| Who We Are | What We Do | The Plan | Resources | Members | In the News | What is Biodiversity? | |||
|
|
What
is the State of Biodiversity in Pennsylvania? Reflections on the First Statewide Biodiversity Conference Patrick
McShea Ghosts weren't mentioned on the agenda of the first Pennsylvania Biodiversity Conference, organized by the Pennsylvania Biodiversity Partnership, a public-private partnership recently formed to address biodiversity conservation throughout the state. Nevertheless, a visitor from Newfoundland compared the late November gathering of over 230 naturalists, state agency officials, educators, and forest industry representatives to a séance. Speaking without notes, and in a clipped brogue that bespoke deep Celtic roots, Shane Mahoney launched into his keynote address with a booming statement that served as both summary and challenge. "What you have embarked upon is nothing short of the resurrection of Leopold's ghost." The audience in the ballroom of State College's Atherton Hotel undoubtedly recognized the reference, for a two-tiered legacy has developed in the 53 years since Aldo Leopold, the university professor who was also a researcher, forester, sportsman, writer, and philosopher, died fighting a grassland fire near his Wisconsin farm. He is revered among all who make their living studying free-living plants and animals for spurring the development of conservation biology as an academic discipline and profession, and admired by a far larger circle of nature enthusiasts as the author of A Sand County Almanac, the posthumously-published (and perpetually in print) set of essays that eloquently advocate a "land ethic" to guide our individual and collective interactions with the natural world. The immediate allusion to Leopold's twin achievements was appropriate because, in one form or another, every subsequent conference session involved charting courses between the narrowly focused findings of field biologists and the broad arena of public policy. Biodiversity, a term of relatively recent origin, refers to "the variety of species, their genetic make-up, and the natural communities in which they occur," and conference attendees had been charged with a daylong attempt at initiating a comprehensive plan to conserve that full scope of natural richness in Pennsylvania. Mahoney's talk was titled "The Human Role in Biodiversity Conservation," and as Executive Director of Science for the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, Culture, and Recreation, he relied heavily upon examples from Canada's eastern-most province. He cited the island's history in fostering the oldest non-native culture in North America, quoted Winston Churchill's assessment of Newfoundlanders as the best small boat sailors in the world, and established a connection between his distant home and events still painfully current - "80% of the trans-Atlantic passengers stranded by the tragic events of September 11 were sheltered in Newfoundland, and for many days those people were made welcome and kindly looked after in our homes, and schools, and community centers." Gratitude for such unconditional hospitality continues to be expressed through financial contributions sent by the now repatriated travelers. Donors generally direct their support to a wide range of community improvements, including scholarships for island students. According to Mahoney, the needs targeted by such contributions are in large part biodiversity-related, a cause-and-effect connection made clear to stranded fliers who spent any time in conversation with their hosts. In his preface to A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold notes that "land yields a cultural harvest." This principle is equally applicable to the nutrient-rich waters around Newfoundland, where for 500 years a unique and largely self-sufficient culture was shaped and sustained by the super abundance of a bottom-dwelling fish know as the Atlantic cod. Exploitation of this free-swimming resource was not restricted to Newfoundlanders, of course, and during the past two centuries, the finned commodity poured billions of dollars worth of value into economies all over the world. Modern fishing techniques eventually achieved annual harvests measured in millions of tons, but such rates proved unsustainable, and in the early 1990's the cod fishing industry collapsed. "Since 1992 we have lost 30,000 people and much of our self-reliance," Mahoney explained. "So do not think that because everyone values something, it cannot be lost. Newfoundland's ocean-dependant culture is being lost because the biodiversity of the North Atlantic is impaired, and the people we've turned to for help in reversing the damage are themselves helpless. A biodiversity crisis is a shortage none of us can manufacture our way out of." With the need for a biodiversity preservation plan thus framed, Mahoney briefly described two revolutionary periods in the history of American conservation: the era some 120 years ago when national parks were created through the efforts of the social and intellectual elite who hoped their action would eliminate the loss of wild species, and the post-Depression "Leopold movement" which was kick-started when the sporting arms industry supplied funds for launching scientific wildlife studies. He addressed the existence of a selfish agenda among some of each movement's backers, but argued that such ulterior motives did not diminish the long-term accomplishment of tremendous good. "I've never met a saint." he quipped. "You shouldn't expect to." According to Mahoney, critical elements for success in the current movement to preserve biodiversity are tolerance and action. He cited the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir as an example of a sport hunting enthusiast and adversary recognizing their overwhelming agreement about nature's power to restore the human spirit, and challenged audience members to focus on the shared ideals of any and all potential partners. "We quite naturally think of others as holding a distorted view of the world. Tribalism is alive in such thoughts and it holds all of us back." In endorsing action during the conference's afternoon sessions and in later work sessions on the statewide biodiversity plan, Mahoney offered as metaphor a vivid description from a cliff-nesting sea bird colony off Newfoundland's coast. After spending their entire existence on a few square inches of level rock, the nearly full-grown chicks of a puffin-like bird known as the common murre drop en masse from their perches to the sea hundreds of feet below. "In this business, we are like those chicks. Striving is critical, and it's only if we get off our comfortable mark that we'll succeed." The Pennsylvania Biodiversity Partnership is presently completing a report on the current state of biodiversity in Pennsylvania, which will be available in 2002. |
||
| Last Updated: Dec 07 | |||
Top of Page
