Our wild neighbours – and some dumb ones…
It was another excellent day of watching our wild neighbours yesterday. Although bears were again our focus, we found none. What we did find was Dall sheep, mountain goats, and some snow geese and Greater white-fronted geese that we only have a chance to see for a few days each year as they migrate through the southern Yukon. The picture of the goat below was taken right from the shoulder of the highway, with a 300mm lens on my Canon Digital Rebel XT. See this page for more photos from yesterday’s drive.
The Northern wilderness offers not only spectacular beauty, it can also provide substantial challenges to those who venture out unprepared. A quote from yesterday’s Anchorage Daily News sums up one of the problems faced by any community on the edge of the wilderness:
The ethic of self-sufficiency is fading, increasingly replaced by a dependence on rescue. There was a time in the West when getting rescued was about the worst embarrassment that could happen to an outdoorsman or woman.
This was in response to the helicopter rescue of 2 men who would normally be considered old enough to figure out how to get themselves out of trouble. Instead, a cell phone replaced the common sense that should be required equipment in the back country. The ADN reporter seems to have gotten nowhere in his attempt to embarrass the men, who don’t even face the bill for the helicopter time. There was no hint that they acknowedge that as well as forcing the taxpayers to pay for their stupidity, they put rescue personnel in some degree of danger. The bleeding hearts say that forcing people to pay for their own rescue may cause some to not call until it’s too late. Perhaps making rescue easy, though, is just another way of messing up evolution – see The Darwin Awards for more on that…
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