[member of DK Greenroots.]
If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts. To save every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering -- Aldo Leopold, Round River.
This diary is about the environmental and conservation movements, about the difference between deep green and shallow green environmentalism, and an innovative scientist who radicalized conservation and re-branded it as a potent force for change.
Working with Jimmy Carter, early IBM computers and fighting daffodils along the way.
Dividing Environmentalism
In Steve Van Matre's 1990 classic, Earth Education: A New Beginning, the activist draws a sweeping vision of the environmental movement. Its many ideologies and warring factions are integrated and deconstructed as he explains where we went wrong. [Oh, how we did.] He saves his powder for well-meaning opportunists. They provide a glut of environmental band-aids but never force society to confront problems and reform. Sometimes, opportunists claim a share of equal import with those trying to implement real environmental solutions. The aesthetics conflate their hobbies and all their wonderful sensations--the crunch of trail bark, the unique odor of damp moss, finding the explosive yellow of a seasonally-present song bird amidst trees, having children bus out to a regional park for day camps and outdoor schools--with urgently-needed activism. Outdoor and aesthetic appreciation are part of our culture and good for the soul, but not answers to dying ecosystems. When it comes down to the funding, someone or something will give, and its usually the deep green.
[Note: Lest you think Van Matre's criticism of opportunists is over-blown, these very well-meaning groups take corporate money. Survey BP and Exxon's recent television commercials yourself. It happens from the oil industry across the corporate world.]
This clash between symbolic motions and reform plays out here, in my community in Washington County, Oregon. Here, the city of Beaverton operates one of the most expansive and exciting parks districts in the country--Tualatin Hills Parks and Recreation District (THPRD). Out of dozens of parks, THPRD manages two nature parks, each over 220 acres, and a several-mile long greenway along Fanno Creek that extends into its southern neighbor of Tigard. Martial arts, athletics, special needs programs for kids and other activities abound, providing children to the elderly with learning and physically stimulating experiences. This success is tempered by the reality within Beaverton and the greater metropolitan area.
Though the downtown Portland cityscape hasn't changed too much, (Beaverton's directly adjacent to the Rose City) sprawl and development in the metro region bolted. Our renowned-mountain view fades, which also means we're inhaling evermore crud. Omens abound. There's a current plan to double the I-5 freeway which connects Portland to its other big suburb, Vancouver, Washington into 12 lanes. Longer commutes, reduced air quality and lost open space. But still, you'll hear the conurbation of Portland-Beaverton-and-Vancouver is green!
An Activist Joins A Non-profit
When it comes to conservation, few have fought harder in the battle between vision and results harder than Richard E. Jenkins, Jr. His career began in 1970 at the Nature Conservancy, armed with Harvard education and activist cred (previously, he'd participated in Earth Day and helped found Zero Population Growth). His task: to challenge TNC to keep to its roots and be significant during a time of change.
The Nature Conservancy had changed quite a bit prior to Jenkins' arrival, both in size and focus. According to Bill Birchard's Nature's Keepers: The Remarkable Story of How The Nature Conservancy Became the Largest Environmental Organization in the World, paid and business-trained administrators birthed the nascent non-profit into its second-generation, i.e., from a volunteer-run charity to a well-funded, exponentially-growing land owner. Birchard states that by 1970, TNC closed several real estate transactions per week; only ten years prior they worked in several, mainly eastern states. Now they owned 113 parcels in 23. But their failure to apply the original mission of the organization to their new direction led to set-backs, waste and lost opportunity, only masked by the non-profit's lucrative new situation.
Mid-century conservation prioritized land conservation almost in the inverse of how we do today. Open spaces, regardless of biodiversity (or the number of species within) was premier, followed somewhere after by cheaper, fragmented habitats which contained one or some increasingly rare species. The problem is, small lands don't really preserve a species well (how many generations before the gene pool of a flower or vole is exploited in full?). The new tool in the TNC were "trade lands", which, despite the charter of the conservation group, had almost no biological significance but provided solid sales. Within his first two years, a diverging Jenkins determined that the cause of their work was to preserve "the vanishing heritage of wild plant and animal species, their habitats, natural vegetation associations, biotic communities and other features." This was prompted as much by the charter, but the drift which plagues many organizations struck the Conservancy.
Revenge Of the Nerd
Aided by a clearer view due to his science background, Jenkins planned out a coup. He wanted to better organize information in TNC at all levels. Particularly the categorization of these land preserves. And he wanted to pursue aggressively a 4th type of land--"ecosystem preserves", which the original NC never had resources to aquire. As Brichard writes, they would seek "undisturbed lands big enough to save many components of a diverse system", including the rare and endangered.
If this sounds simple, it wasn't in 1970. The Conservancy may have been centrally-managed, but it was now divided by chapters in 23 states, all vying for the attention of national money for local, obscure and primarily aesthetic projects. Parks. In 1974, New Jersey Conservancy members tried to buy 14 acres of daffodils for about $55,000, proving that even a generation ago, Jersey pissed people off. Jenkins bruised quite a few egos as he persuaded enough people to stop a purchase. And it wasn't just NJ; half of all projects nationwide were under 25 acres and almost a third were under ten. Biologically speaking, these are tiny bastions against the outside world's pollution, pets, (please think twice before letting your cat or dog into the neighboring woods) pests (including the widespread house finch and knotweed) and vandals. It didn't help that many were former clear-cuts and farms, denuded and homogenized. Jenkins had a vision grander than daffodil-ed fragments. One that required actual planning.
See, at the time, information on natural areas was decentralized and loaded with holes, which gave added influence to the local IMBY opportunists. The Conservancy itself blazed trail for Jenkins back in the '50s, when 250 scientists published a groundbreaking assessment of 691 sanctuaries. Jenkins followed this model. After designing a species list of natural areas in the Chesapeake Bay for the Smithsonian, he took things a step further and asked a local foundation for 154 grand so as to create a national index. The proposal came up flat. Attempt one after another. Meanwhile, local opportunities appeared for Jenkins. The governor of Georgia (Jimmy Carter) approved a statewide effort to survey Georgia's native wildlife. Once properties were accessed, not only did the biologist have an ally who'd speak with other governors about the novel approach, but he'd narrow down bargain-bin lands with scientific value. Prompting the Conservancy to add them to its portfolio.
The conservancy's only scientific voice proposed creating a database that would back up his agenda. But Jenkins was burning out.
Southern Rumblings
Then, in 1973 TNC bought a 24,000 acre cypress lake and swamp purchase in South Carolina. Patrick Noonan, Conservancy president, needed Jenkins to direct a survey of the state. It dawned on the biologist that while his national effort moved sluggishly forward, he could shore up his efforts with statewide data systems.
Over the next two years, Jenkins expanded statewide "Natural Heritage" inventories to Mississippi, West Virginia and Oregon. These were under his control but again, Jenkins felt uneasy. He'd sent out dozens or hundreds of biologists to gather info in each state and document the rare and the biological communities. Unfortunately, the scientists were failing too, by finding local pet projects and making easy observations. The data was too opinionated. At that point, Frank Pelurie, the something of a computer geek-new head of the WV Heritage program, gave Jenkins a break-through.
Pelurie, like Jenkins, was fond of using computer queries--he's worked on weapons-systems computers for military aircraft. Yet their Conservancy computer systems were more labor than love. Oh, unqualified, barely useful lists of species data came cheap. Yet they couldn't ask about species rareity without racking up a huge bill. Pelurie argued the statewide surveys compared apples to oranges but not the comparable; what was more rare and what was commonplace? They weren't detailing what could be found on what part of the site, or how much of it was there. In Oregon projects, there might have been plant associations along the lines of Douglas Fir--Western Hemlock--Oregon White Oak, but how much of the latter, rarer species, were actually at the site? At Pelurie's instigation, Jenkins' main inventory would store data on "elements" and their occurrences. Jenkins and Pelurie undid 45 years of conventional wisdom on how to catalog.
"Direct comparisons can be made on the basis of real data (as opposed to subjective judgement)... [the problem of individual bias] often leads to the gully and hemlock syndrome, in which habitat types or elements are preserved redundantly while others are not preserved at all" -- Richard Jenkins, Nature Conservancy News, 1975.
While adding a handful of state Heritage Programs each year, Jenkins was still battling party after party over which lands the Conservancy would protect. In South Carolina, the local bigwig wanted citizens to decide on an area which best represented their heritage; Jenkins roared in opposition. TNC's real estate-negotiating "mastermind", David Morine, "would argue [with Jenkins] so loudly the staff thought they would sock each other", writes Birchard. (BTW, Jenkins was as phyiscally robust as he was well-rounded, an ex-college football player.) He only slowly gained dominance through key allies like President Noonan, and through his sometimes-fanatical staff.
The real confirmation of Jenkins' hard work came with Nags Head Woods. A thousand-acre coastal forest in North Carolina, it was the first large procurement validated by the nascent Natural Heritage data. Now, TNC conserved land of biological significance. But Jenkins never completed his national system, and the cumbersome Heritage programs required great effort. Birchard explains:
"...it produced a lot of data, far more than many [property] dealmakers wanted. So they offered one refineement after another: ranking systems, natural diversity scorecards, mapping systems, standardized procedures, and manuals to describe it all... over fifteen years [he established] ...systems in every state (and several abroad)"
It is a hard fight, as development and sprawl ravage our last great places, to make action in a significant and useful way. Playing triage with options doesn't sit well with idealists, but it's exactly what Jenkins had to do at times, in fact, during his most bitter rows. And fighting entrenched, self-serving ways of doing things will alienate people, so doing it in a way that's sustainable and succeeds walks a fine line. And when an organization starts to drift from its stated goals (the Nature Conservancy's slogan is: "Living Museums of Primeval America") the damage can prove fatal or deeply injurious to progress. Many Conservancy people besides Jenkins helped found and foster their success. Jenkins' story shows one aspect. But his legacy lives on in the many sites in your own state and foreign nations where rare flora and fauna maintain a foothold.
FWIW: Couple weeks ago, Tualatin Parks and Rec in Beaverton unveiled its newest park at Cooper Mountain. This 230, acre park was ten years in the making and protects the rare delphinium leucophaeum, or white larkspur.