Shellmounds of the Bay Area, California

Beneath the streets and all along the estuaries of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay region lie ancient remnants of the daily and sacred lives of California’s native peoples. Pavement and buildings now mostly cover what used to be hundreds of shellmounds — gently rounded hills formed from accumulated layers of organic material deposited over generations by native coastal dwellers. Often the sites of burials and spiritual ceremonies, these shellmounds are still places for veneration. But preserving the remaining shellmounds has proven to be a contentious issue among developers, indigenous rights groups, preservationists and local governments … Read more.

Holy Island of Lindisfarne, England

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne has been a Christian holy site and pilgrimage center since 635, playing a pivotal role as a cradle of Christianity in northern England and southern Scotland. Nature and spirituality are very much linked here through a line of “nature saints,” of which St. Cuthbert — considered by some as England’s first conservationist — is best known in the area. Lindisfarne more recently has become a node in the revival of Celtic Christianity — an indigenous, if somewhat contested, type of Christianity where the spiritual values of nature are overtly expressed. Recent years have seen an increasing number of pilgrimages, and visitors are now estimated to exceed half a million per year, placing strains on this small community as well as on the island and surrounding coastal habitat, most of which is an official national nature reserve. The challenge today is to strike the best balance between spiritual, natural, community and economic values and interests … Read more.

Nine Sacred Mountains, China—Throughout China’s history, Buddhist and Daoist pilgrims have gone to mountains seeking spiritual sustenance and solace; there are five sacred mountains that are preeminent for Daoists and four sacred mountains that are paramount to Buddhists. In the 20th century, political upheaval led to the violent repression of religious expression, and sacred sites across China were destroyed. Despite losses, the devotion of monks and local residents to the holy reputation of these mountains prevented total destruction.

Now, as China gradually moves away from its past of religious intolerance and forges a new social and political identity amid unprecedented economic growth, the sacred mountains continue to attract traditional pilgrims and a considerable number of secular visitors. With these dual roles as spiritual destinations and economic enterprises, the sacred mountains face new challenges, such as uncontrolled tourism and habitat destruction. In this modern era, Buddhists and Daoists are turning to age-old philosophies as an impetus for environmental conservation.

Bogd Khan Uul, Mongolia—Considered the world’s oldest officially and continuously protected sacred site, this mountain massif was declared a sacred mountain reserve in 1778, and evidence of its protected status dates back to the 13th century. During the decades-long rule of communism in the 20th century, religion was repressed and nearly all of Mongolia’s 900 Buddhist monasteries were destroyed.

However, reverence persisted and the post-communist era ushered a revival of the national tradition of nature conservation, the restoration of monasteries and resanctification of sacred natural sites, including Bogd Khan. Unfortunately, real estate and tourism development, including a ski resort, now threaten Bogd Khan, and Mongolia’s deep-rooted conservation ethic must face yet another modern challenge.

Lands of the Penan, Malaysia—Living in the rainforests of Borneo, the Penan people are one of the last indigenous groups in the world with members who still follow a traditional nomadic lifestyle, relying solely on their natural environment for material and spiritual sustenance. In recent decades, logging has destroyed or altered the rainforest, forcing most Penan into a settled or seminomadic lifestyle marked by impoverishment, political marginalization, and increasing difficulty finding traditional sources of food in a diminishing rainforest.

These circumstances have driven many Penan into activism that began in the 1980s with road blockades against lumber companies and legal battles over land rights. Today, the Penan are fighting to save their rainforest home in the face of hydroelectric dam construction and a misguided race to plant oil palm plantations for biofuel.

Subjugated during the country’s apartheid era to the power of larger, government-backed tribes, this small clan was helpless to stop Phiphidi from becoming a popular tourist spot, with visitors freely roaming the site, leaving litter, trampling vegetation, playing loud music and, the Ramunangi say, disturbing the spirits. A rock above the waterfall — one of the site’s most holy areas — was recently destroyed as part of a road-building project, and for years, the Ramunangi have been denied full access to the site to perform their rituals and custodial duties. The clan is now turning to legal measures to restore full access to Phiphidi and receive official recognition as its custodians.

Tshavhungwe Nemarudi, a custodian elder, said in 2008, “It is no longer possible to respect the sacred site as it should be respected. Members of our clan have become sick. The Earth is sick. We know that this is because we have not been able to conduct our rituals properly in the last years. What we request is simply that our sacred site should be allowed to remain a place of pure, untouched nature.”

Read the report to learn more about the Ramunangi and Phiphidi Waterfall, and what you can do to help.

• In California and Oregon, negotiations are almost complete on a plan to remove three dams on the Klamath River that have blocked the migration of salmon — and impacted sacred and cultural practice of the river’s native tribes — for decades.
• In Australia, at the iconic sandstone monolith Uluru, Aboriginal and park management have stepped up efforts to stop visitors from climbing the sacred rock, with a new viewing area and a commitment to work toward an outright ban on climbing.
• At England’s Stonehenge, the managing agency unveiled its proposal to close and grass over a stretch of road that runs through the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage site, bringing nearly to a close a controversy that has raged for a decade.
• Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge appears safer under the Obama administration. Might Congress finally pass the bill, which has been on the table for years, to protect the refuge’s 1.5-million-acre coastal plain from oil development?
• We’ve also updated reports for Georgia’s Ocmulgee Oil Fields and Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon.

While many of these sites are closer to protection than they once were, there’s still work to be done. Check out the individual reports for ways you can help!

Beyul of the Himalaya; Nepal, Tibet, India — Throughout the famed Himalayan mountains are large, hidden valleys known as beyul, places of peace and refuge revered by Tibetan Buddhists. Because of their remote and isolated location, and the respect with which they have been treated by the communities that reside in or near them, the beyul contain high levels of biodiversity in a setting of tremendous beauty. However, outside influences like globalization, nationalization, cultural assimilation and tourism have begun to erode the power of the traditional beyul concept in many places, while development encroaches on the physical landscape. If modern conservation and management efforts are to be successful, they must find ways to preserve and integrate longstanding traditional beliefs and practices.

McCloud River Watershed, California — The CALFED Bay-Delta Program, adopted by Congress in 2004, proposes to raise Shasta Dam, on the McCloud River, by between six and 200 feet, which would significantly impact the native people in the area. However, the voices of the Winnemem Wintu, whose cultural identity as winnemem or “middle river people” derives from their ancestral homeland along the river, have been left out of the debate. The threat posed by raising the dam led the Sacred Sites International Foundation to include the McCloud River Watershed on its 2008 list of endangered sacred sites.

Mount Tenabo, Nevada — Mount Tenabo and its environs are part of Newe Sogobia, the ancestral land of the Western Shoshone, which has never been legally ceded to the federal government. Nevertheless, U.S. politicians and multinational corporations have ignored an 1863 federal treaty acknowledging Western Shoshone ownership of the land, treating sacred land as a public resource to be mined for gold. Today, Barrick Gold, the world’s largest multinational mining corporation, is planning an open-pit gold mine on Tenabo, the highest peak in the Cortez Range.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada — For more than two decades, the Shoshone and Paiute peoples, scientists, environmentalists, the federal government, Nevada citizens and politicians have wrestled over the fate of Yucca Mountain. The federal government had advocated for the mountain as the nation’s primary dumping ground for deadly, high-level nuclear waste; however, it has recently signaled intentions to phase out the project. Meanwhile, the Western Shoshone fight off federal efforts to sell their land in order to give multinational corporations access to its mineral resources.

Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia — Emerging from the mist that covers the island of Borneo, multi-peaked Mount Kinabalu is known to the indigenous Kadazan as akina-balu, resting place of the ancestral spirits. It plays a key role in their creation stories and legends, which inform traditional land relationships and conservation practices, and it is also home to a spectrum of exotic plants and endangered animal species. From 1975 to 1999, copper mining on the mountainside damaged the landscape, contaminated the water supply, and left behind millions of tons of tailings that continue to pose an environmental threat. Meanwhile, the area has become increasingly exposed to eco-social pressures stemming from logging, oil-palm plantations, settlements and tourism, while the Kadazan are experiencing threats to the durability of their traditions. The Kadazan, NGOs and the Sabah government, however, are taking steps to respond to these threats and preserve the mountain’s cultural and ecolological treasures.

Rila Monastery, Bulgaria — Rila Monastery is a symbol of national identity representing the persistence of Bulgarian culture and faith despite centuries of foreign rule, and the preservation of the surrounding land, the Rila Monastery Nature Park, is intimately linked with Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity, the dominant national religion. As Bulgaria emerges from its recent post-communist era, the government grapples with a legacy of corruption and the pressures of rapid development, even as it positions Bulgaria as a preeminent destination for ecotourism. As part of that strategy, a management plan for the park has been drafted with the participation of the church, establishing specific strategies for managing tourism and conserving plant and animal species. Lingering bureaucratic obstacles, legal conflicts between church and state, and controversies over hydropower, however, hinder Bulgaria’s public commitment to sustainable development in the Nature Park.

San Francisco Peaks, Arizona (updated) — From many places in northern Arizona, the horizon is dramatically marked by three 12,000-foot volcanic peaks that rise out of the Colorado Plateau south of the Grand Canyon and north of Flagstaff. The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to 13 tribes, including the Navajo and the Hopi. However, it is the U.S. Forest Service, not the tribes, that determines what activities can take place on the Peaks, and they have permitted a ski resort since 1979. In 2009, the resort received legal clearance to use reclaimed wastewater to make additional snow — a desecration of the sacred slopes and a threat to the pure drinking water supplied by the mountain aquifer.

Kii Mountain Range, Japan—For over 1,000 years, the people of Japan have walked pilgrimage routes that wind through the densely forested slopes of the Kii Mountain Range. Today, the mountains are a site of active devotion, but also of increasing tourism, which has fueled concerns about negative human impact on the site. Fortunately, the Japanese have a long history of preserving the ecological and cultural landscape of these sacred mountains, and that dedication persists as they respond to meet the challenges of increased visitors.

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia—For the indigenous peoples living on the steep slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, sustaining the balance of the spiritual and ecological world is their sacred task. They call themselves the Elder Brothers, the guardians of the Earth, remaining vigilant while their Younger Brothers, modern civilization, have harmed the mountain’s ecosystem—and, by extension, the rest of the planet—though logging, mineral extraction and, most recently, two dam projects and massive ocean port development that will export mined natural resources while blocking access to a sacred site.

Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan—In March 2001, the world watched helplessly as Taliban forces in Afghanistan methodically dynamited two of the largest standing Buddha figures in the world. Located in the imposing Bamiyan Valley, the figures, standing 125 and 180 feet, had been carved out of sheer sandstone cliffs some 1,500 years earlier under the direction of Buddhist monks. Today, amid efforts to preserve the now-unstable cliffs and indecision over how to best honor or rebuild them, the statues are only a collection of car-sized boulders and dust, a reminder of the worst excesses of the fundamentalist regime that brought them down.