Kings of the Yukon: An Alaskan River Journey

by Adam Weymouth

Few of the great migrations remain. The European settlers shot sixty million buffalo as they moved west across the plains; there are fifteen thousand left in the wild today. Flocks of passenger pigeons once darkened the sky for days; the last died in 1900, hunted to extinction.

A fine levied on Irish tanners washing leather near to spawning grounds, imposed in 1466, is perhaps the first piece of anti-pollution legislation in the world.

Despite a culture formed upon a land of seemingly infinite abundance, Indigenous beliefs eschew waste as immoral. It is not a question of scarcity, it is a question of respect.