![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image09.png\" "\\"image09\\"")
<\/a>David and Lida in Madrid on the last night of a five-week stint around Europe.<\/p><\/div>\n
Is it still possible for American retirees to backpack — like they would have done as youngsters — around Europe for five weeks, have fun, learn a few things and\u2026have fun? \u00a0The answer for Lida and me at least, is a resounding \u201csi !\u201d<\/h2>\nBy David A. Burney<\/span><\/h3>\n <\/p>\n
My wife and I set only one ground rule for a recent trip to the Netherlands, England, and Spain. \u00a0We would explore ecotourism opportunities from the perspective of independent tourists who were traveling without a car. \u00a0Our proverbial carbon footprint would be relatively light (for Americans) \u2013 using the most efficient public transport available, eating local foods, walking several kilometers per day, and not spending much money. \u00a0Having fun all the while, of course.<\/p>\n
Naturally, we had a list of things we wanted to learn more about: \u00a0prehistoric cave art, new developments in conservation and ecotourism, and indigenous maritime cultures — restoration, rewilding, and cultural rebirth. \u00a0These are the things we have emphasized in all our work, including the Makauwahi Cave Reserve on Kaua`i (www.cavereserve.org<\/a>). \u00a0\u00a0Our increased leisure time, or intention to have more leisure time, in the last year or so has freed us to follow up on some favorite ideas, old and new.<\/p>\nWe even managed to visit the only place in the world where an animal has gone extinct for a few years, then been \u2013 for a few minutes at least \u2013 brought back to life.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image02-1024x767.jpg\" "\\"image02\\"")
<\/a>View of the remote part of the Pyrenees, near the village of Torla, where the last bucardo died.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park<\/h2>\n
High in the Pyrenees, those rugged lofty mountains separating Spain and France, Dr. Alberto Fernandez-Arias and his staff were \u201cground zero\u201d for the compelling and controversial idea of de-extinction. \u00a0First the park had the sad duty of losing the last remaining individual of the spectacular bucardo, or Pyrenean Ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) back in 2000. Three years later, a group of scientists used the \u201cDolly the Sheep\u201d cloning technique to produce a cross-fostered lamb from her frozen cells. \u00a0The lamb, genetically identical to the last individual of an extinct subspecies, only lived for a few minutes. As Harvard geneticist George Church pointed out, the first airplane flight only lasted twelve seconds\u2026<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image05-1024x680.jpg\" "\\"image05\\"")
<\/a>Celia, the last bucardo on display in the park visitors\u2019 center.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
I first met Alberto a couple of years ago at the National Geographic Society, where he and I were participants along with other scientists in a symposium exercise organized by the LongNow Foundation. \u00a0\u00a0Later we met again, under the same sponsors, to record the TEDx de-extinction lectures http:\/\/tedxtalks.ted.com\/video\/The-First-De-extinction-Alberto<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn late October Lida and I were in Zaragoza, Spain, and gave Alberto a call. \u00a0He offered to give us a personal tour of the National Park area next day (we were on our way up there anyway, planning to go by local buses). \u00a0He was Director of the national park until a few years ago, now he is in charge of \u201call the hunting and fishing in Aragon,\u201d as he put it. \u00a0This wildlife veterinarian is also an accomplished wildlife artist. The effort he helped begin, to clone the remaining frozen cells of the last bucardo, continues in a biotech lab in Zaragoza that is collaborating with government wildlife officials.<\/p>\n
Alberto drove us from the hotel in Zaragoza up into the mountains beyond Huesca. \u00a0The Pyrenees loomed ever larger and more picturesque as we approached the park. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m going to show you some of the things you would have missed if you just came on the bus,\u201d Alberto grinned as we wound up remote mountain roads with spectacular views in all directions. \u00a0Along the way we stopped off near Ainsa at the \u201cEco Museo-Centro de Visitantes del Castillo de A\u00ednsa (Huesca)\u201d http:\/\/www.quebrantahuesos.org\/htm\/es\/lafcq\/donde-ainsa.htm<\/a>, headquarters of the foundation that is spearheading the effort to save one of the world\u2019s largest and rarest fliers, the Lammergeyer, \u00a0Bearded Vulture, or Quebrantahuesos. \u00a0We were greeted by the foundation Secretary, Oscar Diez. \u00a0He explained that this gigantic raptor, a specialist feeder on bones of large (megafaunal) carcasses, is holding its own here in the steep remote ridges and canyons of the Pyrenees. \u00a0Surplus individuals are being translocated to another place where they went extinct in the mid-20th century, the Picos de Europa of NW Spain, to create another population as a hedge against extinction. \u00a0The European Ecological Network Natura 2000 aims to coordinate protection of the entire natural corridor of mountains stretching the 350 km (218 miles) between Picos de Europa and the Pyrenees, so that these only two populations surviving in Europe can eventually rejoin through this Iberian-Cantabrian Corridor. \u00a0Again, Europe is leading the way in large-scale rewilding strategies. \u00a0Brown bears, wolves, and that odd giant grouse, the Capercaille, also depend on this corridor.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image04-1024x680.jpg\" "\\"image04\\"")
<\/a>Burney with Alberto Fernandez-Arias & Oscar Diez in Ainsa, Spain.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
We drove on into the mountains, visiting the remote, stone-clad village of Tella. Famed for its remote mountain hermitages, it was also hereabouts that a pre-Christian tradition of witchcraft has apparently persisted right through to the present. \u00a0A megalithic dolmen, an ethnological museum of witchcraft, and a general feeling that Halloween lasts all year here pervades the place. \u00a0Chimneys have ornate points, to keep witches from perching there on their nightly flights.<\/p>\n
After Alberto stopped for a wonderful lunch of local fare at Lamiana, a friend\u2019s remote restaurant , we were winding through the picturesque steep canyons leading into the heart of the Pyrenees. \u00a0We ended up at Torla. \u00a0This is the last village in the mountains before the track turns into tourist access, then trails, then steep climbing routes into the central peaks, of which Monte Perdido at 3355 m (about 11,000 feet) is one of the three tallest. \u00a0As the sun went down over these great ragged limestone peaks, Alberto pointed to the high valley where the last bucardo died. \u00a0I resolved to hike up there, and did a few days later.<\/p>\n
A falling tree killed the last individual, a female called Celia. \u00a0Her frozen cells waited over three years until the lab opportunity arose, then were cloned and viable embryos were implanted in hybrids between domestic goats and the surviving cousin of the bucardo, the Spanish Ibex. \u00a0One made it to term, and produced a lamb with a defective lung. \u00a0It died a few minutes later.<\/p>\n
This humble beginning for \u201cde-extinction\u201d has led to a great deal of discussion about possibly bringing extinct species back from the dead. \u00a0Of course, we all agree that it would be easier to save a species before it goes extinct, but many jewels in the biodiversity crown have been lost already, apparently forever\u2014or so we thought. \u00a0Suddenly, technology seems to be offering a way to see a mammoth, or something close, walk the earth again (see cover story, April 2013 National Geographic). That\u2019s a big deal, regardless of how you feel about it. This story of Celia, the last bucardo, and her living cell line is an important part of the bigger story of de-extinction. \u00a0Now, thanks to our visit with Alberto and his colleagues, Lida and I have a better feel for the courage it took to try this daring strategy, and the deep sense of loss that people in this part of northern Spain have for this handsome animal. \u00a0The frozen cells are still there, and a government project to try and produce more \u201cde-extincted\u201d bucardos for reintroduction to the park in the future is still in the works. \u00a0Local school children keep on drawing it, and a faint ray of hope for the bucardo shines on.<\/p>\n
Communing with the Last Cave Artist<\/h2>\n
Earlier in October, Lida and I were in Cantabria, the north central part of Spain. \u00a0We had gotten there via the Brittany Ferry service from Plymouth, England, to Santander, Spain. \u00a0It\u2019s a 20-hour big-ship cruise, off the Brittany coast of France. \u00a0Once in Spain, we chose as our base of operations a village that comes as close to remaining in late Medieval times as one could in the modern world. \u00a0Thanks to \u201czoning laws\u201d that date back to the 16th century, Santillana del Mar has changed less than almost any place in Europe. \u00a0Jean Paul Sartre called it \u201cthe most beautiful village in Spain.\u201d \u00a0Anyway, touristy or not, for us it was centrally located amid one of the greatest concentrations of Paleolithic cave art known anywhere. \u00a0This region is on a par with some famous cave-art valleys of southern France. \u00a0Lida and I had first visited the Dordogne region of France almost three decades ago to admire this most ancient form of human art, which depicts the European megafauna in exquisite drawings that have lasted tens of millennia.<\/p>\n
We walked from Santilliana up to Altamira, knowing full well we couldn\u2019t see the actual art (the cave is closed to protect the delicate paintings) — only the facsimile \u201cNeocave.\u201d Some of the greatest cave art sites of Europe are off-limits to the public now to protect the delicate cave environment and these art treasures. \u00a0But Altamira was special, as one of the very first places where, in the 19th century, Paleolithic art was being recognized for what it was: \u00a0the world\u2019s first public exhibition of human creativity, thousands of years old. \u00a0For us, the art is really special because it features large animals that are either extinct or very rare in Europe today. \u00a0Some, like the horse, bison, and red deer (elk), are creatures now making a spectacular comeback in European rewilding projects. \u00a0Some, like the aurochs or wild cow, are returning to the landscape through a de-extinction process of backcrossing old cattle breeds and selecting for the \u201cwild\u201d traits.<\/p>\n
But it was the day we hiked from the bus stop in Puente Viesgo up to Monte Castillo that we felt closest to those artists of the late Pleistocene. \u00a0This is a cone-shaped limestone mountain, absolutely riddled with caves. \u00a0The most famous, the huge cavern of El Castillo, contains art that is some of the most ancient, perhaps done by the Neanderthals who occupied the cave before our own species. \u00a0It contains art of virtually every named period over subsequent millennia, right up to some of the finest and perhaps latest Upper Magdalenian masterpieces, depicting aurochs, horses, ibex and deer. \u00a0Twenty meters of sediment excavated at the cave entrance record 150,000 years of Neanderthal and subsequent modern human occupation, right up to the Middle Ages. \u00a0Our tour was with a large, trilingual group, moving quickly, with no pictures allowed of course.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, though, we had a chance to get a tour of Las Monedas, the other cave open for tours, of the four known art caves on the mountain. \u00a0We were the only ones signed up for this tour, just Lida, me, and a guide who spoke excellent English. \u00a0It\u2019s a very old, highly draped cave, in the geological sense. \u00a0Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of steady dripping has produced truly gigantic stalactites, stalagmites, and other cave dripstone features of dramatic appearance, on a par with caves anywhere. \u00a0This apparently was not a cave that was visited much by Paleolithic people, although it was frequented by the extinct cave bears. \u00a0The entrance is obscure now and was perhaps more so 12,000 years ago. \u00a0At that time, perhaps only one artist, very late in the Paleolithic sequence, left some drawings here. \u00a0They are very expertly done, in a consistent style of charcoal outlining often with an impressive economy of strokes to get the essence of the beast. \u00a0He was perhaps one of the very last of these artists. \u00a0Soon after 12,000 years ago, with changing postglacial climates, the advent of the Neolithic and the first evidence for agriculture, this mysterious practice of crawling into remote caves and leaving magnificent, realistic pictures of megafauna abruptly ceased. \u00a0The big animals, and the European hunter-gatherer culture that followed them, were passing over the hill of time.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image002-200x300.jpg\" "\\"image002\\"")
<\/a>Paul Bahn\u2019s excellent book on cave art features the Las Monedas caribou on its cover.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
After a longish hike through the convoluted recesses of this magnificent cave, seeing no art, Lida and I at last came upon a human-decorated passage. \u00a0It contains some of the most famous of all depictions of horses and reindeer, left by an artist of consummate skill and an economy of strokes. \u00a0For this dark recess deep underground, we had electric lights, but the artist would have probably had only a small stone lamp, burning fat derived from ever-scarcer big animals. \u00a0Perhaps nobody came back after him or her until some mysterious person many millennia later, in the fifteenth century, who left hobnailed boot tracks. \u00a0These led to a deep pit, from which a bag of silver and copper coins from that period was extracted in the 20th century. \u00a0The cave (and the coins that gave the cave its name) was re-discovered in 1952 by tree-planters. \u00a0Nobody yet has figured out why the coins were tossed in.<\/p>\n
Lida and I agreed, after the cave visit, that visiting Las Monedas was our consummate moment for somehow connecting with these ancient artists. \u00a0In one\u2019s mind\u2019s eye, imagine about 12 millennia ago, an accomplished artist crawls into the recesses of a spectacular cave, wildly decorated with dripstone and with cave-bear bones on the floor, and draws by the light of a flickering stone lamp, perfect pictures of big animals that are perhaps disappearing from his world. Among them are two pictures of the ibex (Celia\u2019s ancestors), and what is most likely a wolf. \u00a0Images of a world that, 12,000 years ago, was passing.<\/p>\n
Who Were these People?<\/h2>\n
Are there any vestiges of this early European culture, the indigenous people of the populous subcontinent we usually think of mainly as a source of colonizers of other lands? \u00a0Perhaps merely by historical coincidence, near these caves there is an area of NE Spain and SW France where many Basque people speak Euskara, a language that has been spoken in this region longer, almost certainly, than the many other languages we associate with Europe. Before Asiatic peoples speaking Indo-European languages began invading Europe about 5,000 years ago, there were languages, of which Euskara is perhaps the sole survivor, spoken by the indigenous peoples of Europe. \u00a0It\u2019s what linguists call a \u201clanguage isolate,\u201d a language that doesn\u2019t seem to fit neatly onto the family tree of existing languages anywhere.<\/p>\n
These Basque people are noted for their early development of maritime skills, fishing the Bay of Biscay and much of the northeastern Atlantic in late Medieval times, and reaching the Grand Banks and North America around the time of Columbus. \u00a0Lida and I spent some time in the heart of Basque country, in Bilbao, in order to learn more about these remarkable people.<\/p>\n
Linguists have had long arguments over this unique tongue, which sounds nothing like the surrounding Romance languages or anything else European, except for vague connections to two other old languages, Finnish and Hungarian. \u00a0The Basque writer and intellectual Miguel Unamuno, was among the first to point out that the Basque words for most common tools, including \u201cknife,\u201d \u201caxe,\u201d and \u201choe\u201d include the word for \u201cstone,\u201d implying that these language elements may date back to the Stone Age. \u00a0While linguists argue about the details, the modern Basques are moving forward with a remarkable bilingual culture. \u00a0\u00a0Bilbao is a city famous for its modern architecture and museums such as the Guggenheim. Its twin museums of ethnology and archaeology, on opposite sides of the Plaza de Miguel Unamuno in Bilbao, give an overview of Basque culture. \u00a0My favorite ancient artifact on display was the Mikeldi Idol, a great stone sculpture standing in the cloister. It\u2019s some sort of large animal (the original description from the seventeenth century said it was a rhinoceros) draped over a huge perfectly circular object carved from the same stone. Of unknown age, it is almost certainly from pre-Roman times.<\/p>\n
Through the centuries, the independent-minded Basques have earned a proud reputation as a highly skilled people of fishers, boatbuilders, shepherds, blacksmiths, potters, weavers, and more. \u00a0For good books in English about them, written by an American Basque, check out author Robert Laxalt.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image082-1024x767.jpg\" "\\"image08\\"")
<\/a>Mikeldi Idol, one of the most ancient relics of the Basque country. Wild woman in background.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
At Sea on the Bay of Biscay<\/h2>\n
These \u201cBiskaian\u201d people were much on my mind on the ship coming over from Plymouth, England (yep, the same one that has some steps that the American Pilgrims supposedly embarked from). \u00a0Crossing the English Channel and the broad Bay of Biscay, I noted a chart on the wall of our ship, the Pont-Aven, showing the whales of the North Atlantic that one might see on such a voyage. \u00a0Sadly, one of the most common whales when the Basques took to the sea with harpoons a millennium ago is no longer to be seen on this route, nor anywhere in the Atlantic. \u00a0Genetic studies of the bones saved in museums from early whaling days show that the \u201cextinct\u201d Atlantic Gray Whale is the same whale as the living \u201cPacific\u201d Gray, that has made such a remarkable comeback with protection in recent decades off the western coast of North America. \u00a0I suggested in an article over a decade ago that some should be captured, towed through the Panama Canal, and released in the Atlantic. \u00a0I still think that should be discussed, and like many ideas once dismissed, its time may come \u2013 a spectacular rewilding, ocean-wide.<\/p>\n
To get to England in the first place, we traveled under the water. \u00a0That\u2019s right, the \u201cChunnel.\u201d \u00a0We boarded a magnificent high-speed Eurostar train in Brussels, and came out of a long, dark tunnel under the English Channel near Dover. As is the norm in Europe these days, we were able to connect directly between the various train lines (using the London Metro), and were soon on our way to Salisbury, the home of one of the greatest and oldest cathedrals, but also that \u201ccathedral\u201d of still more ancient times, Stonehenge. \u00a0Much has been written about the improved interpretive facilities at the \u201c\u2019Henge,\u201d and we wanted to see for ourselves. \u00a0Indeed, it is fabulously well-done (and easily reached from Salisbury by bus, which also stops at the ancient hilltop ruins of the Medieval castle of Old Sarum, another good romp through ancient history). We especially liked the addition at Stonehenge of the reconstructed Neolithic village, complete with ethnobotanical demonstrations and a view into the lives of the people in the period when the builders were starting to drag big rocks around. \u00a0But what we especially wanted to hear more about was the Great Bustards.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image07-1024x768.jpg\" "\\"image07\\"")
<\/a>At Stonehenge, cows help maintain the landscape in a \u201cprehistoric\u201d condition.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right, huge ground birds that were hunted to extinction in 19th century Britain, but have held on in remote places from Russia to northern Spain. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Great Bustard Group ( www.greatbustard.org ) have a project on the Salisbury Plain, near Stonehenge, to reintroduce the Great B. \u00a0First they used individuals from a migratory Russian population. \u00a0As one might expect, these birds were prone to fly south in winter! \u00a0So experts then tried a more subtle technique, hatching eggs of the Spanish birds (Spanish bustards don\u2019t migrate, they are resident year-round). \u00a0\u00a0These birds are now being used for the reintroduction, with better success. \u00a0The project has a long way to go, and is still dealing with discussions regarding which genetic stocks and methods to use as with many reintroductions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image03-768x1024.jpg\" "\\"image03\\"")
<\/a>Stuffed Great Bustards in a display at Salisbury Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
While we were out in southern England, enjoying eating, sleeping, and drinking in places with overhead timbers up to 1000 years old or more, we thought we should go have a look at another type of restoration effort, the much-talked-about Eden Project in Cornwall. \u00a0Situated in abandoned clay pits, this mammoth project has built from scratch an elaborate theme-park devoted to the proposition that plants can be interesting and entertaining. \u00a0It\u2019s a government-nonprofit collaborative project that has cost over \u00a3120 million. We spent a Friday there, a balmy day (for SW England), admiring their biospheric domes. \u00a0We especially liked the one devoted to the Mediterranean theme and the origins of agriculture in that flora. Sadly, it seemed there were more employees than visitors that day, but I imagine things pick up on the weekends during the fall.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image06-1024x680.jpg\" "\\"image06\\"")
<\/a>The Eden Project on a mild autumn day in Cornwall.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Second Pilgrimage to that Unpronounceable Place<\/h2>\n
When it comes to rewilding at larger scales, nothing anywhere comes to mind more readily than a place with a name only Dutch people could pronounce, the Oostvaardersplassen. \u00a0Much has been written about this place by Franz Vera, Emma Mariss, and a host of other journalists and scientists, including me ( http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/?p=588#more-588<\/a> ). \u00a0Last fall I was there in connection with a visit to Holland for meetings with members of the True Nature Foundation. So I had a V.I.P. tour with Hans Breveld, one of the key wildlife biologists working at this remarkable example of restoration. There were many tourists around, but I was \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d and really couldn\u2019t quite picture what their experience of this unusual place was like.<\/p>\nThe place has a unique history, starting as an abandoned swamp-drainage scheme. \u00a0It rapidly became a refuge for more than 100,000 migrating geese, rare raptors, and a controversial but by many standards astoundingly successful, restoration of a large herbivore system modeled after late prehistoric Europe. There is an excellent short film (with English subtitles) on the place, De nieuwe wildernis, and a book in English with magnificent photography (Oostvaardersplassen: New Nature below Sealevel, by Vincent Wigbels). \u00a0A question I wanted to evaluate, something for Lida and me to tackle on this trip, is what does this experience add up to from the perspective of an international tourist? \u00a0And more specifically, can foreigners just show up here, and, using the fantastic public-transport, cycling, and hiking network so complete everywhere we\u2019ve been in the Netherlands, have a low-carbon-footprint sort of holiday that is really fun? And doesn\u2019t cost a bundle, I should add.<\/p>\n
We had been traveling around Holland for more than a week by this time, lecturing at Utrecht University, visiting with Dutch colleagues such as Dr. Erik de Boer, a paleoecologist, and catching up on the activities of the True Nature Foundation. \u00a0As I wrote in a recent bit for the Makauwahi Cave Reserve newsletter http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/?p=659#more-659<\/a> , we had an interesting time visiting with Henri Kirkdijk-Otten and Guido Beauchez at the Planken Wambuis Reserve, to see the restoration work being done there by\u2026cows! \u00a0Old cattle breeds thought to contain important genes for reconstituting the extinct wild aurochs are being tended here by Peter van Geneijgen. \u00a0Along with the feral horse breed from the New Forest area of Britain, these livestock fill in for the extinct herbivores in helping control invasive weeds and favoring native grasses and forbs.<\/p>\nSo near the end of our sojourn in the Netherlands, Lida and I took the train from Rotterdam, where we had been staying in this vast harbor on a \u201cboat and breakfast\u201d \u00a0\u2013 a restored century-old ship offering b & b accommodations \u2013 up to Lelystad in the NW corner of the country. \u00a0As the train drew near the town, passing through a lonely stretch of marshlands, we were suddenly flashed back to the times in Africa almost 40 years ago that we used to take the train from Nairobi to Mombasa, through herds of zebras and antelopes. \u00a0But we were in Holland, one of the most densely populated and industrialized countries in Europe. \u00a0Standing around as the train passed were wild herds of several hundred prehistoric-looking Konik horses, believed to be ancestors of the extinct tarpan of Europe, with faint stripes on the backs of their legs.<\/p>\n
We stayed at the Hotel Lange Jammer near the yacht harbor, an easy walk from the harbor bus stop. \u00a0Our intent was to rent bikes (easily done anywhere in Holland) and ride out to the \u201cOost.\u201d \u00a0But the owner\u2019s husband insisted on giving us a ride, saying we would have more time to walk around inside that way. \u00a0So he dropped us there, we hiked all over the reserve, and then walked back to town along the excellent trail system that perches atop the dikes that run everywhere in this low country.<\/p>\n
At the end of the five-week trip, Lida and I \u201cvoted\u201d independently, regarding which thing we did on the entire trip that was by our personal standard the \u201ccoolest.\u201d \u00a0This day was it for both of us. \u00a0Once again, like the times when we lived in the Masai Mara Reserve in the late 1970\u2019s and studied cheetahs, we felt that certain special uplift that comes with being out on the savanna with big animals. \u00a0Signs warn the many visitors hiking through not to approach the animals closer than 25 meters. \u00a0We obeyed the rules, and indeed the red deer, wild cattle, and thousands of migrating geese of three species did keep their distance. \u00a0But we paused some distance from a big herd of the wild horses, and they eventually came to us, sauntering by, eating, bickering, suckling foals, and generally ignoring us.<\/p>\n
At the lovely raised observatory at the end of a day-long loop hike, we were impressed with the extent to which Europeans take their birding seriously. \u00a0Although these big animals were all around, many visitors were exclaiming in let\u2019s see\u2026Dutch, German, French, Italian, English\u2026about the various species of geese, raptors, wading birds, even \u201clittle brown jobs\u201d as sparrows, warblers, wrens and such fare are sometimes lumped. \u00a0The view from here, and various hides and viewpoints accessible on foot around the reserve (and some by bicycle or even that increasingly rare conveyance in Holland, the private car), are absolutely stunning, as the large herbivores trim back the encroaching brush, and the geese do their job mowing the marsh edges and fertilizing everything to that bright green that comes from rapid nitrogen cycling and constant plant biomass turnover, to put it ecologically. The air, ground, and water teemed with diverse life. Nature\u2019s barnyard.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/image01-1024x681.jpg\" "\\"image01\\"")
<\/a>Rewilded descendants of the tarpan, Europe\u2019s extinct native horse.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
What Did We Learn on Vacation?<\/h2>\n
I have always believed that travel is one of the most effective educational tools. \u00a0It certainly has worked that way for me. \u00a0And as I approach 65, I am still learning lots. \u00a0Here are some generalities from our recent trip:<\/p>\n
1) Restoration of any type makes a place or a thing or a historical event more interesting for visitors of all sorts. \u00a0This idea of rewilding, in whatever form, represents above all a direction, not a destination, and this intention to restore gives a place and its caretakers a more positive purpose than just protecting nature from humans, and vice versa, as important as that is.<\/p>\n
2) Europe has a lot to teach the rest of the world about interpretation of natural and historical features. \u00a0Visitor information is generally high-quality, on a par with anything generated by the U.S. National Park Service, almost everywhere I\u2019ve been in Europe in the last few years. \u00a0They are advanced, but perhaps they have also led in making all the necessary mistakes along the way. \u00a0For instance, nature tourism and historical tourism are a huge business in many parts of Western Europe, and sometimes good places can become unpleasantly crowded during the high tourist season (we prefer to travel in Europe in the fall, after the rush). \u00a0Increasingly, parks are adopting no-car policies, providing shuttles or even restricting areas to foot or paddle access only. \u00a0In some situations, visitor centers have become highly automated, sometimes with working displays and sometimes \u201ctemporarily out of order.\u201d \u00a0There is no substitute for a real person in relating visitor information, European facilities have discovered over and over. \u00a0Ideally this person, who forever after becomes the face of the place for thousands of visitors, is courteous, engaging, and personally interested in the site.<\/p>\n
3) Visitors are there for entertainment but also appreciate relevancy to their own lives. \u00a0Museums, parks, and historical sites everywhere are being affected by global changes, as are all visitors. \u00a0It is important to address energy, climate change, and biodiversity loss issues by local example and message, all the while avoiding the \u201cpreachy\u201d quality we encountered in a few places. \u00a0If a park conserves energy in its operations and has proactive programs to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss, and shares these programs with the public, that says more than any amount of environmental sermonizing.<\/p>\n
4) All conservation projects benefit from historical tie-ins; all historical features invite a conservation opportunity. \u00a0Lida and I like to think that Makauwahi Cave Reserve on Kaua`i has played a positive role in developing and promoting these paired concepts.<\/p>\n
Finally, I guess what anybody still reading really wants to know: \u00a0is it possible for an elderly couple to travel around Europe with a very light footprint, specifically no car? \u00a0Yes, absolutely proved now. \u00a0And it was fun, from one end to the other. \u00a0Starting in Amsterdam, traveling all over Holland, exploring the antiquities and natural features of southern England and northern Spain, right out to the last night in Madrid, at a famous Flamenco club, it was all fun.<\/p>\n
We never risked getting stranded until we got back to the small airport in New Bern, North Carolina. \u00a0Fifty miles from home, 11 in the evening, our friends Barbara Garrity-Blake and Margery Meisenheimer picked us up by car for the last leg of our long journey. \u00a0They are good neighbors and reliable folks, but if they had failed to show up for whatever reason, there is no public transport we could have taken, short of bribing a cab, if we could find one, to drive to the next county in the middle of the night. \u00a0No similar dilemma ever arose in five weeks of foreign travel. \u00a0That\u2019s a sobering thought for Americans, or should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is it still possible for American retirees to backpack — like they would have done as youngsters — around Europe for five weeks, have fun, learn a few things and\u2026have fun? \u00a0The answer for Lida and me at least, … Continue reading
<\/p>\n
My wife and I set only one ground rule for a recent trip to the Netherlands, England, and Spain. \u00a0We would explore ecotourism opportunities from the perspective of independent tourists who were traveling without a car. \u00a0Our proverbial carbon footprint would be relatively light (for Americans) \u2013 using the most efficient public transport available, eating local foods, walking several kilometers per day, and not spending much money. \u00a0Having fun all the while, of course.<\/p>\n
Naturally, we had a list of things we wanted to learn more about: \u00a0prehistoric cave art, new developments in conservation and ecotourism, and indigenous maritime cultures — restoration, rewilding, and cultural rebirth. \u00a0These are the things we have emphasized in all our work, including the Makauwahi Cave Reserve on Kaua`i (www.cavereserve.org<\/a>). \u00a0\u00a0Our increased leisure time, or intention to have more leisure time, in the last year or so has freed us to follow up on some favorite ideas, old and new.<\/p>\n We even managed to visit the only place in the world where an animal has gone extinct for a few years, then been \u2013 for a few minutes at least \u2013 brought back to life.<\/p>\n View of the remote part of the Pyrenees, near the village of Torla, where the last bucardo died.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n High in the Pyrenees, those rugged lofty mountains separating Spain and France, Dr. Alberto Fernandez-Arias and his staff were \u201cground zero\u201d for the compelling and controversial idea of de-extinction. \u00a0First the park had the sad duty of losing the last remaining individual of the spectacular bucardo, or Pyrenean Ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) back in 2000. Three years later, a group of scientists used the \u201cDolly the Sheep\u201d cloning technique to produce a cross-fostered lamb from her frozen cells. \u00a0The lamb, genetically identical to the last individual of an extinct subspecies, only lived for a few minutes. As Harvard geneticist George Church pointed out, the first airplane flight only lasted twelve seconds\u2026<\/p>\n Celia, the last bucardo on display in the park visitors\u2019 center.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n I first met Alberto a couple of years ago at the National Geographic Society, where he and I were participants along with other scientists in a symposium exercise organized by the LongNow Foundation. \u00a0\u00a0Later we met again, under the same sponsors, to record the TEDx de-extinction lectures http:\/\/tedxtalks.ted.com\/video\/The-First-De-extinction-Alberto<\/a>.<\/p>\n In late October Lida and I were in Zaragoza, Spain, and gave Alberto a call. \u00a0He offered to give us a personal tour of the National Park area next day (we were on our way up there anyway, planning to go by local buses). \u00a0He was Director of the national park until a few years ago, now he is in charge of \u201call the hunting and fishing in Aragon,\u201d as he put it. \u00a0This wildlife veterinarian is also an accomplished wildlife artist. The effort he helped begin, to clone the remaining frozen cells of the last bucardo, continues in a biotech lab in Zaragoza that is collaborating with government wildlife officials.<\/p>\n Alberto drove us from the hotel in Zaragoza up into the mountains beyond Huesca. \u00a0The Pyrenees loomed ever larger and more picturesque as we approached the park. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m going to show you some of the things you would have missed if you just came on the bus,\u201d Alberto grinned as we wound up remote mountain roads with spectacular views in all directions. \u00a0Along the way we stopped off near Ainsa at the \u201cEco Museo-Centro de Visitantes del Castillo de A\u00ednsa (Huesca)\u201d http:\/\/www.quebrantahuesos.org\/htm\/es\/lafcq\/donde-ainsa.htm<\/a>, headquarters of the foundation that is spearheading the effort to save one of the world\u2019s largest and rarest fliers, the Lammergeyer, \u00a0Bearded Vulture, or Quebrantahuesos. \u00a0We were greeted by the foundation Secretary, Oscar Diez. \u00a0He explained that this gigantic raptor, a specialist feeder on bones of large (megafaunal) carcasses, is holding its own here in the steep remote ridges and canyons of the Pyrenees. \u00a0Surplus individuals are being translocated to another place where they went extinct in the mid-20th century, the Picos de Europa of NW Spain, to create another population as a hedge against extinction. \u00a0The European Ecological Network Natura 2000 aims to coordinate protection of the entire natural corridor of mountains stretching the 350 km (218 miles) between Picos de Europa and the Pyrenees, so that these only two populations surviving in Europe can eventually rejoin through this Iberian-Cantabrian Corridor. \u00a0Again, Europe is leading the way in large-scale rewilding strategies. \u00a0Brown bears, wolves, and that odd giant grouse, the Capercaille, also depend on this corridor.<\/p>\n Burney with Alberto Fernandez-Arias & Oscar Diez in Ainsa, Spain.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n We drove on into the mountains, visiting the remote, stone-clad village of Tella. Famed for its remote mountain hermitages, it was also hereabouts that a pre-Christian tradition of witchcraft has apparently persisted right through to the present. \u00a0A megalithic dolmen, an ethnological museum of witchcraft, and a general feeling that Halloween lasts all year here pervades the place. \u00a0Chimneys have ornate points, to keep witches from perching there on their nightly flights.<\/p>\n After Alberto stopped for a wonderful lunch of local fare at Lamiana, a friend\u2019s remote restaurant , we were winding through the picturesque steep canyons leading into the heart of the Pyrenees. \u00a0We ended up at Torla. \u00a0This is the last village in the mountains before the track turns into tourist access, then trails, then steep climbing routes into the central peaks, of which Monte Perdido at 3355 m (about 11,000 feet) is one of the three tallest. \u00a0As the sun went down over these great ragged limestone peaks, Alberto pointed to the high valley where the last bucardo died. \u00a0I resolved to hike up there, and did a few days later.<\/p>\n A falling tree killed the last individual, a female called Celia. \u00a0Her frozen cells waited over three years until the lab opportunity arose, then were cloned and viable embryos were implanted in hybrids between domestic goats and the surviving cousin of the bucardo, the Spanish Ibex. \u00a0One made it to term, and produced a lamb with a defective lung. \u00a0It died a few minutes later.<\/p>\n This humble beginning for \u201cde-extinction\u201d has led to a great deal of discussion about possibly bringing extinct species back from the dead. \u00a0Of course, we all agree that it would be easier to save a species before it goes extinct, but many jewels in the biodiversity crown have been lost already, apparently forever\u2014or so we thought. \u00a0Suddenly, technology seems to be offering a way to see a mammoth, or something close, walk the earth again (see cover story, April 2013 National Geographic). That\u2019s a big deal, regardless of how you feel about it. This story of Celia, the last bucardo, and her living cell line is an important part of the bigger story of de-extinction. \u00a0Now, thanks to our visit with Alberto and his colleagues, Lida and I have a better feel for the courage it took to try this daring strategy, and the deep sense of loss that people in this part of northern Spain have for this handsome animal. \u00a0The frozen cells are still there, and a government project to try and produce more \u201cde-extincted\u201d bucardos for reintroduction to the park in the future is still in the works. \u00a0Local school children keep on drawing it, and a faint ray of hope for the bucardo shines on.<\/p>\n Earlier in October, Lida and I were in Cantabria, the north central part of Spain. \u00a0We had gotten there via the Brittany Ferry service from Plymouth, England, to Santander, Spain. \u00a0It\u2019s a 20-hour big-ship cruise, off the Brittany coast of France. \u00a0Once in Spain, we chose as our base of operations a village that comes as close to remaining in late Medieval times as one could in the modern world. \u00a0Thanks to \u201czoning laws\u201d that date back to the 16th century, Santillana del Mar has changed less than almost any place in Europe. \u00a0Jean Paul Sartre called it \u201cthe most beautiful village in Spain.\u201d \u00a0Anyway, touristy or not, for us it was centrally located amid one of the greatest concentrations of Paleolithic cave art known anywhere. \u00a0This region is on a par with some famous cave-art valleys of southern France. \u00a0Lida and I had first visited the Dordogne region of France almost three decades ago to admire this most ancient form of human art, which depicts the European megafauna in exquisite drawings that have lasted tens of millennia.<\/p>\n We walked from Santilliana up to Altamira, knowing full well we couldn\u2019t see the actual art (the cave is closed to protect the delicate paintings) — only the facsimile \u201cNeocave.\u201d Some of the greatest cave art sites of Europe are off-limits to the public now to protect the delicate cave environment and these art treasures. \u00a0But Altamira was special, as one of the very first places where, in the 19th century, Paleolithic art was being recognized for what it was: \u00a0the world\u2019s first public exhibition of human creativity, thousands of years old. \u00a0For us, the art is really special because it features large animals that are either extinct or very rare in Europe today. \u00a0Some, like the horse, bison, and red deer (elk), are creatures now making a spectacular comeback in European rewilding projects. \u00a0Some, like the aurochs or wild cow, are returning to the landscape through a de-extinction process of backcrossing old cattle breeds and selecting for the \u201cwild\u201d traits.<\/p>\n But it was the day we hiked from the bus stop in Puente Viesgo up to Monte Castillo that we felt closest to those artists of the late Pleistocene. \u00a0This is a cone-shaped limestone mountain, absolutely riddled with caves. \u00a0The most famous, the huge cavern of El Castillo, contains art that is some of the most ancient, perhaps done by the Neanderthals who occupied the cave before our own species. \u00a0It contains art of virtually every named period over subsequent millennia, right up to some of the finest and perhaps latest Upper Magdalenian masterpieces, depicting aurochs, horses, ibex and deer. \u00a0Twenty meters of sediment excavated at the cave entrance record 150,000 years of Neanderthal and subsequent modern human occupation, right up to the Middle Ages. \u00a0Our tour was with a large, trilingual group, moving quickly, with no pictures allowed of course.<\/p>\n Afterwards, though, we had a chance to get a tour of Las Monedas, the other cave open for tours, of the four known art caves on the mountain. \u00a0We were the only ones signed up for this tour, just Lida, me, and a guide who spoke excellent English. \u00a0It\u2019s a very old, highly draped cave, in the geological sense. \u00a0Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of steady dripping has produced truly gigantic stalactites, stalagmites, and other cave dripstone features of dramatic appearance, on a par with caves anywhere. \u00a0This apparently was not a cave that was visited much by Paleolithic people, although it was frequented by the extinct cave bears. \u00a0The entrance is obscure now and was perhaps more so 12,000 years ago. \u00a0At that time, perhaps only one artist, very late in the Paleolithic sequence, left some drawings here. \u00a0They are very expertly done, in a consistent style of charcoal outlining often with an impressive economy of strokes to get the essence of the beast. \u00a0He was perhaps one of the very last of these artists. \u00a0Soon after 12,000 years ago, with changing postglacial climates, the advent of the Neolithic and the first evidence for agriculture, this mysterious practice of crawling into remote caves and leaving magnificent, realistic pictures of megafauna abruptly ceased. \u00a0The big animals, and the European hunter-gatherer culture that followed them, were passing over the hill of time.<\/p>\n Paul Bahn\u2019s excellent book on cave art features the Las Monedas caribou on its cover.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n After a longish hike through the convoluted recesses of this magnificent cave, seeing no art, Lida and I at last came upon a human-decorated passage. \u00a0It contains some of the most famous of all depictions of horses and reindeer, left by an artist of consummate skill and an economy of strokes. \u00a0For this dark recess deep underground, we had electric lights, but the artist would have probably had only a small stone lamp, burning fat derived from ever-scarcer big animals. \u00a0Perhaps nobody came back after him or her until some mysterious person many millennia later, in the fifteenth century, who left hobnailed boot tracks. \u00a0These led to a deep pit, from which a bag of silver and copper coins from that period was extracted in the 20th century. \u00a0The cave (and the coins that gave the cave its name) was re-discovered in 1952 by tree-planters. \u00a0Nobody yet has figured out why the coins were tossed in.<\/p>\n Lida and I agreed, after the cave visit, that visiting Las Monedas was our consummate moment for somehow connecting with these ancient artists. \u00a0In one\u2019s mind\u2019s eye, imagine about 12 millennia ago, an accomplished artist crawls into the recesses of a spectacular cave, wildly decorated with dripstone and with cave-bear bones on the floor, and draws by the light of a flickering stone lamp, perfect pictures of big animals that are perhaps disappearing from his world. Among them are two pictures of the ibex (Celia\u2019s ancestors), and what is most likely a wolf. \u00a0Images of a world that, 12,000 years ago, was passing.<\/p>\n Are there any vestiges of this early European culture, the indigenous people of the populous subcontinent we usually think of mainly as a source of colonizers of other lands? \u00a0Perhaps merely by historical coincidence, near these caves there is an area of NE Spain and SW France where many Basque people speak Euskara, a language that has been spoken in this region longer, almost certainly, than the many other languages we associate with Europe. Before Asiatic peoples speaking Indo-European languages began invading Europe about 5,000 years ago, there were languages, of which Euskara is perhaps the sole survivor, spoken by the indigenous peoples of Europe. \u00a0It\u2019s what linguists call a \u201clanguage isolate,\u201d a language that doesn\u2019t seem to fit neatly onto the family tree of existing languages anywhere.<\/p>\n These Basque people are noted for their early development of maritime skills, fishing the Bay of Biscay and much of the northeastern Atlantic in late Medieval times, and reaching the Grand Banks and North America around the time of Columbus. \u00a0Lida and I spent some time in the heart of Basque country, in Bilbao, in order to learn more about these remarkable people.<\/p>\n Linguists have had long arguments over this unique tongue, which sounds nothing like the surrounding Romance languages or anything else European, except for vague connections to two other old languages, Finnish and Hungarian. \u00a0The Basque writer and intellectual Miguel Unamuno, was among the first to point out that the Basque words for most common tools, including \u201cknife,\u201d \u201caxe,\u201d and \u201choe\u201d include the word for \u201cstone,\u201d implying that these language elements may date back to the Stone Age. \u00a0While linguists argue about the details, the modern Basques are moving forward with a remarkable bilingual culture. \u00a0\u00a0Bilbao is a city famous for its modern architecture and museums such as the Guggenheim. Its twin museums of ethnology and archaeology, on opposite sides of the Plaza de Miguel Unamuno in Bilbao, give an overview of Basque culture. \u00a0My favorite ancient artifact on display was the Mikeldi Idol, a great stone sculpture standing in the cloister. It\u2019s some sort of large animal (the original description from the seventeenth century said it was a rhinoceros) draped over a huge perfectly circular object carved from the same stone. Of unknown age, it is almost certainly from pre-Roman times.<\/p>\n Through the centuries, the independent-minded Basques have earned a proud reputation as a highly skilled people of fishers, boatbuilders, shepherds, blacksmiths, potters, weavers, and more. \u00a0For good books in English about them, written by an American Basque, check out author Robert Laxalt.<\/p>\n Mikeldi Idol, one of the most ancient relics of the Basque country. Wild woman in background.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n These \u201cBiskaian\u201d people were much on my mind on the ship coming over from Plymouth, England (yep, the same one that has some steps that the American Pilgrims supposedly embarked from). \u00a0Crossing the English Channel and the broad Bay of Biscay, I noted a chart on the wall of our ship, the Pont-Aven, showing the whales of the North Atlantic that one might see on such a voyage. \u00a0Sadly, one of the most common whales when the Basques took to the sea with harpoons a millennium ago is no longer to be seen on this route, nor anywhere in the Atlantic. \u00a0Genetic studies of the bones saved in museums from early whaling days show that the \u201cextinct\u201d Atlantic Gray Whale is the same whale as the living \u201cPacific\u201d Gray, that has made such a remarkable comeback with protection in recent decades off the western coast of North America. \u00a0I suggested in an article over a decade ago that some should be captured, towed through the Panama Canal, and released in the Atlantic. \u00a0I still think that should be discussed, and like many ideas once dismissed, its time may come \u2013 a spectacular rewilding, ocean-wide.<\/p>\n To get to England in the first place, we traveled under the water. \u00a0That\u2019s right, the \u201cChunnel.\u201d \u00a0We boarded a magnificent high-speed Eurostar train in Brussels, and came out of a long, dark tunnel under the English Channel near Dover. As is the norm in Europe these days, we were able to connect directly between the various train lines (using the London Metro), and were soon on our way to Salisbury, the home of one of the greatest and oldest cathedrals, but also that \u201ccathedral\u201d of still more ancient times, Stonehenge. \u00a0Much has been written about the improved interpretive facilities at the \u201c\u2019Henge,\u201d and we wanted to see for ourselves. \u00a0Indeed, it is fabulously well-done (and easily reached from Salisbury by bus, which also stops at the ancient hilltop ruins of the Medieval castle of Old Sarum, another good romp through ancient history). We especially liked the addition at Stonehenge of the reconstructed Neolithic village, complete with ethnobotanical demonstrations and a view into the lives of the people in the period when the builders were starting to drag big rocks around. \u00a0But what we especially wanted to hear more about was the Great Bustards.<\/p>\n At Stonehenge, cows help maintain the landscape in a \u201cprehistoric\u201d condition.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s right, huge ground birds that were hunted to extinction in 19th century Britain, but have held on in remote places from Russia to northern Spain. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Great Bustard Group ( www.greatbustard.org ) have a project on the Salisbury Plain, near Stonehenge, to reintroduce the Great B. \u00a0First they used individuals from a migratory Russian population. \u00a0As one might expect, these birds were prone to fly south in winter! \u00a0So experts then tried a more subtle technique, hatching eggs of the Spanish birds (Spanish bustards don\u2019t migrate, they are resident year-round). \u00a0\u00a0These birds are now being used for the reintroduction, with better success. \u00a0The project has a long way to go, and is still dealing with discussions regarding which genetic stocks and methods to use as with many reintroductions.<\/p>\n Stuffed Great Bustards in a display at Salisbury Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n While we were out in southern England, enjoying eating, sleeping, and drinking in places with overhead timbers up to 1000 years old or more, we thought we should go have a look at another type of restoration effort, the much-talked-about Eden Project in Cornwall. \u00a0Situated in abandoned clay pits, this mammoth project has built from scratch an elaborate theme-park devoted to the proposition that plants can be interesting and entertaining. \u00a0It\u2019s a government-nonprofit collaborative project that has cost over \u00a3120 million. We spent a Friday there, a balmy day (for SW England), admiring their biospheric domes. \u00a0We especially liked the one devoted to the Mediterranean theme and the origins of agriculture in that flora. Sadly, it seemed there were more employees than visitors that day, but I imagine things pick up on the weekends during the fall.<\/p>\n The Eden Project on a mild autumn day in Cornwall.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n When it comes to rewilding at larger scales, nothing anywhere comes to mind more readily than a place with a name only Dutch people could pronounce, the Oostvaardersplassen. \u00a0Much has been written about this place by Franz Vera, Emma Mariss, and a host of other journalists and scientists, including me ( http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/?p=588#more-588<\/a> ). \u00a0Last fall I was there in connection with a visit to Holland for meetings with members of the True Nature Foundation. So I had a V.I.P. tour with Hans Breveld, one of the key wildlife biologists working at this remarkable example of restoration. There were many tourists around, but I was \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d and really couldn\u2019t quite picture what their experience of this unusual place was like.<\/p>\n The place has a unique history, starting as an abandoned swamp-drainage scheme. \u00a0It rapidly became a refuge for more than 100,000 migrating geese, rare raptors, and a controversial but by many standards astoundingly successful, restoration of a large herbivore system modeled after late prehistoric Europe. There is an excellent short film (with English subtitles) on the place, De nieuwe wildernis, and a book in English with magnificent photography (Oostvaardersplassen: New Nature below Sealevel, by Vincent Wigbels). \u00a0A question I wanted to evaluate, something for Lida and me to tackle on this trip, is what does this experience add up to from the perspective of an international tourist? \u00a0And more specifically, can foreigners just show up here, and, using the fantastic public-transport, cycling, and hiking network so complete everywhere we\u2019ve been in the Netherlands, have a low-carbon-footprint sort of holiday that is really fun? And doesn\u2019t cost a bundle, I should add.<\/p>\n We had been traveling around Holland for more than a week by this time, lecturing at Utrecht University, visiting with Dutch colleagues such as Dr. Erik de Boer, a paleoecologist, and catching up on the activities of the True Nature Foundation. \u00a0As I wrote in a recent bit for the Makauwahi Cave Reserve newsletter http:\/\/cavereserve.org\/blog\/?p=659#more-659<\/a> , we had an interesting time visiting with Henri Kirkdijk-Otten and Guido Beauchez at the Planken Wambuis Reserve, to see the restoration work being done there by\u2026cows! \u00a0Old cattle breeds thought to contain important genes for reconstituting the extinct wild aurochs are being tended here by Peter van Geneijgen. \u00a0Along with the feral horse breed from the New Forest area of Britain, these livestock fill in for the extinct herbivores in helping control invasive weeds and favoring native grasses and forbs.<\/p>\n So near the end of our sojourn in the Netherlands, Lida and I took the train from Rotterdam, where we had been staying in this vast harbor on a \u201cboat and breakfast\u201d \u00a0\u2013 a restored century-old ship offering b & b accommodations \u2013 up to Lelystad in the NW corner of the country. \u00a0As the train drew near the town, passing through a lonely stretch of marshlands, we were suddenly flashed back to the times in Africa almost 40 years ago that we used to take the train from Nairobi to Mombasa, through herds of zebras and antelopes. \u00a0But we were in Holland, one of the most densely populated and industrialized countries in Europe. \u00a0Standing around as the train passed were wild herds of several hundred prehistoric-looking Konik horses, believed to be ancestors of the extinct tarpan of Europe, with faint stripes on the backs of their legs.<\/p>\n We stayed at the Hotel Lange Jammer near the yacht harbor, an easy walk from the harbor bus stop. \u00a0Our intent was to rent bikes (easily done anywhere in Holland) and ride out to the \u201cOost.\u201d \u00a0But the owner\u2019s husband insisted on giving us a ride, saying we would have more time to walk around inside that way. \u00a0So he dropped us there, we hiked all over the reserve, and then walked back to town along the excellent trail system that perches atop the dikes that run everywhere in this low country.<\/p>\n At the end of the five-week trip, Lida and I \u201cvoted\u201d independently, regarding which thing we did on the entire trip that was by our personal standard the \u201ccoolest.\u201d \u00a0This day was it for both of us. \u00a0Once again, like the times when we lived in the Masai Mara Reserve in the late 1970\u2019s and studied cheetahs, we felt that certain special uplift that comes with being out on the savanna with big animals. \u00a0Signs warn the many visitors hiking through not to approach the animals closer than 25 meters. \u00a0We obeyed the rules, and indeed the red deer, wild cattle, and thousands of migrating geese of three species did keep their distance. \u00a0But we paused some distance from a big herd of the wild horses, and they eventually came to us, sauntering by, eating, bickering, suckling foals, and generally ignoring us.<\/p>\n At the lovely raised observatory at the end of a day-long loop hike, we were impressed with the extent to which Europeans take their birding seriously. \u00a0Although these big animals were all around, many visitors were exclaiming in let\u2019s see\u2026Dutch, German, French, Italian, English\u2026about the various species of geese, raptors, wading birds, even \u201clittle brown jobs\u201d as sparrows, warblers, wrens and such fare are sometimes lumped. \u00a0The view from here, and various hides and viewpoints accessible on foot around the reserve (and some by bicycle or even that increasingly rare conveyance in Holland, the private car), are absolutely stunning, as the large herbivores trim back the encroaching brush, and the geese do their job mowing the marsh edges and fertilizing everything to that bright green that comes from rapid nitrogen cycling and constant plant biomass turnover, to put it ecologically. The air, ground, and water teemed with diverse life. Nature\u2019s barnyard.<\/p>\n Rewilded descendants of the tarpan, Europe\u2019s extinct native horse.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n I have always believed that travel is one of the most effective educational tools. \u00a0It certainly has worked that way for me. \u00a0And as I approach 65, I am still learning lots. \u00a0Here are some generalities from our recent trip:<\/p>\n 1) Restoration of any type makes a place or a thing or a historical event more interesting for visitors of all sorts. \u00a0This idea of rewilding, in whatever form, represents above all a direction, not a destination, and this intention to restore gives a place and its caretakers a more positive purpose than just protecting nature from humans, and vice versa, as important as that is.<\/p>\n 2) Europe has a lot to teach the rest of the world about interpretation of natural and historical features. \u00a0Visitor information is generally high-quality, on a par with anything generated by the U.S. National Park Service, almost everywhere I\u2019ve been in Europe in the last few years. \u00a0They are advanced, but perhaps they have also led in making all the necessary mistakes along the way. \u00a0For instance, nature tourism and historical tourism are a huge business in many parts of Western Europe, and sometimes good places can become unpleasantly crowded during the high tourist season (we prefer to travel in Europe in the fall, after the rush). \u00a0Increasingly, parks are adopting no-car policies, providing shuttles or even restricting areas to foot or paddle access only. \u00a0In some situations, visitor centers have become highly automated, sometimes with working displays and sometimes \u201ctemporarily out of order.\u201d \u00a0There is no substitute for a real person in relating visitor information, European facilities have discovered over and over. \u00a0Ideally this person, who forever after becomes the face of the place for thousands of visitors, is courteous, engaging, and personally interested in the site.<\/p>\n 3) Visitors are there for entertainment but also appreciate relevancy to their own lives. \u00a0Museums, parks, and historical sites everywhere are being affected by global changes, as are all visitors. \u00a0It is important to address energy, climate change, and biodiversity loss issues by local example and message, all the while avoiding the \u201cpreachy\u201d quality we encountered in a few places. \u00a0If a park conserves energy in its operations and has proactive programs to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss, and shares these programs with the public, that says more than any amount of environmental sermonizing.<\/p>\n 4) All conservation projects benefit from historical tie-ins; all historical features invite a conservation opportunity. \u00a0Lida and I like to think that Makauwahi Cave Reserve on Kaua`i has played a positive role in developing and promoting these paired concepts.<\/p>\n Finally, I guess what anybody still reading really wants to know: \u00a0is it possible for an elderly couple to travel around Europe with a very light footprint, specifically no car? \u00a0Yes, absolutely proved now. \u00a0And it was fun, from one end to the other. \u00a0Starting in Amsterdam, traveling all over Holland, exploring the antiquities and natural features of southern England and northern Spain, right out to the last night in Madrid, at a famous Flamenco club, it was all fun.<\/p>\n We never risked getting stranded until we got back to the small airport in New Bern, North Carolina. \u00a0Fifty miles from home, 11 in the evening, our friends Barbara Garrity-Blake and Margery Meisenheimer picked us up by car for the last leg of our long journey. \u00a0They are good neighbors and reliable folks, but if they had failed to show up for whatever reason, there is no public transport we could have taken, short of bribing a cab, if we could find one, to drive to the next county in the middle of the night. \u00a0No similar dilemma ever arose in five weeks of foreign travel. \u00a0That\u2019s a sobering thought for Americans, or should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it still possible for American retirees to backpack — like they would have done as youngsters — around Europe for five weeks, have fun, learn a few things and\u2026have fun? \u00a0The answer for Lida and me at least, … Continue reading <\/a>Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>Communing with the Last Cave Artist<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Who Were these People?<\/h2>\n
<\/a>At Sea on the Bay of Biscay<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a>Second Pilgrimage to that Unpronounceable Place<\/h2>\n
<\/a>What Did We Learn on Vacation?<\/h2>\n