Yo-Yo: Grist with a good article on eating fish

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Grist has a good interview with chef/author Barton Seaver about eating seafood.  It's a tad light on actual tactics for improving our ocean conditions by eating seafood, but it is still worth a read.

This is a big step away from the opinion piece it ran a couple of weeks back on an oyster farmer's desire to own more farms at the expense of other fisheries... well, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but that is how it read to me.

Mr. Seaver does explain one tactic for improving our impact, and it happens to be one of my favorites:  Eat lower on the seafood food chain.  He doesn't make the claim so directly, but the fish he points out that need to be replacing the giant, slow-growing (and often toxin-laden) predators we currently eat are smaller prey species like sardines and mackerel.  These just so happen to be the tastiest fish one can eat (we had grilled, whole sardines two nights ago!), and they are also cheaper than the big ones.

It was a refreshing change to read at Grist, though it wasn't a complete rebuttal to the earlier piece.

Much going on...

© 2011 Joshua

With a baby and a new job, I've found my blogging time constrained.  Alas, the world still turns, and there are many topics on which I'd love to wax poetic...

First, this report from the U.N. on sustainable agriculture.  In a nutshell, "agroecological farming practices" can double food production in many regions.  These science-based practices empower local communities with their foods, which puts major corporate enterprises out - so, expect them to fight these conclusions.

Next, California Watch reports on a Pacific Institute report on nitrates in California's Central Valley groundwater... we've all known it's been there for years, but this report attempts to quantify the human impacts. 

My view on the Central Valley, my second home, is that its social, political, and economic infrastructure is effectively a 3rd World country, a fiefdom for a handful of extraordinarily (and inordinately) powerful people.  Pile this report on top of the reports on asthma, air quality, cancers, unemployment, working conditions, transportation, income inequality, etc.  And if you are so inclined, please pray for the Valley. 

The L.A. Times reports on Republicans using the budget in California to dismantle our environmental regulations.  Please, conservative conservationists, keep up the calls to legislators, letting them know that this is not your value.  The major law usually attacked is CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), which, in a case of powerful irony, is just about the only transparency-in-government law out there, and is also a law very often used by companies to keep out competition from industrial growth. 

Looking at our economic and fiscal conditions, it's safe to say that these regulations have not had an economic impact on our State to any great extent, especially in relation to our quality of life, nor in comparison to more lax states like, say, Texas, whose budget deficit is larger than ours in absolute terms and in relative terms ($27 billion in Texas vs. $26.6 billion in California).  Far larger an impact on our quality of life has been our decision to stop funding infrastructure like transportation, schools, and energy. 

And, speaking to California's impact on the rest of America, it looks like our Congress has decided to run its budget show like we do here in the Golden State.

That's it for now.  I'll try to get back into the swing of things, but first, I'd like a full night's sleep.

Update: Conservative conservationists

© 2011 Joshua Stark

In my previous post, I asked where they were, and I've got my answer:

A couple days back, a number of conservation and environmentalist groups testified before a California Assembly Committee - among them, representatives from the California Outdoor Heritage Alliance (COHA), our hunting lobby.  What were they talking about? 

They were informing the California Legislature of the horrible, horrible proposals of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the devastation they will wreak on conservation. 

If you want to read what they have to say, click here: "Congress Considers Massive Cuts to Wildlife Programs".

I often despair that large, corporate enterprises have eaten American conservatism.  It allows for large, corporate enterprises, but it holds many other values equally, or more, important than the mere hoarding of capital. I'm heartened to see conservatives making clear that wildness, and its appreciation, are American virtues.

In other, related news about conservative conservation, Western Farm Press reports that, "California farms and ranches now make up more than 20 percent of all operations in the nation with solar, wind and methane digester use", according to the USDA.

Lest ye forget, amidst the shock-media decrying our horrific fiscal situation, California still leads the nation in many things.  Including green energy.  And agriculture.

The Precautionary Principle might have come in handy...

© 2011 Joshua Stark

California Watch reports on lead, arsenic, and other toxins found in climate-friendly LED lights.

While reading this post, I thought:  Well, there's another technological fix with the subsequently ugly, unintended consequences (see glyphosate-resistant crops, methyl iodide, and DDT even).  I also remembered my post on our inability to "sell" conservation. 

Right now, if you hear a spokesperson for any environmental advocacy group, you are far more likely to hear about green jobs, high-mileage brand-new cars, high-tech solutions to saving the planet, efficiency gains, etc.  What you will rarely hear is one of them saying, "just turn off your lights, and turn down your thermostat.  And for goodness' sake, hold off on buying that new car!"  It's hard to sell, "buy less".

But this post isn't on conservation, it's on preparing for all these new technological advances that purport to save us from ourselves.  As I read that report, I thought: how do we keep from shooting ourselves in the foot with each new attempt at efficiency gains, especially here in California, the Land of the Next Big Thing?

Then I remembered that simple, great, conservative pillar of environmental justice:  The Precautionary Principle.  This principle merely states that a new item (chemical, technological process, etc.) must prove that it is generally benign to the environment before it can be mass produced. 

That's it.

When people hear about this principle, they are usually struck by the notion that things don't have to prove that they won't leave tremendous amounts of toxins persistent in the environment.  In the case of LED lights, for example, I'm sure people are thinking,  "but, we regulate lead; how did these things make it here in such huge amounts?"

Regulation is an interesting term, and while most Americans think it means that everybody gets equal scrutiny under the law, the reality is often far, far more complicated.

It comes down to this:  Most Americans believe, inherently, that our regulatory agencies follow the Precautionary Principle, because it is a very conservative way of looking at the World.  But, they don't.

What we need are far more sophisticated models of thinking, rather than re-packaging the same materials in new ways.  We need, when we consider costs, to include the total lifecycle of the product.  We need to consider the noneconomic impacts, even if that means coming up with some quantities to at least represent them (and we need to continually re-work those quantities).  At the very least, we need some form of the Precautionary Principle, some proof that the Next Big Thing doesn't come with the Next Big Cleanup Effort.

History and responsibility, and hope

© 2010 Joshua Stark

If you are expecting some reflection on yesterday's election, it ain't happening here.  I'll gladly give my opinion if people want to read it, but not unless there is some email outpouring lamenting the dearth of talking-head spinmeisters.  The only thing I will say is that I completely and totally gave up on the federal government doing anything for climate change in 2009, and I'll keep my focus on California and regional attempts to do right by their people, considering the latest changes in federal vs. state government. 

But this post is another reflection from reading "A Sand County Almanac." No politics.  This is about history, and more specifically, the importance of knowing history and acknowledging and reflecting on our good and bad past deeds.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to sit on a panel at the BlogHer Food '10 Conference (for my take on that great event, read here).  During my short time at the conference, I had a number of fascinating conversations with people well versed in all things culinary.  One of these conversations involved hunting snipe (Gallinago gallinago), which included the typical snipe-hunting conversation - five minutes of swearing up-and-down that they do, in fact, exist (hence, the link on the name).

Then the conversation moved to the notion that the snipe is the last of the legally huntable shorebird game species (okay, there's timberdoodles, but if I mention them, then nobody will believe any of these exist).  Someone showed surprise that shorebirds had been eaten at all, the concept being so foreign, and the cultural knowledge of these supposed delicacies having been removed by law decades ago.

But shorebirds were heavily hunted by Americans for many, many years.  The end of shorebirds appearing on menus and in cookbooks happened because of the efficiency of the market hunter and the flocking nature of most shorebirds, coupled with a new-found awareness that we must protect our wilds, lest we lose them all.

This morning, then, when I read 'May' in Aldo Leopold's wonderful work, I was reminded just how close we came to losing so many birds.  Leopold writes,

"There was a time in the early 1900's when Wisconsin farms nearly lost their immemorial timepiece, when May pastures greened in silence, and August nights brought no whistled reminder of impending fall.  Universal gunpowder, plus the lure of plover-on-toast for post-Victorian banquets, had taken too great a toll.  The belated protection of the federal migratory bird laws came just in time." 

One hundred years ago, the demand for plovers was so great among households and restaurants that market hunters nearly ended them all.  

And the same is true for many, many species.  Egret feathers no longer adorn hats.  Buffalo tongue and wild grouse are no longer on the table as regular fare or ingredients.  Most sadly, there is no longer a popular pigeon pie, because that great biological phenomenon, the passenger pigeon, was shot, netted, and clubbed out of existence. 

Thank goodness for the wisdom, if belated as Leopold put it, of legislators who thought past mere economic efficiency, and looked at the value of things from other perspectives.  

Maybe this is a political post, then.  Perhaps I'm still hoping for that human trait to make a comeback, and for our leaders to note the value of our wild places, the value of what we put in our bodies, the values that we teach our children.  I can hope that our leaders will look past their political affiliations from time to time, and recognize the need for us to directly manage and protect our wilds.  We've done it before.  

Maybe I haven't totally given up hope.

New lead ban proposal in California

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Assemblyman Nava (D - 35th Dist.) recently introduced AB 2223, banning lead shot in all California State wildlife management areas.  Though not a gigantic leap (all Federal refuges in the state already ban lead shot, as does Ft. Hunter-Liggett), I would really love to see some regional science to support banning lead shot in these particular places, and since this is currently lacking, I must, sadly, not endorse this bill.
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First, let me note that I do not use lead in any hunting anymore.  This is a personal decision I've made, especially since my baby was born.  I also do believe that lead has harmed many raptors and California condors.  Because of this, I fully supported the lead ban in California condor range.

On a broader note, I've argued that lead bans seem to be just about the only way to move companies to provide lower-cost alternatives for hunters who want to switch.  Volunteer efforts are hindered as long as the cost of non-lead ammunition remains prohibitively high (e.g., my 30-30 ammo. costs $18 for lead, or $52 for nonlead), and ammunition companies see no need to re-tool, so long as they can help convince hunters that this is just another enviro-commie conspiracy to end hunting.  (Cost, by the way, is not an issue for steel shot, anymore, precisely because lead was outlawed from waterfowl hunting nearly 20 years ago.)

Lead in the environment can pose problems to particular species (including us!), and so it would be nice to see a cost-effective, non-toxic alternative to what most hunters currently use in rifle ammunition.

So why, then, do I not support this particular legislation? 

First step back a minute, and consider where much of our conservation funding originates.  Yes, it's cliché, but only because it continues to be true - hunters pay for much of our conservation efforts, and they are definitely paying the lion's share of conservation on these particular sites.  Now, consider that they pay because they are out there.

Hunting is a love of a place almost as much as a love of game and food.  Sit out in a blind at sunrise, with a view of the flooded marsh, and Mt. Diablo or the Sutter Buttes beyond it, and you understand.  Watch the tules, listen for the tell-tale scurrying noises in a particular stand of oaks or blackberry bramble, and you get to know them as much as, or more than, the animals you pursue.  Hunters know which side of which mountain holds a decent covey, and the particular bend in the river above which struts a tom.  Place is vital to hunting. This is why Aldo Leopold called it a "land ethic".

So it behooves those non-hunters who would work for the betterment of these places to first understand them, too.  If the folks who supported and wrote this legislation had, instead, proposed a research study to identify the impacts of lead shot at particular management areas, or better yet, proposed annual research on ecosystem health and impacts (good and bad) within these systems, I would be charging ahead in support.  And, if it were determined after a year or two of research that lead shot was adversely impacting these ecosystems, including bad impacts to particular species (including us!), then I would work hard to help eliminate lead shot from these places, because, you see, it's the places that are important.  Knowing and respecting place is important in getting hunters to make good decisions about their impacts. 

It's also good science.  What these beautiful, bountiful places need is real, place-based understanding.  In the rush to do good, I worry that we may overlook real problems suffered by these wonderful areas, while thinking we've helped.  My worst fear is that well-meaning, non-hunting advocates will use political capital to ban lead shot, and subsequent research will show that there is, in fact, a lead problem on these lands, but it isn't from shot.  In this case, hunters will be even less trusting of the new efforts (and maybe even stopped supporting these places), politicians will have moved on to the Next Big Thing, and by far worst of all, animals (including us!) and habitat will continue to suffer.

So long as non-hunting advocates ignore the place-based nature of hunting, and instead rely upon general notions of what is best, they will continue to suffer the anger and disappointment of many hunters, a group who is already leery of notions about Big Brother.

Californians concerned about lead in habitat should take a page from the Peregrine Fund's work in Arizona and Utah, as Phillip noted over at the Hog Blog.  Surely here in California we can encourage a back-to-nature hunting movement already afoot (e.g., see here) through volunteer efforts, using the power of reason and love for a place and perpetuating an important tradition.

Now, let's focus on good research on the places we love.

Hello! Hunting organizations, sign up!

© 2010 Joshua Stark

To elaborate on a passing reference I made two blogs earlier, the biggest threat to Southern California's wild lands is development, and more specifically, the development of solar thermal facilities and their subsequent energy corridors.
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In this light, Senator Feinstein has authored a bill, the California Desert Protection Act of 2010, that would set aside more land for protection. You can read a good summary of the bill here at the Senator's website.

Now, the NRA-ILA is fighting hard to maintain hunting in Mojave National Preserve, but where are they in supporting this issue? The reason I ask is because, like the Ca. Desert Protection Act of 1994, it specifically supports hunting as an activity in much of the lands it is attempting to protect.

At the very least, let's see some hunting groups signing on, because I know full-well that the NRA isn't a hunting organization.

Here's a list of supporters:

• The California Wilderness Coalition
• The Wildlands Conservancy
• The Wilderness Society
• The National Parks Conservation Association
• Friends of the River
• Campaign for America's Wilderness
• Cogentrix Energy
• Edison International (parent company of Southern California Edison)
• Friends of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve
• Friends of the Desert Mountains
• Mojave Desert Land Trust
• Desert Protective Council
• Amargosa Conservancy
• Death Valley Conservancy
• Cities of Barstow, Desert Hot Springs, Hesperia, Indio, Palm Springs, San Bernardino and Yucaipa
• Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley
• San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry
• Imperial County Supervisor Wally Leimgruber
• Coachella Valley Association of Governments
• SummerTree Institute
• Route 66 Preservation Foundation

Show me one hunting group there...

This bill also straddles the constituent fence, as it were, by both adding wilderness land and including space for OHV use. Neither side in that battle will probably be happy in public, but the long-term effects of having the federal legislation specifically refer to both of them will help both groups.

Come on, hunters, this is something to support!

Special thanks to Defenders of Wildlife for bringing this to my attention.

Up in arms over junior deer hunt

I read this piece in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, where folks are raising a stink about proposing a proposed junior doe hunt (that wasn't a typo) for Southern Placer County.

When I first heard of the proposal, my first instinct was selfish: My child is only two, and I'm, well, not a junior anymore. However, the article is about the 'controversy' of such a proposal, because of the youth focus, the doe focus, and the urban-wildland interface. Of course, the online comments quickly span the range of ridiculousness, with little in the middle.

So, my two cents: Folks, if I hadn't hunted and fished as a kid, I would most likely not have become an environmentalist. In addition, hunting and fishing (and kayaking, of course) are the primary ways in which I continue to interact with the wild. So get your young ones out there with guns in their hands! Teach them ethics, teach them that they need to know how they impact the world, and also sit back and let them learn things for themselves, on their own time, with their own experiences and in unstructured places. That's right, I'm not just condoning, but encouraging that we arm 16 year-olds, and let them run around in the wild. We complain that our kids never seem to grow up, yet we don't let them off the kiddie-leash. You would be surprised at the responsibility many teens can take if they are given the chance. We give them weapons that kill more people in the US every year and let them loose in highly urban, dense neighborhoods (cars), so stop your hypocritical whining.

Second, a doe, as the song goes, is a deer. That folks viscerally react to the notion of culling female deer more than male deer means that our motives have moved away from honest, clear-eyed management decisions to one of emotion, and an emotion based on some pretty sexist thinking, and with some serious violence thrown into that thinking, too.

Third, folks concerned with hunting going on at the urban-wildland interface need to move back to the city. Yes, I said back, because it's obvious where you came from.

My biggest problem with the report was the bias, beginning with referring to opponents not as animal rights activists, but as "animal activists." I am an animal activist, yet I am diametrically opposed to the position and philosophy as described in the article. This first bias of omission belies the angle of the rest of the story, and it gives me the feeling that the reporter is so completely unable to understand hunting that Mr. Fletcher cannot seem to get the balance right (I checked out his Tweets, and the closest thing to hunting he's done is, "Just killed 150 emails.")

So, Mr. Fletcher, if you wish to try to understand it, I am more than willing to take you hunting, especially if you hope to accurately report Placer County. Deer season is just around the corner up there.

Good Cazadora post, then a bit on Leopold

NorCal Cazadora has a great post about some books that have influenced her as a hunter. The reason I post this here is because these almost invariably include thoughts on the ethics of hunting. The comments section includes some other good works, so click on those, too.

I'd like to point out her first book, a Sand County Almanac, at a time just prior to the split between the environmental and conservation movements. Mr. Leopold was one of those great thinkers, a man who marvelled in the intricacies and connectedness of ideas. To environmentalism he elucidated a number of important concepts, including the First Rule of Intelligent Tinkering, and he moved forward the notion of ecology as a legitimate school of thought at a time when science was focused laser-like on breaking everything into its component parts. And this same man who waxed poetic about the loss of life and diversity, who founded the Wilderness Society, was also the man who waxed poetic about building your own bow and arrows to hunt, about hunting great blue herons with peregrine falcons. Leopold understood that humanity's relationship to the land and ecosystems was amazingly intricate, profound, and that our future depended on a true understanding of our place in the land.

It is often the influences of current society to take apart historical figures, to look down on them with condescention at their simpler, simplistic ways, and, in the supposed light of our greater wisdom, to separate out those attributes which we dislike from those which we admire. In so doing, we show ourselves as the simpletons, forgetting the constant winds of time and thought, forgetting that we can almost never know the intricacies of eras past, and losing the subtle nuances when we are lucky enough to catch a glimpse. We lose the ability to truly learn from those past experiences, and, like much of science in Leopold's time, we lose the ability to see the true connections that make for a rich, often profound existence, regardless of era.

Of the most influential ideas in my life, Aldo Leopold brought me to a conscious understanding of a land ethic and its need. If you get some time, please click over to that link and read his own words on the subject.

Environmental Justice and hunting groups together? Why not!

These two groups are about as far from each other on a traditional political spectrum as can be, but the political spectrum is irrelevant to conservationism. First, a little background:

By "hunting groups", I mean to include those organizations whose original impetus for creation came from hunting. In my mind, this includes folks like The Wild Turkey Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, the California Waterfowl Association, etc. These groups are largely made up of older white males, people who care deeply about hunting as a tradition and the wild as a necessary component to humanity. These are people who often cradle baby chicks in their hands, understand animal husbandry as well as shooting, and think hard about a conservation ethic.

By "environmental justice groups", I mean to include those organizations whose original impetus for creation came from an outrage against pollution in their immediate communities. This includes groups like Citizens Against Waste, the Coalition for Clean Air, the Verde Group, the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, etc. These groups are largely made up of poor and disenfranchised folks who have organized out of a sense of outrage and a desire to protect their towns, neighborhoods, and children. These are people who see lung cancer rates in some places at 1,000 times the national average, folks with a quarter of their kids suffering from asthma, people who are literally fighting to keep other people's poop from being dumped on them.

Now, these two cliques, as radically different as they seem on the surface, share some remarkably deep traits. Both grew out of battles against huge businesses and business trends, fighting and beating major corporate interests. Both have a deep sense of conviction and an evangelical streak when it comes to their passion. And both serve large, more socially conservative constituents who enjoy the outdoors.

Hunting groups tend to forget just how radical were their ideas when first proposed: Huge tracts of land taken completely off the market, owned and managed by the government or quasi-governmental institutions and run by volunteers, not profit; species and entire habitats protected from hunting; water quality improvements forced on major companies. Many hunters can, with pride, talk about the conservation efforts of the hunting community and our conservation forefathers like TR and George Grinnell, but doing so means that we are proud to support government efforts that curbed business interests for the greater common good.

On the other hand, many EJ groups represent constituents who trend more socially conservative than the typical environmental policy analyst. EJ communities tend to be deeply religious, are usually one generation or less from the farm or the wilds, and carry a strong fishing and hunting tradition. Today, many folks who live in EJ communities can be found fishing local ditches for carp and bass, hunting the National Forest and BLM lands for deer, squirrel, and quail, and, increasingly, showing up at the local wildlife refuges for ducks and geese.

Now is a great time for these two communities to get into active conversations and cooperative arrangements, and two places where this seems a natural fit are in community/youth outreach, and work on public policy. Both groups are fighting to stay relevant to young people, and each group has something to offer the other - they both currently cater to very different people, yet these people could mesh well. Setting up information booths at each others' outreach events would be a great start, with each group bringing their strength: EJ groups, bring the kids, urban youth, and their parents, who know how to hunt and know the land; hunting groups, bring baby birds, bring recipes and sausages and video of ducks and deer. Heck, bring guns - people like to shoot guns, it's fun.

The political policy realm may be a bit trickier for these two groups, as they tend to fall on different sides of the political spectrum, but there are many common goals, and their political tendencies can result in some major victories. My recommendation? Work on a local public lands access issue or clean-up effort. These make for good media, and can bring together pretty diverse people for a common, and reachable, goal.

In our current economic climate, conservation efforts are going to take a hit, both at the public policy and individual levels. Cooperative efforts are vital at this point, and they are also vital in the long run. These two groups have important things to share, and their cooperation could take the establishment by surprise and by storm. It would be just in time.

Enviros? Conservationists? Tree-huggers? Killers?

I love the political realm, for the most part, though I also hate it. In fact, my fascination with it probably has nearly as much to do with the emotions it stirs as it does with my personal belief that we are all responsible in our democratic republic. But, one place that really bothers me about political 'discourse' is the prevelance of half-formed ideas, urges and reactionism that get rolled up and kneaded into little soundbites, or worse, labels.

People are labeling creatures, we are ordering creatures. We create boxes of meaning into which we place ideas about people and things. Then we attach words to these boxes, for ease of use. This is very helpful in remembering, for example, that a particular mushroom killed Joe-Bob, or that cars with the word "Hyundai" on them may not be solid purchase decisions. However, when it comes to labeling groups of people in the political realm, we can really step on our own feet and hinder good management decisions.

Let me be perfectly clear here: The number one threat to the environment right now is unfettered development. Were we to efficiently manage our future development, and re-configure existing development, we could:

1) Help to effectively mitigate greenhouse gasses;

2) Much more effectively protect habitat and wildlife corridors;

3) Improve the health of our people;
4) Provide more opportunities for healthy outdoor connectedness, and more of a sense of place.

I could go on, but those are the big four when it comes to our future.

So, why am I seemingly jumping from one topic to another? Because our current political climate has so polarized us on environmental issues that we cannot even speak in civilized tones about the environment, much less push effective legislation.

Hunters, think about it: What is the bigger deal, that you can't shoot a lead round in condor country, or that you can't shoot ANYTHING?
Nonhunters, think about this: Hunters killing deer in a forest managed mostly through their dollars, or no deer at all, because the forest is now a string of Kinkos, Targets, and ticky-tacks?

The political upheavals of the 1960's & 70's completed a great schism in the community of people who love nature. This schism has reached such heights, that now, when I write about these topics, I have to write convoluted sentences about the "environmental-conservation community", and probably stay away from words like "natural resources" or "movement". Even the words "environment" and "conservation" are loaded!

It's downright ridiculous.

Of the four major groups spawned by the first folks loving nature in the late 1800's, three of them can share in an honest attempt to rein in sprawl, protect valuable habitats and corridors, re-establish watersheds, wetlands and prairies, and any number of other important goals for places. These three groups are hunting organizations (like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, SCI, Pheasants Forever), conservation groups (like Defenders of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy), and environmental groups (like the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity).

The fourth group, believe it or not, is another symptom of unfettered development. In our expanding suburbs, with no real rivers or wild places, there grew a group of people who 'love' nature. They often have had little or no contact with it, with particular places or creatures, because of where they live and how they were raised. They have no experiences with death and life, realities of our world. They only think of these things in the horrific. In this vacuum, fed by an honest longing for nature and the wild, but with no way of getting the genuine experience, the animal rights movement was born. Of course, I'm labeling, and I know that many animal rights' proponents have had many experiences with the wild, but for the most part, of the folks I've run across, most have come from urban or suburban environs, and may have worked in healing or rescuing animals, but haven't really seen a cat catch a bird, and do not understand that death must occur for even their continued survival.

If the three major groups who care about the environment and have experience with it could honestly engage young people by helping to curb sprawl and create living places where kids can respectfully experience the wild, then we can also help develop people with a true understanding, and therefore appreciation, of that wild. To do that, we don't need to put down our differences about other conservative/liberal ideas. We just need to meet and stick to the subject.

Where do you see connections that can be made?

My trip to the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy

At the last minute I was able to attend the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy, organized by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and in response to the President's Executive Order 13443. This order calls on federal agencies to, "facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat..."

The event was spread over two evenings and two days, with fine dinners hosted by major conservation organizations. DU's evening was especially nice, due to the short film they kept re-playing, showing birds flying; I felt like a dog, mesmerized by the cupped wings and slightly rocking descent of two drakes and a hen, orange legs outstretched, putting on the brakes from sizzling through the air to drop down onto some decoys... okay, snap out of it.

One day was dedicated to "plenary sessions", based on a series of white papers prepared by a number of organizations and sent out to participating groups. These papers outlined ideas for achieving the goals of the Executive Order, and also provided the framework for conversations. I was disappointed by this method, as it really framed the questions, rather than opening up the floor to hear ideas from many different perspectives. Of course, folks jumped outside the boundaries when offering ideas or questions, which is always a good thing when you get a chance to talk to the government in a public forum.

Personally, I felt a bit disconcerted by the amount of emphasis on resource extraction, in particular for "biofuels", a controversial topic right now. But, I'm going to accentuate the positive here, and state that I found two points of focus on which groups from the entire spectrum of the conservation and environmental community can focus: Funding and youth involvement.

I defy you to talk to an involved hunter or angler for five minutes about conservation without hearing about how these folks contribute more dollars to the effort than any other group. It's stated so often (and I'm one to blame) within the community, that it starts to feel more like self-aggrandizement, however, so I propose we take it a bit more public. NorCalCazadora has mentioned some recent hunting-related news in some major publications lately. Perhaps we could build on this publicity by reminding the public of the importance of hunting/fishing dollars to conservation efforts, especially as they relate to the current economy?

In the meantime, environmental and conservation groups are looking to help out in funding. Many would love to see an additional funding source, like binoculars taxes, or making people buy duck stamps to access wildlife refuges. Many would love to see an uptick in the numbers of people hunting and fishing, thus buying more excise-taxed items and licenses. These are both areas where coalitions of groups who may not always see eye-to-eye could actually accomplish a shared goal.

The other idea where collaboration potential exists is in youth involvement. There is a movement afoot right now by the moniker, "No Child Left Inside." Folks see that kids these days aren't getting out, they aren't gaining a love and appreciation for a place, and they (and we) are suffering for it. This is just another symptom of unfettered suburban development, the single largest threat to the environment today, and it is one that needs to be addressed in a big way. Requiring the application of outdoors activities to particular curricula is one step, but in poor, urban schools, access to park lands is limited, and pollution is a big problem. We need to combine mandates with the funds and ability for schools to accomplish the goals we set.

Last year, the Sierra Club offered legislation to encourage outdoor education for young people. It didn't make it out of committee. Next year, why not get some kind of bill at the state level which offers outdoor education with an archery component, and possibly some fishing or hunting access? This could garner the necessary bipartisan support (no small task in California) for passage, and could be accomplished through cooperative efforts between groups like the Sierra Sportsmen, Ducks Unlimited, and the California Outdoor Heritage Alliance.

Which brings me to the best part of my trip to the conference: I was able to meet some great folks representing a wide array of organizations and interests. In particular, I got to meet a man I highly regard, Jim Posewitz of Orion, the Hunters' Institute. I recommend a trip to that website. I came away hopeful in our ability to gain hunters and anglers, to come up with wise resource and habitat management decisions, and to find some common ground and make some concerted moves toward the goal that all in the conservation and environmental community share: Protecting and preserving our common inheritance, and instilling in our children a love and passion for our places.

Roots of conservation

Well, my baby and I tried watching the debate last week (it's fun to hear a 21 month-old say McCain and Barack Obama), but wound up turning to the Family Feud on Ion Television, instead. What a waste of an opportunity for both candidates. First, they only agree to a format where they get about two minutes per talk, then they spend those two minutes spouting the same general rhetoric that you hear on their commercials and in their stump speeches. Big, fat waste of time.

But, one discussion really made me angry and frustrated, and made for fodder for this post. When asked about energy, and, even more directly, when asked about sacrifice, neither candidate spoke of the need for Americans to use less. In fact, the only time I've heard this idea promoted in the public sphere lately is from, of all places, a Chevron commercial. Local, state, federal, and Presidential candidates are all spouting the horrible line that we have to use all available methods and opportunities for meeting our demand for energy, including clean coal, nuclear, wind, drilling, blah, blah.

We have reached a strange time in our history, when sacrifice is no longer asked of us during times of trouble. What does it say about us that the people running for office feel that to ask us to sacrifice is a sure way to lose an election? Or, is it a sign of the financial times, that their major donors are absolutely wedded to the current economic conditions, and therefore require spending, even though we know that we are sitting on false values created by a bloated housing market? And, how does this relate to our ethical relationships to the environment?

The root of the word conservation is obvious, as are its implications. Believing that we can consume our way out of our financial and security problems is wrongheaded, and it's bad environmental policy. Under typical bad economic conditions, and in times of war, we are often asked to stock up and save things, to use less and hold onto valuable assets. Right now, for some reason, our candidates are not encouraging this behavior, and I am saddened by it. Many Americans like to sacrifice for the betterment of their country, they like to feel connected through actions, but being told to purchase another Chinese-made toy as your American duty is an empty gesture.

So I would like to simply suggest to folks that you use less. Hold onto some money, learn to can some food and get a garden going (for those of you in climates like California's). Perhaps walk down to a local pond or creek and catch some bluegill for dinner every week or so. Also, get to know your neighbors, so that you can help out in case they see some bad times. Call up the local government and get a free tree or two to plant. Take some short trips around to the local open areas near you, spend a little bit of money locally, and learn to appreciate your place. If you see something not quite right, let somebody know, or ask to fix it. Getting to know your environment while using less can go a long way to protecting it. Also, if you needed it, you get a good reason to catch some bluegill.