On a golden October day, two young businesswomen sat outside having lunch at a deli along downtown Denver's 16th Street Mall. They chatted of friends and families and happenings at work. Then one said, "Oh, did you hear that? How wonderful!"
"What?" replied her friend. "What did you hear?"
"The geese," said the first, scanning the sky, "The honking of geese!"
"Don't be silly," said her friend over the engine roar of the mall shuttle passing by. But as the bus noise faded, she, too, heard the voices of the geese, a two-toned, vociferous honking sounding from the sky. Looking up, they both saw an immense wedge of Canada geese heading toward the southeast. 
A few other diners noticed their gaze and also looked up. For just a brief moment, the downtown bustle seemed to quiet down around them and they all enjoyed the birds' wild calls and the passage of the geese over the busy city.
A man at the next table, who had paused to listen to the geese, leaned over to the first woman. "How did you hear those geese above the noise of the city?" he asked. "Until you mentioned it, I hadn't heard anything but conversation and the ball game on TV from the bar next door." "I guess it depends on what you're listening for," she replied.
We often fail to hear the calls of wild geese these days, or a hundred other wild sounds. But the sights and sounds are there, whether we notice them or not. Awareness of the natural world is often difficult in the context of modern life. Technology has allowed us to achieve a style of life unimaginable to earlier generations. But its tools have distanced us from the natural world, broken our direct connection with so much around us. When was the last time anyone you know milked a cow or slaughtered a chicken? With technology as our buffer, we've come to think of ourselves as outside the natural system-there's us, and there's nature. But no matter how much we wrap ourselves in steel and concrete, and how packaged we are in modern life and technology, we are still a part of the natural world.
Like the geese, our survival depends on it for those old familiar basics-food, water and air.
And we still have an emotional and aesthetic connection to nature and animals. Many people enjoy nature shows on television and the public has delighted at the antics of polar bear cubs Klondike and Snow. Coloradans often feel their lives are richer just knowing wildlife "is out there." We preserve our connections to wildlife by turning them into symbols. By identifying with animals, we hope to endow ourselves with their attributes of beauty, strength, or ferocity. Consider how many sports teams are named after animals, how often wildlife is used to sell a product or a service. Our nation's symbol is a bird. 
Colorado has a state animal (bighorn sheep), state bird (lark bunting), state fish (greenback cutthroat trout), even a state fossil (stegosaurus).
These days, the environment is a hot topic. The term "biodiversity" is bandied about as the new mantra of environmental thought. The Supreme Court is ruling on interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, the very renewal of which is under debate. But what is this all about? Why all this effort, energy and concern for wildlife conservation, preservation of habitat and wild places? It goes far beyond cute bear cubs and saving our nation's symbol. When the earth becomes uninhabitable for a species, that species becomes extinct. Because, like wildlife, we are dependent upon the earth's ecosystem—its materials, products and systems—our survival depends upon its continued health. If the system breaks down too far, we, as a species, are also in peril. What happens to wildlife eventually will happen to us. As our partners in the ecosystem, wildlife are our "canaries in the coal mine".
That's why it's important to listen for geese. Awareness is a first step towards overcoming the many environmental challenges of our age. By learning about the natural world, appreciating it and remembering our connections to it, we learn why we want, and need, to preserve it. If we all keep listening for geese, perhaps there will always be geese to hear.
Next: Watchable Wildlife in Parks
(The information contained in this issue of Colorado's Wildlife Company was accurate at the time of original publication. Situations and circumstances described, staff positions, contact information, and dates of some events may have changed in the interim. Present knowledge and understanding of biological and behavioral facts and information may also be different, now, than presented here.)