Leslie E. Sponsel earned the B.A. in Geology from Indiana University (1965), and the M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1981) in Anthropology from Cornell University. Over the last four decades he has taught at seven universities in four countries. These posts include a Fulbright Fellowship in Anthropology at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations in Caracas, Venezuela, and in Biology at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, Thailand.

Sacred places are a new frontier for interdisciplinary research on their own merits and for their relevance for biodiversity conservation. The religious or cultural designation of an area as sacred, especially those which are relatively natural, may either intentionally or coincidentally promote the conservation of its associated biodiversity. Such sacred places can complement national parks and other protected areas established by governments. Collaboration among religious, governmental, scientific, and/or conservation agencies may be desirable for the protection of sacred sites and landscapes.

Biodiversity and Conservation

Biodiversity is the variety of life at all levels from the genetic through those of the population, species, community, ecosystem, biome, and biosphere. Since the 1980s, Edward O. Wilson and other biologists have advanced biodiversity as a powerful catalyst for environmental research, education, and action, with a profound sense of gravity and urgency regarding life on Earth as increasingly endangered. In 2005, the final report of the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned that if current patterns of biodiversity loss continue to increase, then future generations of humanity may be at risk. It estimated that current species extinction rates may be a thousand times greater than normal in nature, and that 12% of bird species and 23% of mammalian species are threatened with extinction. Some evolutionary and ecological processes may also be endangered. Accordingly, the extinction crisis is one of the most critical challenges for the 21st century.

The various kinds of government sanctioned protected areas throughout the world, like national parks, nature reserves, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas, are a major historical achievement and certainly necessary. However, they are insufficient for biodiversity conservation because they cover only a small portion of the planet and do not adequately sample the entire range of species, ecosystems, and biomes. Most of the world’s biodiversity lies outside these government protected areas. However, throughout the world various kinds of community-based protected areas have developed since ancient times in connection with a multitude of diverse cultural practices including sacred places in nature. Restrictions on access and use of such areas, and especially for sacred places in nature, may reduce or even eliminate human environmental impact and thereby help protect species in the area. Nevertheless, only in the last two decades has the potential of community-based land and resource management systems to conserve biodiversity begun to be recognized by anthropologists, biologists, conservationists, environmentalists, and others. The recognition of the actual or potential conservation role of sacred places in nature has been even slower and more recent.

Sacred Places

Special sites or areas that have one or more attributes which distinguish them as somehow extraordinary, usually in a religious or spiritual sense, are called sacred places. They tend to evoke a feeling of some awesome, mysterious, and transcendent power that merits special reverence and treatment like the active volcano Kilauea on the island of Hawai`i. Individuals may experience a sacred place in different ways as a site of fascination, attraction, connectedness, danger, ordeal, healing, ritual, meaning, identity, revelation, and/or transformation.

Medicine Lake with Mount Shasta in the background in northern California, sites sacred to the Wintu and other Native American cultures in the area. (See the documentary film “In the Light of Reverence”). (Source: Author)

A wide range of “natural” phenomena, not just places, are considered sacred by one or another culture or religion, including particular mountains, volcanoes, hills, caves, rocks, soils, waterfalls, springs, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, swamps, trees, groves, forests, plants, animals, wind, clouds, rain, rainbows, and so on. There are also coastal and marine phenomena that are considered to be sacred such as parts of wetlands, mangrove forests, estuaries, lagoons, beaches, islands, sea arches, sea grass beds, coral reefs, and tides. Some places that are considered sacred are connected with solar, lunar, and/or stellar cycles. Furthermore, sacred places are tremendously diverse, not only among cultures, religions, and regions, but also even within a single one of these categories.

A particular sacred place or area can actually encompass various individual sites and phenomena as integral parts of the whole or a sacred landscape, such as waterfalls, springs, caves, and meadows on a mountain like Shasta in northern California. Sites can be connected by a river, legends or stories, the histories of individuals or groups, and/or a pilgrimage routes like the centuries old Way of Saint James to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Thus, certain sacred places have persisted for centuries or even millennia. Some annually attract thousands or even millions of pilgrims and other visitors. The visitation pressure can be problematic in many ways. In contrast, there are other sacred places where humans are excluded or access is strictly limited to a special class of individuals such as ritual specialists, healers, or elders.

Sacred places are complex phenomena that can be viewed usefully as varying along several continua ranging from natural (or biophysical) to anthropogenic (or socio-cultural); prehistoric to historic, recent, or newly created; secret or private to public; single culture (or religion) to multicultural (or multi religious); intrinsic to extrinsic in value; uncontested to contested; and protected to endangered. Particular sacred places variously reflect one pole or another of some combination of these continua.

Sacred Places and Conservation

Many sacred places in nature are associated with indigenous cultures. Although indigenes compose only about 15% of the human population, estimates range from 200-600 million persons depending on definitions and sources, they occupy a much larger percentage of the land in the world, perhaps up to half. Indigenous societies commonly use a wide variety of natural resources for their survival, economy, medicines, rituals, and other purposes. Historical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the ecology of indigenous societies are grounded in the biodiversity, ecosystems, and landforms in their habitat. Thus, indigenes are most important to consider in exploring the relationships between sacred places, biodiversity, and conservation.

A particularly striking case is provided by a study from Bruce A. Byers and colleagues with the Shona people who live in the Zambezi Valley of northern Zimbabwe. The Shona consider trees, rivers, pools, mountains, and even whole mountain ranges to be sacred. Their concept of sacred (inoera) connotes something that is life sustaining and linked to rain and the fertility of the land. A sacred place (nzvimbo inoera) is where spirits are present. Associated with it are certain rules of access as well as behaviors that are not allowed (taboos). Moreover, Byers and colleagues discovered that deforestation is at least 50% lower in sacred forests than in their secular counterparts. Some 133 species of native plants occur in these sacred forests, whereas they are variously threatened, endangered, or extirpated elsewhere in Zimbabwe. These researchers conclude that strategies for biodiversity conservation that link culture and nature are more likely to be effective than those imposed from the top down by government and/or international agencies and that ignore the traditional beliefs, values, institutions, and practices of local societies.

Statue of the Buddha in the sacred forest of the monastery of Suan Mokh in southern Thailand. (Source: Author)

The mountain of Sorte is another outstanding example of a sacred place that is relevant to biodiversity conservation. It reflects a combination of religious influences. Sorte is located in the Chivacoa district of the state of Yaracuy in central Venezuela. The area is called El Monumento Natural de Maria Lionza. Sorte is sacred because of its association with the historic personage of Maria Lionza. The related spirit cult is a creative mixture of African, Catholic, and indigenous religions. Sorte has a substantial religious history, extending back at least to the 18th century, although some aspects of the cult developed mainly in the last few decades.

Sorte is the site of religious pilgrimages, especially during periods when religious and state holidays coincide. Pilgrims engage in rituals of purification and healing, vigils, and other religious experiences. Some go into a trance through spirit possession. The main shrine where the spirit of Maria Lionza is believed to reside is at the top of the mountain near a lake. There are numerous sacred caves and springs as well as shrines throughout the forest along the mountain side.

Maria Lionza has been characterized variously as a goddess or spirit that, among other things, protects the forest on Sorte. In a survey of forests and deforestation in Venezuela during the early 1970s, Lawrence S. Hamilton noticed that by far the best preserved forest in central Venezuela was around Sorte. The extent of the forest was substantial, around 40,000 hectares.

The close interconnections of many sacred areas with cultural and biological diversity mean that, if any one of these three is threatened or endangered, then the others may be as well. Sacred sites are a subject for human rights and legal action as well as for basic and applied research.

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