As folk singer Gordon Lightfoot once wrote, “… a land too silent to be real.”

It is hard to imagine what this land, this coastal jewel, must have been like before the takers came. Ages before the trappers and way before the crossings from Asia. Long before the missionaries and traders, slavers and miners, and hundreds of centuries before the spectacular and hugely diverse populations of wildlife were threatened, it was indeed a silent land.

It’s also difficult to imagine the sheer numbers of wild creatures who roamed in profusion through the towering old growth forests where trees 10 arm spans in circumference were commonplace.

The silence of the mountains stood for millions of years before a chainsaw was ever heard, and in the short course of a few generations, little is left of that primal silence.

Wildlife and their home habitat have been left out of the planning process for “Page Two.” There is precious little wild space left to set aside, and those wide expanses of northern forests, the very best prime wildlife habitat like that in Canada and Alaska, are being removed at a rate not seen in history. In a few generations these endless expanses of green will simply be gone. Roof trusses and wall framing will mark their passing.

The wild geese speak defiantly from the sky, and it is absolutely goose music. Few sounds can define the wild as well as geese. The little innocent ducks hurriedly flap their way north again, and it’s always really special to see our family of ducks come back year after year, the babies grown into teenagers. Talk about smile food! They have more to show us about life than any Page Two people, and we have but to listen and watch and enjoy.

We anxiously watch as the geese and ducks move north and wonder and worry how they will fare with the drillers and the oil spills and bulldozers and loggers and hunters!

It seems that fewer people even bother to watch the sky much anymore. When I asked some teenagers recently if they had seen any of the spectacular formations of geese headed north, they grudgingly broke their attention away from their video games and said, “Huh?”

Gordon was right. It was a place too silent to be real. Long before the dirt bike and long before the train, there was only wild.

The geese and their wild cousins will have to work much harder now, and most of these little birds and small mammals and wildlife in general simply can’t adapt to world domination.

We do what we can to save hundreds of animals each year. Yet the number of wildlife casualties continue to climb, and we have a long way to go before the tide turns. But there will be a “Page Three.” Count on it.

Check out our new weekly nature movie at: http://home.pacifier.com/~sparks/wildlife!!.html

Craig Sparks is director of NAWA, a filmmaker, freelance writer and wildlife rehabilitator.

Found injured wildlife? Questions? Call the Wildlife Center at 665-3595 or send an e-mail to: sparks@pacifier.com.