Democracy Now!, broadcasting from Bozeman, MT, interviews Doug and Andrea Peacock.
Doug & Andrea Peacock on Montana’s Grizzly Bears, the Late Edward Abbey and the Fight to Save the Wilderness
Democracy Now!
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. Doug Peacock, I’d like to ask you, you’ve been, in some of your writing and in your interviews of late, critical of the current environmental conservation movement in the country. Could you talk about your concerns about where you see it’s gone wrong?
DOUG PEACOCK: Yeah. Largely, I think it’s tried to be too polite, too nice. It’s tried to work with administrations like the Bush administration. It’s tried to work with corporations and energy companies. And quite frankly, we can’t do that anymore. I mean, the earth is in terrible shape. I mean, the life-support systems of air and ocean and temperature are going to pot in a hurry. And, you know, we’ve seen extinction of species unprecedented. Even during the end of the Cretaceous, when there was the great paleo-extinction that did in the dinosaurs, today’s rate is right there.
Quite frankly, we’re not radical enough. We’re not angry enough. We’re not militant enough. I mean, this should not be just a weekend meeting we go to. This should be the heart of our lives, and that’s a lot to ask, I know. They’re tough times. But the earth just doesn’t need it. We, as a species, our own survival, I believe, is also up for grabs, just like the grizzlies. And, you know, to survive is natural. We humans are so separated from, you know, the saber tooth that used to lurk in the bushes and the grizzly on the mountain, that I don’t think we get what’s in our long-term self-interest for survival.
Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! will appear in Boise, Idaho tonight at a benefit for Boise Community Radio. Tickets are available here: http://radioboise.org/news.html
Comments
It’s good to see Peacock’s name come up again. I have 2 of his books. I happen to agree that trying to play nice and work with certain groups is pointless and a waste of time. We’ve comprimised too much. I don’t want wilderness tied to a trade off for development or some other industrial incentive. Private interests have had their way, and look where compromise has gotten us. Take the gloves off and keep them off.
I need to go back and read “The Grizzly Years”. Outstanding book.
Peacock also appears quite often in “Ghost Grizzlies” by David Peterson and “The Lost Grizzlies” by Rick Bass. Both are pretty good books on the possible last few Colorado grizz. I’d love to get Peacock’s view on that specific situation now.
So depressing. Everyone should read “Desert Solitaire”and “Down the River”. Abbey had such a keen sense of the land and rivers he loved. I wish Doug Peacock would come to our part of the country, where all I hear is how the grizzlies are to blame for their own demise. Ed Abbey would be appalled at what is going on in our environment today. I can just imagine what he would say about our last president’s policies.