Director’s Page

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
Heraclitus of Ephesus 540 BC – 480 BC, on the Universe.

Those of us in the business of conservation often muse about the swing of the pendulum back to a better day when people will again become more aware of the connection between a healthy environment and the human condition. We yearn for an environmental Messiah in the vein of Aldo Leopold, Teddy Roosevelt, or Bob Marshal of the turn of the century; or a Morris King Udall, Rachael Carson, or Gaylord Nelson of the 60s and 70s to lead us out of this bondage of greed, avarice and ignorance that is threatening the natural systems that sustain us. These two and only great periods of environmental awareness and activism in our brief history as a nation have both followed periods of rampant exploitation of natural resources. If this pattern holds, I am confident we are on the cusp of a reawakening for conservation and environmentalism. If we are going to meet the challenge of promoting good conservation we need to build on past successes and identify new problems of our age.

In 1988 I was employed by the Forest Service as a river ranger on the Chattooga River. My boss thought it would be instructive for us to attend a conference in Washington D.C. in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The Chattooga River had been one of the original rivers named in the act and we felt encouraged about what we would learn about the history of its designation and about management trends from a national perspective.

We learned about Frank and John Craighead, twin brothers, who as biologists studying grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park became principle authors of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. I even found myself having a conversation with Mo Udall during a social break. Udall, as a member of the United States House of Representatives, served as the chairman of the House Committee of the Interior and Insular Affairs during that second environmental renaissance of the 60s and 70s. In that capacity he wrote much of the nation’s most important environmental legislation. I stood there in wonder as he patiently fielded my questions about his hearings on pesticide use after Silent Spring and the friendship he had developed with Rachael Carson and even personal conversations he had had with her shortly before her death.

I came back from the conference pumped to do good things for conservation. The environmental heroes in our history gave us great cornerstones to build on: the Wilderness Preservation System, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, the National Forest System, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to name a few. We have seen good progress in smog reduction, new technologies for pollution control, and lands set aside for natural resource protection. One shining example is the 11,292 miles of National Wild and Scenic Rivers that have been protected. One of which is our own Chattooga River.

The bad news is that we have allowed those who degrade our great natural resources in the name of profit to gain far too much control of our society. We must all accept responsibility. Conservation organizations have become so bloated and obsessed with funding campaigns to feed exorbitant salaries and assets that they have lost their bearings. Our system of government has become so infiltrated with unscrupulous corporate money that, once again, as at the turn of the century, profit motive at the expense of environmental concerns has become the political norm. Finally, and most disturbing, people have lost touch with the natural world. We no longer link quality of life with clean air and water and with biological diversity.

Today we are faced with a whole suite of new problems; global warming, sprawl, overpopulation, exotic species globalization, loss of family farms and green space, genetic engineering, and a host of other problems that our predecessors never dreamed of. But now we have better tools to work with. We now know how to look at the whole watershed across political lines in order to protect water quality and biological diversity. We have learned, as Eugene Odum taught, to look at the whole landscape in formulating any plan for conservation. We also have better technology if we will only put it to work.

Our challenge is great, but the time is at hand to act. The pendulum always swings back. What we must be concerned with is taking advantage of the great environmental legacy we have in this country. This time there must be no net loss. We must, as Leopold instructed us, create a new land ethic and a sense of community in harmony with nature. This time we must be vigilant to maintain our land ethic. Rather than waiting for the swing of the pendulum our task should be to minimize its swing. The pendulum is something we have created. It is an unnatural manmade cycle of progress followed by complacency. Many of our problems are new, but the solutions have always been right in front of us. Every time we step into the river it will be different, but it will still be a river. This time, let’s keep it clean.