Since returning from the UK I’ve been reflecting on what I’d seen of the English countryside after several years absence. Firstly, we were lucky with the weather and Sussex and Kent were enjoying a kind of Indian summer. The warm, clear days also gave rise to overnight fog and misty mornings, perfect for photography. We drove around and visited various places remembered, especially English woodlands sprinkled around in seemingly plentiful numbers, but that got me to wondering about the survival of ancient English habitats. Many of the ancestral trees continue to thrive, especially the English oak (Quercus robur) as well as the mixed woodland still so common in many areas, but what drew my attention was the small size of each patch of woodland. Barely a mile passed without there being a road, house or some other kind of development. In Canada there is great concern that although some old-growth forest is being maintained it tends to be in areas increasingly isolated from each other, or areas separated from essential resources, such as a viable salmon river for grizzly bears, or safe passage to prey for wolves.
It seems on reflection that the same must be true for the English countryside, that isolated woodland although good for trees in that at least some are preserved, for other species the result is worse, and extinction becomes a possibility. For bears, wolves, beavers and several other key species this is, of course, already a reality, but what about the rest? Perhaps many species have survived in the physical sense, but have had to adapt to new ways of living, abandoning old feeding practices for new. In this sense perhaps we should recognise this transition and loss more openly, and consider not only the physical extinctions of species but also their “cultural” extinction and its consequences. We might retain a species, but lose its once essential pattern of interaction with an ecosystem, and this might prove as damaging in the long term as any other type of extinction event. For example, a small spatial shift in feeding of one species could promote the spread of a once contained species, or putting yet another under greater stress.
It could be argued that this isn’t a new idea, that we understand already that displaced animals or those whose original habitat has been destroyed can have a significant impact on new territory and species, after all this has historically been one source of evolution. I’m not trying to repeat this in a different way, but rather draw attention to the fact that a “cultural” change is more than a behavioural outcome of loss of habitat, but is in itself a form of adaptation arising of the extinction of a crucial character of given species, and thus a whole system. And in doing so this will bring us to the idea of animal culture being worthy of our attention. You might argue that animals have instincts not cultures, behaviours not intentional abstractions like music, but we need to consider that the rich, complex patterns of interaction that take place within an ecosystem will have emergent, self-directing properties that embody species-level styles, preferences and values. With some adjustment, we could see this as a network of ideas and actions directed towards survival and reproduction that arise in the context of a broader ecosystem. In this sense the plea is to look more closely at processes rather than the simple behaviour of single species.
Maybe thinking about human cultural change might help? If all the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region were displaced into urban areas, human life would go on, but some aspect of the range of human capabilities would have become extinct. We, as a species, will still be human, but will have changed, perhaps forever in terms of what is possible.
This leads me to ask if a lion in a zoo the same as a lion in the wild? Genetically yes, in terms of fundamental behaviour, yes, but does it think the same as a wild lion? Similarly, do we still have stone-age minds, or have we changed, adapted irrevocably?
For conservation photographers , film-makers and videographers perhaps this could prove another important part of the work to be done, to document the behavioural and spatial aspects of the routine behaviour of key species, to make a record of change and animal cultural extinction to sit alongside what is already being done, and to do this in a systematic way to show that negative, fundamental, irretrievable changes might well begin in a subtle but crucial way long before an animal species vanishes from the planet. And when extinction comes, it could happen even if some few numbers remain in zoos or protected parks, and we might never even notice.