Both my friend and I greatly enjoy visiting Duckburg (that’s where Donald, Mickey, and their families live) and accompanying Uncle Scrooge on his adventures. Not long ago my friend lent me a precious book featuring stories by Carl Barks, the creator of Uncle Scrooge. One of the stories was called “Land of the Pygmy Indians.” Although it was published in June of 1957, the story couldn’t have more accurately depicted today’s world.

In the story, Uncle Scrooge, having grown tired of the smog, noise, and crowds of people, wants to move far away from all the chemical gases and factory fumes — despite having been the one, as he acknowledges, who “started all of those smelly industries.”

He buys a huge area of land and takes Donald and his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, into the wilderness. There the air is fresh, the water is clean, and there’s no noise from factories or people. Of course Uncle Scrooge, being a businessman, can’t stop thinking about business. How about bottling up that healthy air and selling it in Duckburg? Or tapping all that natural gas? No to mention all the precious metals he could mine: lithium, manganese, thorium and so on. His nephews have a hard time reminding him he came here for peace and quiet, and not for exploiting the land, thus destroying Nature and the home of the many other animals living here.

At Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, my favorite bookstore in Vienna, a small book caught my attention. It included a letter exchange between Einstein and Freud, sharing their thoughts on war. However, it wasn’t their letters that moved me, but the essay at the end of the book.

The essay, called “Die gute Erde stirbt” (literally “The good Earth dies”), was written in 1971, when the global population was 3.6 billion people. In it, American writer and biochemistry professor Issac Asimov voiced deep concerns over the effects of a continuously growing population who didn’t care much about the natural world. With a population of an estimated 6 billion people in 2000, how could humane standards for everyone possibly be ensured?

This is especiallhy true if all the nations lived according to American standards and humans continued to strive for more harvests, more products, more machines and more of everything — how would we be able to sustain ourselves? Rather than striving for more, he argued, we needed to contribute to preserving the natural world and the conditions necessary for humans to survive. The good Earth, he concluded, was dying, and if we didn’t act fast, the planet could lose its ability to sustain human life.

I don’t think our Earth is dying. Our planet will be around with or without us. At stake are — as Asimov correctly points out — the conditions that make it possible for human life to survive on this planet. So, we don’t need to save the Earth. On the contrary. We need to save ourselves by treating the Earth much better.

Knepp Wildland is a rewilding project on the Knepp Castle Estate in West Sussex, England. Originally a typical farm, the soil had been destroyed by pesticides and monoculture, needing subsidies for artificial fertilizer to grow plants. Learning about the soil being the source of all life, the family reached out to the conservationist Frans Vera, who had founded Oostervaardsplassen, a nature reserve in the Netherlands, in 1968. Following Vera’s instructions, the family tore down the fences, released old hards of cows, pigs and ponies on their estate, and allowed Nature to take her course. Within a short period of time, numerous insects returned and various biotopes developed, providing homes for many different species. Within 10 years, worms re-inhabited the soil. Within 20 years, Nature and the nonhuman animals transformed the estate into the original English landscape, as it had last been seen hundreds of years ago.

Lots of birds found a home there, including one of the most endangered species in Great Britain, the turtle dove. One of the rarest butterfly species — the emperor — has grown Great Britain’s largest population on the estate. And all of this happened because of allowing the nonhuman animals and plants to form the natural relationships that don’t exist on modern-day farms.

Soon after being released, the nonhuman animals returned to their natural instincts. The pigs roamed around freely in search of food and even dove for swan mussels in the pond. As the first piglets were born into the wild, the mother dug a small hollow in the leaves for her babies and covered them with leaves for the night. Storks were also released, and after some time the first chicks were born in the U.K. in 600 years. Beavers, too, found a home on the estate. They’d been hunted in Great Britain until extinction despite their ability to prevent flooding, improve water quality, and restore diversity. Knepp Wildland has proven, just like Oostvaardersplassen, that Nature can indeed take care of herself – if we don’t keep exploiting and destroying her.

In the German-speaking world we celebrate Erntedank (i.e., harvest thanks) in September/October, giving our thanks to God for a good harvest. I, however, think we should go beyond Erntedank. Every single day we should be thankful for the beautiful Nature and her wonderful creatures. And instead of always taking, we need to regularly give back by treating Creation with more respect, care and love.

Dr. Daniela Ribitsch, a native of Austria, is a resident of Lock Haven.