Wally's remarks on Iowa's habitat are excellent for already developed Iowa, but the issues is allowing human exploitation of already protected National Parks. But according to your argument of human need at the moment and population as a justification to allowing human hunting or gathering in permanently protected wilderness areas opens the door to where will we stop with that.  There is already intense pressure for uranium mining affecting the Grand Canyon and drilling right next to sensitive arches in Arches National Park. We've heard enough from oil companies claiming they can drill using "sustainable practices".  The issue is keeping hard fought for permanent protection for National Parks and other protected places.  Having experience on what it took to protect the roadless Wild Sky Wilderness in WA State that would protect old growth along salmon streams and not allow roads was an education in how hard people try to stop protection so they can exploit.  We simply do not agree on religion nor the need to keep hunting activities out of National Parks.  Hunting, trapping and fishing is allowed in every National Wildlife Refuge and we see damage from local Alaska planes landing in the Arctic Refuge for hunting.  I expect Sierra Club to continue to keep protected land free from human development of any kind and that's why I'm an activist member working on wilderness issues.  It's OK to disagree and this discussion raised some points to consider.  Thank you.  Phyllis

 

 

There are any of a number of studies by my colleagues that show how local communities, informed strongly by religious values, have engaged in sustainable practices. Some of the studies come from the Amazon basin. Walter Goldschmidt did such a study in California in the 1940s, called “As You Sow.” One town was fairly cohesive and locally oriented, while the other was influenced by the “religion” of the dollar. Granted that most of the studies I have in mind are not “world” religions – Christianity, Islam, and others that have fueled colonial doctrines.

 

I also don’t want to paint “native peoples” as some kind of “original environmentalists.” Humans in almost all places and in almost all times, at least since the invention of the city-state, have overused their ecosystems: Maya, Zapotec, Aztec (Aztec society’s collapse was speeded by the encounter with the Spanish), Easter Island, the Norse in Greenway…. Jared Diamond’s book, “Collapse,” is an interesting presentation of numerous well-studied examples.

 

I’m saying that Sierra’s response appears to make unsupported assumptions. You offer some of the additional information that I would require before signing onto an action alert like the one where this all started. No fan of world religions myself, I also can present counter-evidence that religious values can inform environmentally friendly practices. This really isn’t a debate about “religion” as such, and if religion enters at all, it’s because certain religious tenets and practices encourage environmental destruction. But not all.