Bluegrass Wildlife: We are ‘community property’ – we don’t own the Earth, it owns us

By Howard Whiteman
Murray State University

I watched the squirrel intently as it headed my way. Hopping along the forest floor, she happened to pause right where the line is between my lot and my neighbor’s property. Then she just kept going, exploring all of my backyard.

How dare she. And how dare the deer do the same thing. And don’t get me started about the birds! They are everywhere. Even my neighbor’s trees stretch their branches over my airspace and drop their leaves on my lawn.

All of these organisms are part of a community, which in ecology is any group of species that potentially interact. Every one of the species in the local community act in the same way. They don’t acknowledge or even care about property lines.

They don’t care, of course, because those lines don’t really exist, at least not in the minds of the local community of life or the Earth itself. They are imaginary constructs that we have created to portion out and defend our own territories. Just like a dog or cat peeing, a buck whitetail fighting off another buck, or birds squawking at each other, our imaginary property lines are just ways to keep order among us humans.

But to the Earth and everything else that exists on it, such lines really don’t exist. That observation underlies a very real truth which too many of us have forgotten, because we think that as humans, we can do anything with the planet that we choose.

We think we own the Earth, when in reality the Earth owns us.

Think about the implications of those two statements. By thinking that we own the Earth, we embolden ourselves to do whatever we want with it, from building on it, adding a fence or wall, drilling it, digging it up, burning it, or even killing every other member of the community of life that happens to enter the area that we have decided is ‘ours’. It is our “right” to do so.

The other vision is a very different one. When we belong to the Earth, we suddenly have to live within the rules of the Earth, not humans and their societies. We have to care for it, and think about how our actions would affect it and all of the other species that share the Earth with us.

We are part of the community of life. Not apart from it. We belong to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us, and it never has. We are “community property”.

Here’s what is obvious if you just look in your backyard: all of life, the entire ecological community, knows the truth already. They don’t act like we are their masters. They don’t worry about property lines, and they do their best to find a way to make use of our homes, sheds, gardens, and lawns. Squirrels and birds nest in our eaves, bees and wasps create homes on our porches, and ants, mice, and other animals enter wherever they can. Plants grow up all around us, and some of these “weeds” keep us busy, because like the animals they understand that the property is not ours. They act as if no matter what we do, say, or think, and no matter what we build to try to keep them or other species out, that all of us belong to the world, rather than the other way around. Because we do.

Sure, you ‘own’ your land for now, because you have a deed, a map, and maybe a fence. But that will not last forever. Humans have been setting aside and defending territory from each other for tens of thousands of years, and land ‘ownership’ has changed hands hundreds of times. In the end, you cannot take it with you, and neither will your kids or their kids. Eventually, when humans are gone from this planet as all species inevitably are, our claim on land will again be meaningless, but the Earth and her community of life will keep on living, and keep on crossing all of those imaginary boundaries, without any knowledge of human property lines.

A good example of that crazy but important future vision is happening right now all around us. You see it wherever an old farmhouse is being taken over by the forest. An even more impressive example is Chornobyl, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. The city of Chornobyl has been abandoned because of the accident, and in the ensuing decades, nature has returned. Forests are taking over the city, and wildlife are now cruising streets that were once busy with cars, buses, and pedestrians. Nature doesn’t care about our views of ownership, because she knows that we all belong to the Earth, not the other way around.

I’m not suggesting that we should all give up our property; not at all. But perhaps we should consider that it was never really ours, and it still isn’t. We are just borrowing it, as we are borrowing the resources of the entire Earth to make our lives better.

If we made this logical jump, perhaps we wouldn’t be so eager to drill, burn, dig, pollute, and generally create as much havoc on Earth as we do. All of that activity has put us in a real environmental pickle lately, and much of it stems from our incessant view that we own the world rather than the other way around.

Whether or not your heart and mind is changed about your own property, many people do understand this reality, and in some way you can’t help but realize it, once you watch that squirrel hop from your neighbor’s lot into yours.

The question is, what will you do now that you know? Will you continue to act like the Earth belongs to you, or will you see the big picture and change your behavior, understanding that you (and I, and every other human) belong to the Earth. We only have one Earth to belong to, and if we want to keep it, understanding this one idea might help us do so a lot better than we have so far.

Howard Whiteman is the Commonwealth Endowed Chair of Environmental Studies and a professor in the Department of Biological Studies at Murray State University.