The Prairie Naturalist, Vol. 1, No. 4, December, 1969, pp. 51-57                           A Requiem for the Prairie1                             Hugh H. Iltis                                       Professor of Botany                                 University of Wisconsin, Madison    It is a particular privilege to talk to an agricultural convocation, because, for better or worse, you who farm and you who teach land use hold the key to either the continuing destruction of the biosphere and its diversity, or to a birth of ecological sanity which will allow life and man a continuing evolution.    I wish to voice three basic concerns:    First, because our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in nature, and was selected by nature, we need nature to survive.    Secondly, because of our technological success in conquering nature, we have been completely preoccupied with progress, progress which to agriculture has meant ever-increased production of goods and food to feed more and more people. This means ever-increased destruction of the natural environment which made us. Our preoccupations have made us not only rich and civilized, but also arrogant and blind to inescapable biological realities. If we wish to continue our evolution, a radical shift from an exploititve to an ecological philosophy is a most urgent business.    Lastly, only undisturbed ecosystems, such as virgin prairies or forests, can show us their vast ecological complexities. Such untamed lands are desper- ately needed for teaching and research, for a balanced stable environment and a beautiful and healthy world. Thus, it is one of the prime responsibilities of progressive agricultural education to insure the survival of the last gew remaining undamaged prairies and forests for posterity. The greatest contri- bution that any university can make to human culture is the establishment of  hundreds of scientific preserves, and the training of ecologically sophisticated students.   Man needs nature, nature is being eliminated, and what can we, what must we, do about it?    Now, how true is it, really, this human need for nature, over and beyond the nature that gives us food? Do we need wilderness? Do we need flowers? Do we need beauty? Do we need National Parks?    Surely technology has promised us a post-evolutionary heaven in which wild nature has but a very minor role. Molecular biology, too, has gleeful visions of genetic manipulations of DNA which would  change the face of all creation and recast man into a "perfect" image. Others cheerfully dream about a world with unlimited opportunity for at least 40 billion people, living in giant, automated cities. There is no doubt that science and tech- nology have undreamed of potential for food production. But the quality of living, not the quantity, is what counts. Any one of us, if not blind, who has hunted for prairie flowers in Illinois, fished in the Mississippi, explored the Peruvian Andes or on the Mexican Plateau, or tried to find a tree growing _____________________  1Address presented to the Agricultural Convocation, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, April 6, 1967.

in Brooklyn, knows that life's diversity is what keeps the world from being dull!    Yet, in 20 or 30 years, it will all be over for much of this exuberant biotic wealth. The crisis for all the living and for a high quality environment for man is here and now. Except for masses of people, corn and cows, the world of the near future promises to be flower-less, animal-less, and lifeless. The next century will be a nightmare world of steel and concrete, of algae steaks and yeast pies, and the day may well come when our great-grand- children will hold hands in a circle and sing:                   "Spring has sprung                    The grass has ris                    I wonder where the flowers is" and wish they could see some. And by then it will be too late.    Is there any one among us who would doubt that we, and especially our children, need a good helping of wild nature to walk in, to cherish, to love?    Granted, then, that we all love flowers and birds, and instinctively seek nature even if in a garden. But is it enough to say "We need" - "we love?" The skeptics want to know "why?" And the technicians of exploitation are not impressed by sentiment, but by dollars and profit, by board feet and yield per acre.    How can we defend sanctuaries for prairie flowers and young birds, and mountain lions and pitcher plants? And especially, a million acre National Park for buffalo and prairie grass? How can we defend such luxury when our world is plagued with hunger? How can we defend it for science, to say nothing of other reasons. Can we defend, in short, a truly human environ- ment for purely selfish human reasons?    Let us examine our evolutionary history. Some 4 or 5 billion years ago, on some fateful day, lighting struck water, ammonia, and carbon dioxide and the first organic  molecules were born. Eventually, after another 1000 million years, these substances, now self-duplicating, organized themselves into cells, and life wason its evolutionary way. Perhaps a 1000 million years ago came the first invertebrates, 500 million years ago the first land plants and aquatic vertebrates, and 250 million years ago the coal flora with its terrestrial vertebrates was living in Kansas, characterized by giant dragon- flies and fish, and 40 foot horsetails. Next came the dinosaurs, 150 million years ago, and, when they became extinct, the mammals arrived, to evolve into monkeys, apes, and finally into clothed, intellectualized, transformed apes, the unique species Homo sapiens, of which all of us are members.    Now Man is indeed unique! But it should never be forgotten that he is a unique animal! He is the result of 2000 million years of evolution at the cellular levels, of over 500 million years as a vertebrate, of over 100 million years as a mammal, of 45 million years as a primate, of over 15 million years as an ape, and, at most, of but 2 million years as a prehuman.    The refined human neurological and physical attributes are even more recent, only a few hundred thousand years, perhaps at most 5,000 or 10,000 sexual generations old. All of our major physio-chemical patterns, those ancient, basic, mysterious chemical frameworks of the human animal, con- trolled by an ancient autonomic nervous system, evolved not in civilization, but in nature.

Physically, like the apes, we are programmed for wild tropical or sub- tropical nature. But culturally, especially away from the equatorial regions, over the past 10,000 years we have become dependent on, and culturally adapted to, towns and cities. Thus, even though we live in recent inventions called houses, for our physical and mental well-being nature in our daily life is an indispensable biological need. As proud as we are of our amazing cul- tural uniqueness, every basic adaptation of the human body, be it the ear, the eye, the brain, the gut, yes, even our psyche and our sex life - for proper functioning demands an environment similar to the one in which these stuc- tures and behavior patterns evolved over the past 100 million years through natural selection. For millions of generations, as George Gaylord Simpson points out, our monkey ancestors with faulty vision who misjudged distance and missed the branches they jumped for, or who did not hear the approach of a carnivore, died, and failed to become our grandmothers. Only those that were adapted to nature contributed to our gene pool.    The significance of this to understanding man or any other living thing is clear. George Schaller illustrated in "The Year of the Gorilla" that, if we study gorilla behavior in a zoo, the animal is an incomprehensible, danger- ously erratic brute. But if we study gorillas in their evolutionary habitat, in the tropical forests of Africa, they are shy, mild, alert, and well-coordinated bundles of adaptations. Neither gorilla nor man can be evaluated, understood, or kept healthy out of context of the evolutionary environment that selected them.

Cultural expressions of these subtle biological needs of man are every- where. In our houses, we try to imitate tropical climate, the setting of our geological past - warm moist air and green plants and even animal pet com- panions. If we can afford it, we may even build a greenhouse next to the living room or buy a place in the country. The specific human reactions to natural beauty and diversity are as yet poorly understood. They have not been much studied. Yet our needs are clear from our preferences. We have plastic flowers in every bank, and green leaves imprinted even on the "puke bag" they give you on the airplane. From the standpoint of evolution, like the need for love and loving, human needs for nature, for natural diversity and natural beauty, must have a genetic basis. The tremendous compulsive power of these drives alone suggests this clearly. Thus Tennyson's line, "Nothing in nature is unbeautiful," takes on new significance. Woods and prairies, clean air and unpolluted waters, flowers and butterflies, gardens and fields, yes, and vast National Parks, are indispensable human needs.    How can we  plan to satisfy these needs? How can we plan for a good world or a high quality environment? Clearly we must accept man's depend- ency on nature. It follows then that ecologically-based environmental plan- ning, i. e. , a true human ecology, is the one and only cornerstone of a sane and human world. Only in this context can we discuss resource management and environmental health, or argue whether preservationists are sentimental or exploiters practical or short-sighted.    Then how are we to define the best environment for man? is it not one in which the human animal can have maximum contact with the natural environment in which it evolved and for which it is genetically programmed, without sacrificing the many advantages of civilization? That is, our optimum human environment must represent a compromise between our genetic heri- tage, which we cannot deny, and the fruits of civilization, which we are loath to give up. Of course, some proclaim a blind faith in our ability to adjust our genetics as well as our culture to the destruction of the environment. But this is impossible! Not because man cannot change his needs, but with his long life span and genetic limitations, he could not possibly change them fast enough. Yet today man is modifying his environment (especially in the large cities) so rapidly that soon all his adaptations will be out of phase.    But suppose that man could change to keep up with his changing modern environment. Man would then evolve smaller ears, less sensitive eyes, a tolera- tion to crowding and pollution, and, as a consequence, lose his most precious sensory values. The appreciation of life and of living, the enjoyment of nature, art, and music, for example, would lose all meaning. Furthermore, these genetically-fixed ecological idiots of the future, like many of our cultur- ally-fixed ecological idiots of today, would then control the fate of the living world, doubly accelerating its deterioration into a human pigsty.    We cannot radically change our physiological adaptation. We cannot change our genetically based needs. But we can modify our culture, and with- out too much trouble. And we had better start doing this soon. The need is great to reformulate some of our most cherished cultural concepts, to re- think the most sacred agricultural dogmas.    For all is not well on this spaceship earth. There are now too many people, wanting too many things. And in 10 years, a billion more! An old Wisconsin hunter said, "The older I get, the less and less I get interested

in shooting animals, and the more and more I get interested in shooting people."    The population explosion, technology, and the chemical revolution threaten to make man the one animal who, by conquering nature, is making the earth unfit for all. The more complex technology becomes, the more far-reaching are its destructive effects. To assess these effects, to stop or reverse them, is exceedingly difficult. Even to ask pertinent questions, or to expect sensible solutions has become almost impossible. Technological success has corrupted our ability to view the human animal in proper perspective.    The second point I wish to make is a practical one. If we need nature and its diversity in order to survive as a quality civilization, we must accept nature as the most precious of all human possessions; and the main responsi- bility of our educational system, in the agricultural schools especially, is to train people not only in its exploitation, but also in its preservation.    It would be blind not to acknowledge the immense debt of modern man to the destruction of nature. The fabulous inventiveness of modern agricul- ture has allowed the cultural exploitation that is here today. It has made our very civilization possible. Agricultural technology, from Liebig and the gaso- line engine to hybrid corn and pesticides, has crashed the barriers to increased production. Yet we must now assess its long-term effects.    We must, I think, learn to accept the fact that agriculture and forestry will have to spend as much time correcting or preventing the ecological con- sequences of human activities, as in abetting the increased exploitation of nature.    But we are still too preoccupied with an expanding economy, and with a "progress" where production and quantity, not quality, are the targets. Increased economic growth was, and is, after all, largely dependent on the rape of the redwoods, the destruction of buffalo and prairie, the exploitation of the sea, the pollution by DDT, and the use of fossil fuel. To continue all this madness, our schools must continue to train properly indoctrinated citizens, not those that love flowers or prairie dogs!    So, now that buttercups are rare, and springs silent, why study them? The ever-increasing emphasis on technology and (until recently) the con- tinued deletion of Natural History from the curriculum has slowly but surely produced generations of children which can at most distinguish a dandelion from a daisy, but to who the fields and woods are a closed book. And where are they to learn? Teacher doesn't know, the public doesn't care. And most city kids have ceased to wonder at natural beauty for other reasons as well - the simple unavailability to city schools of woods with song birds, of prairies with flowers. How many high-schools in Kansas or North Dakota have school prairies? Some forgotten unplowed 40 acres used just for teaching? For that matter, how many colleges?    And the college contingent has fared little better. In many parts of the United States, the crucial role in the survival of wild nature is relegated to the farmer, and to beaurocrats who control the fate of remnants of public wild land, be they planners or highway engineers. Yet in their education, natural history has been neglected. Agronomists may get PhD.'s without knowing one grass from another. The agriculture student is often short- changed by his curriculum in his preparation for a sensible future. And where are the agricultural beatniks to tell their professors "this is enough."

We need a Berkeley on our agricultural campuses to force an intellectual change. I don't think agricultural schools will die, but they might just possibly fade away.  And if we continue in the old tracks of progress, production, and pounds per acre, the decline of the agricultural schools will be well deserved. Farm boys can return home with a B. S. and little more knowledge about flowers or ecology than what 2-4D will do to the "weeds" on the back forty. Yes, good high yields per acre, assured by DDT, will outvote any prairie rose in need of living bumble bees for pollination.    Such is this cultural intensification of environmental ignorance. It is very dangerous. For what American children and adults neglect to learn about American flowers or landscapes, or Russian  or Chinese children about theirs, may bear strange and disastrous fruits in our country as well as in foreign lands. It is especially dangerous in the United States, since we, as the richest country in the world, have now the power of enforcing, on other peoples - economically or militarily - our economic ways, to change the face of the earth - which means destruction of biotic diversity. And in the tropics es- pecially, which are ecologically so fragile, the results are catastrophic.    I could talk a great deal about the importance of diversity to natural and agricultural stability, but Charles Elton has explained it so well in his book, "The Ecology of Invasions by Plants and Animals," which should be re- quired reading for all. The fate of this diversity represents the fate of life, of continuing evolution, and therefore very probably of man himself.    Must we destroy this diversity without heed to the other values, including often direct agricultural ones? By chainsaw or pesticides, by cow or plow, by sewer or chimney, we are exterminating thousands of species, whose roles in the web of life we cannot even guess at, whose uses for man we do not know, and will not know, for many years to come. As a scientist, I cannot say when, or how, or how much; but again as a scientist, I can say: Without knowing, dare we take that risk?    We have discussed elsewhere the scientific utility of the American Prairie and what it can teach us of evolution. We have marvelled at the beauty of its animals and plants, their bright colors and wondrous shapes, whose mean- ing often we cannot yet fathom. And we have mentioned the practical values in agriculture that this ancient and diverse biological community holds for the human species. It is clear that prairies have value to man far beyond their price tag in dollars.    There is, however, one additional and overriding urgency to prevent the permanent extinction and subjugation of the living landscape. Taine, the French historian, has said that "the body of man in every country is deeply rooted in the soil of nature." "Give the philosopher a handful of soil, the mean annual temperature and rainfall, and his analysis would enable him to predict with absolute certainty the characteristic of the nation."2 We, in this overly rich country have forgotten this basic truth. We have worshipped the high standard of living, but have forgotten that ultimately it flows from the land. Until 30 years ago, as a people we identified closely with the pioneers, their hardships and devotion, their environment of hostile Indians, of cattle and cowboys, of stars over the boundless oceans of waving grass. The Prairie was their garden in more than one way. The marvel of six feet of topsoil, ___________  2J. J. Ingals in Grass, 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture, USDA, p. 7

the magnificence of millions of buffalo, the sweat of the breaking sod and the harvest of vast yellow fields of wheat are part and parcel of our cultural history. Without the prairie, we, the American people of today, cannot understand where we came from, what we are, and where we are going.     When you professors were young, there were still virgin prairies in abun- dance, even in Illinois and Wisconsin. When you were young, you were still part of the tradition that made your life. Today, in the whole prairie state of Illinois, there are hardly 40 acres of deep-soil prairie left! Here, the "land- scape," which to all people of all lands, and not only to the poet, was "a mother that never dies," has become subjugated and killed.    Yet the landscape as it was when the settlers came is still vitally important to our educational process, to our culture. By our avarice, we are losing touch with what made the Midwest what it is today, not only with our land re- sources which made us wealthy, but which also made our culture, our life. What is to satisfy the simple unspoken needs of humanity to keep in touch with its ancestry? We need landscape, fenceless wild lands, to know how they, our forefathers, lived and worked. We need wilderness to know where we, the human species, came from. We are rapidly becoming cultural and evolu- tionary orphans, a people without a cultural past, a species with meaningless adaptations.    Let it be said of the prairie state, of its many Universities, that they led the way to save for America and the world one of its richest biotic communi- ties, and for humanity, one of its grandest sights. Let it never be said that the prairie states let the prairie die.    Let us plan for at least four big National Parks. A Shortgrass Park in the Dakotas, and a Sandhills Park in Nebraska, each over one million acres, a Llano Estacado National Park near Lubbock, Texas, and a Tall- grass Prairie Park of over 300,000 acres in the Flint Hills near Manhattan, Kansas. I have a dream of a Prairie Research Institute (an institute of ad- vanced ecological studies) to train students in the ecology and taxonomy of the prairies and Great Plains. I have a dream of a system of prairie hiking trails, of school prairie preserves, and of a rich, and enriching, landscape.    Until we have preserved for our children the biotic wealth of the prairies, we cannot, in truth, sing a halleluja to civilization, for the vast prairie is close to death. We have come here instead for a solemn requiem. The word requiem come from the mass for the peaceful repose of departed souls in a new life, "Requiem aeternam dona eis, domine," "give them eternal peace, oh Lord." Let us remember that in singing a requiem for the prairie, we hope yet to rejoice in its future!    We, who understand that the basis of human culture lies in the past, we who believe that man does not live by bread alone, must pledge our conserva- tional ideals with concrete action. That magnificent Prairie National Parks shall thrive is our responsibility. That wild prairie, in a series of parks from Canada to Texas, shall live and bloom for 10,000 years to come, is our dedica- tion to our culture and our legacy to our children, so that they, on a warm spring day, can feel peace in a sea of grass, watch a bee visit a shooting star, hear a sandpiper call in the sky, and marvel at the incomprehensible symphony of life.