Every era of conservation took its defining characteristic from an innovation that met a need. The need now is for durable decisions able to withstand competing perspectives and the pendulum of politics. Conservation today is fully fledged with ideas. Naturally, they conflict, and the arguments have created the stalemate in which little is tried and little progress is made.
Conservation now struggles with concerns from forests and wildlife to water and wilderness, to litter and other pollution as big as the atmosphere, and even to communities of people living where ecological woes fall disproportionately. There is no niche or facet of ecology lacking opinions and desires. Yet disputes over what to do, or not do, outnumber actions.
Today’s challenge is turning enthusiasm into motion. Not toward ideal progress, which is bigger than government, philanthropy, NGOs, and business acting alone or in combination, but toward realistic progress from cooperation and co-operation: i.e., people working together directly and independently under rules.
We should not hope for grand unity, as occurred in the FDR era of conservation. In 1936, with FDR’s support, the recent Chief of the U.S. Biological Survey Ding Darling presided over a national conference of hunters, anglers, gardeners, farmers, biologists, and youth groups. Many represented local or statewide clubs and groups. Within a couple of years, the National Wildlife Federation formed to organize a national lobby for this legion of clubs.
Then, the need was still for more attention to conservation, less so for direction. Today conservation reaches far beyond wildlife, and ideologies are far more diverse. We need the diversity of passion, knowledge, and opinions to resolve into decisions.
If in our clash of ideas is the sound of freedom, as Lady Bird Johnson is to have said, it rings with fury more than substance. Conservation clamors with competing priorities, and where common causes may be found, contradictory strategies confound them. The competition is more detrimental than complementary as the camps counteract each other. A prominent example is the battle over burning forests: forest restoration to some is a chainsaw massacre to others.
The next innovation should channel conservation’s rambunctious enthusiasm, and a point of entry is the dominant strand of conservation history by which technical agencies have become central planners and decision makers. T.R.’s (and certainly Pinchot’s) policy allocated resources entirely by the scientific calculation of government experts. In 1950, Samuel Hays described it as “The Gospel of Efficiency.” Its flaws appeared in several ways long before Rachel Carson studied pesticides; the experimental removal of predators from the Kaibab Plateau began shortly after T.R. established the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve in 1906. A check on administrative discretion appeared in 1946, with the enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act, which required notice and comment on regulations. Public comment began to dominate conservation with the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970.
The main function of public comment now—actually, not intentionally—is to reserve for commenters the standing to sue over decisions they don’t like. A class of organizations has emerged that does nothing but sue. Even the intent of a comment period is dubious: Availing an agency of informative outside views is sensible but no match for the determination of an agency to do what it has already decided—or has been told to do. Thus, it is mainly a shadow vote. Expert decision making is only distantly accountable to the value judgments among options for achieving the same objective.
“Collaboration” is a more recent reaction having innovative potential. Starting in the 1980s, concerns about the spotted owl, the Blackfoot River watershed, and the Malpai Borderlands brought citizens together to deliberate. Some reached agreements, solved problems, and realized opportunities. But collaboration has no official place in conservation policy. A place for collaboration would mark a new era.
There are at least two ways to institutionalize collaboration. Collaborative groups could petition for action, and agencies could recognize collaborative alternatives to official proposals. Collaborative solutions that meet lawful purposes and needs could receive preferential consideration for expeditious approval. Objectors could be required to participate meaningfully to gain standing to sue.
Defining the next era of conservation by how we relate to each other is no distraction from wildness. Instead, it is, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, a return to our beginnings where we know them for the first time.
