Silence
Nick Young | December 2018
Silence provokes us. The space in between words and phrases push us to break it, the silence of our thoughts drives us to create things to crack it, you could argue our existence in itself is an attempt at destroying the all-encompassing silence. Boredom is the mother of invention, or should we say silence is? The fear of silence comes with an evolutionary background seared into the human condition. Sounds are the things of nature, so common that they mean safety in knowing that everything is as it should be. This is a reason people feel adept at working in coffee shops or with white noise. William R. Klemm Ph.D. writes that sound is comforting to humans because the brain sorts millions of stimulus from our minds every second of every day, therefore the mindless noises of a coffee shop, or of white noise, help put our minds at ease.
Cats are the kings of silence, they use stealth and intelligence to stalk and lure prey into a false sense of security. This taking advantage of nature’s stimulus is the accumulation of thousands of years of carnivorous evolution. Predators use stealth to mask sounds birthed out of physical movements, and their environment to create olfactory silence. Therefore creating the illusion to their prey that everything is as it should be.
“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” - Elie Wiesel 1960.
The Panthera uncia, or Snow Leopard, lives in the arid mountains of south and central Asia. Its silence is something mystically intriguing. What conservationists know about the Snow Leopard is still shrouded in mystery, a reason that compels many to seek them out. There have been successes in understanding their life cycles through remote imagery. Conservation biologists studying the Snow Leopard place motion-detecting cameras within known ranges of the leopard, and then collect the images and video months later. These advances have allowed scientists to better understand these elusive animals, showing the mother-child bond through the first months, their hunting practices, and small insights into their character as a species.
The leopard has been caught on tape by conservation biologists crossing snowy mountain tops, its silent paws carrying them over the bare rock. The leopard’s movements are provocative, it’s stare contains the haunting brilliance of a proud carnivorous evolutionary tree, it’s long tail poised for balance. Something about the raw jagged peaks and the cat’s sublime alienation leads to me waiting, intrepidly, for their next steps. The snow leopard taps into the raw craving of a young man. The yearning to set off into the woods with nothing but his hands, to forsake the civilized world, and to be alone with the leopard.
The plight of the species is a shared one, almost every other large carnivore on the planet is facing similar circumstances. The lion, the Grey and Red Wolves, the Mountain Lion, the Dingo, the Lynx, the Leopard, the Cheetah, all face threats from habitat loss due to the apex predator of the world; Homo sapiens.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir
Snow leopards are losing their traditional territory due to the encroachment of humans and agriculture. The IUCN lists their status as “vulnerable with a decreasing population”. The ability to mitigate the population decrease is hindered because of cultural associations people have constructed for the Snow Leopard. A study done by The University of Edinburgh found that “only 9.8% [of farmers] suggested that compensation should be attempted first followed by eradication if this proved unsuccessful and 2.9% thought that compensation would be a satisfactory solution.” suggesting that farmers of these regions are under-informed on the value of large carnivores. Trophic dynamics of large carnivores as shown by Ripple et al. in 2014 demonstrates the ecological value of carnivorous species in their ability to regulate ecosystems.
Large carnivores exert an exceptional force on ecosystems within the natural world. Scientists have seen time and time again the net benefits of the preservation and even reintroduction of such animals. William Ripple and 13 others examined the roles of 8 keystone predators in 2014, publishing their findings in a research paper, “Status and Ecological Effects of the World’s Largest Carnivores”. They find that every ecosystem has developed to be mutually dependent on its carnivores and predators to find balance. Being a “keystone carnivore” means that they have generally low population numbers, but a large ecological weight within their environmental niche. It is shown that these animals have the capabilities to transform and regulate ecosystems, for example within Yellowstone National Park, the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf, Canis lupus, changed rivers and grew forests through their regulation of wild herbivore populations.
It excites me that this animal has an opportunity to teach the farmers of central and south Asia the ecological values of large carnivores. The scientists who study them are charmed by their solitary lives, the bond of mother and child, and their ruthless hunting tactics, it seems a shame to kill them in order to breed goats. The population of the Snow Leopard is difficult to estimate due to their solitary nature, but the IUCN figures it between 2,710 and 3,386 mature individuals. This challenge represents a larger fight for education on Planet Earth. It is our duty, our responsibility, and our pleasure as scientists to inspire the world to believe in the benefits of natural ecosystem functioning.
I mourn the loss of such a solitary and beautiful animal. But, am given hope when organizations like The Snow Leopard Trust say that their population is likely higher given the difficulties of actually assigning them an accurate number. Keystone predators are a foundation upon which ecological function is held stable, the plight of the snow leopard is representative of a larger human condition which drives us to take hold of the natural world and choke it into submission. Fighting against silence we are driven to our own extinction event. We are eroding the pillars of our existence, and may never know they are gone until we ourselves are no longer here.
Nick Young | December 2018
Silence provokes us. The space in between words and phrases push us to break it, the silence of our thoughts drives us to create things to crack it, you could argue our existence in itself is an attempt at destroying the all-encompassing silence. Boredom is the mother of invention, or should we say silence is? The fear of silence comes with an evolutionary background seared into the human condition. Sounds are the things of nature, so common that they mean safety in knowing that everything is as it should be. This is a reason people feel adept at working in coffee shops or with white noise. William R. Klemm Ph.D. writes that sound is comforting to humans because the brain sorts millions of stimulus from our minds every second of every day, therefore the mindless noises of a coffee shop, or of white noise, help put our minds at ease.
Cats are the kings of silence, they use stealth and intelligence to stalk and lure prey into a false sense of security. This taking advantage of nature’s stimulus is the accumulation of thousands of years of carnivorous evolution. Predators use stealth to mask sounds birthed out of physical movements, and their environment to create olfactory silence. Therefore creating the illusion to their prey that everything is as it should be.
“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” - Elie Wiesel 1960.
The Panthera uncia, or Snow Leopard, lives in the arid mountains of south and central Asia. Its silence is something mystically intriguing. What conservationists know about the Snow Leopard is still shrouded in mystery, a reason that compels many to seek them out. There have been successes in understanding their life cycles through remote imagery. Conservation biologists studying the Snow Leopard place motion-detecting cameras within known ranges of the leopard, and then collect the images and video months later. These advances have allowed scientists to better understand these elusive animals, showing the mother-child bond through the first months, their hunting practices, and small insights into their character as a species.
The leopard has been caught on tape by conservation biologists crossing snowy mountain tops, its silent paws carrying them over the bare rock. The leopard’s movements are provocative, it’s stare contains the haunting brilliance of a proud carnivorous evolutionary tree, it’s long tail poised for balance. Something about the raw jagged peaks and the cat’s sublime alienation leads to me waiting, intrepidly, for their next steps. The snow leopard taps into the raw craving of a young man. The yearning to set off into the woods with nothing but his hands, to forsake the civilized world, and to be alone with the leopard.
The plight of the species is a shared one, almost every other large carnivore on the planet is facing similar circumstances. The lion, the Grey and Red Wolves, the Mountain Lion, the Dingo, the Lynx, the Leopard, the Cheetah, all face threats from habitat loss due to the apex predator of the world; Homo sapiens.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir
Snow leopards are losing their traditional territory due to the encroachment of humans and agriculture. The IUCN lists their status as “vulnerable with a decreasing population”. The ability to mitigate the population decrease is hindered because of cultural associations people have constructed for the Snow Leopard. A study done by The University of Edinburgh found that “only 9.8% [of farmers] suggested that compensation should be attempted first followed by eradication if this proved unsuccessful and 2.9% thought that compensation would be a satisfactory solution.” suggesting that farmers of these regions are under-informed on the value of large carnivores. Trophic dynamics of large carnivores as shown by Ripple et al. in 2014 demonstrates the ecological value of carnivorous species in their ability to regulate ecosystems.
Large carnivores exert an exceptional force on ecosystems within the natural world. Scientists have seen time and time again the net benefits of the preservation and even reintroduction of such animals. William Ripple and 13 others examined the roles of 8 keystone predators in 2014, publishing their findings in a research paper, “Status and Ecological Effects of the World’s Largest Carnivores”. They find that every ecosystem has developed to be mutually dependent on its carnivores and predators to find balance. Being a “keystone carnivore” means that they have generally low population numbers, but a large ecological weight within their environmental niche. It is shown that these animals have the capabilities to transform and regulate ecosystems, for example within Yellowstone National Park, the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf, Canis lupus, changed rivers and grew forests through their regulation of wild herbivore populations.
It excites me that this animal has an opportunity to teach the farmers of central and south Asia the ecological values of large carnivores. The scientists who study them are charmed by their solitary lives, the bond of mother and child, and their ruthless hunting tactics, it seems a shame to kill them in order to breed goats. The population of the Snow Leopard is difficult to estimate due to their solitary nature, but the IUCN figures it between 2,710 and 3,386 mature individuals. This challenge represents a larger fight for education on Planet Earth. It is our duty, our responsibility, and our pleasure as scientists to inspire the world to believe in the benefits of natural ecosystem functioning.
I mourn the loss of such a solitary and beautiful animal. But, am given hope when organizations like The Snow Leopard Trust say that their population is likely higher given the difficulties of actually assigning them an accurate number. Keystone predators are a foundation upon which ecological function is held stable, the plight of the snow leopard is representative of a larger human condition which drives us to take hold of the natural world and choke it into submission. Fighting against silence we are driven to our own extinction event. We are eroding the pillars of our existence, and may never know they are gone until we ourselves are no longer here.