They were labeled as pests and shot in droves. The last wild Carolina Parakeet was killed in Florida in 1904; the last captive specimen died in the Cincinnati Zoo fourteen years later. In the span of a single century, the beauty that Wilson described had become an impossibility, never to be seen again.

 

Today there are 483 endangered or threatened plants and animals in Illinois. We look at this long list and we think to ourselves, why should we care about the bluebreast darter, or the Shawnee rocksnail, or the prairie moonwort?

 

The answer is complex. Ecosystems are built upon relationships, both obvious and obtuse, and the removal of a single member sends out destructive ripples that may not surface for years. But beyond the technical, surely there is some inherent worth in the species that make our home what it is. What would Illinois be to me if I had never seen the brilliant flash of scarlet as a red-winged blackbird took flight, or heard the gentle hoot of a barn owl as evening fell? Would my childhood memories be as rich without the seas of big bluestem that waved around my playmates and me, or if my grandfather had never pointed out the quiet majesty of an eagle swooping low to hunt on the river?

 

All of these things have shaped me. Our environment shapes us all; it is a vital part of us, a foundation on which our stories are built.

 

When Alexander Wilson came upon that flock of Carolina Parakeets 198 years ago, he experienced something so impressive that he was moved to record it for posterity. He was there to write about technical details -- feeding habits, feather type -- but instead he found himself recalling the simple beauty of birds gathering at dawn, birds that his grandchildren would never see.

 

Ask yourself, after another century has passed what parts of your land will be missing? What sights will your grandchildren miss? What memories of yours will have vanished?

 

We shape our land, both through our use of it and our stewardship of the parts we set aside. How we choose to shape it affects us all, it changes our futures, it alters our stories. We should value every part of it, from the smallest snail to the fleetest doe, and we should work to protect it because it is our home and it is beautiful.