SINCE THOSE EARLIEST VISITS, Tara and I have made several trips to Australia together, and during that time we have seen many changes. In the almost two decades since our first joint trip, the Great Barrier Reef has been changed by tourism, fishing, and the accumulation of effluents from cities, towns, and farmers' fields, which ultimately percolate through the reefs.
More recently, climate change has been responsible for coral bleaching over immense areas. Coral is more than one organism. An animal called a coelenterate, which is related to jellyfish, creates a hard shell around itself, a carbonaceous material we think of as the coral. The coelenterate harbors within it another species, a plant that provides energy through photosynthesis in return for the nutrition the animal captures. It's a classic example of symbiosis, a partnership in which both parts benefit from each other. The plants also confer color to the animal, and the Great Barrier Reef is a profusion of colors from purple to pink and green. The plant parts are extremely sensitive to temperature, and a rise in water temperature of just a degree or two can cause their death and hence the “bleaching” phenomenon of color loss. The animals can survive a season without their partners, but they then die if they are not reinfected with the plants.
Coral bleaching related to El Niño events unprecedented in their heat, duration, and shortened interval between are thought to be the basis for a global bleaching episode; El Niños are deviations from normal temperatures in the southern Pacific Ocean between South America and Australia. Coral reefs are oases of life, supporting a disproportionate abundance of life forms, and, as with tropical rain forests, disruption of their integrity represents a catastrophic threat to the ocean ecosystems of the world.
In 2003, when Tara and I again visited the Great Barrier Reef, it had visibly changed in both abundance of organisms and vitality. Dead stag coral littered the bottom, and the numbers and variety of fishes were noticeably diminished. (This is not a scientifically validated observation — it is subjective and anecdotal — but I think too much is at stake to ignore it.) Yet when we finally climbed back on the boat, the guides bubbled with enthusiasm, extolling the wonders of the reef and all its components. Part of that is their job; after all, we had paid a lot of money for the trip. But it is my impression that they really were enthusiastic and meant what they were saying.
Even in that short span since Tara and I had first visited this place in 1989, the degradation was perceptible to us. Because the guides had been working there only for a few years, however, they didn't have the same baseline for comparison. To tourists, the coral and fish are still dazzling in profusion and color, but I am sure an old-timer who has known the reef for decades will remember it in a state that no longer exists.
It was the same on our visit to the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania in eastern Africa. Our encounter with so many mammals filled us with wonder and delight that there still are such pristine areas with abundant wildlife — until we talked to some of the people who have lived there all their lives and remember a flourishing plain that no longer exists. Urban people like us live in such a degraded environment for wildlife that almost anything else looks rich and unspoiled. It's only when we dig deeper to find what the state of wildlife was decades or centuries before that we realize how much we are drawing down on nature's abundance.
ON THAT VISIT IN 2003, I was asked for the second time to be honorary patron of the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), a program for youth who had dropped out of school but were unable to find jobs. The program gave them a stipend to spend six months a year learning how to rehabilitate the land, cleaning up soil and rivers, planting native species, making inventories of wildlife, and otherwise being trained for jobs in conservation. When Mike Rann had been minister for Aboriginal affairs in the Labor government of the state of South Australia in the 1990s, I met him, and we hit it off. I was asked to be the honorary patron of YCC, but when Labor was thrown out of office in 1993, the program was cancelled. Mike led the party back to power in 2001 and as state premier then resurrected the Youth Conservation Corps and asked me to return as honorary patron. I was delighted with the honor, and Tara and I attended a YCC event in Adelaide.
Once again, we were moved to see the dedication and enthusiasm of the kids. A young girl who seemed to have rings hanging from every part of her face and body enthused about her bird inventory: “I've seen twenty-five species right here in this field.” A young man with tattoos on his face, arms, and legs and a bush of hair that exploded from his head exulted about how great it was to be out here in the country and to be paid for it. We were taken to a large area of degraded land where the trees had long been cut down, the land overgrazed by sheep, and the soil overrun by grass and brush. “This will be Suzuki Forest, named in honor of our patron,” announced John Hill, the minister of environment. The Youth Conservation Corps will plant native trees on that land so that perhaps a couple of decades from now there will again be a young forest, one bearing the name of that Canadian bloke who used to visit Australia.
AYERS ROCK, THE LANDMARK familiar around the world as one of Australia's icons, is now known by its Aboriginal name, Uluru, and is an amazing sight. Imagine a flat desert, hot as hell; out of its haze looms a massive piece of rock that changes color as the sun makes its way across the sky. An Aboriginal woman offered to walk around Uluru with Tara and me. As when I was filming!San people in the Kalahari Desert, at first all I saw was scrub and sand. And as with the!San people, I was shown there was food aplenty. In Australia it's called “bush tucker,” and this woman demonstrated great knowledge of it, pointing out tiny edible fruits and various nutritional and medicinal plants, as well as hiding places for insects and scorpions.
One of the terrifying aspects of globalization and economics is that this kind of knowledge is not seen as having value in a modern industrialized world, and what has taken thousands of years of careful observation, experimentation, and insight is being lost all over the planet in just a few generations and will never be recovered. This information is far more profound than current science, because it has been tested over time with the survival of those who possessed the knowledge.
During a book tour in the 1990s that took me to Brisbane, an Aboriginal man offered to take me on a short walk through the bush. I was delighted, and we drove to a nearby park. I was dressed in shorts and sandals, and as we stepped onto the trail, I looked at the leafy ground beside it and realized there were leeches waving their heads about a half an inch off the ground, just waiting for an easy victim. Fortunately, I evaded them as we searched for witchetty grubs, the white, fatty, larval forms of beetles that are much prized by Aboriginal people and eaten live or cooked. I was determined to eat a live one, but I must admit that I was not highly disappointed when the only grubs we found were “not the right kind.”
In Adelaide after one of my readings, an elder who looked white approached me and introduced himself. He was Lewis O'Brien, a respected elder of the Kaurna people. He was very pleased because I had talked about the book I coauthored in 1992 with Peter Knudtson, Wisdom of the Elders, which examined the congruence between aboriginal knowledge and scientific insights, and I talked about my respect for traditional knowledge and the way First Nations people had educated me about our relationship with Mother Earth.
