Elk Island Park shows Alberta’s idealized view of ‘nature’

Elk Island Park appears to be predicated on a rhetoric of ‘nature’ that will be of limited use in the 21^st century.

The conservation area, located 35 km east of the city, gained federal park status in 1913 as a sanctuary for a small population of elk, moose and mule deer. Today, the park holds one of North America’s highest densities of ungulates within its 165 km².

Elk Island Park attracts consumers with an aesthetic experience: people can “enjoy” and “connect with” nature. The problem is that ‘nature’ is a cultural construct, an idea largely formed in the Romantic period as a reaction against industrialization. ‘Nature’ was shaped by writers such as Wordsworth (“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her”) and Henry David Thoreau (“I think [mechanics and shop-keepers] deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.”) ‘Nature’ became an entity that changes at a much slower pace than humanity while offering stability and replenishment. Park patrons “connect with” this dreamy ideal.

In the 21st century, climate change increasingly became accepted as a human-influenced phenomenon, and federally-funded parks suddenly had a new purpose: to offer an immersion into ‘nature’ that would motivate the Western world to do something about its potentially destructive habits.

This has proven to be wishful thinking. The worldwide number of protected areas (now covering 13% of the Earth’s landmass) has increased from 10,000 in 1950 to 100,00 in 2009, a time in which CO2 levels increased 400% and greenhouse gas 600%. Also, Tim Morton argues such aesthetic experiences pretend to undermine one of the fundamental hierarchies of Western thought: the subject and object. By “getting in touch” with nature, say ecological writers, subject and object become one, and we achieve a sort of unity and peace. Morton says that we can’t unthink ourselves from our subject positions and claiming that we can is dishonest.

It’s important to see Elk Island Park for what it is: an escapist, recreational zoo (complete with campsites and a golf course) selling the ‘nature’ experience to consumers that won’t do anything significant about climate change. And given the level of human manipulation at the Park (a full time staff, population control, a fence etc.), there’s little ‘natural’ about it.

Many geologists agree that we have entered the anthropocene, “a new geological era in which humans dominate every flux and cycle of the planet’s ecology and geochemistry.” Thinking in this new era requires an honest consideration of national parks as vacation spaces rather than as having some higher purpose. It also requires thinking around seemingly self-evident views of ‘nature’ that obscure realities about climate change, not limited to humankind’s imaginary separation from ‘nature.’ Everything is ecology, and change is fundamental to ecological processes. Mountains form, dinosaurs become extinct, evolution occurs, we are born and then we die. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with climate change.

It’s not as if the park should actually do anything. It’s the consumer’s burden to understand these ideas. And Elk Island Park doesn’t seem to explicitly self-fashion as a motivator to combat climate change.

The popularity of conservation areas, however, indicate that the Albertan consciousness is nostalgic for ‘nature.’ A place like Elk Island Park could be interpreted as an attempt to maintain an engineered, false sense of stability amid a rapidly changing world, or a means of distraction rather than the acceptance of our condition in the anthropocene. Our current condition involves life with very few charismatic animals. Our current condition involves structuring our existence around the national economy.

Instead of escaping into ‘nature’, we need to understand such a rhetoric failed as a means of prevention. We need to plan for the realities of climate change (population shift and immigration) as opposed to thinking there’s anything substantial we can do as individual Albertans or Canadians to reverse it. We need addictions counselling and an acceptance of our standard of living (which we cannot and will not abandon, and which developing countries strive to achieve) as destructive. Our condition is one of great loss, alienation, shame and unfulfilled expectation.

Elk Island Park advertises Eden. Let’s put our clothes on and seriously consider ourselves within climate change.