In life, you’re not supposed to wallow on the past. But when it comes to matters of biodiversity, I think it’s important to.
Although I’m all for sharing conservation successes and examples of great actions having great outcomes, I also think it’s important to dwell on the dark stuff. Times when things have gone badly wrong for Earth’s beleaguered species – or worst of all, times when the great tapestry of life untangles altogether, and we lose a species for good.
I think it’s important to wallow for a few reasons. Firstly, although we must always keep an eye to the future, and try to bend the curve of biodiversity loss, we also need to look at the course we’ve charted through the past. This helps us learn from our mistakes. It also means that we combat the ugly creep of shifting baseline syndrome, where rose-tinted glasses stop us properly judging the devastation we have wrought over longer-than-human lifespans.
With that said, I thought I would take this blog (my first in a very, very long time) to wallow. To wallow twice. And to wallow…literally.
I’m currently doing some of my PhD fieldwork in Malaysian Borneo, and I have been struck by something once so very common that now is entirely missing. Something that is conspicuous by its complete absence.
Above is a photo of a bearded pig wallow. I took it a few weeks ago in a patch of logged forest a few kilometres from Danum Valley Field Centre. This muddy hole in the ground is, almost unbelievably, the closest I have come to a bearded pig after weeks of working in the forest.
Bearded pigs were the last time I came to Borneo so common that we fed them our organic food waste. Seen so regularly in the forest – almost daily – that we barely paid them attention as they scuffled and snuffled about us.
Nobody here that I have spoken to has seen or heard a bearded pig since March.
The creatures are the victims of African swine flu – a disease borne from our broken food production system, which has in turn driven a near-total collapse of Sabah’s wild-pig population.
What the nearly all-encompassing removal of ecological engineers that shape the structure of entire forest ecosystem might mean? Who knows. But we will surely find out in the years to come.
My second wallow is sadder still. Whereas the population of bearded pigs will presumably recover in time, the creature that carved out this wallow, at least in Northern Borneo, will surely not.
This wallow was dug out of the surrounding forest by Sabah’s very last Sumatran Rhino. Her wallow, where she would once have bathed for hours at a time to stay cool, will soon be swallowed by the forest. But for now, it is still visible about 9 kilometres or so walk into Danum Valley’s old-growth forests. A physical remnant of a creature that roams these forests no more.
I shall not linger on just how sad it is to stand in the hollowed-out playground of a majestic animal that has been emptied-out of a former stronghold – probably forever. I have done so already. Nor will I recount the missed opportunities and NIMBYism that has led to Sabah – and enormous parts of Borneo besides – becoming rhino-free zones. For that, read Jeremy Hance’s articles.
All I will say is that at times, it’s okay to wallow. And at times, it’s even okay to wallow about wallows…
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