3/25/2002
KUFM / KGPR
T. M. Power
Comparing Japan’s Montana to Our Own
I just returned from a two-week visit to Japan, half of which was spent in the high
grasslands that surround the Mt. Aso volcanic caldera in the Kumamoto Prefecture of
southern Japan. Montana has a “sister state” relationship with Kumamoto because of
the similarities created by both state’s reliance on livestock grazing on natural
landscapes and grain production. Both regions present a “big sky” when looking out
over the high grasslands that seem to stretch forever, broken only by deep valleys and
distant mountains.
Besides the similarities in economic activities and landscape, there are some
dramatic differences. Japan’s “Montana” is almost a completely human-dominated
landscape. Just before I arrived, the hundreds of square miles of grasslands had
undergone their annual burning. Each group of ranchers and farmers is responsible for
burning part of the grasslands and controlling that fire. It is a major undertaking that
mobilizes the entire rural population.
The result of the burning is a quick greening of the grasslands and the production
of waist high grasses that suggest what the tall grass prairies of our Great Plains must
have looked like when Lewis and Clark crossed them. The annual burning is carried out
for several reasons. First, without regular fires, forests would take over the grasslands,
a problem Montana is currently wrestling with on the Palouse prairie grasslands of
Wildhorse Island State Park in Flathead Lake. In other parts of the West, lack of fire
has also allowed woody plants and trees to takeover what had been grasslands.
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The second reason for the burning is to get rid of cattle ticks that would otherwise
infest and weaken the cattle. Finally, the burning provides a rush of nutrients to support
the new grass crop.
This annual human-managed burning has been taking place for at least 1,000
years in the Mt. Aso region of Japan. Of course, Native Americans used fire on
ourGreat Plains for similar reasons and for hunting purposes. They also burned parts of
the forested landscapes. As a result, ecologists tell us that what we EuropeanAmericans took to be “pristine” “natural” landscapes were actually at least somewhat
human-managed landscapes manipulated by Native Americans. The Japanese with
their much higher population density clearly have been heavily managing their
grasslands for a very long time.
The forested aspects of these Kumamoto mountain highlands and the steep
creek and river valleys are also heavily managed. During and after the Second World
War, those forested lands were heavily harvested both for the war effort and then to
support the rebuilding of the bombed and burned out urban areas. The harvest took
place quite quickly and the land was replanted with cedar trees that grow straight and
tall and produce wood products that resist decay. The result is largely even-aged
stands of a single species, plantations rather than diverse forests. In addition, many
people turn out to be allergic to the cedar pollen, creating a health problem for some
and a nuisance for others.
Although it is hard from a brief visit, in one season, to judge accurately, these
high mountain grass- and forestlands, despite their beauty, appear to have little of the
wildlife diversity that we take for granted in Montana. No big game was visible although
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some wild deer are still found in the high forests and grasslands. Wild boars, hares, and
badgers are also present although I did not see any. Even song birds were rare despite
the fact that spring had already arrived and fruit trees were in blossom.
None of this is surprising given how long these Japanese landscapes have been
managed for human purposes by a relatively dense population. After all, cattle ranching
is only 150 years old in Montana, and European-style farming is only about a century
old. It is millennia old in Kumamoto. Population density in Montana is very light, only
about 6 persons per square mile. In Kumamoto, population density is over a hundred
times that, about 700 persons per square mile. It is not surprising that there is more
room for non-human animals in Montana compared Kumamoto.
But the pressures to manage our natural landscapes almost exclusively for
commercial purposes here in Montana are relentless. Consider the debates we
continue to have over wildlife even in our national parks, such as the bison and wolves
in Yellowstone. Or consider the debates over motorized recreation in those same
national parks, the “rights” of snowmobiles and jet skis to use our national parks.
Mining under the Cabinet wilderness has been approved. There is heavy pressure to
open as many public lands as possible to energy production. Not that many years ago
there was pressure to allow energy exploration in national parks and wilderness areas;
for the Arctic Wildlife Refuge the pressure continues. And, of course, our population,
especially in the narrow river valleys of Western Montana and elsewhere in the
Mountain West, is growing, adding pressure on open space and wildlands alike.
Japan, having a thousand year head start, may have something to tell us about
where we might be headed and where we might end up. Japan certainly proves, as a
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lot of rural America does, that human dominated landscapes can be beautiful to the eye.
The more important question is whether beyond that superficial beauty and the
commercial productivity hidden behind it, there is something very important that is being
lost, namely natural diversity and the complex of valuable environmental services it
supports, including a rich mix of other living, wild, critters. With the loss of that natural
diversity will go the last of the original qualities that made Montana and much of the
Mountain West unique. If we do not energetically act to keep that from happening, we
will slowly but surely lose our natural heritage, replacing it with a thoroughly tamed and
commercial landscape. That would be a cultural and environmental shame and,
possibly, an unnatural catastrophe.
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