Humans as keystone species: How has human inaction impacted recovery efforts?

In modern conversation, man and nature often take opposite and conflicting roles to each other; nature threatens man, and man threatens nature. From this has birthed a separation between the two; there is natural space, and there is human space

As someone who has worked in the environmental education space, it is clear that modern children are not growing up with the same comfortability and familiarity of their local natural spaces. Some have feelings as severe as fear or phobia, but many simply do not know how to exist in nature. There are less green spaces than before, and there are challenges to accessing them, such as cost of living, visit limitation, and lack of guidance.

A lot of fully grown adults I meet have the same disconnect, although not at nearly the same degree that I have seen trending in children. They don't know how to exist in the natural world; they don't know the attire, the appropriate behavior, what is dangerous, what is safe. I've seen it to both levels of severity: people fearing the unknown too much to experience it, or walking headfirst unprepared and putting themselves and others in danger.

From another perspective, as someone who has worked in the conservation and restoration space, there is a lot of caution taken to make sure that animals have a "healthy" fear of humans, or at least avoidance. Responsible conservationists don't share every location publicly for fear of creating an influx of human presence in rare and delicate habitats; animal rehabbers and reintroduction specialists practice a lot of caution to prevent human nurtured animals from gravitating towards humans.

There is a delicate balance between awareness and overexposure. How are people supposed to know how to save something that they don't even know about? How is nature supposed to breathe when a million lenses stare at it, a million footprints smother it, a million hands are desperate to grab it, hold it, own it?

A few days ago, I hosted a group of physicists who have been studying the aerodynamics of sphagnum moss spore dispersal using high pressure chambers and high speed cameras. Some of the researchers had been studying the subject for years, and when we asked them their motivation for coming out to the

There is also the added burden of guilt that weighs on so many of us humans. I grew up with constant warnings and cautions of what humans have done, what nature can do to us, why we have clear boundaries between the two. Nature was a delicate glass thing to be kept on a shelf because my hands would smudge it or drop it.

But what is a human but an animal just like any other, and we have evolved with our ecosystems. As a restoration ecologist, when I am designing land and resource management plans I search for indigenous stewardship practices. Human culture evolves as a component of its environment just as wild animal behavior has. Controlled burns, planting, materials usage, and many other historical and cultural practices and knowledge from native nations and tribes act as a function of the environment in which they preside (this is not a blanket statement; when creating restoration plans all methods should be studied thoroughly to ensure their safety, effectiveness, and ability to fulfill project needs).

Understanding the landscape, the plants, the animals, the climate and weather is knowledge that comes from generational experiences and knowledge, past down from human to human. Tribal knowledge has been lost to colonization, genocide, and oppression. Ecological knowledge that could inform past and current actions has had its natural succession severed by cultural erasure. What knowledge remains is fractured; stories traditionally passed down through spoken word can't be inherited by children who had their language stolen from them.

Environmental justice is a human rights issue. Restoring natural ecosystems involves reintroducing indigenous tribes back to the area as well as allowing them the opportunity to serve their ecological purpose. Restoration must include the traditional practices of tribes native to the area or else we are excluding essential ecological processes.

I hope that every person reading this takes this as a call to action. You are a vital part of your ecosystem and your actions matter so much. The world will not be saved by a scarce few doing everything perfectly; it will be saved by the majority doing everything imperfectly. If you don't want to give up meat, try reducing your intake by 25-50%; if you can't afford sustainably created clothing, try buying secondhand items.

Do whatever you can, and love the world around you. Create community, and celebrate healing.