Biophilia is not something that can be taught; it comes only from direct, personal, intimate contact with the non-human world whether it be in a national park, in a backyard garden, or simply with a family pet. While we cannot give another person such an experience, we can help them to recognize and appreciate the opportunity for such experiences in national parks, and in response to the question "Why should I care if the grizzly (wolf, snail darter, tropical rain forest) disappears?" we can supply information on our physical, cultural, and even spiritual dependence on other organisms and the naturally functioning ecosystems within which we all live.

This paper briefly describes some of the general arguments for conserving biological diversity and in particular suggests some reasons for conserving species and intact ecological processes in Glacier National Park and the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (CCE). The arguments are divided into four categories (after Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1981). The first three direct benefits, ecosystem services, and aesthetics are utilitarian. They hold that it is in people's enlightened self-interest to protect species and ecosystems. The final argument is an ethical one which holds that we are morally obligated to conserve other forms of life simply because they have as much right to existence as we do.

Direct benefits from species
We derive all of our food (see NH 4.21) and many of our medicines (see NH 4.19) and raw materials for construction and industry from wild plants and animals and their domesticated descendants (see NH 4.6, 4.19, 4.21). Many residents in the CCE hunt elk, deer, and other animals for their meat, and others make livings by trapping fur-bearing animals (e.g., marten, fisher, wolverine, mink, lynx, red fox) and outfitting and guiding hunters in search of big game trophies (e.g., elk, moose, bighorn sheep, grizzlies, black bears). Many others collect edible plant parts most notably huckleberries for personal consumption and for sale. The timber industry, which supplies many jobs in the CCE, depends upon the renewable supply of Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, western larch, Engelmann spruce, grand and subalpine firs, and other tree species. And tourists, whose dollars contribute significantly to the economy of this region, are drawn here to observe and photograph wildflowers and wildlife, to catch native trout, and to experience a pristine environment.

Native Americans in this region knew the uses and took advantage of far more plant and animal species than we do today. Hart (1976) describes the food, medicinal, and other uses by native Americans of 60 native Montana plants, most of which occur in the CCE. Undoubtedly the knowledge of many other species has been lost over the last century as tribes have been drastically reduced and traditions disrupted and abandoned. However, plants and animal parts are still collected by Native Americans in the northern Rockies particularly for ceremonial use (see Hart 1976). Native Americans also continue to use the park for spiritual vision quests (see Holterman [no date]).

Although 25 percent of all prescription drugs sold in the United States contain an active ingredient derived from flowering plants (Oldfield 1989), only about 5-15 percent of the world's higher plant species have been tested for biomedical activity (Cowen 1990). Much of recent research has focused on tropical plants as potential sources of cancer cures; but at least one plant that occurs in Glacier is also under investigation: western yew (Taxus brevifolia), found in the Lake McDonald valley, which contains a compound called taxol that is useful as an anticancer drug (Oldfield 1989). Currently yew is being harvested for its bark on Forest Service lands before timber sales (L. Kurth pers. comm.).

In addition to providing us with medicine, species and ecosystems supply other health benefits. Most drugs are tested on other animals before being used on humans; and the reactions of wild plants and animals to air and water pollution and toxic wastes can give us an early warning signal about the harm we may be doing to our own health by polluting the environment (Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1981, Oldfield 1989). Lichens, for example, are extremely sensitive to toxic chemicals in the air, and have been used to monitor dispersal of pollutants from factories. The current alarming decline of frogs, toads, and salamanders around the world may be alerting us to the hazards of acid rain or some other unknown environmental degradation (Anon. 1990, Booth 1989). The status of amphibians in Glacier is being assessed in light of this global die- off (see Information Paper 8).

Ecosystem services
The "free services" provided by naturally functioning ecosystems are less tangible than food or medicine but are equally vital to our survival. Ecosystems also cycle nutrients and energy; they provide clean water and fertile soils; they supply us with oxygen and ameliorate climates; they recycle wastes, absorb toxins, and control pests and disease; they maintain species diversity and a "genetic library" out of which evolve new organisms and adaptations to cope with an ever-changing environment (Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1981; see also NH 4.10, 4.18, 4.22, 4.27.1). In short, ecosystem processes sustain life all life, including our own.

In Glacier and the CCE, forests hold the soil in place and prevent sediment from clouding streams and spoiling fisheries and drinking water supplies. In addition to pollinating flowering plants, the resident insects decompose dead organic matter and return nutrients to the soil. The myriad but inconspicuous plant and invertebrate life in the CCE supplies the broad base of the food pyramid which supports at higher levels the large, charismatic animals that everyone hopes to see when they come to the park (elk, moose, mountain goats, eagles, wolves, grizzlies, etc.). Individual species may be critical to the survival of many others. Pileated woodpeckers, for example, which normally use the nest cavities they excavate in large trees or snags for only one year, act as "pathfinders" for other cavity nesters. Their nest holes may be subsequently used by a variety of birds and mammals including wood ducks, buffleheads, common mergansers, hooded mergansers, common goldeneyes, Barrow's goldeneyes, American kestrels, saw-whet owls, pygmy owls, boreal owls, screech owls, common flickers, red squirrels, flying squirrels, and American martens (McClelland 1979).

The genetic diversity maintained in the ecosystem's plants and animals is a warehouse of potentially useful organisms and substances. For example, Douglas firs in the CCE may harbor genes which make the trees resistant to certain pathogens or to browsing by snowshoe hares and mule deer. Such trees could be used for the genetic improvement of commercially harvested stands of this highly valued species in other parts of the Pacific Northwest (Oldfield 1989). Even more importantly, the CCE's genetic library provides a buffer of evolutionary options for species to draw on when faced with, for example, natural or human-caused climate change (see Information Paper 7).

For every species like Douglas fir which has a demonstrated, tangible usefulness to humans, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of other species which, as far as we can see, serve no readily apparent ecological or economic purpose. We may not be able to comprehend fully the function of a grizzly bear, an Indian paintbrush, or a mosquito, and we may believe that the disappearance of one of these species will matter little to our survival or to the planet's. But ecosystems are extraordinarily complex. We are far from understanding them and even farther from being able to replace ecosystem services with human technologies. (In fact, most of our attempts to do so have backfired in one way or another [Westman 1977, Ehrlich & Mooney 1983].) As Aldo Leopold (1966) wrote:

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

The Ehrlichs (1981) use an analogy of rivets on an airplane to make the same point. If you saw a mechanic popping rivets one by one from the wing of an airplane in order to save money, would you feel safe boarding that airplane? The mechanic assures you that the airplane has many more rivets than are needed to hold it together, but you may wonder, how many rivets can it stand to lose? Which are the critical rivets? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you are probably not going to get on that airplane. Similarly, if we don't know how many species or which species are critical to maintain the earth's life support systems, how can we shrug off the loss of any of them?

Aesthetics
Perhaps the easiest argument to make for conserving biodiversity in a place like Glacier National Park is that we get so much pleasure and spiritual fulfillment from closeness to wild places and wild things. The aesthetic values of Glacier are particularly evident when contrasted with human-modified environments.

For example, encounters with wildlife are unpredictable and spontaneous in Glacier. The possibility of seeing a grizzly bear or a wolf in its own world gives people a sense of the thrill and the wildness of untamed nature that is absent from the safe, sanitized, and artificial environment of a zoo. Even in areas adjacent to Glacier the aesthetic experience is different in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. On forests managed for multiple use (see Information Paper 2) just beyond the park's border, the land may be crisscrossed with logging roads, spotted with geometric clearcuts, or covered with extensive, even-aged stands of young second- or third-growth trees. Within the park, on the other hand, a person can travel for miles on foot without seeing a road. The landscapes are diverse and, away from the few roads, the only straight or abrupt edges between meadows, stands of young trees, and towering, mature, old-growth forests are small-scale ones caused by natural forces such as fire, flood, and avalanche. The quiet and solitude that can be found in the parks and wilderness areas of the CCE are increasingly rare and valuable qualities.

We need places where we can harvest timber and extract minerals; we want places where we can take our cars, snowmobiles, and guns; and we may even want places where all the threatening animals are behind bars. But we also need places like Glacier where we can see and experience nature on its own terms, unfenced, untamed, and unforeseen.

In addition to appreciating the magnificence of natural landscapes as a whole, we also place high value on individual species for their beauty or grandeur (e.g., grizzlies, wildflowers, butterflies) or as cultural or spiritual symbols (e.g., the coyote in native American mythology, and the bald eagle and the beaver as national symbols of the United States and Canada respectively; see NH 4.24). We value other species because of their fascinating physiological and behavioral complexities (e.g., the social systems of ants, the communication systems of bees, the physiology of hibernation in ground squirrels). And some species we value simply because they are naturally or unnaturally rare. One of our challenges is to cultivate a conscious aesthetic appreciation of abundance the value of thousands upon thousands of wildflowers or a prairie carpeted with millions of bison (Hutto et al. 1987). If we only concern ourselves with the fate of rare and endangered species, we will never be able to turn the tide of extinctions that our activities have set in motion (see Information Paper 5).

Ethics
For many people utilitarian arguments to conserve obscure, apparently useless species are simply not compelling, especially when hypothetical or undervalued (Norton 1986, 1988b) ecological functions are weighed against concrete economic benefits jobs, houses, energy, and so forth (Westman 1977). But for many other people, economic or utilitarian questions are either irrelevant or secondary to the ethical argument that other species have as much right to continued existence on earth as we do (Ehrenfeld 1981, 1988). In fact, these people hold, our power to destroy species to destroy the whole planet, for that matter obligates us not only to avoid causing extinctions but to act as wise stewards of all the earth's resources. It is an ethical imperative that we bequeath a healthy, life-supporting planet to future generations of other species as well as to our own children (see NH 4.9).

Conclusion
Underlying arguments for or against conserving individual species and habitats is a fundamental question: what kind of relationship can we or should we have with nature (Norton 1988a)? Will we treat ecosystems as our physical and spiritual life support system or will we treat nature as a warehouse of commodities to be consumed at will and eventually replaced, as needed, by human technologies? In places like Glacier people can explore alternatives to the nature-as-warehouse relationship that most people, isolated in big cities, have grown up with. By articulating our own emotional experiences of Glacier and the tangible and intangible values of biological diversity, we can help to stimulate park visitors' own feelings of "biophilia." Although making people aware of the magnitude of current environmental crises is necessary, in the long run our efforts to help people connect with and care personally about nature will probably do far more to motivate them to action than will any prophecies of doom (Soule 1988).

Many eloquent and thought-provoking books and articles have been written about how we value (or undervalue) nature and biological diversity; all of the ones listed below are highly recommended reading.

Author: Karen J. Schmidt.

References

Anonymous. 1990. California mountains seem deadly to frogs. Missoulian, March 4,1990.

Sax, J.L. 1980. Mountains without handrails: reflections on the national parks. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.