🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear Persons,

Conservation or Preservation?  Fisheries or Wildlife?  These are "lose, lose"
situations and could be "win, win."  i.e. Conservation and Preservation!
Fisheries and Wildlife!  (I, frankly, am sometimes amazed at these
discussions.)

Of what is (or should be) of more direct concern to us all is the distinction
between Ecology and Environmentalism and where we put our understanding.
Ecology is a science (note the suffix "ology") and an ecologist must deal with
a great number of facts (the "interaction of the living and the non-living"
fairly well covers most of the sciences except maybe cosmology).  Ecology is
not a simple subject and one could argue is the most difficult science.  An
environmentalist, in contrast, requires only one fact in order to qualifiy as
an environmentalist.  That one fact is, "they like the environment."   Well, I
am an ecologist (PhD U of AZ 1979) and I like the environment too, but it
seems there are a whole host of people out there who are environmentalist, but
without much additional information.

Some people like to go hiking and "commune" with nature.  Others like to go
hiking and catch some fish for dinner.  It seems like we are fighing about
whether we should go fishing or not, when we don't know how much mercury is in
the system or that the estuary will naturally dissappear by succession in the
next few hundred years whether we make a national park out of it or not.  We
fine farmers $50,000 for each endangered subspecies of grasshopper mouse
killed when it has been shown that farming activities provide the only niche
that is allowing the subspecies to survive.  Americans deplore the loss of
biodiversity in Brazil not realizing the incredible "destruction" of habitat
that has occurred in America ... well, in fairness, I suppose it's too late to
bring it back as it was, even if we wanted to.  When we can use the facts to
develop "win win" for the environment and industry, that's real ecology.
Charles Lindbergh had it right 50 years ago.  We need a balance.