Our next blog will come from New Mexico where we will be working on our efforts to prepare new environmental education materials for our school project. Developing the contacts required for this project is essential to present the material properly. We are really excited about the prospects and potential this project offers!
     Meantime, recent news articles are again covering the number of lawsuits that are occurring as our public land managing Agencies seek to manage our remaining forested lands. The Chief of the Forest Service recently complained  that as many as 15% of proposed timber sales windup in the courts. I know how frustrating it is to work at managing our public forest lands according to scientific principles and then being stopped by groups and individuals that do not agree with the management techniques being applied. When I read the lawsuits they seem to focus on disagreements over access, harvesting techniques, potential habitat impacts, commercial utilization and so forth. Seldom, if ever, do I hear   meaningful dialog over the needs of the forest communities to maintain healthy diverse vegetative conditions. Almost all of the disagreement is over the how to, tools and techniques, and neither side seems prepared to focus on the condition of the forests. I have stated before that the "Preservation" concepts nor the "Conservation" concepts will produce the desired outcome. With over half of our forests already gone and population at it's current number and expanding, our forests demand proper management. To think otherwise is simply ignoring the obvious. Mother Nature requires help!
     The real question is what kind of management? Conservation, Wise Use, manages the resources from the forests and will result, eventually, in the destruction of our remaining valuable forests. The only solution is to focus on health and diversity, and the only way to accomplish this is to begin to manage the individual communities. The first step is to develop the skill to recognize these unique units and stop treating hundreds and thousands of acres with the same prescription.
     I can guarantee that when leadership begins working with the potentially effected interests on forest condition goals before proposing techniques, you will experience a reduction in the number of lawsuits!   


 
   

Last weeks meeting with the local community college left us excited and anxious to begin working on developing the outline for a new project. The purpose of the project will be to introduce a different approach to environmental studies in our public schools. Certainly, more time and effort is being invested in environmental education today, so what is different about our approach and why do we need to change what we are doing now? We want to start by helping young students (elementary and intermediate school ages) begin to understand and appreciate how connected and dependent they are upon their natural surroundings. Much has changed in the way we live today, but the very basic requirements of the human species remains the same. What we do to our natural surroundings we do to ourselves!

Our second step is to introduce these students to the detail and complexity of our natural environment. This is where we introduce the students to the need to observe carefully the interactions and relationships found in the unique communities that make up Nature. Our objective is to start thinking about how we belong to and are a part of Nature, rather than thinking earth belongs to us and can be manipulated to produce whatever we want.

Our final step is to begin learning what it means to live in balance with the limits of our natural environment. Today we are told that people living in the United States and Canada use 20 acres per individual, to produce the energy and produces required to support our current  living standard. If you divide the total number of acres on this planet by today's world population, there is slightly less than 4 acres available per person. We are also told the the number one environmental issue we face worldwide is population expansion. It is time to begin to adjust our demands to achieve some degree of balance before it is to late!

My background is in forest science and it seems appropriate to focus on our remaining forested lands as examples of how we must change. Population expansion, urbanization and deforestation will continue regardless of what we try to do. A new approach to managing our remaining forested lands is our only hope. It will not come easy and will require much time, but failing to start now will result in a future devoid of the human species!