more to come on this:
I think the problem is balance, the biological equivalent of the politicians' promise of law and order. Balance is not possible - I feel this in my bones - but all the reserves and various mantras of ecology appeal to this idea of balance, of consumption matching production, the killing matching the births, the inputs matching the outputs. Notions like the park [Bowden's campaign to establish a national monument in the desert, the subject of the book] are seen as magic kingdoms where this balance will be displayed to our edification forever and forever and the lamb will lie down with the lion and there will be no talk of lamb chops with a dab of mint jelly on the side. The whales, they be peaceful, and the fucking dolphins are doing advanced mathematics in their soggy skulls. The redwoods are god with the bark on. the mountain lion reeks of serenity and the wolves strut about as mom and dad of the year. This thing called nature has been reduced to the status of Native Americans, creatures that cannot exist in life but only in the mind where they are housebroken and safe had don't shit in the street or talk out of turn. This, I cannot abide. Balance is inhuman. And false. The only balance that actually exists snores in the virtual reality of our nature documentaries, in the prisons of our schools, in the sexual teachings of the masturbating priests and in the hideous recipes of our nutritionists. Leave nothing but your footprints, after you've parked your rig, swaddled yourself in Lycra and put on boots made by cheerful slaves in some distant bog.from Charles Bowden and Michael Berman's Inferno
