Protect, Defend or Restore
We really have three possible strategies to conserve the natural systems on the planet. We can protect which was how we first set aside Yellowstone back in 1872. And we continue to set aside large tracks of land and oceans in the form of National Monuments. One place we worked is a recent national monument - The Northwest Hawaiian Islands 1100 miles NW of Honolulu. To protect means literally to enforce the Endangered Species Act and on Midway Island that means protecting the monk seal, laysan duck and short tailed albatross without any limits.
Defending an ecosystem or species requires a more focused effort against the extraction industry. We supported bluefin tuna catch limits, we actively worked to stop the $35B LNG plant construction at James Price Point thru the Coastal Walkabout Program and Spinner Dolphin research, We have funded and worked to maintain striped bass populations against the commercial fishing fleet in the Northeast US. Of all the three possible conservation strategies this is the most difficult since there are active profit minded adversaries to confront, fund and by any means slow them down thru lawsuits and lobbying elected officials. We have funded all these efforts over time.
The defend strategy comes with serious burnout for people who have both passion and ability to fight the extractors. The extractors have more money, they contribute to the economy in jobs and taxes and rally we need the food. But the cost of ecosystem destruction is one that once done forever dooms the local ecosystem. That is something we have fought and stood fast against destruction.
Finally the third leg of the strategy is Restoration and in so many ways the easiest since the damage has been done and wealth extracted. So we step up and fund stream restoration from large cattle operations, we restock fish to build up a sustainable fish population, we remove invasive species and replant the native species. It is a community effort and has a very positive effort on a community to bring something back to near… near its original state. Whether it was Trout Unlimited restoring streams and removing toxic mine waste or replanting native trees in the Colorado Delta or sucking up all the oil spilled in the Deepwater Horizon incident, people step and got to work to fix what we fucked up. We never get back to the original state but we get s close as we can, people celebrate, native species return to thrive and life goes on…. Do I feel like that is success? Sorta but there is always that hope we can find those places before the extraction occurs so we are not left with the single choice - restoration.
