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Editor: Beau McClure, 6510 W. Lucia Dr, Phoenix, AZ 85083 -- Phone: 623-587-7883- bcmcclure@cox.net
2008 ANNUAL MEETING PUBLIC -- LANDS FOUNDATION -- PARK CITY, UTAH
It is now time for you to make your lodging and meeting reservations for this year’s Public Lands Foundation annual meeting, which is being held in Park City, Utah, during the week of September 8, 2008. The theme for this year’s meeting is “Sustaining the Ecological, Economic and Social Vitality of the Public Lands.” . We expect this to be an interesting and informative meeting. Our discussions will help PLF define whether we should adopt “sustainability” as an important element of PLF’s mission statement and perhaps replace the term “multiple use” in our vocabulary with “sustainability”. So it is important our membership to be present. We need your input. As in the past, the Board of Directors will meet on Tuesday, September 9, and the general meeting will be held on Thursday and Friday, September 11 and 12. You also are encouraged to attend the Program and Policy meeting which will be held Saturday morning, September 13. In addition, a Wednesday golf tournament, tour and evening barbeque, a Thursday luncheon speaker, a Friday night banquet and spousal activities are among the activities being planned. The meeting will be held at the Prospector Square Lodge and Conference Center, 2200 Sidewinder Drive, Park City, Utah. Premium Hotel Rooms are available at $79.00 plus taxes per night. Premium Studios are available at $99.00 plus taxes per night. And Premium Studio Lofts are available at $109.00 plus taxes per night. These rates are available from September 6 through September 15, 2008. Reservations must be made by August 25, 2008. To receive these group rates, you must contact the Prospector Square Lodge Reservations office at 435-658-3030 or toll free at 888-283-3030 and mention you are with the Public Lands Foundation group. Do not use the Internet or other sources to make your reservations. A credit card guarantee is due at time of booking, but payment will be charged upon arrival. No penalty will be charged for rooms cancelled prior to September 1, 2008. Rooms cancelled from September 1 to arrival date will be charged a one night lodging penalty. There will be no refunds for cancellations from the arrival date. Please fill out the Registration and Information Form (see insert in this Monitor) and mail it before August 25 along with your check to Beau McClure, Director of Operations, Public Lands Foundation, 6510 W. Lucia Drive, Phoenix, Arizona 85083-7406
Sustaining Earth’s Ecosystem: Its Natural Life Support System
By Ralph Heft, Member PLF Board of Directors, Washington State Representative--April 7, 2008
The theme of this year’s annual meeting in Park City is: “Sustaining the Ecological, Economic, and Social Vitality of the Public Lands”. It is a critical time in our history to address this subject. We humans are taxing the earth’s ecosystem, which is our natural life support system, at an accelerating rate. This increasing use cannot be sustained long term. Fortunately, if we act now, there is still time to bring our consumption of natural resources into balance with the ecosystem’s ability to supply them in perpetuity. Before the industrial revolution, human activity on earth was fairly well balanced within the earth’s ecosystem. People lived in the wild-lands, and their technology and their relative small numbers meant their use of natural resources was sustainable. Whenever human activities were out of balance with the ecosystem’s ability to support them, they were able to pick up and move on to a new location, allowing the old location time to heal. With the development of advanced technology and modern medicine the human population exploded. People are now concentrating in urban environments and exploit the wild-land ecosystem for its natural resources to support their lifestyle. We have now run out of places to move if we destroy the ecosystem that supports us. Fortunately for us old duffers, we are still living in a time of plenty, but future generations are in for hard times unless we learn to live within the earth’s ability to sustain us. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed, he describes the collapse of several societies due to overuse of the ecosystem that supported them. Two of them were close to home: the Anasazi in the southwestern United States and the Mayan on the Yucatan Peninsula. A combination of factors, such as habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and forest and soil depletion, caused these complex societies to disintegrate. When these societies collapsed, people were able to relocate and eventually recover because there were still ecological niches that supported human life available elsewhere, and the overused land could be rested until its ecological functions could recover. However, in the author’s example of the Easter Island society in the Pacific Ocean, the outcome was much bleaker. At the beginning of Polynesian colonization of the island it had abundant forest, fertile soils for growing crops, and ocean fish populations that provided all the food needed for a thriving society. Because their basic necessities were so readily available, they even had spare time to carve gigantic granite boulders into humanoid head sculptures and transport them several miles from the quarry to their religious sites. As the society grew, it began to use up natural resources. The soils were depleted and the forests were completely consumed to supply fire wood, housing, and boats. Without wood for boats, there was a drastically diminished ability to fish for food and they could not escape the island. The human population collapsed because the island’s ecosystem would no longer support it. When European explorers discovered the island, only a few people remained, and they were barely surviving. The survivors’ first request was for wood to build boats to escape the island. Human beings now occupy or use in some way almost all of the earth’s habitable land. There is no longer anyplace to move if we use up our natural life-support system. Unless the earth’s ecosystem is managed so it can continue to support human beings, there will be a population collapse similar to Easter Island. Since the earth is an island in space, we have no where else to go. We have seen the mistakes of the past. What do we need to do to avoid repeating them in the future? Aldo Leopold observed in A Sand Country Almanac: “... [A] land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such." This land ethic provides us with the basis for enlightened land stewardship. Recently, I found some words from an unexpected source that come very close to my own feelings about land stewardship. The irony to me is that it came from the National Association of Realtors, 10 Principles for Smart Growth on the Suburban Fringe: "Green infrastructure is a network of habitat, parks, greenways, conservation easements and working lands sustaining native species, natural ecological processes, plus air and water resources. …green infrastructure is a community's natural life-support system and must be strategically planned and managed as carefully as built infrastructure." Managing the earth’s ecosystem to insure Homo sapiens and their fellow sojourners long-term survival is analogous to managing an endowment to support a family in perpetuity. The ecosystem is the endowment principle. Over using water resources in the Southwestern United States is an example of consuming the ecosystem’s principle. We need to preserve the principle so we can live off the earnings forever, which is not an easy task. Traditionally, a society’s elders have provided the long-term view for society. PLF members are the elders of the natural resource management society; and therefore, their advice should promote a long term vision of sustaining the earth’s natural life support system. The Public Land Foundation’s primary mission should be to promote the conservation of the Public Land’s ecosystems so they can sustain future generations while providing use, enjoyment, and benefit for the current generation. Our future depends on it.
Now is the time to mark your calendar and plan to attend this year’s Public Lands Foundation annual meeting during the week of September 8, 2008
The theme for this year’s meeting is “Sustaining the Ecological, Economic and Social Vitality of the Public Lands.” . We expect this to be an interesting and informative meeting. Our discussions will help PLF define whether we should adopt “sustainability” as an important element of PLF’s mission statement (see below) and perhaps replace the term “multiple use” in our vocabulary with “sustainability”. So it is important our membership to be present. We need your input. As in the past, the Board of Directors will meet on Tuesday, September 9, and the general meeting will be held on Thursday and Friday, September 11 and 12. The Program and Policy meeting will be held Saturday morning, September 13. In addition, a Wednesday golf tournament and evening barbeque, a Thursday luncheon speaker, a Friday night banquet and spousal activities are among the other activities being planned.
The meeting will be held at the Prospector Square Lodge and Conference Center, 2200 Sidewinder Drive, Park City, Utah. Premium Hotel Rooms are available at $79.00 plus taxes per night. Premium Studios are available at $99.00 plus taxes per night. And Premium Studio Lofts are available at $109.00 plus taxes per night. These rates are available from September 6 through September 15, 2008. Reservations must be made by August 25, 2008. To receive these group rates, you must contact the Prospector Square Lodge Reservations office at 435-658-3030 or toll free at 888-283-3030 and mention you are with the Public Lands Foundation group. Do not use the Internet or other sources to make your reservations. A credit card guarantee is due at time of booking, but payment will be charged upon arrival. No penalty will be charged for rooms cancelled prior to September 1, 2008. Rooms cancelled from September 1 to arrival date will be charged a one night lodging penalty. There will be no refunds for cancellations from the arrival date.
Meeting registration information and other details will be provided in the next Public Lands Monitor. If you have any suggestions for speakers on the meeting theme, please contact Beau McClure by e-mail at bccmcclure@ cox.net or by phone at 623-587-7883.