Conservation at Risk

Conservation in America started with movement over 125 years ago. Human pioneering had expanded from the East Coast to the West Coast and the Canadian border to Mexico. It was the vastness and fragility of the arid west that prompted the early conservationists to recognize the intricate relation between land use and abuse. A great beginning but where did we go from there and where is America headed now?

I have been fortunate to have lived in Wisconsin, where pioneering of conservation had its roots not only in people but in ideas, concepts, and science. John Muir, the purveyor of wilderness was born here … and Aldo Leopold the intellectual that defined its necessity to humans. In my field of limnology and the fishery science of migration two pioneers, Juda and his predecessor Hasler, emerged from the UW- Madison culture of the Wisconsin idea to lead these two fields to the present-day science.
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I have also been fortunate to spend my career in the shadow of these great philosophers and scientists. Conservation of what Leopold called “land” was the resources around us … land, water, and air as well as all the creatures that inhabit the land. He recognized the connections between all and knew their preservation can take many forms: purchase/permanent protection and proper resource management. He also knew it was not the laws and regulation that would save the land but an ethical relation with it … and an ecological understanding of it a key.

Conservation advanced to respond to the protection of the land from an ever-increasing population that demanded more from it. Conservation advanced into research of nature to conservation and environmental law but also into providing recreational opportunities. Land and water areas were set aside for public wildlife areas to hunt and ecologically sensitive areas recognized as islands in the science of ecology. On the water, large reservoirs that dammed up rivers for flood and hydropower have been purchase with conservation funds. All have public access as they were often purchased with your state and federal tax dollars.

It is the freedom to use these lands that now fringes on the original intent of preservation. We have come to a point where conservation and environmental efforts to protect the land are colliding with recreational opportunities that are slowly eroding the ecological integrity of the land.

Humans have always been innovators who adjusted in solving problems. They also have been inventors of gadgets to make life easier. But where nature and humans are concerned our ability to create gadgets outweighs our ability to solve problems they create. We think the rules and regulation are a big part of solving, adapting, and accepting changes we have caused in nature. They are not, as they are often based on narrow sciences, public opinion, or a combination of that shouted the loudest.

We need a new way to face the conservation of the land. We have the opportunity in this computer age to take large data sets of ecological knowledge combined with history to move conservation into a new era of restoration to correct our past management mistakes. Conservation is a thankless chore when progress and commerce are at the forefront of America. We need this change.