There was once an old farmer in my grandfather’s neighborhood named Crow. He was known locally as Old Crow, and I only know two things about him, that he was impoverished and that he had a large family. When my dad was very young he wondered aloud at Old Crow’s impoverished state and at the large number of children he was trying to raise on land that, as my grandfather would say, “Was too poor to raise a fuss on.”
I am told that Grandpa replied to my dad’s question by reflecting that Old Crow was so lacking in self discipline that he no longer had a seat at the dining room table. I never knew Grandpa to use harsh language, but I have been told that he responded much less elegantly to my dad’s inquiry.
In “The Cycle of a Farm Pond”, one of author Louis Bromfield’s most insightful essays, included in his memoir Malabar Farm, he describes the consequences of overpopulation among the bluegills he had stocked years earlier. When there were sufficient predators, like largemouth bass, the bluegill population flourished, and the pond provided every evidence of supporting a well balanced, healthy, watery ecosystem. All was well in the world of the farm pond.
Most fish and wildlife experts understand this necessary balance and generally recommend that pond owners stock a wholesome mix of bass and bluegills, along with catfish who fill the role of scavengers, sweeping the bottom of biota. Some include other species of sunfish, like pumpkinseeds and red ears. Some toss in a few crappies, ravenous minnow feeders.
Those who devote their leisure hours to fishing come in two types, those who bring home their catch for a meal and those on the lookout for the biggest trophy bass available in order to garner bragging rights.
Early one morning many years ago, when I was on vacation at a place called Seven Springs in the hills of Pennsylvania, I arose and drove to a nearby lake on the edge of a forest where in moments, I had collected six or seven five and six pound large mouth bass, while casting a surface lure called a Jitterbug.
Later in the day, while cleaning my catch in the hotel parking lot, I became the most popular character around, surrounded by a group of menfolk eager to know where I had caught them and what I had used for bait.
So much for bragging rights. I plead guilty on that one occasion, but it was the exception and not the rule. My catch, together with homemade hush puppies, did provide a delicious meal next day. I have devoted much of my life not to plug casting with a lure like the Jitterbug but to fly fishing, arguing that it is not a “sport” but an art form. Fly fishing restores one’s inner equilibrium and soothes the soul. There is even a book, The Zen and Art of Fly Fishing, by James J. Spring. I ordinarily make it a practice to return the big bass to their watery homes and to bring home only a stringer filled with bluegills or catfish (No, I have never caught catfish while fly fishing).
Bluegills need their predators in order to prevent overpopulation. Otherwise, a pond will contain masses of dwarf bluegills, stunted, even appearing deformed, exhibiting the scourges of disease and malnutrition. A few huge, ravenous bass would save them.
Most people would be offended by being compared to bluegills. However, bluegills and Old Crow have more in common than makes us comfortable. Old Crow’s farm with its exhausted soil was overpopulated, forced to support more humans than its carrying capacity made possible.
This is not to argue that humans are merely biological entities. For my part, I am no longer certain in my old age that any living thing is “just” a biological entity. We trivialize important concepts when we precede them with adjectives like “just” or “mere”. And yet, we err dangerously, tragically, when we deny or ignore that we are, like bluegills, biological entities. In a sense, we are the bluegills, the earth is our farm pond, and the dread Four Horsemen are the predatory bass.
Today, as we are confronted by global climate change, rising ocean levels, mass extinctions, out of control forest fires, ever more destructive hurricanes and tornadoes and burgeoning human populations beyond what our finite blue/green orb can sustain, the big question is whether or not we will take the necessary steps to guarantee the health of our “farm pond” or continue on our reckless, devil may care, ways. The issue continues to be very much in doubt.
Old Crow’s depleted topsoil was insufficient to provide for its human population. It had exceeded its carrying capacity, much as a farm pond with too many prey fish and too few predatory species will exceed its carrying capacity. In much the same way, many of the world’s regions today have exceeded their human carrying capacity. The human populations have essentially devoured their ability to sustain themselves, eaten their lands out from under themselves. With the added burden of climate change, catastrophe is inevitable. In fact, it is already upon us. Else, why are masses of disadvantaged persons fleeing from their exhausted homelands daily and attempting to cross borders into the United States and western Europe.
While it is one’s humanitarian duty to attempt to alleviate suffering and prevent the deaths of one’s fellows, in order to foster a life sustaining environment, it is equally urgent, in fact, overdue, that we also limit the increase in our numbers. If not, nature will have her way, unleashing the dread Four Horsemen in one form or another, with Death, the most dread horseman of all, brandishing his scythe and reducing our population back down to sustainable numbers.
The Biblical Four Horsemen are Death, Famine, War and Conquest, the latter generally being interpreted as meaning Pestilence. Most recently, we have observed the rapidity with which a mutant virus can sweep the globe, creating mass suffering and death. Currently, two destructive wars are being waged on the steppes of eastern Europe and in the Middle East. Others in the South China Sea, the borders between India and Pakistan, among the islands of the Baltic, along the 38th parallel simmer and fester, threatening to erupt into violence at any moment.
Essential to the reduction of the world’s human population is the global emancipation of women, perhaps the hardest nut to crack of all. While most western nations have made vast improvements—admittedly not enough—with regard to women’s rights, in many lands, women continue to be secondary citizens, simply extensions of their husbands, serving only as baby factories, existing only to serve the whims of often brutish men.
Will humanity address its most challenging problems, or will we simply deteriorate into bluegills desperately seeking sustenance in the diminished global farm pond?
My enthusiasms include fly fishing, natural history and wilderness backpacking. In 1996, I published privately a memoir, Trails of Laughter/ Trails of Tears, featuring my wilderness adventures and misadventures.I serve when needed as a Licensed Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church.
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