JUNE 2012
The Greatest“Un-Road” Trip Ever Blue Ridge Press
Amy Mathews Amos Last year conservation ath-
lete John Davis left his job to spend 10 months covering 7,600 miles on an epic journey. Unlike Jack Kerouac, the 47- year old traveled not by car or bus, but by kayak, bicycle and afoot on what could be called the ultimate “un-road” trip as he sought the wildest routes possible connecting Florida’s Key Largo with Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula. It wasn’t the personal chal-
lenge that spurred him on. Rather, it was the desire to inform Americans that our remaining wildlands must be connected by something other than roads if we ever hope to protect our nation’s wildlife. Davis and his conservation colleagues call their vision the Eastern Wildway – an eco- logically functional, unbroken chain of East Coast wildlife hab- itat linking green jewels like the Florida Everglades, Great Smoky Mountains and Adiron- dack Mountains with dozens of other refuges. Out West, the Wildlands Network and other groups are pursuing a likeminded vision: working with Rocky Moun- tain landowners to create the Western Wildway, and hoping to protect a Pacific Wildway on the West Coast and a Boreal Wildway in northern forests. There are good scientific
reasons for linking wildlands to wildlands. Roads, cities, and suburbs isolate wildlife popu- lations, preventing them from migrating or mating. For ani- mals needing large territories, like grizzly bears or the Florida panther, such isolation can be a death sentence. Conservation biologists have
long known that wildlife popu- lations cut off from each other eventually dwindle and die, no matter how well managed. Stud- ies of remote, oceanic islands
show why: small populations are vulnerable to catastrophes such as disease or drought, and their separation from others means that numbers and gene pools are not replenished after a population crash. Isolated habitat in nation-
al parks and other preserves works much the same way. Un- less we connect wildlands with wildlands, extinctions become inevitable. Impending climate change, with its dramatic geo- graphical shifts in food supply, temperature and precipitation, makes the linking of fragment- ed habitats even more urgent. Despite his best efforts, Da-
vis wasn’t able to avoid roads on his trek. His close calls with fast cars and powerful trucks gave him a new appreciation for the challenges that wildlife encounter: “I face[d] that dan- ger by choice,” Davis said. “Ani- mals are forced to.” Fortunately, strategically
placed wildlife corridors across major roadways already are helping. Wildlife underpasses and overpasses are aiding mi- grating species as varied as salamanders in Massachusetts, mountain goats in Montana and tortoises in the Mojave Desert. But connecting parklands
isn’t enough. Davis and other conservationists see a critical role for private landowners and outdoor recreationists – hikers, hunters, anglers, mountain bik- ers, birders and others – in cre- ating American Wildways. Even in the West with its vast
public lands, conservationists increasingly are turning to pri- vate landowners to fill habitat gaps. “We’ve been hypnotized in the West by the abundance of public land,” says Dr. Mi- chael Soulé, Professor Emeritus at the University of Califor- nia at Santa Cruz and one of the founders of the Wildlands Network. Unfortunately much
federal land is dedicated to gas wells, mining and timber har- vest, not wildlife habitat. That’s why Western conser- vationists are working closely with ranchers to create ecolog- ical and recreational corridors, offering lessons for budding East Coast efforts. The High Lonesome Ranch in Colorado, for example, is pioneering new techniques for restoring and conserving habitat on working ranches. “I think there’s start- ing to be a shift in attitude,” says Soulé. “There’s more op- portunity on private land… which in a way is kind of nice because it brings conservation back to being people-orient- ed.”
Davis agrees, and empha-
sizes the importance of people getting outdoors – away from electronic distractions and onto greenways and blueways. “This trek convinced me… that we really need to get people out there to value these places,” he says. People “don’t tend to be passionate about things unless we’ve had firsthand experi- ence.”
Davis admits to questioning
his own sanity at times on his trek, dodging trucks on a South Carolina highway or fighting off hypothermia in Maine. But he was on a mission to save our nation’s wildlife, and besides, he had a hell of a lot of fun. So much fun that he’s already plan- ning his next trek, this time in the Rocky Mountain West. To learn more about connec-
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