The Many Gods of Planet Earth: Betsy Quammen at TEDxBozeman

Betsy Gaines Quammen and the organization she founded, The Tributary Fund, explores world cultures to identify, reinforce and put into action values and practices that safeguard our species and planet.

For me it started with gospel music.

A group of African-American
women were singing

for their children who had asthma

and for neighbours who had cancer.

It was a strange picture:
these women

standing in front of these huge smokestacks

that were emitting a poisonous gas.

It was deceiving, because the thin line
of white smoke looked very innocent

but at night,
in the cover of dark,

they'd really let it go
and it was black and thick.

These women did something interesting,

interesting to me as a conservationist:

they launched this conservation campaing
through their church.

They went to traditions that they knew:
gospel music, God and passion,

and they went up against
this refinery in Southern Lousiana

that did not have monitors on their stacks,
and they won.

The stack emissions
were finally regulated.

This idea of putting religion
in conservation

had never really occured to me before.

I'd been working in conservation
for a number of years

and this was a new idea.

Six years after this occurred

I was going down
to Southern Louisiana again

and priests were handing out
at that time food vouchers

and they were overseeing
some suicide watchers

of these fishing families
that had been wiped out

during the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

It really impacted their industry
and these families were desperate.

What they did in a time of crisis,

was that they returned
to their traditions, to their faith,

and to their religious leaders.

Now --

conservation cannot be done
by radiocolouring and by tagging alone,

it cannot be done
through surveys and data sets.

If conservation is going to be successful,

there has to be a community

that's living in and around
the issue, wildlife, habitat

that cares about the wildlife
as a sacred value.

So, it occurred to me that I needed to go
to the religious leaders

and begin to talk to them,

it was when I met the many Gods
of planet Earth.

I went to Mongolia in 2002 as part of a team
going over to work

on a fisheries conservation project.

This was an area on the Siberian border

and it was inhabited by nomadic people

who lived on the banks of the Üür river.

The Üür river was also
home to the taimen,

which is a fish that gets up to
180 pounds and six foot in length

making it a huge draw for anglers

who come over to catch
and release fly fish.

There were a number of pressures
being put on this fish at the time

and we were really tempted
to launch into a full-on

sort of community-outreach effort,

we had fisheries biologists over there,

who were tagging the fish
and tracking their movements.

But the first thing
I wanted to do with this team,

is go and visit families
and listen to their stories:

what was it about this culture that --
What did they respect?

What did they value?

I learned a few things.

Number one: Mongolians come from
a long ago coupling of a wolf and a roe deer.

Number two: in this valley,
a long time ago,

a wicked shaman
had really terrorised the people,

but later, converted to Buddhism
as did the inhabitants of this valley.

And number three:
the death of one taimen

equals the souls
of 999 people suffering.

So that's what we'd build
the campaign around.

It was a circuitous route actually:

we re-built a Buddhist monastery,

that became a site for Buddhism
and conservation dialogue,

we started a summer camp for kids --
a free one --

where they would learn
about conservation issues,

they'd learn about
conservation policy, nature,

and they also were learning about
water quality and fisheries.

We went and we were able to,
excuse me --

we were able to create these festivals

that incorporated local traditions
and what not.

And I want to say that, right now,

the taimen population is stable in this area --

that was -- we started
the project in 2004,

and that's one of the only places
in the world that can make that claim.

When I began to look at religions,
and look at cultures

I discovered that every faith,
every culture has a message about ecology

and nature and its importance.

For example in the Bhagavad Gita,
which is a sacred text in Hinduism,

they have a quote that says,

"He is dear who practices non-violence
against all living beings."

And then, on a more rather --
condemning note,

in Revelation,
in the Christian Bible it says,

"God destroyeth,
he who destroyeth the world."

So, I thought these were so interesting

and it was really adding another dimension
to the work,

and it was also this wonderful
new experience for me

to be working with religious leaders.

So I started the organization
"The Tributary Fund"

and together we go and
unearth traditions,

or rather discover traditions,

encourage the traditions
that put value in wildlife

and really try to bring these traditions
either back,

or to make them a part of community practice
and replicating or whatnot.

And I want to give an example of one of the things
that we do, which is the next step:

we find these traditions,
Buddhism is a good example

of people who believe
that all sentient beings need to be protected.

So we brought a group of Buddhist monks
over to the United States

and this is,
we've done it now for four years,

and they went and saw a researcher
who was working on Pallas's cats.

Pallas's cats are cats
indigenous to Mongolia.

In the work that they were doing:
they were [tranquilizing] the cat,

colouring the cat
and they were harvesting eggs.

After the monks saw this,
there was a lot of discussion and --

obviously it had touched a nerve
and they turned around and said,

"You know, we do understand that there is harm
being made towards these beings,

we understand
that this cannot be comfortable,

the harvesting of eggs in particular."

But the scientists said that these eggs
are our insurance policy, essentially.

"If this animal faces extinction
we have this genetic material," and they said,

"We think this research is OK

because there is nothing more profane
than the idea of extinction."

This is something that really drives us,

these beliefs, these -- traditions,

we're really finding them
more and more in Bhutan, Mongolia,

we're working in the United States
with a variety of different religions.

Science is important for understanding
conservation boundaries,

but beliefs and story-telling is important
for local communities involvement.

Both are essential
in protecting the Earth.

Luckily,
we have many Gods on our side.

Thank you.

(Applause)