The focus of Milligan’s Big Ideas course this semester is on “War.” The Stampede is presenting a series of articles, essays and other features on the class, which will include interviews of students and the faculty who are leading the class. This week, Biology Professor Dr. Brian Eisenback touches on war’s effect on the environment.
How War Affects the Environment
by Brian Eisenback
War is like a cancerous tumor. Cancer drains resources from surrounding areas, disrupting normal function and affecting health. War is a human-induced cancer; it drains lives, disrupts economies and diverts resources from productive uses to destructive ones. War’s draining effect extends from society to the natural world. During peacetime, habitat destruction, poaching, pollution and other environmental stressors threaten nature. During wartime, however, these threats are amplified, and nature becomes an often-ignored, innocent casualty caught in the crossfire of human conflicts.
War can affect nature directly—whether through the chemical defoliation of Vietnam’s jungles, the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells or the millions of land mines still littering Cambodia’s landscape decades after peace treaties were ratified.
War also disrupts protections for nature and intensifies risks mitigated during peacetime. In sub-Saharan Africa, elephant conservation efforts help sustain the savannah ecosystem and drive tourism. But during Angola’s civil war in the 1980s, soldiers killed 100,000 elephants for food and ivory to fund the war effort. When the conflict ended, elephant populations began to recover. In war, long-term conservation gains are lost for a few meals or another rifle.
War’s impacts on nature are often indirect. Wars are intended to kill people; armies don’t intentionally bomb wildlife. But conflict forces the relocation of resources, conservation workers, park personnel and security forces. Displaced and desperate people deplete natural resources as economic systems collapse and supply chains are disrupted.
Some animals suffer from war, while others thrive. In World War I, rat and flea populations flourished in the crowded, unsanitary trenches, barracks and shelters. As a result, flea-borne typhus ravaged tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Disease does not respect uniforms or borders.
At times, war inadvertently benefits nature. Ponds dug as water sources for soldiers on the Kinmen Islands created habitat for an endangered Chinese pond turtle. The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, devoid of human occupation, has become an unintended wildlife refuge. During Zimbabwe’s war of independence, poachers avoided killing elephants for fear of nearby military forces.
During the American Civil War, the Confederacy destroyed Union whaling ships in an effort to limit economic gains from whaling. An unintended consequence was the collapse of America’s whaling industry. While 600,000 Americans tragically died in the war, 10,000 fewer whales were slaughtered for lamp fuel.
War wounds humanity, and by harming the natural world, we wound ourselves a second time. Let us always count the full cost of conflict and strive for peace—for the sake of ourselves and the world around us.
Dr. Brian Eisenback’s piece is the second of three written by the faculty members leading this course. Dr. Michael Blouin will close out this series next week.