Let's Live Up To Canada's Green Image

 

by Jake Brennan, Writer/Photographer, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: we Canadians just don't appreciate what we have.

Having explored the Flathead Valley in July 2009 as a photographer and assistant on the ILCP RAVE, I now understand just what so many environmentalists rave about. This place is truly wild. As soon as you get up high for a view, the sheer size of it drops your jaw in awe. And as good as the RAVE photographers are, that size is hard to convey in a picture, because so far, thankfully, no man-made structures give you a sense of this valley’s scale. It just looks like another pretty Rockies postcard.

But if you come here and drink the sweet water straight from the river, hear the wolves howl at night, see the rainbow of wildflower blooms and smell the pine sap all around you, the Flathead will touch you, too. Its richness smacks you in the face.

The wide Flathead valley holds this continent’s densest inland grizzly population and its greatest range of carnivores, conservation’s canaries in the coal mine: grizzly and black bear, cougar, lynx, bobcat, wolf, wolverine, badger, red fox, coyote, river otter, marten, fisher, mink and weasel. Hoofed species include mountain goat, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, white-tailed and mule deer. The Flathead’s role as a North American crossroads for plant and animal biodiversity and a keystone in the Yellowstone to Yukon Wildlife Corridor effort make sense the moment you arrive.

But other forces are at work. These proverbial canaries are threatened by very literal coal-mine development, which promises to lop off mountaintops, obliterate diverse habitats and pollute the Flathead’s pristine water, currently so clean it serves as a benchmark for purity around the world. All this just to get at the black crack inside. The climate-change jury is in: humans are going to have to quit our destructive coal habit anyway. Do we really need to hold up this particular store, ruin these particular lives, just for one more binge on our way to the rehab clinic?

Sometimes I despair about Canada. Travel abroad and you’ll soon learn what a fantastic reputation our country enjoys. World-famous natural beauty. Many mistakenly think that with so much of it staring us in the face, we must recognize it; we must be good stewards. One of the smartest national PR moves in world history had to be putting a maple leaf on the Canadian flag.

The truth is, we have many green spaces, but few green spirits. Our environmental record makes it plain as a clear-cut that the colonizing spirit that brought Europeans to this beautiful land still runs stronger than most of our rivers. A resource-based economy we were born, and major interests pursuing a different kind of green are determined to keep it that way.

If more people speak up to conserve such a pivotal place, we Canadians might just have a chance to earn the green reputation we enjoy, but don’t deserve. But if dollars trump sense in the Flathead, I’m cutting the leaf out of my flag.

Writer-photographer Jake Brennan works in Communications at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He makes use of his fluent French and Spanish and journalism background in his extensive travels, hiking and shooting the world's mountains and remaining forests with an eye toward conserving them. You can contact him at jakesnetm@yahoo.com.

*Editors note: Art for Conservation partnered with the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) and the National Parks Conservation Association to print the Flathead RAVE exhibit which is currently touring North America. Images from the Flathead RAVE are now available for sale on Art for Conservation. Search artists A-Z for ILCP Flathead Rave

Check out this video on the Flathead RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition).

Flathead Wild Web from Epicocity Project on Vimeo.

More on the Flathead Rave on the iLCP Website: http://ilcp.com/?cid=193