The Lobby for Death in the Landscape

Last Tuesday, I suddenly heard a strange sound when walking with Ria through the otherwise quiet landscape. A hoarse bellowing, almost like an old man who had fallen into a hole and needed help. But it echoed out from the middle of a field. We got curious and followed the sound. Behind the last row of trees, we could see its source: a female roe deer barked her distinctive sound into the air. But instead of jumping to the next best hiding spot, she circled right in the middle of a field in clear daylight, being loud, very visible and thereby risking her life.

Ria and me watched a while to gather understanding of this. Some moments later, my gut pinched me clearly and said: she must be mourning. More minutes of bellowing and circling followed until the deer left into the forest, leaving out two last barks (which you can see in the video above). We walked to the spot she had circled and found the reason for my gut feeling: a tiny fawn in the freshly grubbed field, lying ducked into the ground with her giant ears still folded in anticipation of a returning mother. But one of its delicate hindleg bones stuck out in a horribly wrong direction, its eyes already devoured, its freckled fur hosting flies:

It was a heavy sight, weighted by my anger about the violence of our machines, speed and numbness. At the same time I felt a deep awe at the audacity of this deer mother who prioritized the mourning of her child over the safety of her life.

The reason my system so quickly associated mourning with this scene sprouted in April of this year, when I visited the Dutch nature park Millingerwaard. I took part in a tour through this rewilding area which feels like an archaic landscape beamed right into 21st century densely populated Netherlands. This old school landscape type of feeling arises because large herbivores shape this area, break trees and leave traces that make for a diversified, unmanicured scenery. With 500 hectares only, the area is tiny compared to many other rewilding spaces. And yet, Millingerwaard hosts free roaming horses and cattle who take on a crucial role there. They contribute to the local ecosystem through grazing, selecting plants, leaving dung for insects (and hence birds), creating a varied soil structure with their hoofs and eventually also through dying.

There have been many brilliant pieces on the importance of death in our landscapes and the surprising ripple effects it can have:

• Lynx help birds: When Lynx recolonized parts of Sweden, the number of ground nesting birds recovered, because Lynx leave a large part of their prey uneaten and thus foxes ate the leftovers and hence did not eat as many ground nesting bird nests anymore (check this link also for a cool timelapse of a deer cadaver sinking into the ground)

• Political boundary becomes ecological barrier: Vultures hardly cross the border from Spain to Portugal, not because they respect human ideas of territory but due to the differing legal regulations. While dead lifestock in Portugal is quickly removed by the authorities, you can leave it in the field if you live in Spain (the map they made of the vultures with a tracing collar is pretty impressive).

• The forest who is mostly made of salmon: the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada is fed through dying salmon, who spawn and die in its waters, or get eaten by predators and dragged into the forest. A staggering 80% of the trees`nitrogen in Great Bear Rainforest is of salmon origin.

The moment that struck me in Millingerwaard was less scientific though. Tears came to my eyes when our tour guide and longstanding local ranger Bart Beekers stopped at a bush and pulled out his phone to show us a video: two half grown Galloway cattle circling a dead cow from their herd, bellowing loud and continuously for minutes. Bart told us, with the sparkles in voice and eyes only a wonderfully nerdy naturalist can conjure, how this happened three months after the cow had died. These young cattle did not exhibit confusion or surprise about their freshly collapsed companion but they mourned recognizeably after many weeks of having realized the death of their ancestor and returning to her dead body.

Bart continued to tell us that such moments are what drives one of his main passions: to fight for death to be reallowed in our domestic landscapes. Together with many partners, he founded an organization called Dood doet leven which roughly translates into “death begets life”. This organization lobbies for legally allowing more processes of death and decay in our landscapes. If you follow their media outlets, you can find CarcassCam videos on Youtube and excursions for children to carcasses in nature parks. Dood doet leven wants to bring to light the many good reasons for allowing more death in our landscapes again and tracing finer lines between the serious risk of spreading diseases (e.g. during a pandemic such as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or the current African swine fever virus) and the large benefits to the ecosystem when considering whether to clean up Nature or witness its transformational force.

And seemingly, the emotional function of a dead body in inviting grief and thereby processing the shift from death to life seems real for many life forms, too.