“We are as gods and might as well get good at it”. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue, 1968.

“We are as gods and have to get good at it”. Interview with Stewart Brand, Edge, 2009.

Humans have transitioned from being a thread in the tapestry of life, to being the image within which all threads are woven.  Reaching back to the Greeks, the Moirai, or the fates, were the three goddesses, perhaps best known as the witches of MacBeth, that wove the fate of humans. However, humans have taken over the loom; the tapestry that lays out our fate is of our own weaving.

Nitrogen is a critical part of the warp (vertical threads) and weft (horizontal threads). Three percent of our bodies are made of nitrogen, following oxygen (65%), carbon (18.5%), and hydrogen (9.5%). Nitrogen is critical to the proteins which are building blocks of our bodies, the nucleic acids that store our genetic information, and the ATP molecules that we use to manage energy.

From earth’s formation 4.5 billion years ago until about 3 billion years ago, much of the biologically available nitrogen, such as ammonia and ammonium, was generated by releases of energy through lightning and volcanos needed to break the strong triple bonds locking up nitrogen in a gas. About 3 billion years ago bacteria developed the ability to create ammonia by combining nitrogen gas with energy, water, electrons, and hydrogen. Today, nitrogen-fixing plants such as legumes trade energy generated by photosynthesis for biologically available nitrogen from bacteria they host in root nodules.

Humans made their move into the nitrogen markets in 1913 with the emergence of the Haber-Bosch process leading to industrial scale production of nitrogen. Today, human nitrogen fixation consumes 1-2% of human energy consumption, more than doubling food production, and allowing the earth to support billions more people. Much of the tapestry of life is underpinned by human intervention; almost half of the world’s biologically available nitrogen is generated through the Haber-Bosch process.

Not only do predators grab our attention in the tapestry of life, but their place (or not) in the tapestry is set by us. Scimitar cats, which ran down mammoth calves, bison, and horses disappeared some 10,000 years ago, due to some combination of hunting and climate change. We are still deciding whether and how to include wolves. After hunting down wolves in the 1900’s, several states, including Colorado, have reintroduced them. The decision about whether to include wolves is not purely ornamental; reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in 1995 led to a cascade of changes, impacting elk, deer, beaver, plants, and hydrology.

Given that humans have taken their seat in weaving the tapestry of life, we can at least look to seat individuals at the loom with training and experience. This month we profile Eric Odell, a RMBL alum (and former Gothic winter caretaker), who was honored in 2023 with Colorado Park and Wildlife’s Jim Jones Award for Outstanding Employee for his work on Colorado’s wolf restoration plan. Through our K-12 programs, our award-winning undergraduate research program, our support of graduate students, and our docent program, RMBL influences the tapestry of life. Through your support of RMBL, thank you for helping ensure we have weavers capable of accepting the responsibility for ensuring a beautiful tapestry of life!