Nature demands respect -- or else
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Chuck Zlotnick In the Sean Penn-directed "Into the Wild," Emile Hirsch stars as Chris McCandless in the true story of a young man who abandoned civilization to live in the Alaskan wilderness, where he eventually died. Was he a romantic adventurer or a naive fool?Jumping on an alligator's back, grabbing a snake by the tail or, as depicted in the new film "Into the Wild," naively attempting to live as one with nature may be exciting, dramatic and likely to sell movie tickets or hold the audience's attention until the next commercial.
But many conservationists and wildlife experts are troubled by a recent rash of media adventures that blur a line that for millennia has separated civilized humans from the natural world.
"I think it's a corruption of nature to depict it in that way," said Joe LaRocca of North East, Erie County, an author and former Alaska journalist who in 1970 was named Communications Conservationist of the Year for "outstanding contributions to the wise use and management of the nation's natural resources." "It's the difference between being wild and being civilized."
You'd think we'd know by now that a romantic view of nature without a healthy dose of reality can have deadly consequences.
Director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" opened in theaters last Friday and is based on Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book about Christopher McCandless, a college graduate who in 1992 abandoned the trappings of civilization to live alone in the mountains surrounding Alaska's Mount McKinley. In a challenging region that had been inhabited by indigenous people for tens of thousands of years, McCandless died of starvation. Krakauer's book made McCandless a folk hero in the eyes of anti-capitalist adventurers, but many Alaskans viewed him as naive, arrogant and unprepared for the harshness of mountain living.
"The tragedy of that," said LaRocca, "is the surreal portrayal that Sean Penn [takes] in the movie, and to an extent that Jon Krakauer portrayed in the book. ... What [McCandless] did wasn't noble; he died from his own actions. But since the book came out, thousands of people, mostly young college kids, have tried to find [where he died] and consider him some kind of hero."
Depictions of a skewed view of man's relationship with nature are pervasive. Last week on cable TV's National Geographic Channel, host Brady Barr grabbed a 12-foot Indonesian reticulated python by the tail and screamed when it bit his thigh and tried to strangle him.
Mike Hale, New York Times assistant editor of Arts & Leisure, wrote that this was great television. "But the point here ... is clearly python wrangling for its own sake. By the time Dr. Barr meets his Waterloo in the cave, so many snakes have suffered so many indignities -- yanked out of their holes, stuffed into sacks, forced to throw up half-digested bats -- that you may be rooting for the 12-foot python, who just wants to be left alone."
Barr compares the show's unnatural and forced human-animal contact with two of television's most popular animal programs.
"That's the problem with the whole post-STEVE IRWIN school of nature shows," he writes, "in which the [less confrontational] style employed by Marlin Perkins of 'Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom' has been set aside."
IRWIN, host of the cable channel Animal Planet's popular "The Crocodile Hunter," was killed last year by a wild stingray while filming off Queensland, Australia. News accounts of his death portrayed Irwin as a conservationist who helped bring an appreciation of wildlife to millions. But many animal advocates objected to his sensational style.
"I detested that show for that very reason," said LaRocca. "I hate to see animals portrayed in a way that blurred the line between wilderness and civilization."
Jean-Michel Cousteau, an aquatic researcher and son of Jacques Cousteau, said that while he mourned Irwin's passing, he disagreed with his confrontational interaction with the animals. Irwin, he said, would "interfere with nature, jump on animals, grab them, hold them and have this very, very spectacular, dramatic way of presenting things. It sells, it appeals to a lot of people, but I think it's very misleading. You don't touch nature, you just look at it."

Wildlife videographer Timothy Treadwell never heeded such advice and filmed himself interacting with Alaskan grizzly bears. He and a companion were killed by a grizzly in 2003.
After his death, director Werner Herzog compiled Treadwell's video in "Grizzly Man," an unusual documentary that challenged Treadwell's perception of himself as a savior of the bears, depicting him instead as well-meaning but naive in the ways of nature.
You would think these real-life stories would act as cautionary tales. Instead, they "give people the wrong idea about interacting with animals," said Lisa Wathne, an exotic animal specialist for the animal advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"The people who do these things claim they are educating people about habitat preservation and wildlife conservation. But there's no doubt when people see people interacting with [the natural world] in this way, the message they get is that it's OK to do so and that the animals might like it, which is outrageous. There's a separation between people and wild animals that should be respected."