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Wm:

THE BIODIVERSITY MISSION IN AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM

By

John Attix Kinch

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

American Studies
1996

Professor James I. McClintock

ABSTRACT
THE BIODIVERSITY MISSION IN AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM
By

John Attix Kinch

Known only to biologists as recently as the 19803, "biodiversity loss" has grown
into a cause within American Environmentalism in the 19903. The campaign to
publicize the importance and plight of "the diversity and interdependency" of the tens
of millions of Species on Earth is transforming how peOple think about and preserve
nature. In the United States in particular, the "Biodiversity Mission" is revolutionizing
conservation science and environmental politics. This dissertation examines the
mechanisms and reasons for biodiversity's popularity among experts and the public.

Chapter 1 examines the ecological "facts" of biodiversity and the ethical
imperatives drawn by ecologists and environmentalists. Building on Aldo Leopold's
dictum of a half century ago that saving "every cog and wheel is the first precaution to
intelligent tinkering," modern biodiversity advocates argue that not just the popular
species or scenic wonders of nature need protecting as has been the conservation
practice in the past, but all natural native life. In Chapter 2, I contend that E. O.
Wilson bases 3 new environmental ethic on biodiversity principles ("biophilia," in his
words) which is a hypothesis gaining credence in intellectual and environmental
spheres. Similarly, in Chapter 3, I argue that the field of conservation biology has
bred a new kind of scientist, one who embraces activism instead of eschewing it for the

sake of “objectivity.” In Chapter 4, I maintain that The Nature Conservancy, by using

business language and approaches to preserve biodiversity, is legitimizing the
biodiversity cause in the eyes of corporate and governmental leaders. Chapter 5
explores the problematic, but crucial, relationship of media coverage to this cause and
efforts to improve biodiversity reporting. Chapter 6 addresses the efforts of a rural
community to protect their region’s biodiversity in the midst of an "ecotourism" boom.
Finally, Chapter 7 examines the efforts of environmental educators to get the issue of
biodiversity loss into the classroom so the support for this cause will continue and grow

into the next generation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my committee members, Professors Fred Gifford, Jim McClintock,
Doug Miller and Doug Noverr. Each has inspired me with his mentorship, scholarship and
friendship. I would also like to extend a thanks to my outside reader, Professor Harry
Reed, whom I feel fortunate to have known while at MSU.

I especially want to express my appreciation to my Dissertation Committee
Director Jim McClintock. Professor McClintock’s steerage of my graduate work,
culminating in my dissertation, has been deﬁ: showing me possible courses, yet letting me
navigate the way. What’s more, his kindness, generosity and encouragement throughout
the dissertation process has been a constant.

I wish to also thank friends and family: Elizabeth Zimels for love, patience, faith
and support; Rod Phillips for being the best doppelganger a guy could have; Pat
McConeghy for discussions about academia and biodiversity, and more importantly,
excursions after warblers; Eric F retz and Neal Palumbo, who are two of Pennsylvania’s
ﬁnest; present friends and former colleagues at The Nature Conservancy; my parents, John
and Madeleine, and the assorted relatives who asked each and every get-together without

fail ifI had my Ph.D. yet.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

The Biodiversity Mission in American Environmentalism ........................ 1

Chapter 2

Biophilia: E. O. Wilson’s Biodiversity Ethic ................................. 43
Chapter 3

Conservation Biology: The Warrior Science .................................. 68
Chapter 4

The Nature Conservancy and the Business of Biodiversity Conservation ............. 98
Chapter 5

The Press and Biodiversity .............................................. 128
Chapter 6

“Cryptos” Versus “Gonzos’: The Challenge of Biodiversity Preservation .......... 154
Chapter 7

Environmental Education and the Future of the Biodiversity Mission .............. 178
Works Cited ....................................................... 202

CHAPTER 1
. THE BIODIVERSITY MISSION

IN AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM

"The sixth great extinction spasm of geological time is upon us, grace of
mankind. Earth has at last acquired a force that can break the crucible of
biodiversity. "

E. O. Wilson, 1993

"The Land Ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to
include the soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the lan ."

Aldo Leopold, 1949
"Long live diversity, long live the earth! "
Edward Abbey, 1968
The Mission
By the late 19805, the American public was beginning to hear about a new
ecological crisis which prominent scientists and environmentalists believed was the most
serious yet to face the planet in the history of humankind. Scientists had known about the
problem for a decade previous, but it wasn't until the "globalization" of American
Environmentalism that most Americans heard of something called the loss of
"biodiversity." The 19805 had been a time in American history, according to one
environmental historian, when the "revelation of environmental threats of global

proportions brought home to people that nearly every environmental problem had personal

1

2
and possibly international dimensions" (Caldwell 67). Of these new global threats -- global

warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, human overpopulation and mass extinctions of wild
species -- one of the ﬁrst to report on the "biodiversity crisis" appeared in Time magazine's
celebrated " 1988 Man of the Year" issue. The magazine, instead of awarding a person
this honor, as was the usual practice, declared the "Endangered Earth" as its "Planet of the
Year." The immediate reason for T ime's selection of the Earth stemmed from the record-
breaking hot summer of 1988 in the United States, and an unusual series of worldwide
ecological disasters, such as forest fires, ﬂoods, droughts and polluted beaches. A
secondary reason behind the issue was the appearance the new generation of ominous-
sounding global problems, of which, many experts considered biodiversity loss to be the
most grave (3).
T ime’s Eugene Linden reported that loss of the "diversity of life," or "what
scientists call biodiversity, " in habitats around the globe amounted to, in the words of
Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, "the death of birth" (32). Linden wrote,
Life needs diversity because of the interdependencies that link ﬂora and
fauna, and because variation within species allows them to adapt to
environmental changes. But even as the world's human population
explodes, other life is ebbing from the planet. Humanity is making a risky
wager -- that it does not need the great variety of earth's species to survive.
(33)

Linden's article amounted to a primer on the heretofore little known biodiversity crisis.

For the purposes of this study, this comprehensive and high-profile article serves as the

moment when "biodiversity" reached a degree of prominence in American society that

3
could be considered "popular." While biologists, such as Wilson, Paul Ehrlich and

Norman Myers, had been warning about the loss of biodiversity -- primarily in the tropics -
- as early as the late 19705, it was T ime's coverage and events over the next few years that
put biodiversity loss onto the agenda of American environmental politics.

The single most important event to focus world attention on biodiversity loss came
in June 1992 at The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,
otherwise known as the "Earth Summit." Biodiversity became front page news in
American newspapers because of the Earth Summit and especially because of then US.
President George Bush's reﬁisals to sign the "international biodiversity treaty" (Schneider
A1). Another more gradual contributor to the prominence of biodiversity loss in the
United States, beginning in the mid-19805 and continuing into the 19905, was the activism
of various environmental organizations. These groups, such as The Nature Conservancy,
Defenders of Wildlife and The World Wildlife Fund publicized the problem of native and
world biodiversity loss to their memberships and through the media. On another front,
scientists and other environmental experts throughout the 19803 had been publicizing
biodiversity issues within their ﬁelds at universities and other institutions. Powerful and
respected associations and organizations, such as the National Academy of Sciences,
backed biodiversity initiatives and helped to legitimize the need for more research. In fact,
so much activity had taken place around this issue that by 1993, "biological diversity,"
once an arcane scientiﬁc notion, had become in the words of one expert, the "symbol for
the ﬁll richness of life on earth" (N 055, Saving 5).

Other experts have supported this assertion. By the mid-19905, biodiversity loss

had emerged, according to another expert, as the "marquee issue" in American

4

Environmentalism (Auer Interview). According to Brad Auer, an executive with the
Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, biodiversity conservation projects in mid-
19905 are "clearly getting more funding each year, especially from ﬁve to 10 years ago."
In fact, Auer estimated that biodiversity projects received a quarter to a half of all
environmental funding in 1995 (Auer Interview). The stature of biodiversity loss and the
need for conservation was further codiﬁed in 1995 in the nation's most prestigious
newspaper. The New York Times reported in an article entitled "The 25th Anniversary of
Earth Day: How Has the Environment Fared?, that
most of the [environmental] victories so far have been relatively easy ones
against obvious, clearcut threats. Tougher and more complex problems lie
ahead, especially in the largely unchecked destruction and biological
impoverishment of the natural landscape and the uncertain but real
prospect of climate change. As ecological threats go, scientists advising
the Government have said, none rank higher than these, and they promise
to dominate environmental politics in the foreseeable ﬁiture. (Stevens BS)
To make the "unchecked destruction and biological impoverishment of the natural
landscape" a national environmental priority, biodiversity advocates have engaged in the
19805 and 19905 in a massive, multi-front campaign to publicize and popularize this issue.
In the United States in particular, they have called on policy makers, business leaders,
educators, governmental ofﬁcials and average citizens to join their cause.
This transformation of the issue of biodiversity loss from obscurity to prominence
in less than a decade is the subject of this dissertation. My thesis, as I begin to argue in

this chapter, is that biodiversity has become a cause in American Environmentalism for a

5

host of reasons, including the scientiﬁc "facts" of its meaning, the ethical imperatives
derived from its concepts and the growing societal concern with the environment over the
last three decades in the United States. Further, my thesis contends that a confederation
of biodiversity proponents -- scientists, writers, activists, journalists, educators -- have
popularized this issue and have been important catalysts for change in their professions.
For example, in Chapter 2, I contend that E. O. Wilson bases a new environmental ethic
on biodiversity principles which is gaining credence in intellectual and environmental
spheres. Similarly, in Chapter 3, I argue that the ﬁeld of conservation biology has bred a
new kind of scientist, one who embraces activism instead of eschewing it for the sake of
“objectivity.” In Chapter 4, I argue that The Nature Conservancy, by using business
language and approaches to preserve biodiversity, is legitimizing the biodiversity cause in
the eyes of corporate and governmental leaders. Chapter 5 explores the problematic, but
crucial, relationship of media coverage to this cause and efforts by environmental
journalists to improve biodiversity reporting. Chapter 6 addresses the efforts of a small
rural community to protect biodiversity in their surrounding environment in the midst of a
recent "ecotourism" boom. Finally, Chapter 7 examines the efforts of environmental
educators to get the issue of biodiversity loss into the classroom so the support of this
cause will continue and grow in the next generation of Americans.

While I'm claiming signiﬁcant progress from the biodiversity cause in American
Environmentalism over the last two decades, I want to make it clear that this progress is
largely conﬁned to what I call "the environmental community." Environmental thinkers,
activists, scientists, ethicists, journalists, writers, educators, politicians and

"environmentally-aware citizens" have embraced the "Biodiversity Mission." But

6
Americans as a whole have not. Actually, polls show and many environmental experts

agree this group may never become biodiversity proponents from the fact they don't
understand this issue. An ofﬁcial with The Nature Conservancy has said,
"biodiversity" is still at term that most of the general public does not
understand or recognize, and it's unlikely the general public will ever have a
very sophisticated understanding of it. (Chipley Interview)
In other words, this dissertation is primarily about the education and subsequent
mobilization of the environmental community around this issue and to a lesser degree,
when it can be gauged, the environmental community's impact on American society. To
clarify further, the importance and plight of biodiversity are engendering a subset of the
population of the United States with a sense of urgency and purpose, but it has not yet
enlisted a mass following. This same statement can be made about environmentalism as a
whole in the United States over the last 30 years. Social scientist Riley Dunlap has written
that
the ultimate objective of environmentalists is not simply to convert the
public to their cause but to improve the problematic conditions that gave
rise to, and continue to drive, the movement. In this regard, the
environmental movement has clearly met with considerably less success.
(1 13)
This is not to say that environmentalists have not been effective in changing American
society; they have. But the degree to which this change has occurred is disputed among
scholars and environmentalists alike. That many people today recycle is considered a coup

by some environmentalists, while others consider this a trivial success in light of more

7

serious environmental dangers caused by the continuance of consumerism, industrialism
and human overpopulation.

Nevertheless, the basis and goal of all environmentalism over the last half-century
remains to actualize the ideals put forth by Aldo Leopold in his famous "The Land Ethic"
and, in this sense, the Biodiversity Mission is an important advancement for the
movement. Leopold's 1949 essay called for enlarging ethical consideration (and thus,
protection) to the "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land" (204). In
part, the American conservation movement has succeeded in partially realizing the land
ethic, giving protection and ethical consideration for wild animals -- Endangered Species
Act of 1973 -- and landscapes -- Wilderness Act of 1964 (Nash 85). However, this task
remains incomplete. As environmental historian Joseph M. Petulla observed in 1980,

Much support has developed among environmentalists for Aldo Leopold's
land ethic . . . But until institutions which will support the operation of his
maxim are developed, it will remain meaningless (at worst, facetious) to
most people. (16)

I believe the Biodiversity Mission's emphasis on protecting "whole assemblages of
species, habitats, and ecosystems,” as one leading biodiversity expert has said, regardless
of their immediate appeal or utility to humans is the most signiﬁcant advancement for
American Environmentalism since the ﬂowering of the movement in the 19605 and 19705
(Saving Noss 27). By emphasizing the need to preserve, as ecologist Donella Meadows
has said, "the whole, all of life, the microscopic creepy crawlies as well as elephants and
condors. . . . all the habitats, beautiful or not, that support life -- the tundra, prairie, and

swamp as well as the tropical forest," the Biodiversity Mission , if it succeeds, could come

8
closer than any environmental cause in history to achieving the ideals of Leopold's land

ethic and affect real and systemic change in American society (Meadows 149-50).

The Biodiversity Message

I want to clarify the meanings of several terms before proceeding further. By
"American Environmentalism" I mean "the ideas and activities of those concerned with the
protection or proper use of the natural environment or natural resources" (Petulla xi).
American Environmentalism encompasses many causes: pollution, toxic waste,
environmental justice, animal rights, wilderness preservation and endangered species
preservation, to name a few. In my discussion of American Environmentalism, I am
referring primarily to the facet of the movement concerned with the conservation,
preservation or protection of the natural world. In this sense, the Biodiversity Mission is
an extension of earlier conservation efforts in the United States, namely wilderness and
species protection. But, on a global scale, biodiversity is also a human health issue. It is
so because of the "services" it performs for humans, such as pollination, recycling, ﬂood
control, drought prevention, pest control, temperature regulation and genetic hybridization
(Meadows 150). Just as the seepage from a toxic waste dump into a community's water
supply has real and potential health hazards to the citizens living nearby, the extinction of
millions of species and destruction of thousands of habitats worldwide has consequences
for the "global citizen" as well. Therefore, biodiversity proponents argue along several
lines, often simultaneously, when discussing the need for preserving the diversity of life.

E. O. Wilson does this in the conclusion of his 1993 book The Diversity of Life,

The ethical imperative should therefore be, ﬁrst of all prudence. We should

9

judge every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and

come to understand what it means to humanity. We should not knowingly

allow any species or race to go extinct. (351)
Wilson is arguing both a "biocentric" and "utilitarian" position for preserving biodiversity.
"Biocentricism," or "the equality of all living" has been a facet of American environmental
thinking and activism since at least Thoreau (McClintock 5). Wilson's admonition that
"we should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct" is an example of this
kind of thought and has been a main component of defenses of wilderness and wildlife
from Thoreau to John Muir to Leopold to present environmental leaders (Oelschlaeger
281-319).

Wilson's utilitarian position, on the other hand, -- "what it means to humanity" --
has been another prevalent way of defending nature in American Environmentalism, but
one most associated with "multiple-use conservation," as typiﬁed most by Federal land
managers (Kellert 44-5). In fact, many wilderness and wildlife advocates and other so-
called "deep ecologists" would ﬁnd this utilitarian argument for nature an anathema.
Except, there is another component to Wilson's argument which forms the crux of the
argument for biodiversity and serves as a bridge between these two traditions. Implicit in
Wilson's statement is the "ecologic-scientiﬁc" argument for nature: "every scrap of
biodiversity is priceless" to the ﬁmctioning of individual ecosystems and collectively the
earth (Kellert 46-7). This echoes Aldo Leopold's famous dictum that

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of animal or plant: "What
good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is

good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons,

10
has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool

would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the
ﬁrst precaution of intelligent tinkering. (" Round River" 190)

While environmental thinkers over the years have made much of the many "schisms
in environmentalism" over the different rationales for defending nature, the realities of
American Environmentalism, and the Biodiversity Mission in particular, has been that
these rationales and others for protecting the environment continue to coexist in diverse
environmental "messages" to varied audiences (American Environmentalism, Sale 285).
American Environmentalism, like other major socio-political institutions in American life,
has not led "to a single system of thought such as social theorists might prefer, and it
would be difficult to reduce its varied strands to a single pattern" (Hays 247).

To illustrate, The Nature Conservancy tells corporations that they should preserve
biodiversity because it makes business sense: companies get good public relations from
such actions and humans need biodiversity for medicinal derivatives and food products.
On the other hand, more radical environmentalists, such as those behind the journal Wild
Earth argue for saving "Grizzly Bear, Gray Wolf, Wolverine, Puma, Jaguar, Green Sea
Turtle . . . Boreal Forest . . . Tall Grass and Short Grass Prairies . . ." for their intrinsic
worth (Mission Statement 3 [their capitalization]). In yet another example, biodiversity
scientists when speaking to colleagues typically and not surprisingly speak of ecological
stability, population viabilities and genetic storehouses supported by the diversity of life
(Raven Address).

The Biodiversity Mission bridges the two traditions in American Environmentalism

-- conservation of the natural world and human health -- by presenting a preservation

11

message that is above all else grounded in "good science." As social constructionists have
argued, science has been a powerﬁil zeitgeist in Western thought since the 17th century
and one which has the appearance, at least, of being above the cultural fray and thus
possessing authoritative truth (Lewontin 3-16 ). American culture in particular has
embraced "the image of science and technology as a panacea for modern ills" and, by and
large, continues to confer a "special status on scientists" as "secular priests," alleviating
our collective doubts and ignorance about the world (Savan 21). While this exalted status
of science -- and ecology in particular -- has been periodically challenged in American
culture in the last several decades by Marxists, feminists and postmodern critics,
ecological verities can still can be a powerful ally in environmental causes (Botkin 185-
192). "Once we accept the intrinsic qualities of organic systems -- with their ambiguities,
variabilities, and complexities," writes ecologist Daniel Botkin, "we can arrive, with the
best information available for us in our time, at a new organic view of the Earth, a view in
which we are a part of a living and changing system" (189).

The purpose of the Biodiversity Mission is to make this organic view of the Earth
manifest in American culture. It does so primarily through science and this "hard data" of
biodiversity itself -- the estimated ﬁve to 30 million species of life inhabiting the Earth.
From this data, biodiversity scientists like E. O. Wilson argue that "we should judge every
scrap of biodiversity as priceless while learn to use it and come to understand what it
means to humanity" (Diversity, 351). While this sounds at ﬁrst, as I've said, to be a
utilitarian position, it is more ecologic-scientiﬁc, and more ethical, as well. Its imperative
is "prudence," as Wilson calls it. Leopold spoke of this attitude toward nonhuman life as

essentially being humble -- never to ask the hubric question of another species "What good

12
is it?"

Wilson, the scientist, wants to preserve biodiversity so it can be studied, but he
also wants to preserve it because he understands, like Leopold and unlike a layperson, the
limits to science of unlocking the mystery of nature. Wilson repeats this theme throughout
his writings, as he does here:

A few of the species were locked together in forms of symbiosis so
intricate that to pull out one would bring others spiraling to extinction. . . .
the effects are beyond the power of present-day ecologists to predict. It is
enough to work on the assumption that all of the details matter in the end,
in some unknown but vital way. (Biophilia 8)

The Biodiversity Mission relies on a kind of science that is seeking answers to
questions about life, but never claims to have the ﬁnal word. In a sense, the reformation
biodiversity science is causing in American conservation follows a similar pattern. Based
upon "the best information available" at the time, as Botkin observes of the social
construction of wildlife and ecology science, conservation for decades in the United States
focused on single species and pristine wilderness. While this focus continues in
biodiversity conservation, it has been expanded and new strategies are being tried, based
upon better and newer scientiﬁc data. In a nutshell, scientists and conservationists are
discovering that "all the details matter in the end" within an ecosystem, not just the
"popular species" and "scenic wonders" (Noss, Saving 25).

This shift is manifested by the new focus of environmental groups like
Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club from predator species conservation and

wilderness preservation, as has been their respective missions for years. Defenders of

l3
Wildlife, in particular, has become an important champion of biodiversity in the 19805.

Through public awareness campaigns, lobbying and litigation, Defenders has done much
to further the cause of biodiversity. This shift from its earlier emphasis is reﬂected in a
membership appeal which says,
Your help is needed to protect all species -- not just the "cute and ﬁJzzy,"
but the "creepy, crawly" too and the thousands of less conspicuous, often
overlooked creatures that form the building blocks of biodiversity.
(Defenders Appeal [their emphasis])

Another example of the shift in American conservation from single- or charismatic-
species conservation is demonstrated by a reconstituted campaign to preserve the grizzly
bear in the contiguous United States. The grizzly, declining precipitously in the last few
decades because of encroachment on its habitats is down to a few hundred individuals in
Western states. In the past, defenders of grizzly bear and other large predators have
tended to argue along aesthetic and moralistic lines for their protection. While this
approach has been effective, it ﬁnally has its limits because it precludes appealing on the
ecologic-scientiﬁc fronts as biodiversity proponents do. Earlier defenders of the grizzly
would be hard-pressed to make their case that the human race's survival depends on the
continuance of this one species. In contrast, biodiversity proponents, while continuing to
value single species, argue more broadly on behalf of the grizzly. They say that the loss of
this "indicator species" bodes a graver ill for nature. The loss of this particular animal
reﬂects the destruction of the bear's habitat, the collapse of the surrounding ecosystem and
the unravelling of the "web of life" of which the bear is merely one victim among

thousands (Grumbine 19).

14
Ecologist R. Edward Grumbine makes this point in his study Ghost Bears:

Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis,
The biodiversity crisis can be measured by such outward threats as the rate
and scale of species extinctions, loss of wild habitat to human population
growth and resource consumption, increase in atmospheric carbon, and
ozone depletion. . . . We must learn a wholistic approach: Species are not
separate from their habitat; human laws must match the laws of nature;
science is shot through with values; and people must ﬁt in to places. (11,
13-14)

Aldo Leopold made this same point emphatic in his "The Land Ethic" when he said
humans are part of the "biotic pyramid." Disruption of this pyramid -- "lopping off" large
predators from the "apex" or destroying the "base" of "thousands of prey, millions of
insects, uncountable plants" -- has dire, often unforeseen, consequences for all the
members of the community, including humans (215-217). Thus, human behavior or ethics
must be brought, Leopold said, in line with "ecological necessity" of maintaining the
integrity, stability and beauty of this pyramid of life (203). The Biodiversity Mission is

attempting just such a transformation of American life.

The Problematic Nature of American Environmentalism

Whether it is a fool's errand or not, the goal of American Environmentalism for the
last half-century has been to get humans to behave more altruistically toward other
nonhuman life and the land. But the traditional approaches to this effort in the United

States -- namely, conserving single species or scenic wonders -- has had only limited

15
success in keeping the land pyramid in tact (Rohlf 273-282). Since the Endangered

Species Act was instituted in 1973, for example, the number of species on the list has
grown from 100 to 800 with 4,000 species awaiting listing, "a backlog that could take as
long as 50 years to process," according to one expert (Schlickeisen 11). Further,
protection of natural lands in the United States has also come up short, especially at the
level most crucial to long-term survival of biodiversity, the ecosystem. "People are
already in the last of our great remaining ecosystems," Nature Conservancy President John
Sawhill has said. "They've burst through the museum door . . . into the main galleries of
the natural world" (qtd. Lancaster C3).

Additionally, environmentalism in the mid-19905 has plateaued as far as popular
support. Memberships of most of the major environmental groups, such as the Sierra
Club, The Wilderness Society and the National Audubon Society, have stagnated or
dropped (Schneider F4). Reasons for this are complex and include economic incertitude
in American society. But, some of the waning support has to do with the tired
conservation appeals that are either emotionally shrill or too anthropocentric for many
people's tastes. Scholars deﬁne the mid-19805 to mid-19905 as a period of
"professionalization and institutionalization" of the environmental movement (Snow 9).
Therefore, in keeping with this development, environmental supporters have come to
expect a certain sophistication and level-headedness to a group's activities and messages.
They want, according to surveys, better education and less rhetoric (Snow 183-185). It
is worth noting that in the 19905 only The Nature Conservancy -- the environmental group
with a consistent scientiﬁc-based agenda and businesslike approach ---- has fared well and

actually increased membership (Schneider F4). In fact, I believe many environmental

16
groups have come to adOpt the biodiversity banner in the 19905 because its ecologic-

scientiﬁc argument for nature has become stronger than the "cute and cuddly" within the
movement itself and among policy leaders and the public.

It is important to stress that the shifting within American Environmentalism from
an older model and message to a new one is taking place within the profound paradox that
has dogged the movement since its beginnings in the 19605. The paradox is that

despite considerable governmental and societal efforts at environmental
protection over the past two decades, there is a widespread perception that
the quality of the environment -- from the local to the global -- is
deteriorating. (Dunlap 1 12)
This is certainly the belief held by those p0pularizing biodiversity issues. The leading
spokesperson for biodiversity issues, E. O. Wilson, has portentously warned that "The
sixth great extinction spasm of geological time is upon us, grace of mankind. Earth has at
last acquired a force that can break the crucible of biodiversity." (Diversity 343). Other
scientists have sounded similar tocsins. Ecologist Norman Myers has called biodiversity
loss "the greatest single setback to life's abundance and diversity since the ﬁrst ﬂickerings
of life almost 4 billion years ago” (Linden 32). Colleague Paul Ehrlich has said the present
rate of biodiversity loss will spell the "denouement for civilization within the next 100
years comparable to a nuclear winter" (BioDiversity 22). Peter Raven has put the rate of
extinction for plants and animals at 50,000 a year during the next few decades, calling it
"the greatest mass extinction since the die-off of the dinosaurs" (Futurist 38). An expert
scientiﬁc panel studying environmental destruction in the United States reported to

Congress in 1995 that "to sustain a viable ﬁiture for our descendants, we must ﬁnd ways

17

to preserve both species and ecosystems" (Kenworthy A3). These amount to considerably
dire assessments and predictions, especially on the heels of 30 years of intense
environmental activism in the United States. And while right-wing opponents to
environmentalism might label these as "doomsday myths," the international scientiﬁc
community vigorously defends such warnings as based on incontrovertible scientiﬁc
evidence (Budiansky 81).

In many ways, the intense focus and nascent popularization of the issue of
biodiversity 1055 starting in the late 19805 follows the cyclical pattern of the environmental
movement since its inception. The movement, scholars say, undergoes periods of
widespread popularity and revitalization followed by periods of apathy and stagnation
(Mitchell 15). Despite these ebbs and ﬂows, the environmental movement, scholars
believe, is one of the most important social movements of the late 20th century.
Sociologist Robert Nisbet has said that "when the history of the twentieth century is ﬁnally
written, the single important social movement of the period will be judged to be
environmentalism" (10). Sociologists A. Clay Schoenfeld has argued similarly:

The environmental movement is probably the most extensive and profound
event to hit the world since the Industrial revolution -- an entire new ethic,
a tacit rejection of materialism in favor of a new scale of esthetic and
artistic and spiritual satisfactions . . . (54).
Schoenfeld's assessment has been backed by others, such as noted environmental historian
Samuel P. Hays. In his study of environmental politics from 1955 - 1985, Beauty, Health
and Permanence, Hays argues that in America, "environmental quality was an integral

part of this new search for a higher standard living" within an emerging consumer society

18
(4). Kirkpatrick Sale in The Green Revolution observed that there has been "considerable

popularity of environmental protection among the general public," especially in the last
two decades, citing a 1990 Gallup poll that found that "76 percent of Americans called
themselves environmentalists and half contributed to environmental organizations" (80).
Environmental journalist Philip Shabecoff has also noted that the continued reappearance
of local "grass-root organizations," ﬁghting "acre-by-acre, dump-by-dump battles" signals
a deep and ongoing commitment of Americans to environmental principles (233).

And yet, all these scholars place caveats on their assertions about the primacy of
environmentalism in modern American life. They agree that environmental actions and
attitudes exist in American culture, but only "up to a point," as environmental historian
Donald Worster has said.

But it is altogether premature to assume that such accommodation implies
deep cultural change. . . . To say the least, it is highly problematical
whether, on balance, there has been a radical change to environmental
protection in this society or even whether what has been achieved will
survive into the next century. (Environmental History 258-9)
Similarly, Samuel Hays wrote that for 30 years the public has made strong "demands for
environmental improvement and progress" and over that same period it has continued its
thirst for consumer goods, reliance on the automobile, caused the spread of suburbia and
believed solely on an economic model of growth. All these factors have jeopardized
environmental health (542). Measured another way, conservation biologist and activist
Michael Soule has noted the paradox of environmentalism as a great political and social

cause in the United States:

19

If charitable donations reﬂect how Americans rank society's needs, it is
evident that humanitarian concerns are dominant; money ﬂows primarily to »
religious organizations and to medical, cultural, and social welfare causes. .
. . only 1.5% of donated monies go to support environmental (nonhuman)
groups and causes. (Science 746)

Thus, it is difficult to reconcile the presumably sincere beliefs of the "90%" of
Americans who claim to be "environmentalists," as USA Today reported in 1992, with the
fact that the environment is declining at a faster rate than ever before in history (Stoltz 4,
Adler 21-22). This is especially concerning to environmentalists because they feel that
the enormous societal attention the environmental movement has generated since the
19605 has done little to address underlying ills. "The progress we've made in solving
environmental problems is deceptive," environmental journalist Bill McKibben wrote in a
1995 New York Times Magazine article . "We're making no progress at all on the deeper
problems because they do not spring from the same sources" (25).

Cultural critic Neil Everden sees the paradox of "Nature in Industrial Society" to
be a matter of degrees. "Nature, to all appearances, remains remarkably 'popular' in
America," Everden observes, but

we only want to follow if nature is willing to lead in our chosen direction.
If we have a dog named "nature," we can cheerfully claim to be following it
by walking a step or two behind. But to be conﬁdent the dog will not deny
us pleasure, we keep it on a leash, lest it take a turn not to our choosing.
(151, 164)

Everden's point about the "social construction of nature" in America could also be applied

20
to the "back-to-nature—movement" at the turn of the century that morphed into suburban

sprawl following World War 11. These popular phenomena reﬂect a desire of an industrial
society to reconnect with the natural world, but of a very speciﬁc and controlled level,
epitomized by human-made lakes in subdivisions and the caravan of motor homes one sees
at National Parks. It is perhaps not merely coincidence that paved roads in America
constitute the same surface area as "wilderness" does: two percent of the landscape of the
contiguous states (with Alaska included, four percent is wilderness) (Noss, Saving 172).
But wilderness, or "uncontrollable nature," as Everden might say, has been declining
precipitously over the decades, while news roads on the American landscape are as
common as the new strip malls to which they lead.

This paradox of American Environmentalism -- or, more broadly, of nature in
American culture -- is that its loss or transformation from wild to less wild is insidious and
incremental. Americans were understandably outraged by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in
March 1989 in Alaska. Citizens cut their Exxon charge cards in half and mailed them back
to the company (Shabecoff 1 12). But, how many of these well-intended folks that year
went to town planning meetings to lobby for "slow-growth" initiatives in their
communities? How many boycotted the new shopping center built on the edge of town
the year previous in what formerly had been a wetland, meadow, woods or even farm
ﬁelds?

This kind of creeping loss, multiplied by thousands of communities across America
and tens of thousands across the world, day in and day out, is more of a threat to the
overall diversity and functioning of the natural world than the occasional oil spill. Yet,

biodiversity loss seems to be either a remote phenomenon or one that the individual citizen

21
can do little about -- neither of which is true. Ecologists and environmentalists often

illustrate the rate of this global loss of biodiversity by giving estimates of the deforestation
of the rainforests. I have heard and read everything from a "football ﬁeld a second," " 100
to 200 square acres every minute" to "100,000 square kilometers . . . each year [62,000
square miles]" (Myers 29). These are enormous amounts; the state of Michigan is roughly
50,000 square miles in size. Additionally, rainforest destruction reﬂects just one "biome"
or ecosystem out of hundreds throughout the world. In the United States, ancient forests,
grasslands, rangelands, wetlands and riparian systems (river corridors) have lost as much
as 98% of their original pre-European settlement distribution Less than two percent of the
streams in the lower 48 are of quality high enough to be designated as wild or scenic
rivers. Grasslands and savannas are the most endangered terrestrial ecosystems in the
United States. Ninety-percent of the old-growth forests of the of the Paciﬁc Northwest --
home to the controversial spotted-owl -- are gone. These grim statistics speak for
themselves (Noss, Saving 63-65). Despite local and state parks, nature preserves, national
forests and parks, the natural world, as conservation biologist Reed Noss contends, has
been overwhelmed over the last few centuries by the plow, bulldozer,
chainsaw, dredge, dam and other tools and artifacts of civilization, and by
simply too many people consuming too much of everything. Biodiversity
at every level is critically imperiled. (66)
The lack of public awareness of this situation is pointedly made by the fact that
most Americans feel pollution is the most serious environmental threat today. This is an
understandable perception since most people live in urban areas and can see, feel and taste

pollution. But pollution is of a minor concern to global environmental experts. They say

22

that biodiversity loss is the most pressing issue facing the planet, not smog. Overcoming
this "immense perception gap" between the public and the experts, is the challenge facing
biodiversity proponents (Defenders Survey). Further, there is real doubt among experts
whether biodiversity protection initiatives on the massive scale needed will ever gain
widespread acceptance among "non-environmentalist voters" (Belden 6). Unlike many
pollution problems, there is no "technological ﬁx" (cleaner-burning engines) for
biodiversity loss. The ﬁx for biodiversity loss entails curbing world human population
growth and developing alternative "sustainable economies" that do not deplete and despoil
the landscape.

At least one survey found non-environmentalist voters resistant of biodiversity
protection strategies because the economic and social trade-offs of such an agenda seemed
to be too severe and "unreasonable" (Belden 6). Since the loss has been incremental,
solutions also need to be incremental, which is to say that local communities must protect
their creeping loss of their "commons" from development and the world's nations must ban
together to protect the "global commons" from overpopulation, injustice, ignorance and
greed (Hardin 503-516). E. O. Wilson has said ofthis approach,

We need to apply the ﬁrst law of human altruism, ably put by Garrett
Hardin: never ask people to do anything they consider contrary to their
own best interests. The only way to make a conservation ethic work is to
ground it in ultimately selﬁsh reasoning . . . " (Biophilia 131).
Wilson is right. While American environmentalism is founded on the premise that it only
works when people sacriﬁce something for it (economic prosperity, freedom), it needs,

instead, to be presented as environmentalists have in the last two decades as something

23
more basic. Without rainforests, arthropods and ﬁmgi, the hybrid vigor of wild plant

species combined with domesticated crops, wild places to visit to reconnect with nature,
human life actually becomes less prosperous and free in the long-term, and, instead,
becomes more Malthusian with mass starvation, droughts, abject poverty and disease. One
has only to look around the world at developing nations, or even at a place like Los
Angeles with its wild ﬁres, mudslides, earthquakes, smog, traffic jams, riots and great
wealth discrepancies to know this ﬁiture is already here.

Thus, since the 19805, there has been a growing concern about environmental
quality throughout the world's people. Despite several decades of environmental work in
the United States and around the world, there is a "widespread perception that
environmental quality has declined over time and a belief that it will continue
to decline in the ﬁJture . . . [to the extent that it] will affect the health of their children and
grandchildren a 'great deal‘" (Bloom 355). This is the broad mandate for doing something
about the environment that a sweeping cause like biodiversity and ecosystem preservation
needs. Of course, the devil has always been in the details in environmental protection.
And if history is any indication, enlisting and sustaining broad public support will remain a
constant challenge to new environmental activists in the 1990s, just as it was in previous
decades. A5 Kirkpatrick Sale has said of the American public as "environmentalists," it

tends by and large not to understand events in a political context or see
individual problems as evidence of a failure of the system. But it is also
true that this inevitably condemns the environmental movement to . . . a
never-ending record of defeats mixed with victories and victories that are

always provisional insofar as they do not alter the values of the prevailing

24

system. (Green Revolution 101)
At this point, it is too early in the history of the Biodiversity Mission to say whether it is
another in a series of provisional victories or one that is beginning to alter the values of the
prevailing system. I would, however, suggest that the Biodiversity Mission has built up
substantial momentum in the short time it has been on the national environmental political
agenda. It has positioned itself to date to reach those individuals and institutions which, in
turn, inﬂuence society. E. O. Wilson's work is a prime example of this. Wilson has
written technical articles and books on biodiversity for the scientiﬁc community, as well
as, popular articles and books for the masses. He has advised Congress on biodiversity
legislation and appeared in television documentaries. Wilson has served on the boards of
environmental organizations and inﬂuenced intellectuals in humanities with his
biodiversity-based ethic, "biophilia" ("Audubon for Wilson" B5).

While Wilson is the most prominent of biodiversity advocates, he is one of
hundreds, if not thousands, who have prominent positions in academia, government,
environmental groups and in the media. As I will stress throughout this dissertation, in
these arenas, biodiversity advocates have laid the groundwork for the mobilization of a
popular front. What it will take to become a mass movement is more media exposure,
more funding, more activists and more citizen involvement at the local, state and national
levels. In terms of the individual citizen who regards himself or herself an
"environmentalist," it will take more deeds than words. As conservation biologist Michael
Soule has said of the biodiversity cause.

What we need now are big, selﬂess and costly acts of biophilia to protect

nature. We need to donate money and time. Giving of yourself for the

25
sake of the larger self. (Kinch 9)

Biodiversity: The Word, Meaning and Popularity

While a mass "biodiversity" movement has yet to materialize, the word itself has
come into more frequent and widespread use in popular environmental discourse since it
emerged from scientiﬁc journals in the 19805. In a 1991 essay, ecologist Donella
Meadows acknowledged the problematic aspect of this scientiﬁc word as the signiﬁer of
an environmental problem. "Bio-what?" she joked in "What is Biodiversity and Why
Should We Care About It?" (149). This section looks at the original meaning and
subsequent extrapolations of the word, its popular use as a catchword for a new cause and
manifestations in environmental and popular culture. Additionally, I return to the larger
issue of the status of this new environmental cause, this time in the context of the
strengths and weaknesses of the word itself

The progress of "biodiversity" from an arcane ecological concept known only in
biology in the 19705 to a rallying cry for environmentalism in the 19905 begins in the
tropics. "The diversity of life" has been primarily associated with tropical ﬂora and fauna
and its accelerating destruction. Although comprising only seven percent of the earth's
surface, biologists believe the tropics house between 50 to 80 percent of the world's
species (Linden 32). But it must be emphasized that biodiversity or biological diversity
was not discovered in the late 19705; its decline was. The notion of biological diversity in
the 19705 grew out of the older ecological concept of "species diversity," made most
famous by Charles Darwin in the 19th century. In fact, Darwin ends his The Origin of

Species ruminating on the diversity and symbioses of species:

26
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of

many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects ﬂitting
about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reﬂect that
these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and
dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. (199)
Darwin's observation almost 150 years ago about the many of kinds of species, so
different from one another, yet inextricably linked to one another in such intricate, even
unknowable ways is very much what biological diversity has meant in ecological parlance.
"Biological" or "biotic" was substituted for "species" by ecologists in the 19705 because of
inroads of microbiology, genetics and ecology. Diversity and symbioses, these experts
argued, existed not just at a species level, but at a molecular and genetic level and at an
ecosystem level (BioDiversity, Wilson. 3-7). Similarly, during the 19705, serious attempts
at estimating the number of species and kinds of habitats worldwide led scientists to
conclude that the earth was a far biologically-richer place than ever thought before.
Although science had classiﬁed only 1.4 million "living species of all kinds of organisms"
by the 19805, taxonomists, because of discoveries in the tropics, were now estimating
between 5 and 30 million species existed on earth (Biol)iversity, Wilson 3, 5).

But, as conservation biologist Reed Noss observed in 1993, "In little more than a
decade, biodiversity progressed from a short-hand expression for species diversity into a
powerful symbol for the full richness of life on earth" (Saving 3). This happened largely
because of the work and writings of several key biologists, most notably E. O. Wilson,

whom I will discuss in depth in Chapter 2. In the 19805 and 19905, Wilson, like Darwin

27
before him, forwarded the concept of the diversity of life, not simply as a scientist, but as a

moralist as well. Echoing Darwin, Wilson wrote in Biophilia in 1984,
The forest was a tangled bank, tumbling down to the grassland's border.
Inside it was a living sea . . . all around me bits and pieces, the individual
organisms and their populations, were working with extreme precision. A
few of the species were locked together in forms of symbioses, so intricate
that to pull out one would bring others spiraling to extinction. (8).
Again, the notion of a variety of organism tied together biologically and dependent on a
speciﬁc environment (and that environment's health on them) is the core meaning of
biodiversity in an ecological sense, and. at the hands of popularizers like Wilson, a moral
sense as well. It is interesting to note that the shorter "biodiversity" was chosen over
"biological diversity" with a mind toward public relations. Scientists at a 1986 National
Academy of Sciences conference chose biodiversity, according to Wilson, because the
former was "simpler and more distinctive . . . so the public will remember it more easily"
(Naturalist 359).
In addition to Wilson and N055, other commentators, such as Susan Shen in a
1987 issue of BioScience, have noted that
Not long ago the term biological diversity had meaning only to biologists.
However, as conferences, publications, and congressional hearings
increasingly highlight the issue, the term is gaining recognition among
policy makers as well as the general public. . . . the term has become a
common denominator for various interest groups concerned with the loss

of biological entities, including ecosystems, species, and genes. (709)

28
While the word and concept of "biodiversity" was becoming a "common

denominator," or value, among the environmental community in the late 19805 to some
degree, as Shen notes, proponents still had (and continue to have) difficulty in deﬁning the
word's exact meaning. This situation has made it problematic for advocates to concisely
translate the signiﬁcance of biodiversity preservation into a catchy environmental message
and clearly-deﬁned cause. To illustrate with an extreme: "Save the whales!" was an
easily-understood message in the 19705. But, "Save biodiversity!" does not have nearly
the same impact because the word's meaning is not self-evident. The most slogan-like
message to come out of the Biodiversity Mission to date is one that has appeared on a
Nature Conservancy t-shirt and does not particularly inspire action: "Diversity is the spice
of life."

The myriad deﬁnitions of "biodiversity" in both technical and popular discourse
over the last two decades indicate that "biodiversity has an image problem," as one
environmentalist characterized it (Tuhy Interview). The following are some samples of
deﬁnitions offered for biodiversity from technical and popular sources and speak to
nebulous meaning of the word:

The US. Office of Technology Assessment, 1989:
the variety and variability among living organisms and the ecosystems in
which they occur. (qtd. in Shen 709)

E. O. Wilson in The Naturalist, 1994:
The deﬁnition soon agreed upon by biologists and conservationists is the
totality of hereditary variation in lifeforms, across all levels of biological

organizations, from genes and chromosomes within individual species to

29
the array of species themselves and ﬁnally, at the highest level, the living

communities of ecosystems such as forests and lakes (N 359)

Reed Noss in Saving Nature 's Legacy, 1994:
Biodiversity: The variety of life and its processes; it includes the variety of
living organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities and
ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and evolutionary
processes that keep them ﬁmctioning, yet ever changing and adapting.
(389)

Peter H. Raven in Nature Conservancy, 1994:
At the simplest level, biodiversity is the sum total of all the plants, animals,
ﬁingi and microorganisms in the world, or in a particular area; all of their
individual variation; and all of the interactions between them. It is the set of
living organisms that make up the fabric of the planet Earth and allow it to
function as it does, by capturing energy from the sun and using it to drive
all of life's processes. (1 1)

"Defenders of Wildlife Fact Sheet," 1993:
the US. Ofﬁce of Technology Assessment deﬁnes [biodiversity] as 'the
variety and variability among living organisms and the ecosystems in which
they occur.‘ There is more to biodiversity, however, than numbers of
species or kinds of ecosystems, or even the potential for ﬁtture sources of
food and medicine. Biodiversity is the fabric from which life-sustaining
systems on Earth are woven. The organisms that comprise natural

ecosystems provide life-supporting services -- regulating atmospheric

30
gases, decomposing wastes, generating fertile soils, cycling vital nutrients,

and controlling insects that would otherwise destroy food crops.(Defenders
Survey)
Eugene Linden in Time, 1989:
Diversity is the raw material of earth's wealth, but nature's creativity lies in
the relationships that link various creatures. The coral in a reef or the
orchid in a rain forest is part of an ecosystem, a fragile, often delicately
balanced conglomeration of supports, checks and balances that integrate
life-forms into functioning communities. Given the complex workings of
an ecosystem, it is never clear which species, if any, are expendable. (33)
Editorial in Audubon, 1995:
The word biodiversity refers simply to the sum total of all life on earth.(4)
A Home Page ofthe World Wildlife Fund, 1995:
The web of life. (Online)

While there is much commonality among these deﬁnitions of biodiversity, there is
also enough differences to make one wonder, as much of the public does, what exactly
biodiversity entails. Some of these deﬁnitions, in fact, have a deja vu quality to them with
regard to environmental science. For example, in a well-known collection of scientiﬁc
essays from the 19605, in his introduction, Paul Shepard wrote that "Ecology is sometimes
characterized as the study of a natural 'web of life'" (1). In 1995, PBS broadcast a
documentary of the same name, the "Web of Life," but it was not about ecology. Instead,
it was subtitled "Exploring Biodiversity" (Online).

Many of these deﬁnitions of biodiversity approximate long-held deﬁnitions of

31
ecology and even parallel the morphology of the earlier word. "Ecology" originally was

reserved to mean the "scientiﬁc studyof the interaction of organisms with their
environment," however, as it became popularized -- "The Age of Ecology," for example, -
- it was "oﬂen used in a loose sense by many nonscientists to indicate the environment
itself" (Purves 1 130-1). Of the deﬁnitions listed above, a conservation biologist told me
that biologist Peter H. Raven's deﬁnition in particular was too broad to be a deﬁnition of
biodiversity and was a more accurate deﬁnition of ecology since it mentions "processes."
Biodiversity, this scientist felt, should be restricted to more of its original meaning of
natural diversity.

But, this scientist would seem to be in the minority as more experts and
popularizers use biodiversity as a synonym for ecology, or, of all natural life. Although,
referring to biodiversity as the "sum total of all life on earth" may be overstating the
original denotation of the word, it seems less problematic than using "biodiversity" as a
stand-in for ecological systems. This is especially true of two recent books entitled
Urban Biodiversity and Human Biodiversity. Although it is true that the human species is
host to a number of microscopic parasites and the occasional bacterial infection, "human
biodiversity" seems an oxymoron and ecological impossibility. Similarly, biodiversity
being used in an urban context is misleading to the word's original intent and the intent of
this cause: it is an effort to save wild nature, not city parks.

This kind of trendy and casual use of the word and concept of biodiversity led the
prestigious journal Nature in 1991 to wonder if biodiversity was becoming another "aspect
of political correctness" (2). The editors opined,

The question why diversity is to be encouraged is rarely asked. . . . But is

32

there not a danger that, like all concepts whose truth is suppose to override
dissenting argument, that of biodiversity . . . may be heading for a tumble?
(2)

Despite the occasional misuse of the word and danger of the word becoming so
diffused as to be rendered meaningless, "biodiversity" in the 19905 has an ever-growing
list of users. It appears today in the mission statements of environmental organizations
and 2005; editorials and news stories; the agreements of international treaties; national
environmental legislation; and mandates of grassroots activist groups; in technical and
popular environmental and science writing; the Internet; television documentaries; and
environmental education materials for school children. Moreover, anecdotal evidence of
popular use of "biodiversity" come from The New York Times, which sometimes does not
bother to deﬁne the word in general environmental stories, presuming its audience already
knows its meaning (Passel B5). Further, the foremost authority on biodiversity, Wilson
has commented that biodiversity is "approach[ing] the status of a household word. . . .
Few other words in my memory have spread around the world faster" (Naturalist 359).

Typical of growing popular use of the word is found in the commentary of
William Stolzenburg, an editor of Nature Conservancy magazine,

Since I began publishing stuff about environment and natural history some
eight years ago, I've gone from not knowing the word [biodiversity]. . . to
using it sparingly (accompanied by a translation and apology in
parentheses), to lately popping it in as mindlessly as eating peanuts. It's
time to enlist some new synonyms to sub for the tiring biodiversity.

Lifevariety? (Electronic Mail Interview)

33
Despite the seeming pervasiveness of the word biodiversity and the attempts to

deﬁne it in nature magazines, environmental mailings and to a lesser extent, the mass
media, much of the public either is ignorant of the word or misunderstands its meaning. A
1995 survey conducted for The Nature Conservancy concluded that
"biodiversity" is largely unknown by the members of the target audiences
and unfortunately its meaning is not self-evident even on close examination.
Biodiversity implies differences rather than connection, and for purposes
of public education, it is not an asset. (Belden 14)
Similarly, a 1993 Defenders of Survey found that "only one in ﬁve Americans say they
have heard of an issue called 'the loss of biological diversity'" (Defenders Survey).

This low salience or ignorance of the word has ramiﬁcations for the cause as a
whole. In part because the most easily-grasped deﬁnitions or synonyms for biodiversity
are not a clear reﬂection of the mission's intent. Preserving "the sum total of all of life, " as
Audubon magazine characterized it, seems to people, as one survey found, to be a goal
that is

out of touch, or infeasible. Many of the voters do not believe it is possible
to save all, most, or even a lot of habitat and species. . . . participants
replied that such a goal was unreasonable, comparing it to never throwing
anything away because "you might need it someday." (Belden 8)
This common imperception that the Biodiversity Mission is about saving all life is
perpetuated by such oversimpliﬁcations, well-intended as they may be. As Reed Noss,
director of the Wildlands Project, a North American wilderness recovery campaign, has

said about biodiversity conservation and science, "We emphasize native biodiversity, not

34
diversity per se (Saving 4 [his emphasis]).

Many regions may increase species richness locally or even regionally, but
they contribute nothing positive to biodiversity. Rather, they pollute the
integrity of regional ﬂoras and faunas and alter ﬁindamental ecological
processes . . . thus, whole ecosystems are changed. Regions invaded by
exotics lose their distinctive characters. . The result is global
impoverishment. (4)

"Exotics, native" ﬂora and fauna are some of the jargon used in "conservation biology,"

a new ﬁeld dedicated to biodiversity science and conservation. "Minimum viable

populations, wildlife corridors, core and buffer zones, rsland biogeography" and "in
situ conservation" are more examples of thejargon used to describe the complex work and
concepts of this ﬁeld (Conservation Biology 571-584).

As such, it is oﬂen difficult for biodiversity scientists and conservationists to speak
so the layperson can understand and it is equally hard for popularizers -- environmental
writers and journalists -- to convey the nature of biodiversity conservation to their
audiences, caught between twin demands of being entertaining as well as informative. The
kind of "ecospeak" prevalent in biodiversity science and conservation oﬁen gets in the way
of communicating the mission and experts are continually faced with the tough decision of
simplifying their complex subject matter at the risk of distorting it or presenting their
"apocalyptic narratives with qualiﬁcations and demurrals" that undermine its urgency and
importance (Killingsworth 148). This conundrum has prompted some activists to "retreat

to the simplest possible message because the public obviously could not understand a

notion as complex as biodiversity," according to conservation biologist Gary Nabhan

35
(Conservation Biology 479). Nabhan takes umbrage with this approach, ﬁnding such

reductionism dangerous. Instead, he believes scientists and environmental activists need
to do a better job of educating the public about the complexities of biodiversity loss and
the challenges to stopping this loss. Nabhan writes in 1995,
We have, to date, failed to make biodiversity intelligible and wonderful to a
wider audience. We have been preaching to the converted, rather than
engaging the unconverted. The challenge before us is to make a complex
subject a vital interest to people of all cultures. (48])
Nabhan is correct in stating that more education of the public is crucial before the
biodiversity cause will be more widely adopted. And, he is correct in charging that so far
most of the preaching has been done to members in the choir. However, informal and
formal biodiversity education ventures have had notable successes in American culture.
To be sure, "biodiversity" remains arcane to a large segment of the American population,
but it is not nearly as obscure in 1996 as it was when the word was coined a decade

previous by a group of scientists with an eye towards p0pularizing a cause.

Pop Biodiversity

The degree of permeation of "biodiversity" into government, environmentalism,
education, communication, entertainment and consumerism, I think, is quite remarkable
given its short history as an environmental cause. President Bill Clinton has mentioned the
importance of preserving biodiversity in speeches commemorating Earth Day. Vice-
President Al Gore discussed biodiversity in his popular 1992 book Earth in the Balance,

writing that "a great movement to protect the earth is stirring within the faith" of many

36

Americans. "Thou shalt preserve biodiversity," Gore says of this new initiative, seeing it
as a modern "Noah's Ark" (244-245). Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt has been a
vigorous campaigner in recent years for biodiversity and ecosystem protection by
strengthening the Endangered Species Act (Stevens A1). Secretary of State Warren
Christopher has said that environmental protection will be a new fundamental principle of
US. foreign policy because it is "essential to the health, security and prosperity of not only
the American people but peoples of the world" (Lippman A9). Even Republicans recently
have gotten on the environmental bandwagon. One strategist told The New York Times,
"Our party is out of sync with mainstream American opinion . . . 55 percent of all
Republicans do not trust their party when it comes to protecting the environment" (I.
Brookes A9).

Various Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and US.
Forest Service, have also gotten greener lately and adopted biodiversity preservation as
part of their management strategies (Conserving Our Heritage). Additionally, The
National Biological Survey, formed in 1993, has been promoting biodiversity conservation
by providing base-line data on species to public and private landholders (Online).

Nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, have also championed biodiversity
protection. The vast and sophisticated environmental communication apparatus of the
major environmental organizations are using direct mail and media coverage to highlight
their biodiversity conservation work. For example, the Sierra Club, arguably the best
group for stirring up public activism, recently modiﬁed its long-standing and famous
objective of wilderness preservation:

As we move toward the 2 1 st century, ﬁve broad global challenges are at

37
the top of the Sierra Club's agenda: (1) preserving biological diversity and

wilderness; (2) protecting our oceans and atmosphere; (3) ending the toxic
threat; (4) stabilizing world population; and (5) building an environmentally
sustainable economy. (Online)
Other environmental groups have done or are doing similarly, including The Nature
Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, World Wildlife Fund, Earth Island Institute and the
National Audubon Society, to name a few. For example, the National Audubon Society
recently revised its mission to read
The mission of the National Audubon Society is to conserve and restore
natural ecosystems, focusing on birds and other wildlife for the beneﬁt of
humanity and earth's biodiversity. (Online)
Earth Island Institute's new mission reads, "Earth Island Institute develops and supports
projects that counteract threats to the biological diversity and cultural diversity that
sustains the environment" (Online). The public relations materials and press coverage
from these groups continually put biodiversity issues before the public.
Institutions are also playing an important role in raising biodiversity awareness.
The Smithsonian Institution has dedicated much attention to biodiversity issues in the
19905. It has created the US. National Biodiversity Information Center, which
disseminates information to public and private organizations, local communities and
schools (Online). Similarly, the Smithsonian Institution, the Environmental Protection
Agency and others have teamed up to form the "Biodiversity and Ecosystems Network"
(BENE), an online resource for "those interested in biodiversity conservation and

ecosystem protection, restoration and management" (Online). The Tuﬂs Environmental

38
Literacy Institute is another important source of biodiversity education, conducting

seminars for educators on international biodiversity issues (Online). The American
Association for the Advancement of Science is pushing an initiative to improve science
education in K-12 grades and has as part of its program a biodiversity component
(Online).

The Internet has become a vast source of biodiversity information, as has the
media. Hundreds, even thousands, of biodiversity articles have appeared in the popular
press and on the Internet since the late 19805. In fact, the biodiversity news story has
become so commonplace that one organization of environmental journalists has offered
seminars for reporters, so they can do a better job of covering this issue (Society of
Environmental Journalists Conference Agenda)

Zoos and natural history museums have also been an important vehicle for
biodiversity issues. Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, for instance, built the "world's largest
indoor tropical rain forest" in 1993, containing some 2,000 species of plants and animals
living among each other in natural settings (Tarpy 9). The Wildlife Conservation Society
in New York City, operating the nation's largest system of urban zoos, adopted as its
mission in 1990: "To Sustain Biological Diversity; To Teach Ecology; To Inspire Care"
(Annual Report). Further, many zoos include explanatory signs about "biodiversity"
alongside animal exhibits. On a more specialized note, the American Zoologist devoted a
1994 issue to "the changing roles of zoological parks in conserving biological diversity"
(1). Similar to zoos, natural history museums, such as the American Museum of Natural
History, promote their work in "preserving biological and cultural diversity" (Membership

Letter).

39

On television, the serial documentary "Race To Save The Planet" in the early
19905 focused on global biodiversity loss, as have later documentaries on "E. O. Wilson
and Ants" and the "Web of Life: Exploring Biodiversity." This last documentary is
perhaps the most interesting from the standpoint of biodiversity advocates trying to reach
a broad spectrum of the American public by presenting the issue in a pop culture format.
"'Exploring Biodiversity” documents this new view of life on Earth," according to the
Home Page on the World Wide Web of the World Wildlife Fund.

Along with this new view, "Web of Life: Exploring Biodiversity" presents a
new style of documentary. Narrated by John Corbett ("Northern
Exposure,") the program combines the sophistication of public television
with the contemporary style of adventure programs and music television.
Along with world-renowned biodiversity experts, such as E.O.Wilson,
Thomas Lovejoy, Peter Raven and Gordon Orians, we follow ordinary
people, including a mother and son who venture to the rain forest to see
life there for themselves. The program's unique artistic style juxtaposes
color video with black and white ﬁlm, and features music by 10,000
Maniacs, REM, Talking Heads, Midnight Oil, Deep Forest. (Online)

A number of popular feature-length movies in recent years have also had
environmental themes, and two in particular have what I would call biodiversity
sensibilities. The ﬁrst is Jurassic Park, which was a popular book and then a movie in
1993. Both book and ﬁlm entertain the idea of extinction and difficulties in "restoration
ecology," a cornerstone of the new ﬁeld of "conservation biology." It also contains a

variation on the environmental adage that "extinction is forever." Extinction is not forever

40

in the world of Jurassic Park, however, it is hubris for people to think they can re-create
in the 20th century a prehistoric species and environment without dire consequences for
all.

The other ﬁlm, the 1994 animated-feature The Lion King begins with a sweeping
panorama of herds of all kinds of animals moving on the African veldt while a song intones
"The Circle of Life, " keeping " great and small on the endless round." It is an ecologically-
healthy and biodiversity-rich world. Later in the movie, however, when the protagonist
lion's kingdom falls to the "evil" lion and his hyena-agents, the landscape is destroyed,
food becomes scarce and the myriad of animals at the ﬁlm's start have ﬂed or died off. At
the ﬁlm's conclusion, when the hero reclaims his kingdom, the circle of life is again
restored.

An animated movie is hardly deﬁnitive proof that biodiversity concepts
are penetrating all facets of American culture in the 19905. However, I think it is fair to
say this commercialization of the issue by Hollywood does indicate that biodiversity ideas
are present in the nebulous "cultural milieu." Similarly, the growth of "ecotourism" and
"green consumerism" (e. g. Ben and Jerry's "Rain forest Crunch" ice cream) further
indicate the trendiness of environmentalism today.

The appearance of ecotourism and green consumerism is an interesting (and
controversial) phenomenon in the biodiversity cause in particular. The Nature
Conservancy, for example, embraces this kind of "free market environmentalism,"
operating ecotours and ecoresorts around the world. The Conservancy also has a number
of joint business ventures with companies, such as MasterCard and a retail chain, The

Nature Company. A percentage of the companies’ proﬁts goes to land conservation.

41
Conservancy officials believe these "cause-related marketing" ventures can be an effective

vehicle to educate people about land and biodiversity conservation (Zbar 16).

In marketing terms, "biodiversity" is getting more frequent, sustained and
prominent exposure with each passing year in the 19905. Since the late 19805, advocates
recognized the need for this kind of exposure, if the public was ever going to be made
aware of the problem and then enjoined to the cause. In 1988, Lester Brown, head of
WorldWatch and a veteran of environmental campaigns, said

We've got to move the issue [of biodiversity loss] from the scientiﬁc
journals into the magazines and popular press, so that maybe someday Jane
Pauley will say, "And today we have a scientist who's going to discuss
biodiversity. THAT'S RIGHT, biodiversity." (449)

Once regarded as a vapid subject as recently as 1988, today the importance and
plight of biodiversity are being taken seriously by important segments of American society
-- the media, government, education and even entertainment. While "biodiversity" as a
buzzword for an environmental cause has its problems and the message remains unclear to
many, nevertheless, the Biodiversity Mission is gaining cachet from the Science Pages of
The New York Times to the World Wide Web; from curricula in grade schools and
colleges to television documentaries; from environmental groups to zoos; from
Presidential speeches to best-selling books like The Diversity of Life. The coalescence of
the environmental community behind this cause is an important phenomenon in American
Environmentalism. Biodiversity proponents, in arguing that nature is far more diverse,

interconnected, fra ile and im eriled than ever before in earth's histo , have set for
g P ry

42

themselves an ambitious and urgent agenda that is gathering momentum and grows more

essential each year.

CHAPTER 2

BIOPHLIA: E. O. WILSON’S BIODIVERSITY ETHIC

"The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections ”
Walt Whitman, 1855

"Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional
affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. "

Edward O. Wilson, 1984

Among American scientists and naturalists, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is
the leading proponent at large of biodiversity preservation. Wilson, along with a small
group of scientists in the late 19705, came to the conclusion that the destruction of the
diversity of life on the planet was the greatest -- and also least recognized -- ecological
crisis of modern history. In a 1980 article for Harvard Magazine, Wilson wrote,

The worst thing that can happen, will happen, is not energy depletion,
economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by totalitarian
government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be
repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 19805
that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species
diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our
descendants are least likely to forgive us. (Naturalist 355)

43

44
In his 1994 autobiography, Naturalist, Wilson noted of this 1980 article that it marked

"my debut as an environmental activist" (355). Since then Wilson has come to be
identiﬁed with biodiversity in scientiﬁc, environmental and popular spheres. So much so,
that he is usually thought to have coined the term itself, although he did not. Dubbed "the
father of biodiversity" by one nature magazine, Wilson has become over the last two
decades a foremost expert, tireless campaigner and effective popularizer of biodiversity
issues (Interview in Nature Conservancy 24). A member of the board of several
conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy, consultant to Congress, lecturer,
researcher, educator, chair of national biodiversity research and policy committees and
author, Wilson has won dozens of awards for his conservation work, including most
recently the Audubon Medal for conservation work ("Audubon for Wilson” B5).

In the 19805, Wilson helped to develop a key component of biodiversity science
and conservation: the "island biogeography" model, as well as a formula for estimating the
amount of the world's biodiversity and its rate of decline (Lovejoy 257). His technical and
p0pular books and articles on biodiversity over the last 15 years remain the center pieces
of a growing library on the subject by other naturalists and scientists. His 1992 book The
Diversity of Life, a natural history of biodiversity was a New York Times best-seller and
Wilson's most popular "call to arms" for the Biodiversity Mission (Bourne 9). Wilson has
been featured on a television documentary, has his own Home Page on the World Wide
Web, and continues to write high-proﬁle articles for publications such as National
Geographic and The New York Times. He is much in demand by environmental groups
and the press to legitimize biodiversity conservation. For example, the World Wildlife

Fund's 1995 Annual Report used a quote by Wilson as a signature for its conservation

45
efforts. Another recent example of Wilson's reputation appears in The Times as he is

quoted conﬁrming a study of threatened species in the United States was "scientiﬁcally
sound" (Dicke B8),

An ant specialist by training, Wilson has become a giant in the cause for
biodiversity, not just because of his ﬁeld work and theories, but also because of his
eloquence as a writer. "Edward O. Wilson is a scientist who likes to write," begins John
Updike in an estimable critique of the biologist's oeuvre,

not just pinched little scientiﬁc papers, dense with data and Latin, but
massive, inclusive, dictionary-size volumes . . . Wilson makes real his own
mysterious bliss, and expands our understanding of our own heterogenous
species. (109, 117).

Wilson has written and edited several essential works on biodiversity: Biophilia:
The Human Bond with Other Species (1984), BioDiversity (1988), The Diversity of Life
(1992), and The Biophilia Hypothesis (1994). Of his book-length works, Wilson's
Biophilia and The Diversity of Life are aimed at a general audience. The Diversity of Life
recounts the evolution of biodiversity on earth and threats to it. "I will give evidence,"
Wilson writes in an early chapter,

that humanity has initiated the sixth great extinction spasm, rushing to
eternity a large fraction of our fellow species in a single generation. And
ﬁnally I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be
learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle. (32)
The Diversity of Life is a powerﬁil and accessible work of evolutionary theory, natural

history and conservation biology, conveying "pointed instruction in the facts of nature," as

46
this kind of popular natural history writing has been deﬁned by critics (Lyons 5).

Like the word "biodiversity," the phrase "the diversity of life" has come to be
identiﬁed with Wilson, although it existed in environmental parlance well before he used it.
However, a portmanteau's of Wilson's very own is "biophilia." He ﬁrst used the word in
an essay in 1979 and again as the title of his 1984 book Biophilia: The Human Bond With
Other Species It is Wilson's notion of "biophilia," or as he deﬁnes its, "the innately
emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms" that is his most original,
provocative and philosophical assertion about the importance of preserving biodiversity
for human and nonhuman life. Like The Diversity of Life, Wilson's earlier Biophilia is
dosed with natural history and conservation messages. But unlike The Diversity of Life,
Biophilia is far more eclectic, personal and meditative. It is less about natural history per
se than it is about, in Wilson's words, "the naturalist's vision." Biophilia's mingling of
natural history, personal responses and ethical interpretations of nature place it squarely in
the venerable genre of "American nature writing." Peter Fritzell has observed that
American nature writing is "deﬁned in part by a deep, abiding commitment to
programmatic -- scientiﬁcal, ethical, and ﬁnally social -- solution to the problems and
disharmonies of mankind's historic relations to nonhuman nature" (129). All of these
elements are omnipresent in Biophilia.

It is, therefore, my contention that Biophilia is a major, but somewhat neglected,
work of American nature writing of the last two decades and one deserving critical
consideration alongside the writings of Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley and Thoreau, to
name but a few. Moreover, in Biophilia Wilson espouses a new conservation ethic or a

"solution" to the historic and present disharmonies of humans' relations to nature that is a

47
provocative notion gaining interest within environmental ethics. This "biophilia

hypothesis," as it came to be known in a 1993 follow-up volume of the same name, builds
upon Leopold's famous "land ethic" by emphasizing our evolutionary connection and
afﬁliation to nature. Leopold wrote, "It is inconceivable . . . that an ethical relation to the
land can exist without love, respect, and admiration" (223). A generation later, Wilson
wrote, "we are human in good part because of the particular way we afﬁliate with other
organisms" (139).

Affiliation or love for nature in Wilson's paradigm is not so much a product of
social evolution as it is biological evolution. In an essay, "The evolution of ethics,"
written with Michael Ruse, Wilson argues that natural selection, understood as "red in
tooth and claw" is only one side of the process. The same process "also leads to altruism
and reciprocity in highly social groups . . . it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to
get us to cooperate" (51-52). For Wilson in Biophilia, this genetic fact has implications
for cooperation between humans and other nonhuman life, on which our "genetic selves"
depend: we need ﬁinctioning ecosystems and the diversity of life for the services they
provide us in air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. This reality is further
bolstered by breakthroughs in recent years by microbiology and genetics, according to
Wilson. Humans feel kinship to natural things because, genetically and evolutionarily,

Wilson argues, "We are literally kin to other organisms" (Biophilia 131).

Biophilia as Nature Writing
The categorization of Biophilia as nature writing is far from being an academic

exercise; it is crucial to understanding the intent of this work. Biophilia was and remains

48

Wilson's most sustained venture into American nature writing, a genre deﬁned by most
famously by Joseph Wood Krutch in Great American Nature Writing in 1950. According
to Krutch scholar, Jim McClintock, Krutch deﬁned the genre as practiced by Thoreau in
particular as entailing
biocentricity (the equality of all living things), close observation of natural
fact, emotional participation in the processes of nature, and a scientiﬁc
bearing that rejected "official science." (5).
Literary historians, such as McClintock, Peter F ritzell, Thomas Lyons and Lawrence Buell
tend to ﬁnd a commonality among nature writers from Thoreau to Leopold to Annie
Dillard to Edward Abbey in that these writers' essays combine "scientiﬁc knowledge with
both philosophical interest and an emotionally charged attitude toward nature," as Krutch
once said of Thoreau (qtd. in McClintock 6).
In 1984 when Biophilia was published, reviewers seemed to recognize these
qualities in Wilson's work, which was a departure from his earlier purely scientiﬁc writing.
In Natural History, colleague Paul R. Ehrlich surmised that Wilson chose the more
informal genre of nature writing because of the boldness of the central assertion in
Biophilia -- that humans have "an innately emotional affrliation . . . to other living
organisms." Wrote Erhlich, "Scientiﬁcally demonstrating this human propensity would be
a task beyond the scope of today's biology, and Wilson wisely eschews that course" (92).
On the other hand, David L Hull's review in Nature, found fault with what he called
Wilson's "shamanistic" strategy. "Wilson is trying to reach masses on the other side of "C.
P. Snow's great cultural divide, those readers who are more impressed by striking imagery

than by scientiﬁc argument and masses of data," Hull wrote (205).

49
Further codiﬁcation of Biophilia as the hybrid of nature writing -- possessing

aspects of humanism (imagery, emotions, philosophy) with science (data, observation,
theory) -- came in 1990 when an excerpt was included in the most deﬁnitive compendium
on nature writing to date, Norton Book of Nature Writing. Biophilia was also chosen as
one of a few essential environmental works in a special issue of Smithsonian,
commemorating Earth Day 1990. The review praised Wilson as raising his "written work
to the level of literature, much of it fueled equally by poetic instinct and scientiﬁc
inquisitiveness" (Watkins 207). Excerpts of Biophilia have also appeared in other recent
anthologies, including 0n Nature: Nature, Landscape, and Natural History and Reading
the Environment and Learning to Listen to the Land.

While reviewers and anthologizers correctly surmised that Wilson's intention with
Biophilia was to create a work of nature writing, the author himself in 1995 conﬁrmed
this, saying that the "intersection" of biology, social science, environment and ethics was a

site for very important scholarly exploration. . . . I recognize that when you
enter that area between biology and the social sciences, and between
environment and the social sciences, and between environment and ethics,
you are engaged in an activity that cannot be dealt with by ﬂat prose. If
you're going to address issues with vivid enough language to invest them
with human feeling, which is what a lot of social science and ethics is
about, then you have to make an additional literary effort. (Interview with
Blume)

From the reviews of Biophilia and Wilson's own voiced intention of creating

works of "science transformed into literature," it is clear that Biophilia grew out of

50

Wilson's desire to escape "pinched" scientiﬁc writing to create literature. Biophilia relies
heavily on "metaphor" and "myth," as Wilson has called it, as did Leopold's A Sand
County Almanac (McClintock 25). Wilson's literary voice in Biophilia is prophetic,
conjuring not just scientiﬁc facts as in his natural history writings, but references to great
events in human history as well. Wilson had used this technique earlier in 1979 in his
Pulitzer-prize winning 0n Human Nature. Critiquing On Human Nature, Martin Eger
argued that Wilson was creating a "new epic."
Wilson's vision of the extended, ﬁJlly worked out, "seamless" theory of
cosmic evolution is not normal science -- it is the vision of a narrative of
unprecedented scope and persuasive power, "far more awesome than the
ﬁrst chapter of Genesis or the Ninevite Epic of Gilgamesh. The
evolutionary epic is simply the "best" of the myths, according to Wilson,
and the one "destined" to prevail because, unlike it predecessors, it does
rest on science, even if it is not itself science. (198)
In Biophilia, Wilson is embarking on a similar kind of myth-making, this time not focused
so much on human evolution as the biotic evolution. His opening chapter singles his
intention of not presenting "normal science" or normal natural history, beginning with the
sentence, "At Bernhardsdorp on an otherwise ordinary tropical morning, the sunlight bore
down harshly, the air was still and humid, and life appeared withdrawn and waiting" (3).
For the remainder of the chapter, Wilson relates the "biological maelstrom" in the
surrounding jungle, presenting himself as an "archetypal" explorer on a "naturalist's
journey" in which "mundane events acquired the raiment of symbolism" (7, 22). Utilizing

literary conventions, such as metaphor, parable and descriptive, evocative language,

5 1
Wilson relates the sublimity and "mystery" of "unknown terrain beyond" (11). He invokes

other great Romantic explorer-artists, mentioning by name 19th-century landscape
painters Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Edwin Church and Thomas Cole and writers Poe and
Melville and he speaks of a "conversion experience" he has that transforms him from the
empiricist he had been before coming to Bernhardsdorp (10-11, McClintock 17).

Wilson 5 taxonomist's eye" is overwhelmed by the "biological maelstrom of which only
the surface could be scanned by the naked eye" (7). Wilson sees a "luminous bank" of
"elusive organisms" -- echoing both Thoreau's famous "thawing bank" in the "Spring"
chapter in Walden and Darwin's "tangled bank" at the conclusion of the Origin of the
Species (Thoreau 304, Darwin 199). Then, aﬁer seeing his bank, he writes
In a twist my mind came free and I was aware of the hard workings of the
natural world beyond the periphery of ordinary attention. . . . I was a
transient of no consequence in this familiar yet deeply alien world that I had
come to love. . . . The effect was strangely calming. Breathing and
heartbeat diminished, concentration intensiﬁed. It seemed to me that
something extraordinary in the forest was very close to where I stood,
moving to the surface of discovery. (7)
Wilson's beatiﬁc conversion from pure scientist to something of a mystic has antecedents
in Thoreau, Leopold, Eiseley, Krutch, Dillard and Abbey, to name a few (McClintock 17).
At Bernhardsdorp, Wilson, a trained mymercologist, ceased to see the rainforest as a ﬁeld
laboratory and in doing so opened himself to the possibilities, the mystery of the natural

world. "It is possible to spend a lifetime in a magellanic voyage around the trunk of a

single tree, " Wilson declares near the end of this chapter in one of the more striking

52

images in all of American nature writing (22).

By liberating himself from seeing and thinking just as a scientist, Wilson becomes

the romantic ideal of the poet naturalist. In a subsequent chapter, Wilson expands on this

new persona:

Come with me now to another part of the living world. The role of
science, like that of art, is to blend exact imagery with more distant
meaning, the parts we already understand with those given as new into
larger patterns that are coherent enough to be acceptable as truth. The
biologist knows this relation by intuition during the course of ﬁeld work, as

he struggles to make order out of inﬁnitely varying patterns of nature. (51)

It is interesting that Wilson says that the biologist knows by "intuition" rather

than by empiricism, the traditional methodology of science. This "another part of

the living world" cannot be reached by normal science, nor can be it reached by

imagination alone. The meld of the two -- which the literary naturalist embodies

-- can only accomplish this trick. Thus, Wilson reveals the minutiae and

intricacies of the natural world with the taxonomist's eye and poet's tongue:

This unprepossessing lump contains more order and richness of structure,
and particularly of history, than the entire surfaces of all the other (lifeless)
planets. It is a miniature wilderness that can take almost forever to
explore. Tease apart the adhesive grains with the aid of forceps and you
will expose the tangled rootlets of ﬂowering plants, curling around the
rotting veins of humus . . . scattering creatures . . . ants, spiders, springtails,

armored oribatid mites, enchytraeid worms, millipedes. . . . a world of

53

scavengers and fanged predators . . . The organisms of greatest diversity
and numbers are invisible or nearly so. (4)
The conservation message here, which Wilson repeats in all of his technical and popular
writings, is similar to Leopold's for keeping all the cogs and wheels: "all of the details
matter in the end" (8). The "details" are the microscopic creatures and intricate
relationships of the natural world. In a direct echo of Darwin, Wilson writes,
The forest was a tangled bank tumbling down to the grassland's border. . .
A few species were locked together in forms of symbiosis so intricate that
to pull out one would bring others spiralling to extinction. . . . Eliminate
just one kind of tree out of hundreds in such a forest, and some of its
pollinators, leafeaters, and woodborers will disappear with it. (8)
The complex, fragile interconnections of species is a theme throughout Wilson's writings.
As with the "unprepossessing lump" of soil, these connections are not immediately
apparent to the observer. And yet, Wilson says over and over again, their existence and
symbioses are more crucial to life on earth than continuance of so-called "higher
creatures." Wilson writes,
The immense protoplasmic bulk and diversity of insects place them among
the little things that run the earth, up there with bacteria, algae, and
copepods. . . . Consequently, humans depend on the vast variety of insects
for survival; but they have little use for us. If all mankind were to
disappear tomorrow, it is unlikely that a single insect would go extinct
except for three kinds of body lice . . . But if insects were to vanish, the

terrestrial environment would collapse into chaos. (Omni 6)

54

The pattern of Wilson being at once a scientist, poet and moralist repeats in
Biophilia. Wilson, on a scientiﬁc errand to gather specimens ends up on a "naturalist's
journey," awed by the complexity, beauty and richness of life around him. Wilson then
derives a moral stance from the ecological facts he has witnessed or intuited, leading him
to conclude that

Humanity accelerated toward the machine antipode, heedless of the natural
desire of the mind to keep the opposite as well. Now we are near the end.
The inner voice murmurs You went too far, and disturbed the world and
gave away too much for your control of Nature. Perhaps Hobbes's
deﬁnition is correct, and this will be the hell we earned for realizing truth
too late. (13)

Wilson's grim prediction in Biophilia is tempered, however, by his belief in
biophilia and belief that humanity can also follow this instinct:

It seems possible that the naturalist's vision is only a specialized product of
a biophilic instinct shared by all, that it can be elaborated to beneﬁt more
and more people. Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above
other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very
concept of life. (22)
Wilson concludes his book by laying out a "conservation ethic" based on biophilia,
appealing less to the "humanistic" side of humans -- the Discursion mind-body dichotomy
that has hamstrung environmental ethics for decades. Rather, Wilson skirts that duality,
appealing to the biological side of humans, reaching back in history to the "biocentric"

matrix in which the now reasoning, thoroughly modern, intensely self-reﬂexive human

55
mind evolved. "The constructs of moral reasoning, in this evolutionary view," Wilson

writes in The Biophilia Hypothesis,
are the learning rules, the propensities to acquire or to resist certain
emotions and kinds of knowledge. They have evolved genetically because
they confer survival and reproduction on human beings. (3 8)
Biology, not culture has shaped our afﬁnities to nature, according to Wilson. Thus, for
Wilson, the environmental crisis stems not exclusively from a crisis of modern culture, but
from a crisis in biology: modern humans are acting against their very natures which is not
only ecologically destructive, but spiritually and mentally degrading as well. Modern

humans, Wilson argues, have alienated themselves from the very thing that gives them

life.

The Biophilia Hypothesis
Just as Aldo Leopold's A Sand Count Almanac contains a "moral" as its

concluding chapter, so does Wilson's Biophilia. As John Tallmadge observed of

Leopold's classic volume,
Here the narrator steps back from his experiences and predictions,
discarding the intense voices of pertinent and prophetic to assume a serene
and reﬂective tone. He ponders the deeper connection to ecological
principles and events to our own moral and social life. (126)

Leopold's conclusion to A Sand County Almanac was, of course, his famous "The Land

Ethic." Wilson titles his chapter "The Conservation Ethic," and uses Leopold's earlier

ethic as the springboard for his discussion (120). Like Leopold, Wilson is at his most

56

consistently philosophical in this chapter, including little anecdotal or experiential evidence
as he does previous in Biophilia. It is interesting to note that like Leopold's book,
Wilson's book was rediscovered some years after 1984 when in 1993 a collection of essays
by environmental thinkers was assembled, called The Biophilia Hypothesis. To this
volume, Wilson contributed an essay to "clarify the concept" of biophilia (30). Wilson
has also since elaborated on biophilia in his autobiography 1994 Naturalist and in
interviews.

In environmental circles, the idea of biophilia is attracting attention and
enthusiasm. In March/April 1996 Nature Conservancy magazine ran my article on
Wilson's "biophilia," which marked an editorial departure for them, dealing with such
esoteric matters (Kinch 8). The environmental press generally welcomed The Biophilia
Hypothesis, on grounds that

The book's emphasis on the aesthetic, emotional, and moral dimensions of
human contact with nature is a welcome departure from a nearly ubiquitous
focus on the instrumental value of other species in biodiversity literature . .
. This thoughtﬁﬂ collection offers a persuasive reminder that the less
tangible dimensions of our experience of the world are no less crucial to
the human prospect. (Wolf 38)
Other reviews of The Biophilia Hypothesis in the scientiﬁc press, however, were greeted
with more skepticism. A reviewer in BioScience raised two essential questions that lie at
the crux of the notion of biophilia.
How far is the biophilia hypothesis a matter of science rather than simply

the statement of a belief, and what are the ethical implications? . . . How far

57
aesthetic reactions are genetically rather than culturally determined remains

unclear. (Johnson 363)

The Holy Grail of environmental ethics has long been locating ethics outside of a
humanism and into the realm of biology. "Environmental ethics involves people
extending ethics to the environment by the exercise of self-restraint," Roderick Nash has
written, espousing the cultural model of ethics (Rights 10). Nash's comment follows a
generally accepted deﬁnition of ethics as outlined by Aldo Leopold in "The Land Ethic":
An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. But,
Leopold, also said ethics could be understood, "ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of
action in the struggle for existence" (202). Leopold continued,

These are two deﬁnitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the
tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-
operation. The ecologist calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are
advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been
replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms in an ethical content. (202)
The idea of an ethic being a limitation on anti-social behavior and thus uniquely human
was sealed as fact by Renes Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes argued that the
ability to reason morally distinguished humans from all the other animals, who were
engaged in an individual free-for-all for survival. Darwin's theory of natural selection and
subsequent evolution theory in the 19th and 20th centuries would seem to conﬁrm this
(Hargrove 34-43)..
However, this was "only one side of natural selection," as Wilson has said. Even

Darwin himself recognized that co-operation, even altruism, could be present among some

58
species of higher primates besides humans. Contemporary evolutionary theorists and

environmental ethicists have taken up this mantle (Callicott 186-217).. "Consider the
baboon on sentry duty," Holmes Rolston III argues recently in one of the better essays on
the "selﬁsh genes and caring groups" debate within evolutionary biology (3 89). This male
baboon, Rolston points out, isn't getting to eat while the others do and is risking himself
(and his chances of reproducing) by being exposed as he is (3 89). If, in fact, the ultimate
motivation of all species is to reproduce and pass on their individual "self" to subsequent
generations, this baboon's behavior would appear counterproductive. Except, this baboon
has "one-half of a self in his offspring, one-eighth of a self in his ﬁrst cousins, and so on"
(3 89). Thus, he is acting on the behalf of his "self" -- his "enlarged reproductive self when
he risks his individual organic self" (3 89).

The notion of biophilia, according to Rolston, Wilson and others merely extends
the "circle of reciprocal altruism" as demonstrated by the baboon beyond a family or band
or species to the entire biota.

Like animal cooperators, mutual human backscratchers may each be acting
in their self-interest. But there is nothing selﬁsh about helping each other
out to the mutual advantage of both -- not unless all self-interested actions
are condemned as selﬁsh. No ethical system, nor any religion, has ever
condemned cooperation in which both partners gain. . . . This process
suggest how reciprocal altruism may have evolved into ethical altruism in
humans. It shows the enlarging of self-interests in cultural systems.
(Rolston 401)

Thus, for Rolston, Wilson and others extending ethical consideration to nonhuman species

59

is not simply cultural, but it is also biological -- "biocultural," Wilson calls it. Humans
behave ethically towards (or aspire to) nature because their "biological selves" are tied into
that nature. "We are literally kin to other organisms," Wilson has said (Biophilia 130).

So, caring for the group, actually advances our selves. Therefore, the modern
manifestation of destroying nature amounts to turning against the group and ourselves. It
is a kind of biological and psychological suicide -- and one most people fail to grasp. It is
a kind of mass psychosis.

Paul Shepard in 1982 was perhaps the ﬁrst to articulate the idea of societal
madness as a result of estrangement from the natural world in his famous study Nature
and Madness. Shepard's thesis was that modern humans as contrasted with primitive
peoples raised children in unnatural environments and discouraged children to follow their
genetic instincts to identify with nature. This created adults in "arrested development,"
according to Shepard, who "strike back at a natural world that we dimply perceive as
having failed us" much the same way a child might toward a parent who has abandoned
him or her (35). Thus, Shepard concludes,

The high percentage of neuroses in Western society seems often to be
interpreted as a sign of a highly stressful "life-style." If you add to it -- or
see it acted out as -- the insanities of nationalism, war, and biome busting,
it seems less of life-style than of an epidemic of the psychopathic mutilation
of ontogeny. (36)

Shepard's "ecopsychology," as this new discipline has come to be called shares
similarities with the psychological arguments about biophilia. "You can get into a vicious

cycle in the process of degrading biodiversity," says Stephen Kellert. "You become more

60
estranged and alienated from the biodiversity source of well-being. 'You don't see the

connection and a certain kind of frustration, if you will, becomes part of the condition
which encourages an even greater sense of estrangement" (Phone Interview). Another
biophilia expert, environmental studies professor David Orr, agrees. "We're rapidly
replacing natural systems for which we have afﬁnity for ones in which we are aliens and
strangers. We've built a system that has trapped us into destroying the biotic capital that's
essential for the long run economy and also for our psychic well-being" (Phone
Interview).

Like Orr and Kellert, Wilson also feels that we as modern peOple have cut
ourselves off from our evolutionary past. "F or more than 99 percent of human history
people have lived in hunter-gatherer bands" in intimate contact with nature, Wilson
explains in The Biophilia Hypothesis:

The brain evolved in a biocentric world, not a machine-regulated world. It
would be therefore quite extraordinary to ﬁnd that all learning rules related
to that world would be erased in a few thousand years, even in the tiny
minority of peoples who have existed more than one or two generations in
wholly urban environments. (32)
Wilson tends not to emphasize the mass psychosis argument of ecopsychologists like
Shepard as much as he does the atrophied quality of humans' genetic affiliations towards
nature. That is why, according to Wilson, even in our techno-modern world, more people
will continue to
visit zoos than attend all major professional sports combined . . . , the

wealthy will continue to seek dwellings on prominences above water

61
amidst parkland, and urban dwellers will go on dreaming of snakes for

reasons they cannot explain. (Biophilia Hypothesis 32)

Wilson and others are quick to point out that biophilia is not a "hardwired" instinct
like eating and breathing; nor can it be isolated in a gene like, say, the coding for red hair.
Rather, biophilia has evolved because we are the legacy of 100,000 generations of human
beings living in the natural world. Certain of our behaviors and predispositions towards
nature nowadays are throw-backs to a faraway past. Several studies recounted in The
Biophilia Hypothesis try to prove this, including one that is a kind of landscape-inkblot
test. People are shown pictures of various natural landscapes and asked to choose their
favorite. The majority end up favoring grassland settings with sparse trees, even though
these landscapes may not be ones in which they live or have ever seen. Why? Because,
Roger S. Ulrich, a behavioral psychologist, concludes, "much of human evolution took
place in savannas." According to Ulrich and anthropologists, "open savannas were better
suited than other habitats to early humans having upright posture, bipedal locomotion and
free-swinging arms." For hundreds of thousands of years, these proto-humans gazed --
often from the safety of trees -- onto these landscapes, in search of lunch or in avoidance
becoming something else's lunch. "Modern humans retain a partly genetic predisposition
to like or visually prefer natural settings having savanna-like or parklike properties" writes
Ulrich, because these settings are home in an evolutionary sense (89). Other hypotheses
for the existence of biophilia discussed in the book include the universality of animals in
the myths and symbols of cultures around the world and the intense bond between humans
and pets.

Provocative as Wilson's idea of biophilia is and the attempts to prove it are, there

62
is an undeniable reality about the modern world that challenges these assertions. 1f loving

nature is natural, how do we explain clearcuts? Mass extinctions? Megalopolises? If
nature is where our beings and minds were formed and is our "home," why our headlong
rush today to create technological realities and worlds that are anything but natural --
"virtual" even?

"Biophilia is a biological tendency," Steve Kellert explains. "But it's a weak
biological tendency. It depends on a certain amount of cultural learning experiences to
become fully and perhaps functionally manifest. Absent that experience, social
reinforcement, opportunity to learn, it will still remain in a kind of atrophied and frustrated
way, but it won't occur" (Phone Interview) Conservation biologist Reed Noss concurs,
"Our society -- parents, teachers, television -- generally discourages biophilia, but a
wilderness experience can reawaken it. Giving people opportunities to get outdoors in
natural areas may be one of the best ways to promote conservation, because biophiliac
people will, by deﬁnition, be more interested in protecting nature" (Electronic mail
Interview). Colleague Michael Soule agrees, saying that "the little acts of biophilia" which
we engage in, such as buying birdseed or caring for pets, is not enough in the face of
larger anti-natural forces, such as unchecked development. "What we need now are big,
selﬂess, and costly acts of biophilia to protect nature" (Kinch 9).

For Wilson and others the fact of environmental degradation today at the hands of
humans does not necessarily contradict the idea that in each person remains a. "species
memory" that is predisposed to be drawn to nature, to consider it home. The biophiliac
instinct, evolutionarily speaking, is far more potent and enduring than the "brief" unnatural

forces shaping the human psyche in the last few hundred years. By recognizing this and

63

courting this -- taking children outside, creating nature preserves -- humans can reawaken,
as Noss says, the biophilia in them.

Biophilia is a powerﬁil basis for a new, "deeper" conservation ethic, according to
Wilson, because it does not shirk from locating the altruistic impulse in biology, instead of
human culture. Wilson writes,

The modern practice of conservation has moved steadily forward from
such primitive beginnings, but its philosophical foundations remain shaky.
It still depends almost entirely on what may be termed surface ethics. . . .
to force the argument entirely in the ﬂat framework of kinship and legal
rights is to trivialize the case favoring conservation, to make it part of the
surface ethics by justifying one criterion on the basis of another. It is also
very risky. Human beings, for all their professed righteousness and
brotherhood, easily discriminate against strangers and are content to kill
them during wars declared for relatively frivolous causes. So it is much
easier to ﬁnd an excuse to exterminate another species. A stiffer dose of
biological realism appears to be in order. We need to apply the ﬁrst law of
human altruism, ably put by Garrett Hardin: never ask people to do
anything they consider contrary to their own best interests. The only way
to make a conservation ethic is to ground it ultimately selﬁsh reasoning --
but the premises must be of a new and more potent kind. (Biophilia 131)
Wilson's "selﬁsh reasoning" is not anthropocentric but biocentric, recognizing our self as a
genetic and evolutionary kin to other life.

Wilson ends his chapter on "The Conservation Ethic" in Biophilia with a synthesis

64

of the evolutionary fact of human beings and his grandly microscopic proscription for

recognizing this fact:
We are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with
other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated
and is permanently rooted . . . To the extent that each person can feel like a
naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I
offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth:
mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of
where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions. (139)

In terms of the workaday challenges of the Biodiversity Mission,

"biophilia" is an interesting and provocative idea, but it is not likely to convert the
nonbelievers. Clair G. Wood's assessment in The American Biology Teacher of The
Biophilia Hypothesis underscores this.
Those papers [in The Biophilia Hypothesis] that attempt to quantify what
is, in effect, a semi-mystical concept are the least persuasive. But if the
biophilia hypothesis is only roughly true, it has immense implications for all
of us and how we relate to the diversity of live surrounding us (444).

The challenge for the biophilia hypothesis and the biodiversity cause in general is
to make these essential in the everyday lives of people. Contemporary society is fraught
with problems and many people continue to think, as Stephen Kellert acknowledges that
environmentalism

is an expression of cultural and class bias. This view suggests that the

assertions trumpeted here are but a romantic ideology of nature, paraded in

65
the guise of biology, promoted for essentially elitist political and social

reasons. (Biophilia Hypothesis 61)
Kellert's concern that environmentalism is not regarded as fundamental is borne out by a
newspaper advertisement for a child welfare program which appeared in the Detroit Free
Press on November 12, 1994. A teary-eye child appeared in the ad with accompanying
text that read:
Save the rain forest. Protect the spotted owl. While you're at it, could you
help her stay warm this winter. Those are all valid causes -- but she's our
most precious natural resource. (13)
It is an effective ad. And it underscores the dilemma not just for biophilia proponents but
also for environmental ethics: despite what biology tells people about their genetic and
evolutionary kinship to other species, like the baboon on sentry duty, humans primarily
looked out for their own. This is evidenced by the fact that the bulk of charitable dollars
go to religious and human welfare causes and less than two cents out of a donated dollar
goes to nonhuman causes (Science 746).

Environmental ethicists and evolution theorists posit that humans have been
gradually extending moral consideration further out from the self, the family, the tribe, the
kind to now include certain other nonhuman species, such as pets, in our ethical sphere.
In the 19805 and 19905 Wilson and others, such as Bryan Norton, J. Baird Callicott,
David Ehrenfeld, Steven Kellert, Eugene Hargrove, Mark Sagoff, George Sessions and
Lawrence E. Johnson have argued further: for the "moral considerability of species and
ecosystems" (Johnson 145). Most of these arguments are like Sagoffs who ﬁnds the

utilitarian defenses operating within biodiversity conservation to be too shallow since not

66
all "exotic species might prove useﬁil for medical purposes" someday (3 7). This

"environmentalists' dilemma, " as Bryan Norton has called it, comes from the perception
that "utilitarian and more preservationist approaches are seen as exclusive choices -- as
opposed rather than complementary values" (6). Norton, instead, urges environmentalists
to consider "objectives" rather than "values" as a way to distinguish differences within the
movement (12). While philosophical grounding is important, according to Norton, it is
less crucial than effective policy. Norton and Eugene Hargrove argue in another essay for
the continuance of pluralism in environmentalism, or "practical philosophy, " instead of
continuing prosaic conﬂicts between "shallow" and "deep" beliefs that does not beneﬁt the
movement as much as it does its opposition (23 8-239).

Wilson embodies the ﬁJSlOIl of the shallow and deep strains in American
Environmentalism: he is tireless campaigning for biodiversity protection throughout the
strata of American culture. Sometimes, his message emphasizes the practical services
biodiversity provides to humans; other times he stresses the intrinsic worth of all life.
While his most philosophical statement, Biophilia, has engaged intellectuals, it is likely his
more popular writings are bringing the most attention to this cause. In this sense, Wilson,
like other biodiversity advocates, has a healthy dose of pragmatism inculcated in his
idealism. Conservation biology, of which Wilson is a prototypical practionner, is a
“mission-oriented, crisis discipline,” as Michael Soule has deﬁned it (Conservation
Biology 3). It is an applied or "real world" science, according to Soule, just as Bryan
Norton argues environmental ethics should have been.

E. O. Wilson considers himself a scientist foremost and a self-described reluctant

activist and moralist. In all three roles he is inﬂuencing powerful circles in American

67

society -- policy makers, business leaders, the media, the academy. Finally, while the
biophilia hypothesis might one day serve as the basis for a deeper environmental ethic in
people, for the meantime, it is the science and politicking of Wilson and other
conservation biologists that matters most to protecting the diversity of life on the planet
today. What is important most to the Biodiversity Mission is that this group is putting

into practice a hypothesis before it has been or perhaps ever will be proven.

CHAPTER 3
CONSERVATION BIOLOGY: THE WARRIOR SCIENCE
"Defending wild Nature and biological diversity, in my
view, is the highest calling for biologists. "

Reed Noss,
Conservation Biologist, 1994

"Now is biology 's moment in history. We biologists must
recognize it ﬁrst. We need to act now. Now. "

Thomas E. Lovejoy,
Conservation Biologist, 1995
Conservation biologist Reed Noss is a ﬁfth-degree black belt in Shito-Ryu

karate. This biographical fact about Noss appears in the "About The Authors" section
of Saving Nature ’5 Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity, a 1994 textbook on
conservation science that he wrote with Allen Y. Cooperrider. It is an unusual piece of
information to ﬁnd in such a text; most science texts usually include the author's
specialty, degree level and institutional afﬁliation and not pursuits outside of his or her
ﬁeld of expertise. But Noss's martial arts training is central to his and other leaders'
view in this new ﬁeld that conservation biologists need to be more than just scientists.
They must be "warriors" as well. "Environmental policy is too important to be left to
the policy-makers, most of whom know little and care little about all that ecologists do

and love," writes Noss in an 1992 essay in Wild Earth (56). Noss continues that not

68

69

also be "biophiles and warriors" (56). Writes Noss,
A key concept of martial arts is to focus your strikes precisely on the
most vital points. By so doing, the weak may overcome the strong. We
can ﬁght this war nonviolently . . . and we can do it well within the
bounds of our professional responsibilities; in fact, our professional
integrity demands that we act. As working biologists, we should be
uncompromising advocates of the "resources" (I hate to use that word)
under our care. . . . At the very least, we can provide information and
strategic guidance to those environmentalists who are able to mount a
more active resistance to biotic impoverishment. (5 8)

Noss is not alone among conservation biologists for his zeal. Other leaders in
this ﬁeld are embracing an activist's agenda, rejecting the traditional belief among
scientists that their research and opinions should remain above the cultural fray. In a
1989 editorial, "The Obligations of a Biologist," in Conservation Biology, Thomas
Lovejoy, head of the Smithsonian Institution's biodiversity programs, wrote, "We do
not help either science or society by evading our social responsibilities as experts"
(329). Similarly, conservation biologist Michael Soule has said,

We can't afford the luxury of thinking that somebody else will do it for
us anymore -- like the activists will do it for us anymore. I'm speaking
in particular about scientists who assume they've done their job when
they publish their papers, even conservation biologists. But clearly these

are difﬁcult times and call for much more of an energetic and active

7 0

response than in the past by those who are well-informed. We have to

go to public hearings, write op-ed pieces, lobby. Because nobody's

going to do it for us or for the other species. (Phone Interview)

Conservation biologists were the ﬁrst to recognize and publicize the global
extinction crisis in the 1970s and have remained advocates for biodiversity conservation
ever since. They have pioneered breakthroughs in conservation science using databases
and other technological advancements; they lobbied Congress for passage of
biodiversity legislation and persuaded federal agencies to adOpt new management
strategies; they have published articles in scientiﬁc journals urging colleagues to
become more active; they have transformed the focus of conservation groups to
biodiversity and ecosystem protection; they have inﬂuenced the adoption of new
biology curricula in schools and colleges; and they have taken their cause for
biodiversity conservation directly to the American public in the media and the Internet.
This "new paradigm" of conservation biology, as practitioners and

commentators have called it, is a synthesis of basic and applied research in the ﬁelds of
wildlife biology, ecology and other natural sciences. In turn, it unites this knowledge
with other disciplines such as ethics, sociology and public policy, creating a
"metadiscipline" (Meffe 330, Noss 84). "A ﬁrm understanding of social, ethical, and
political processes is imperative if conservation biologists are to implement a program
of action in the 'real world,” one commentator wrote of the qualities needed to be a
conservation biologist (Beissinger 457).

Conservation biologists regard traditional conservation efforts as piecemeal,

7 l

founded on poor science and policy, and inadequate to the task of stopping global
biodiversity 1055. They argue that parks and preserves are no long sufﬁcient to save
nature, and the Endangered Species Act, while well-meaning, has been in ineffectual in
stopping the extinction crisis (McIntyre 606). Yellowstone National Park is not large
enough to protect regional wildlife; conservation biologists urge the protection of the
"Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem," an area considerably larger than the present park
(Brussard 336). Conservation biologists utilize the latest and best research on
biodiversity from ﬁeld scientists, literally counting species square-foot by square-foot
to the mapping of thousands of square miles of dominant vegetation types and species
from satellites (Noss, Saving 113). This new model entails protecting whole
ecosystems and landscapes, integrating and adapting surrounding human use patterns
with conservation strategies and restoring the ecology of an area by destroying "exotic"
species and reintroducing native ones (Ryan 37- 44).. It is intensive, expensive, urgent
and stopgap work, according to conservation biologists.

Conservation biologists are often called on to ﬁnd a proximate solution,

such as designing a recovery plan for an endangered species or

designating a viable population goal. But the ultimate solutions for these

problems may involve changing human or institutional behaviors (e. g.

land use patterns, technological processes, or attitudes and values).

(Beissinger 456)

Conservation biologists are accomplishing the latter goal of ﬁnding ultimate

solutions in the way they are inﬂuencing federal and state institutions, the

72
environmental movement itself and the American public. They are accomplishing these
things in a variety of speciﬁc ways -- such as urging the adoption of biodiversity
legislation -- but at the root of all of these lies the shared belief among conservation
biologists that they must be advocates as well as scientists. Conservation biologists,
unlike the majority of their colleagues since the Enlightenment, embrace the dual role
of scientist and advocate -- a controversial stance among traditionalists in science. In
fact, as Thomas Lovejoy has argued, conservation biologists are shirking their duty not
being activists.
Science must take on an advocacy role with respect to environment. If
science does not, we deserve and can expect the future censure of
society, for indeed it is our responsibility, as those who understand best
what is happening and what alternatives exist, to sound the tocsin about
environmental deterioration and conservation problems in all their
variety. (330 [his italics])
As both scientists and advocates, conservation biologists are leading what Reed
Noss has called a "movement" within conservation science.
The fundamental belief of conservation biology is that biodiversity is
good and should be conserved. The mission of conservation biology is
to conserve as much of global biodiversity as possible and to allow
evolution to continue generating biodiversity. Because biodiversity is
being lost so rapidly, conservation biology can also be described as a

crisis discipline (Saving 84).

7 3
Over the last two decades the research and activism of conservation biologists
have been the driving force behind the Biodiversity Mission in the United States. From
eloquent spokespeople like E. O. Wilson to organizers like Reed Noss, from
policymakers like Thomas Lovejoy to educators like Michael Soule, conservation
biologists have help make biodiversity loss a national environmental priority. In doing
so, they have crossed the supposed line between objective and subjective science,

becoming untraditional, but effective warriors for nature.

Conservation Biology's Beginnings
Although E. O. Wilson does not consider himself a conservation biologists per
se, his research in the tropics during the 19705 led to his departure from the role of a
traditional scientist. In his autobiography Wilson writes,
As the 19705 passed I wondered at what point should scientists become
activists? I knew from hard experience that the ground between science
and political engagement is treacherous. . . . Speak too forcefully, I
thought, and other scientists regard you as an ideologue; speak too
softly, and you duck a moral responsibility. (Naturalist 356)
Wilson eventually became an "activist," in his words by 1979, encouraged to do so by
the public stances taken by colleagues such as Norman Myers and Peter Raven, both
experts on mass extinction. Further, Wilson joined a loose confederation of tropical
biologists including Raven, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Thomas Eisner, Daniel

Janzen, Thomas Lovejoy and Myers -- a group that Wilson dubbed the "rainforest

7 4
maﬁa" (358). In the early 19805, this group communicated among its members, joined
the boards of various environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund already doing
work in the tropics, and began publishing papers in scientiﬁc and popular journals on
biodiversity 1055 (358).

Meanwhile, another informal cadre of biologists, including some of these same
individuals, began to formulate a new "applied " or "ﬁeld" discipline which had as its
goal the study and preservation of biodiversity in the United States. They called this
new discipline “conservation biology”(Conservation Biology, Soule 3-5). This group
was led by Michael Soule, a natural resources professor at the University of Michigan.

Soule with the input of other experts, including Raven, Lovejoy and Ehrlich,
published in 1980 Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary-Ecological Perspective and
an updated version Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity in 1986
-- the two seminal texts in the ﬁeld. In the Introduction to the latter volume, Soule said
that conservation biology became a discipline when a "critical mass of people agreed
that they were conservation biologists" (3). He then went on to deﬁne not only the
science and methodology of this synthetic, "mission-oriented crisis discipline," but also
the values and social responsibility it entailed.

In his Introduction, Soule traced the origin of conservation biology back to
forest and wildlife biology and conservation as practiced at the turn of the century.
"Community ecology and island biogeography" from the 19605 and 19705 fed
conservation biology as did the culture of this era in which intellectual and scientists

began to believe their work should have a social relevance to the problems of their day

7 5
(4). In fact, Soule and Reed N055 and many other prominent conservation biologists
are at least a generation younger than E. O. Wilson, who is today in his mid-Sixties.
In part, this younger generation took to the idea of science having a political or social
purpose much more readily than Wilson and his generation because they came of age
during a time of tremendous cultural upheaval with Civil Rights, the Peace Movement
and the Environmental Movement (Soule 4).

Soule's Introduction in Conservation Biology outlined the many challenges
facing conservation biology as the "biology of scarcity" in spatial and temporal terms:
in an ever shortening time frame as each day ticks past and more habitat and
biodiversity are destroyed, conservation biologists and their cohorts in
environmentalism must try to preserve more and more biodiversity. To address this
difﬁcult task, conservation biologists, according to Soule, needed to study the
complexity of biodiversity at all levels, from global to genetic; devise conservation
strategies to stop insidious loss at the ecoregion, ecosystem, habitat, backyard and
genetic levels; and convince a skeptical scientiﬁc community and by extension the
American public of the veracity of the crisis, the legitimacy of their activism and the
need for widespread action immediately (10-11). Soule concluded his Introduction by
saying,

' Not many scientists, during the few decades of their careers, are able to
commit their minds and labors to an epochal task like saving the planet.
It will be a long struggle; many generations of conservation biologists

have been and will be conscripted. (12)

7 6
As an early step in gathering conservation biologists to this struggle, Soule and

others formed the Society of Conservation Biologists on May 8, 1985 (Wiley 31). A
year prior, Soule with ecologist David Ehrenfeld as editor, published the ﬁrst issue of
Conservation Biology, a journal of basic and applied research ﬁndings on wildlife
populations, ecosystem ecology and other areas, position papers, book reviews and
commentary (Wiley 31). In the premier issue, Ehrenfeld, a respected ecologist and
author of the well-known The Arrogance of Humanism, called for contributions from
taxonomists, population biologists, resource managers, anthropologists, environmental
ethicists, educators and economists from nongovernmental and governmental agencies
and universities (Wiley 32). Reﬂecting a belief not unlike that of natural diversity
itself having value, the editors of Conservation Biology called for a multi-disciplinary
approach to address issues of biodiversity 1055. As such, conservation biology is a
"metadiscipline, a level of knowledge that transcends the individual disciplines that
compose it by leading to insights not directly deductible from any discipline alone"
(Noss, Saving 84). Put another way,

Conservation biology is not a typical science. Although it is

fundamentally ecological and relies on principles of ecology, it is also

cross-disciplinary and depends on the interaction of many different

ﬁelds. Geography, geology, sociology, education, philosophy, law,

economics, and political science are just as important to the successful

practice of conservation biology as are wildlife biology, forestry,

ecology, zoology, botany, genetics, and other biological sciences. A

7 7

conservation biologist, even if mainly a plant geneticist, must be

conversant with the other disciplines that compose conservation biology

to apply ﬁndings to real-world conservation problems. (Noss 84)
Here, Reed Noss's extended deﬁnition of conservation biology is interesting because it
is essentially the deﬁnition of what makes a good environmentalist as well as a good
conservation biologist. Like a good conservation biologist, an effective
environmentalist is a generalist, knowledgeable of some ecology, public policy,
environmental history, ethics and law, and so forth. Since conservation biology is an
applied science -- problem-oriented -- it stands to reason that emphasis would be placed
upon other nonscience factors, such as ethics and economics, that effect a conservation
decision, as Ross does here. But, what is signiﬁcant about conservation biology is not
that its practitioners are willing to venture into areas other than science in order to
make their case for nature, but how often they are willing to do this and how successful
they have been in a relative brief span of 15 years to make biodiversity conservation a
priority for an Environmental. Movement that in the 19805 was fractious and without
common cause.

Few scientists in the history of environmentalism, with the notable exceptions of

Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner and a handful of others, have been as
eager to engage in policy making or environmental ethics or activism as conservation
biologists as a group seem to be. Certainly, the science of ecology coalesced the
environmental movement in the 19705, and to a lesser extent, wilderness issues in the

decades prior also gave the movement a common cause. As the ecology movement

7 8

matured, it became more focused on environmental protection with regard to human
risk and safety and less so on functioning ecosystems. The wilderness preservationists
in the 19705 and 19805, typiﬁed by Earth First!, took at times an almost anti-human
stance, suggesting that humans were a pox on the planet and pollution and toxic waste
cleanup, while beneﬁting people, did not do much for nonhuman life (Maines 70-71).

The Biodiversity Mission, with its sweeping agenda of protecting biodiversity in
wildlands, as well as areas already populated by humans, brings together the wilderness
and ecology movements. The prime instigators of this union have been conservation
biologists, trained in a host of disciplines and not hesitant to be outspoken on the behalf
of nature -- a role historically ﬁlled more by the poets, philosophers and polemicists

within the movement.

The New Conservation Model

A number of events contributed to the growth of conservation biology within
the scientiﬁc community and its subsequent cachet in political, social and
environmental circles. First and foremost was the recognition among biologists that
biodiversity worldwide was declining at alarming rates. R. H. MacArthur's and E. O.
Wilson's "island biogeographic theory" in 1967 was an important breakthrough because
it posited that nature preserves surrounded by development were in effect "islands" and
were being encroached upon and destabilized by human activities along their edges
(Conservation Biology, Lovejoy 257). This eventually led biologists to devise models

of the "Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems," which found that the ecological

7 9

integrity of the vast majority of the preserves around the world were compromised and
inadequate to the task of maintaining viable populations of native species for the long-
term (Lovejoy 257-285).

The effect of an edge between habitats in temperate regions is often an

increase in species richness relative to either habitat; yet the initial

results from this study suggest the reverse. Species impoverishment is

the rule. (Lovejoy 284)
Findings such as these surprised the conservation science community, since much of
North American wildlands had been intentionally managed to create edges between
different habitats. Along these edges, biologists and land managers alike believed,
more species, particularly wildlife, would assemble, creating a richer, diverse matrix
(Lovejoy 263). Wildlife managers, in particular, liked edges because game species
such as deer tended to gather there. Forestry practices, such as clearcutting, created
edges, as did suburban and rural development. The net effect of intentional and
unintentional modiﬁcation of the landscape was to create a patchwork of wild and
developed areas throughout the world. In this environment, certain species ﬂourished,
but the vast majority of “native” species began to decline precipitously (Lovejoy 270).

For example, the fragmentation of habitat in the Western Hemisphere has led to

decline of many migratory species, both birds and mammals. Fragmentation has also
endangered many plant species, since they become susceptible to invasion by

9,

“nonnatives” or “exotics. To illustrate, in Hawaii, the native plants have two

enemies: feral pigs and weeds. The former can root up rare wildﬂowers and trammel

8 O
vegetation such that when heavy rains come, erosion can wash away young plants and
seedlings (Royte 14). The destruction of native vegetation by pigs allows exotic weeds
to outcompete native species. As a result, Hawaii’s native species are the most
endangered in the United States. More than one-third of the 526 plants and 88 birds on
the U.S. endangered and threatened species list come from Hawaii (Royte 14).

Other examples of the problem of habitat fragmentation in the United States and
elsewhere include the well-publicized decline in migratory species over the last half-
century, particularly neo-tropical songbirds and large predators. For neo-tropical
songbirds the problem is loss of winter and summer habitat due to development.
Development pressures in Latin and South America on wildlands are extreme. Each
tropical forest or savannah that falls to development means less range for birds such as
warblers. These birds are then forced to congregate in smaller areas, competition for
food becomes more intense, and as a result many birds either starve or are weakened
and die on the long ﬂight to the upper tier of North America in spring (Wilcove 4 -13).

Once in their summer homes, these birds face similar threats by development,
especially in prime habitat along waterways, such as the Great Lakes where beach-front
property is in high demand. The birds face another threat in their summer habitats:
predation. Edges do lend conducive habitat for certain kinds of species, but not
necessarily ones commensurate with ground—dwelling forest songbirds like the Ovenbird
or habitat-speciﬁc Jackpine warblers. In each of these cases, the nests of these birds
are vulnerable to predation by "generalists" of the edges, such as raccoons, squirrels,

domestic cats and Brownheaded cowbirds. The three mammals thrive in human-altered

8 l
landscapes and with the fragmentation of large expanses of woods are able to penetrate
into areas once safe for deep forest-dwelling birds. The cowbird is a parasite which
places its eggs in the nest of another bird. Its young hatch ﬁrst and either push their
step-siblings out of the nest or simply outcompete them for food from parents unable to
distinguish them from their own brood (Wilcove 4-13). Breeding populations of
neotropical migrants have dropped by as much as 70 percent in some parts of the
country since World War II, and certain species, like the Ovenbird, have declined by
90 percent (Wilcove 4-5).

To save the birds and other threatened species, not to mention the natural
communities themselves, conservation biologists as early as the mid-19705 began
developing new protection strategies, getting away from the "single-species" approach,
typical of wildlife biology, and away from the sole dependence of preserves and parks,
as conservationists had since the last century. Tentatively, scientists began talking
about protecting "natural systems," not just pieces of a systems as had been the case in
the past: lake watersheds, large tracts of forests, seashores, prairies and other rapidly
disappearing places throughout the country. Ecologists called these places ecosystems,
although the word has always conveyed a nebulous demarcation, since the Great Lakes
are considered an ecosystem, as is a backyard lily pond. Nevertheless, a consensus
grew among conservation scientists beginning in the 19705 that ecosystems must
become the spatial focus of conservation.

The idea behind ecosystem protection is relatively simple: size matters, bigger is

better. The most logical way to protect species from edges was to push the edges back

8 2
as far as possible. An early conceiver of this plan in the mid-19705 was Robert
Jenkins, the science director of The Nature Conservancy. Jenkins believed,
A cascading series of extinctions could quickly reduce the diversity in
any small preserve plot. . . . If the goal is to save biological diversity,
the major focus must be on conserving ecosystems. (Morine 78)
The Nature Conservancy and a few other environmental groups, such as Defenders of
Wildlife, led by conservation biologists gradually began to identify the best remaining
natural systems in America. "Forget the scraps; bigger is better!" Jenkins said,
according to David Morine, then Conservancy president (78) .
"No Conservancy project," he [Jenkins] warned, "will be approved by
the science department unless it is part of a pre-identiﬁed biological
system. "
Those of us involved in land acquisition were shocked. We were
having enough trouble trying to buy the lifeboats. How were we ever
going to pay for luxury liners? (Morine 79)

Morine's concern was shared by many in private conservation, since funds were
lacking to acquire small preserves, let along whole ecosystems. Further, there was an
immediate trouble with this new plan: ecosystems, unlike smaller wild areas already
had people living in them. Obviously, to protect the Great Lakes, Florida Keys,
Colorado Plateau, or rainforests of Belize, a new conservation strategy was needed.
Thus, the new impetus was for creating a sound, “science-based” conservation model -

- a model very different from earlier ones. Earlier preservation efforts were based less

8 3
on science than on nationalism (the creation of the national parks), spiritualism and
aestheticism (wilderness preservation) and emotionalism (the cute and cuddly wild
animal). The new conservation effort would stress identifying and protecting rare and
representative “hotspots” of biodiversity, regardless of whether or not these were
found in a pristine, scenic wildlife refuge like Yellowstone or in a backwater miasma
like the Great Dismal Swamp.

During the 19805, conservation biologists and land managers began developing
plans in conjunction with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Conservancy
and a few governmental agencies like the US Fish and Wildlife Service began
practicing conservation on a massive new scale. This approach was considerably more
complex compared to the older model of wilderness and species preservation that had
existed in the United States for more than a century. The past models created varying
degrees of protection for public wildlands in the form of National Parks, National
Forests, Wilderness Areas and Multiple-Use Area. In the case of the Endangered
Species Act, this law imposed similar protection sanctions on private land when
warranted. Within the borders of preserves, land managers have traditionally allowed
certain human activities while banning others. For example, in Yellowstone National
Park, hunting, timbering and mining have long been banned. Further, within
Yellowstone, pockets of "primitive" use areas exist where minimal human activity,
such as backpacking, is allowed. Still other areas are Research Natural Areas, where
no human activity is permitted. However, surrounding the park is national forest

where multiple-use activities include intensive land-use, such as timbering and mining.

8 4
In fact, just outside of Yellowstone is a mining operation targeted by the EPA as a
"Superfund" cleanup site (Wilcox S81). For biologists, ecologists and other experts,
such land use in this sensitive region connected by extensive underground geothermal
and water systems is ecologically incompatible and damaging (Wilcox S81). Similarly,
habitat destruction around the Park has led to the decline of grizzly bears. An
individual bear can have a range covering hundreds of square miles. While the
Endangered Species Act protected this emblematic species as of 1975, its numbers have
continued to decline in Yellowstone because of road building and clearcutting outside
of the Park (Wilcox S82). From the perspective of conservation biologists and
activists, both the protection legislation and its enforcement have failed in Yellowstone
and throughout much of North America's wild places (Pulliam S91).

The belief that protection of wild lands was failing -- even in wilderness areas
and national parks -- grew throughout the 19805 among ecologists, wildlife biologists
and conservationists into a consensus by decade's end. Typical of this belief was
Edward Grumbine, who wrote in Ghost Bears: Exploring the Biodiversity Crisis, of a
situation of

inadequate nature reserves, human overpopulation and nonsustainable
resource consumption, species extinction, endangered ecosystems,
impending rapid climate change, and imperfect laws. (21)
The "emergency room" quality of the Endangered Species Act was too reactive for
conservation biologists' tastes, with species being "listed for protection only on the

verge of extinction" (Shute 21). Thus, conservation needed to start to "think big" and

8 5
protect and manage whole ecosystems, rather than isolated preserves. The new
approach included
saving speciﬁc species or ecosystem functions, . . . plants, fragmented
ecosystems sheltering the last representative species, or large
geographical areas more likely to support the evolution of new species.
(Shute 21)
Environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife and later
the Sierra Club launched programs in the late 19805 and 19905 to create bigger
protected areas called "bioreserves," wildlife "communities and corridors" and
"ecoregions" and "bioregions" (Chadwick [no pagination] ). Furthermore, a 1987
Ofﬁce of Technology Assessment report suggested that Congress increase funding to
the National Parks and public lands so managers of these areas could initiate ecosystem
and biodiversity protection (Arrandale 78).

By the end of the 19805, a new conservation model was gaining acceptance and
being adopted by private and public conservation agencies, consisting of a network of
"core" preserves linked together by "wildlife corridors," surrounded by "buffer zones"
in which ecologically-compatible human activities took place (recreation, selective
timbering), surrounded further out by more intense human use, such as industry and
home building ("Great Lakes, Great Places Project Update"). Core preserves would
contain the richest biodiversity and ecological—sensitive habitats and thus, get the most
protection. Buffer zones would be less ecologically-signiﬁcant, but, nonetheless,

important to the integrity of the preserves. In these areas, the overall natural character

8 6
of the land was to be maintained to allow migrating land species, such as wolves, to
move along corridors (often riparian) to winter and summer grounds. The buffers
would also protect sensitive native species in the preserves from invasions or predations
by exotics ("Great Lakes, Great Places," Harris 11-34). Buffers would be larger areas
than preserves and would remain in the possession of private or public landholders with
conservation easements attached. In the high-use areas beyond the buffers,
conservation groups and federal agencies would work with human communities to
create "sustainable development" projects that would beneﬁt local economies, but not
impact on the preserves. For example, The Nature Conservancy in Michigan is
working on projects with local communities in the Upper Peninsula that protect fragile
lakeshore habitats and allow economic development, such as tourism.

The Nature Conservancy is putting this new bioreserve model into practice
throughout the world, counting 75 such "Last Great Places" in the Florida Keys, Latin
American rain forest and the Great Plains. Similarly, Federal land managers have
joined this ecosystem approach with preserving biodiversity as a goal. Other
environmental groups, such as the Defenders of Wildlife, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra
Club and National Wildlife Federation have similar ecosystem protection programs in
place. In fact, many of these groups who have historically not worked well with one
another are doing just the opposite in the common cause of biodiversity preservation
here and abroad. One such initiative is the "Biodiversity Support Program," a
consortium of the United States Agency of lntemational Development (USAID), World

Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and World Resources Institute. Focused on

8 7
developing countries, this program provides biological expertise, economic
development, resource planning and conservation techniques (Online).

Sharing scientiﬁc information and expertise among N G05 and federal agencies
is becoming a hallmark of this new era of environmentalism. Although varying
amounts of distrust and criticism still exist between Nongovernmental organizations and
their counterparts in the government, scientists within each are being united by a new
"biodiversity information infrastructure" (Davis S41). This networking of information
among public and private conservation entities gives the Biodiversity Mission one of its
most persuasive forces. The effort over the last 20 years to systematically and
deﬁnitively catalogue the nation‘s biodiversity and natural habitats is gradually proving
the early claims of a small group of biologists in the 19705 that a crisis exists. Further,
this infrastructure provides crucial information to locate "hotspots" of biodiversity in
the United States and worldwide so limited funds and expertise can be funneled where
they are most needed. Much of this science-driven approach has developed due to the
increasing 50phistication in recent years of the computer; biodiversity is online.

On November 11, 1993, Secretary Bruce Babbitt introduced a new bureau at the
Department of Interior, the National Biological Service. A "biological survey" had
existed since 1896, but only in the 19705 and 19805 did scientists begin to get a
composite picture of the millions of native species and thousands of natural habitats in
the United States, due, in part, to technology. "The National Biological Service will
provide scientiﬁc knowledge to balance the compatible goals of ecosystem protection

and economic progress," Babbitt said. "The National Biological Service will unlock

8 8
information to understand our nation's resources" (Online).

A nonadvocacy, nonregulatory agency, NBS is the central inventory of the
nation's biota. Growing out of the Natural Heritage of The Nature Conservancy begun
in the 19705, the NBS inventories the nation's ﬂora and fauna species by species and
also catalogues natural habitats. This information is shared with federal agencies,
private conservation groups and others to help identify "biodiversity hotspots" around
the country so that they can be protected (Pulliam S92). This information provides
incontrovertible evidence about the status and population trends of species and provides
an "early warning" system about species in danger (Pulliam S92). NBS data on
biodiversity has been fed to the NPS, USFS and BLM -- holders of massive amounts of
public lands primarily in the West -- and has been vital in the decision of multiple-use
agencies to do more to protect native biological diversity (See Chapter 6). For example
in Utah, human access to certain areas of one national park has been curtailed to stop
ecological degradation and biodiversity loss (Canyonlands Backcountiy Plan).

The NBS is partnered with the National Academy of Sciences, Smithsonian
Institution, environmental groups, universities, state agencies and dozens of other
private and public concerns, including business, providing essential information on the
biological makeup of the landscape. Related to the NBS is another partnership, the
Biodiversity and Ecosystems Network (BENE), operated jointly by the Environmental
Protection Agency's Community Environmental Protection Team, the Smithsonian
Institution and National Performance Review and others. Like NBS, BENE provides

information and fosters communications and collaborations among disparate agencies in

8 9
matters of ecological protection (Online).

To make decisions on conservation strategies, a group such as The Nature
Conservancy relies on data from NBS as well as infrared satellite imagery of major
vegetation types, often provided by NASA (Davis S41). Different vegetation types --
and disturbances of these types -- show up as different colors in these maps.

Combining this information, the Conservancy can get a "Rapid Ecological Assessment"
of an area and decide if it needs immediate protection.
the Conservancy borrowed some of the methods of modern warfare,
using satellite photographs and high-resolution aerial reconnaissance to
. deploy ground troops; they are armed with computer-generated maps and
the same sophisticated GPS navigational devices that Desert Storm forces
used . . . REAs turn traditional study on its head . . . Whereas
traditional surveys represent years of work, preliminary information
from an REA is available within weeks; a ﬁnal report including
recommendations can be completed within a year. (Stapleton 13)
All of this is to say, the Conservancy and similar conservation entities are no longer
doing as Jenkins said in the 19703, and protecting nature haphazardly. Instead, the
effort is highly-focused, based on solid science and is much more effective. Armed
with such tools and data, conservation biologists are "warriors" of sorts in the battle for
biodiversity. Moreover, the collaboration among government and NGOs entities at the
information-gathering stage preempts charges and countercharges of collusion, faulty

baseline data and special interests that typically dog conservation and conservation

90
science.

This is not to say, of course, that wranglings and disagreements about the best
way to implement protection of biodiversity do not exist among various players.
Nevertheless, the fact that the federal government considers biodiversity loss a priority
and with the NBS is making basic scientiﬁc information available to experts and private
citizens alike is a positive step forward for conservation in this country. It is also
indicative of the government's desire to be less reactive and regulatory and more
proactive and preventative.

NBS's purpose is to lead a program that pulls together public and private

organizations for gathering information to prevent costly environmental

confrontations over the nation's plant and animal life. (Online)
The emphasis upon proactive solutions to conservation problems, as I discuss in detail
in the following chapter, is another hallmark of the Biodiversity Mission. For early
conservation biologists, the realization that conservation here and abroad was at best
"species triage" was the major impetus behind the push for ecosystem protection today.
The Biodiversity Mission will succeed or fail on whether or not this new conservation
model can be secured throughout the world.

But, it is not without opposition in this country. The Wise Use Movement -- a
conglomeration of ranching, mining and timbering interests -- is mounting campaigns
against this new initiative, regarding it as more "takings" of private property and
restricted use of public lands. In western states in particular, opposition for the last

two decades has been sustained with Wise Use advocates ﬁghting environmental

91
initiatives in the courts and in the media (Stapleton 34). Among the stated goals of the

Wise Use Movement is the disbandment of the national park system, opening up
national parks and wilderness area to mining and oil drilling and gutting the
Endangered Species Act (Stapleton 32). The latter goal is the one which most concerns
environmentalists and conservation biologists today as the Reauthorization of the
Endangered Species Act has ﬂoundered in Congress over the last two years. Imperfect
as it is, the ESA is the best legal defense of biodiversity in the United States and
conservatives want to loosen provisions deﬁning endangered species and protecting
habitat on private and public lands (Steinfels C19).
This comes at a time, when environmentalists, including Secretary of Interior
Bruce Babbitt are calling for strengthening the Act to protect not just species, but
ecosystems.
To avoid contention and lawsuits resulting from "eleventh-hour listings"
of species as endangered, Mr. Babbitt told the House panel yesterday
[February 16, 1993], "we're going to have to manage the Endangered
Species Act pro-actively, by anticipating the problem while we still have
the ﬂexibility to manage the problem." (Stevens A13)
The movement to create an "endangered ecosystems act" and thereby protect whole
assemblages of species, some of which may or may not be endangered, is being
advanced by conservation biologists as the logical and cost-effective solution. The
bioreserve model would protect biodiversity hotspots in core preserves and buffer zones

would surround these and higher-use areas farther out still. These areas would, in turn,

92

be connected to other similar protected areas with natural corridors, forming a vast
network of preserves and protected areas focused around wilderness areas.

The prime architects of these conservation initiatives are conservation biologist
Reed Noss, current editor of Conservation Biology, and wilderness advocate Dave
Foreman, former head of Earth First! and current Executive Editor of Wild Bank.
While the Biodiversity Mission is apolitical, supported by governmental and
nongovernmental entities, forwarded by grassroots and mainstream environmental
groups, championed by the Secretary of the Interior, E. O. Wilson and Dave Foreman
alike, the involvement of Foreman and others gives the cause a radical, even subversive
tinge to it.

The connection between the biodiversity cause and American environmental
radicalism goes back to the late 19805 when Earth First! formed a Biodiversity Task
Force, an organization that litigated endangered species cases (Maines 26). Shortly
thereafter, the word "biodiversity" joined "wilderness" on the masthead of Earth
Firstl's Journal: "In Defense of Wilderness and Biodiversity" (November 1, 1990). In
some ways, this is a curious development for a group that throughout the 19805 prided
itself on being ecoguerrillas and decidedly unprofessional compared to their Beltway
counterparts. However, in the 19905 these paramilitary wilderness defenders were also
defending "biodiversity," which seemed the aegis of conservatives like E. O. Wilson
and The Nature Conservancy. When Earth First! split into two factions in the early
19905, Foreman, along with Journal editor John Davis, formed the Wild Earth, which

along with Conservation Biology, has been the leading journal on biodiversity

93

conservation, policy and ethics. In fact, many of the contributors to Wild Earth such as
Grumbine, Soule, Noss, Ehrenfeld and others are also leading ﬁgures in Conservation
Biology. Wild Earth differs from Conservation Biology in that its mission is to provide
a voice and network for grassroots biodiversity protection efforts around the country.

In that sense, it carries on the decentralized tradition of Earth First! It is also decidedly
more political than Conservation Biology, carrying articles by deep ecologists,
ecofeminists, and well-known environmental advocates such as Doug Peacock, Howie
Wolke, Gary Snyder and Foreman himself.

With the premier issue of Wild Earth, Foreman laid out his vision of "Big
Wilderness" in America. Later it was renamed the "Wildlands Project: the North
American Wilderness Recovery Project." With Reed N055 and others, providing the
scientiﬁc expertise, the Wildlands Project shares similarities with other large ecosystem
protection efforts, like The Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places. But, the rhetoric
and goals of the Wildlands Project are more radical, or perhaps, a better word is
"deep." The Wildlands Project Mission Statement reads, in part:

Our vision is simple: we live for the day when Grizzlies in Chihuahua
have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska . . . when vast
unbroken forests and ﬂowing plains again thrive and support pre-
Columbian populations of plants and animals; when humans dwell with
respect, harmony, and affection for the land; we come to live no longer
as strangers and aliens on this continent. (Wild Earth 3)

Nonhuman species, such as "grizzlies," are capitalized as a matter of style and

94

substance in Wild Earth. "Biophilia," Wilson's idea of an emotional genetic
connection, is frequently reinforced in this journal. Criticisms of business, government
and industry are sharp and uncompromising, recalling the era of confrontation of the
19705 and 19805. Wild Earth is where conservation biologists and other
environmentalists can be their most radical, challenging not only the status quo of
science, but the culture at large. The signiﬁcance of Wild Earth to the Biodiversity
Mission is not so much its niche as the radical voice, but how much it resembles the
more staid and scientiﬁc Conservation Biology. To be sure, the latter is less political,
but not by that much. Many of the contributors, like Noss and Soule, advocate
biodiversity and ecosystem protection in both journals; moreover, they also advocate
advocacy. Noss calls conservation biologists to be "warriors" in a Wild Earth issue and
"activists" in Conservation Biology. Soule and others do similarly. The editorials in
Conservation Biology, such as "The Obligations of a Biologist" by Thomas Lovejoy
could just as easily be printed in the Wild Earth.

The point about these connections is that there is less of a distinction today
between "scientists" and "activists" than there was 20 or even 10 years ago. That E.
O. Wilson remains a respected ﬁgure among his colleagues despite his activism in the
last decade speaks to gap closing between the "two cultures" of humanism and science
that has dominated western societies for the last two centuries. Even Wilson's
hesitation to join the biodiversity cause as recently as the late 19705 demonstrates how
quickly and how much has changed lately. In 1995, for example, the journal

BioScience published primers on how biologists can and must become more active in

95

inﬂuencing public policy (S1). In the keynote address to the 45th annual meeting of

the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Thomas Lovejoy told leaders in the ﬁeld

that
The real challenge is how we as biologists can create a sense of urgency
about biological diversity, climate change and human population growth.

. No group is in a better position than biologists to make this case

and make it eloquently. It is likely to be hard, and maybe even
impossible, to make signiﬁcant progress unless we biologists enter the
fray with greater energy and passion than we have so far. . . . now is
biology's moment in history. We biologists must recognize it ﬁrst. We
need to act now. Now. (S6)

Traditionally, conservation scientists have expected activists and the media to
educate and agitate the public and policymakers on environmental issues. The crisis of
biodiversity loss and other global problems has eliminated that luxury for some
scientists. Some conservation biologists are now taking seminars on public relations
for the express purpose of dealing with the public and media on the complicated issues
of biodiversity. Some have joined the cause willingly and others are being conscripted
by colleagues or their employers. This new paradigm demands, as the experts have
said, a commitment and zeal from scientists that previous environmental causes have
not had. As such, it blurs long—established distinctions between scientist and advocate,
which, in turn, opens up conservation biologists to charges of being "a bunch of

unwashed radicals who use soft science to support their quasi-religious quest to save the

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Earth," as Noss characterized critics of conservation biologists (Wildlife Society

Bulletin Noss 540). In truth, professional opposition to conservation biologists has

been mild and come exclusively from wildlife biologists, some of whom feel that

conservation biology is not so much new as it is a repackaging of some of the

principles of wildlife biology (Jensen 202). However, at least two wildlife biologists in

Wildlife Society Bulletin believe that
the value-driven and crisis-oriented nature of conservation biology
removes it from the desired, value-neutral character of science writ
large, and exposes it to both scientiﬁc criticism and the volatility of
society. (Bunnel 61)

To this charge, Reed Noss responded in the following issue of the journal that
perhaps conservation biologists are simply more forthright in their values
than many wildlifers, more outspoken than conventional scientists about
the tragedy of mass extinction and the need to do something about it. . .
. Is wildlife biology, by comparison, value neutral? 1 think not. Rather,
the values that underlie wildlife biology -- for example, that a surplus of
game animals ought to be maintained for the beneﬁt of hunters -- are
simply more hidden from view. (Noss 540)

One gets the sense from the writings and demeanor of a number of conservation

biologists, especially from the martial arts expert Noss, that while they are not spoiling

for an ideological or political ﬁght, they are not above defending themselves vigorously

once the ﬁrst punch is thrown. This kind of intensity gives conservation biology its

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edge and vibrancy. The discipline of conservation biology, to use a pop psychology
phrase, "empowers" the scientist to act on his or her convictions and not be held back
by conventions. In this regard, conservation biologists are following in the footsteps of
the American prototype of the natural scientist cum activist, who once said, "Action
from principle -- the perception and the performance of right -- changes things and

relations; it is essentially revolutionary" (Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" 7).

CHAPTER 4
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY AND THE

BUSINESS OF BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

"We think of ourselves as Adam Smith with a green thumb. ”

John Sawhill, President and CEO of
The Nature Conservancy, 1995

The Fortunate 500
In 1989, The Nature Conservancy launched a fundraising campaign entitled "The

Fortunate 500." Punning on the well-known annual roundup of the country's richest
corporations in Fortune magazine's "Fortune 500," the Conservancy's "Fortunate 500"
listed biologically-rich places and species found in the United States. "With the Fortunate
500, The Nature Conservancy seeks to raise awareness about the threat of species
extinction in our own backyards," wrote Cliff Messinger, chairman of the Board of
Governors in a promotional publication.

It is also an opportunity to highlight successﬁil creative partnerships the

Conservancy has forged with corporations, foundations, government

agencies, other organizations, and private individuals to save our natural

heritage. (Fortunate 500)

98

 

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The Fortunate 500 campaign was vintage Nature Conservancy, which has courted for
more than 40 years the status of being a conservative environmental group and for the last
three decades one dedicated to preserving biodiversity. This particular campaign was
aimed at a broad audience of corporate sponsors, foundations, legislators and members.
The publicity materials were attractive with photos of species coupled with graphs
depicting rates of extinction and habitat loss, using the pragmatic language of business to

make the case for nature preservation: "opportunity, successﬁil creative partnerships,"
"forged with corporations, government agencies." The conservation message was also
typically reserved -- "raise awareness about the threat of." Such campaigns as this one
over the last 20 years have contributed to image of The Nature Conservancy as the most
pragmatic of the national environmental organizations. As such, the Conservancy has
ﬁlled a vacuum that historically most nature-types have abhorred: working with Big
Business and Big Government. In doing so, The Nature Conservancy has become the most
successﬁil international conservation organization in preserving biodiversity. In fact, by
many measures, The Nature Conservancy is the most successﬁil NGO (nongovernmental
environmental organization) of the 1980s and 19905 (Greene 49).

With assets of $1 billion, the Conservancy owns and operates the largest private
system of nature preserves in the world. Formed in 1951, the Conservancy is is a "land
trust," and has accrued preserves from a few square acres to hundreds of square miles,
totaling 1,500 (Nature Conservancy Fact Sheet). The Conservancy's mission beginning in
the 19805 was to "preserve plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the

diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive" (Nature

Conservancy 4). In short, The Nature Conservancy was the ﬁrst and remains the leader

 

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among environmental organizations speciﬁcally geared toward preserving biodiversity.

Growing exponentially in the 19805 along with many of the national environmental
groups, the Conservancy is the only one to have maintained this trajectory into the mid-
19905. In November 1995, The Chronicle of Philanthropy listed the Conservancy as the
23rd largest charity in the country, behind organizations such as the Salvation Army (lst),
Boy Scouts of America (16th) and Public Broadcasting Service (215t). The next nearest
environmental organization in comparison was the World Wildlife Fund, ranked well
behind at l62nd (Demko 33- 38). Also as of 1995, among the ﬁve "most inﬂuential"
environmental organizations in the country -- along with the Natural Resources Defense
Council, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society --
The Nature Conservancy is the only one, as The New York Times reported, that "has not
been buffeted by declining revenue or membership" (Schneider F 4).

The Conservancy's success, according to its own leaders and to outside observers,
can be traced to two related factors: its "unwavering focus . . . on preserving biological
diversity" and its utilization of "free market" approaches to solving conservation dilemmas
(Famey A16, Anderson 3). To accomplish this mission over the last two decades, The
Nature Conservancy has developed a national biological inventory database network,
begun an international ecosystem protection initiative called "The Last Great Places,"
engaged in ecotourism and sustainable development and worked to make
environmentalism a mainstream social issue in American culture. As a leader of this
"Third Wave" of American Environmentalism, characterized by a business-like approach
to solving conservation problems, The Nature Conservancy and a new generation of

environmentalists are initiating a new and controversial direction for the Movement, one

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that adheres to a belief as TNC President John Sawhill has said, "We can have [economic]
growth and still have endangered species" (USA Today 52). For decades, many
environmentalists -- and, for that matter, business leaders -- have scoffed at the idea that
the ecology and economy could exist without the sacriﬁce of one for the other. The
Nature Conservancy's work and vision run counter to long-standing conventional wisdom
that the Fortunate 500 and Fortune 500 are antithetical to one another. After decades of
rancor between environmentalists and business, the strategy of The Nature Conservancy
and other environmental organizations is to adopt the mien of business to accomplish
environmental goals.

There is a risk, however, in being “Adam Smith with a green thumb,” as Sawhill
describes the Conservancy (Interview in Harvard Business Review) . This risk is both
symbolic and real: losing sight of the fact that one consequence of Smith’s free market
philosophy has been that of an environment overexploited, depleted and polluted by a
consumer culture. With this in mind, The Nature Conservancy’s success must be
measured not just by the fact it has become a robust and inﬂuential player in the
Environmental Movement, but by whether in achieving and maintaining this status it has
remained true to the basic values of American Environmentalism.

The Conservancy’s constantly faces the formidable task of holding on to
environmental ideals in the business world of cutting real estate deals, raising money and
maintaining institutional vitality during a recession period for environmental groups. As
Thoreau said in the last century, there are plenty of “champions of civilization,” as today’s
Fortune 500 list can attest, but few who are willing to “speak a word for Nature”

("Walking" 49). As a speaker for Nature, the Conservancy tries to make its message and

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modus operandi appealing to those on Wall Street, while at the same time, protecting
nature from the excesses of Wall Street. It is delicate balance to strike. The Conservancy
has accomplished this by following a mission that is not based upon the work ethic of
hard-edged individualism, short-term proﬁts and expediency, but on a deeper ethic -- a

land ethic of community, long-term stewardship and ecological values.

The Nature Conservancy and Free Market/Third Wave Environmentalism

As the 19805 began, leaders in the ﬁeld began talking about diversifying their
portfolios, about investing globally, about free market-strategies, the importance of
organizational growth and, of course, proﬁts. These leaders, many of whom were MBAs
with high-level bureaucratic and business experience, headed multi-national defacto
corporations, employed thousands of people, and answered to millions of "stock-holders"
in the form of members. They assembled boards of trustees of wealthy and inﬂuential
Americans with last names like Strohs, Ford and duPont. These leaders and their
management teams drafted long-range strategic plans that would carry their businesses
. into the next century using words like "institution-building" to describe the ﬁJture. They
wore suits to work (Snow 3-32).

All the major environmental groups during the 19805 grew and professionalized
due to a series of ecological disasters such as beach contamination, the Exxon Valdez oil
spill and tropical deforestation and a general rise in public concern about the environment
(Mitchell 15). Some groups grew due to anti-environmental policies of the Reagan
Revolution. For example, The Wilderness Society grew an incredible 144% between

1980 and 1983 (Mitchell 19). Others, most notably The Nature Conservancy, ﬂourished

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in tandem with a more politically conservative era that emphasized private-sector solutions
to social problems, not more government. The Conservancy's tactics and philosophy were
already closely aligned with this free market approach that was an important component to
laissez-faire politics and capitalism under Reagan. According to Philip Shabecoff, the
Reagan Revolution "constituted the most organized, sustained, and virulent opposition
ever encountered by the environmental movement" (207). Environmental groups during
this time, Shabecoff said, reacted one of two ways: they confronted or accommodated
business and government.

The confrontational branch called for “No Compromise in the Defense of Mother
Earth,” assailing not only the powers in government and business but what they believed
to be Vichy environmental groups (Maines 11). Michael McCloskey, former head of the
Sierra Club, characterized this split:

Many radicals wanted to attack the basic system of industrialism and
consumerism, and the mainstream groups did not. The mainstream groups
were attacked for not getting the job done -- for being complacent, co-
opted, bureaucratic, distant, arrogant, interested only in professional
"perks" and money, and for being too conservative. Needless to say, these
attacks, which were largely not reciprocated, ended any sense of comity or
unity in a common cause. (McCloskey 79)
In 1984, Dave Foreman, then head of Earth First!, decried mainstream environmentalists
as resembling
bureaucrats -- pale from too much indoor light; weak from sitting too long

behind desks; co-opted by too many politicians . . . By playing a

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'professional' role in the economic and rational game, we, too, acquiesce in
the destruction of the Earth. (qtd. in Shabecoff 261)

But as the decade wore on into the 19905, Foreman's criticism and that by other
grassroots leaders of the mainstream groups as “selling out” was being listened to less and
less by these groups themselves, and, if membership is an indicator, by that portion of the
American public concerned with environmental issues. Most of the "reform" or
"accommodating" groups -- the National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, The Nature
Conservancy and others -- "emerged from the Reagan counterrevolution bigger and
stronger than ever," enjoying unprecedented growth in memberships and operating ﬁinds
(Shabecoff 255). The more radical groups -- Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd Society, Earth
First! -- also fared well, but were undergoing divisive internal squabbles and declining
memberships as the 19905 began (Shabecoff 256). Among the reformers in the 19905,
the most conservative groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature
Conservancy, bloomed, ﬁlling a "nicely articulated ideological niche," according to
McCloskey (79). In contrast, the ideologues of the reformers -- National Audubon
Society, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society -- underwent great upheavals as they joined the
new trend in environmentalism with its emphasis on cooperating with "existing political
and economic forces to achieve its goals" (Shabecoff 257). The Sierra Club was a good
example of this internal struggle with its director being ﬁred and members angered over
decisions to deal more with business and government (McCloskey 80).

In the 19805 and 19905, The Nature Conservancy, on the other hand, had no
trouble adapting and even enjoyed its status as the "pin-striped real estate brokers of the

environmental movement," which was how Outside magazine had derisively labelled the

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group in 1990 (Gifford 74). The Conservancy was unabashed about its

nonconfrontational, nonlitigious, deal-cutting, pragmatic approach to land and biodiversity
conservation. Since the early 19505, the Conservancy had been practicing "free market
environmentalism" by quietly buying natural lands at "fair market value" and holding them
as an "undeveloper" for the future. Eschewing advocacy, litigation and lobbying, the
Conservancy has always seen itself, as President Bill Blair said in the 19805, as an
important member that did not overstep its bounds within a larger environmental
community.
We are quite good at identifying, acquiring and managing natural areas that
need protection. . . . We think if we become more partisan on political and
economic issues -- say, acid rain -- we would be less effective in what
might be called our niche. (Gilbert 90)
By ﬁlling a speciﬁc, results-oriented niche of simply buying and protecting land over the
last 30 years, the Conservancy has earned the praise of many inside and outside of
environmentalism. "It is all action and no talk," a U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service director
once said (Fitzgerald 18). This strategy has allowed the Conservancy to focus its
resources “right in the dirt," as one official said, instead of costly litigation and other
conservation tools.
Typical of the assessments of the Conservancy's success was Washington
Monthly's in 1988 voting TNC one of the year's best public interest groups:
Other environmental groups condemn The Nature Conservancy for
reﬁising to take on the corporate world or the Reagan administration. But

by foregoing these tactics the low-proﬁle Conservancy has preserved some

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2.6 million acres of selected wetlands, deserts . . . While many other
environmental groups are busy talking from their K Street offices, The
Nature Conservancy is out with mud on its boots, snatching vital lands
from the jaws of condominium developers. (McWilliams 22)
The reluctance of the Conservancy to be an advocate as, say, the National Audubon
Society or Defenders of Wildlife, can be traced back to its formation. The precursor to
The Nature Conservancy was the Ecology Society of America, formed in 1917. The
Ecology Society of America, however, was not created with conservation in mind, but
over concerns that destruction of natural lands would affect ecologists' ability to collect
biological data (Gilbert 96). In 1946, a schism developed in this group of several hundred
scientists over whether or not to intervene with "direct action" when natural areas were in
danger (Nature Conservancy Fact Sheet). A splinter group believing in direct action
formed the Ecologists Union, which adopted the name The Nature Conservancy in 1951.
In 1955, The Nature Conservancy purchased its ﬁrst nature preserve, 60 acres along the
Mianus River in New York state, beginning its portfolio of sanctuaries that includes such
landmarks as the Florida Keys and Tallgrass Prairie of Oklahoma.

Purchasing land hardly seems like the "direct action" that has come to be
associated with the Environmental Movement since the 19705. Since then groups like
Greenpeace, the Sea Shepherd Society and Earth F irst! have been described as "direct
action" due to their demonstrations and ecotage against whaling vessels, oil tankers,
clearcutting machinery and corporations (Mitchell 17). Compared to these groups, The
Nature Conservancy's modus operandi hardly constitutes direct action. But in another

sense, the Conservancy's methodology of buying land and thus controlling it constitutes an

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indisputably effective direct action. Unlike environmental legislation susceptible to the
winds of political change or a last-minute demonstration as the logging trucks roll into an
old-growth forest, TNC's preserves have a tangibility and permanence, protected, in
theory, forever.

This approach throughout the 19705 and 19805 garnered TNC good press with
popular magazines like Reader '5 Digest and National Geographic touting the
Conservancy's work. In December 1988, TNC got the coveted cover of National
Geographic: "Quietly Conserving Nature. At home in the boardroom as well as in the
wild, the Nature Conservancy is striking deals to preserve the earth's biological diversity"
(Grove 818). Among business leaders, TNC was praised for working "within the
system," according to one CEO in article in a USAir in-ﬂight magazine, "Landing the
Deal."

It understands the constraints within which business operates and the need
for economic progress. It doesn't say "We're good and you're bad to
business; it says, "Look, here's something that needs to be done in a way
that will beneﬁt you." It's a balanced style that very much appeals to
business executives. (Wolkomir [no pagination])
Over the years, the Conservancy has also appealed to the business press, written up in
Worth, Financial World and Advertising Age, among others. These articles hit the same
note about TNC, praising its business acumen: "Firms go green with conservancy,"
Advertising Age observed about TNC's cause-related marketing work (Zbar 16). Towards
that end, the Conservancy's strategies over the years have been inventive. For example,

the Conservancy has devised tax shelters for land owners to protect a rare plant on their

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property (Grove 125). It has purchased lands in need of immediate protection and later
sold these the Federal government to manage. In fact, in the 19805, TNC outstripped the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in protecting endangered species with its land acquisitions
(Farney A16).

TNC has worked out "trade-land" deals in which the owner of an ecologically-
important land would be traded for another less ecologically-important property (of equal
or more cash value) owned by TNC. Often TNC trade lands were urban or suburban
properties donated to them by individuals. Similarly, the Conservancy has instituted "debt
for nature" swaps in Latin America in which TNC pays a portion of a country's
international debt for an agreement that it will protect certain biodiversity-rich lands. This
"Parks in Peril" campaign has helped protect 200 tropical ecosystems covering more than
100 million acres and is an important venture in global environmentalism for American
Environmentalism (Parks in Peril). Along with this program, the Conservancy and the
National Audubon Society are combining efforts with South and Latin American
conservation agencies to protect habitat for migrating neo-tropical birds. This "Partners in
Flight" program allows individual or corporate donors to support habitat protection, in say
the Upper Peninsula, and also have a portion of their donations go to habitat in the neo-
tropics (Birds in Flight).

Among the innovative and perhaps the most controversial business ventures TNC
has embarked upon in the last 15 years concerns "sustainable development." Its own
magazine, Nature Conservancy, devoted an issue to this topic in 1995, acknowledging
that the "very mention of the term seems to conjure a question mark" (1 1). Among many

environmentalists, sustainable development, "ecotourism" and some of the "green

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consumerism" strategies of TNC and others conjure more than a question mark, but cries
of selling out to a consumer culture. In the 19905 all three of these hybrids between
environmental protection and economic development became more important than ever to
the conservation strategy of The Nature Conservancy as it embarked on a major new

initiative to protect some of ﬁnest remaining ecosystems in the world.

Of Bison and General Motors

With the launching of its most ambitious conservation agenda ever in 1991, "Last
Great Places: An Alliance for People and the Environment," The Nature Conservancy
ended its low-proﬁle strategy of acquiring land and creating nature preserves over which it
was the sole steward. In this new effort to protect "whole functioning ecosystems in a
manner that also accommodates compatible human activities" in North, Central and South
America, the Conservancy would have to surrender the oversight it once had over its
smaller preserves. The new initiative required unprecedented coordination and
cooperation between TNC and other land holders from private to Federal sectors. With
The Last Great Places campaign, The Nature Conservancy would become one of the
most visible environmental groups in the 19905, raising $300 million over a ﬁve year
period. Shedding its image of the "quiet" land trust as conscious strategy, TNC launched
a media blitz and aggressive direct mail campaign to raise the public's awareness of its
work. After all, protecting a 40 acre preserve along the Lake Michigan shoreline could be
accomplished without much fanfare, but when conservation biologists and land planners
began talking about a plan to protect the entire Great Lakes Watershed, the option to do

this quietly ceased to be available.

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As discussed in Chapter 3, the push to protect ecosystems in the 19905 is
transforming forever how nature is protected in the United States and elsewhere.
Conservation biology has determined what natural communities and species need
protection; it has formulated a plan that calls for creating core preserves surrounded by
buffer zones, linking preserves together by ecological corridors, ergo protecting entire
ecosystems -- in theory. The practice of creating these preserves and buffer zones falls to
environmentalists who are not biologists but experts in land planning, economic
development, public education and ﬁmdraising. However, unless this group can get
people to sign on and sign checks for this "new paradigm," as one expert called it, the
ecosystem protection efforts of the Wildlands Project, Defenders of Wildlife, The Sierra
Club or The Nature Conservancy remain a pipe dream (Pickett 66-67).

The Nature Conservancy was the ﬁrst environmental group to begin thinking of
protecting biodiversity by protecting whole ecosystems. Back in 1975, then science
director Robert Jenkins believed, as did other leading conservation biologists like E.O.
Wilson that the networks of small preserves -- "islands of biogeography" -- were
inadequate to save biodiversity. "The Conservancy will no longer haphazardly acquire
little lifeboats of diversity," Jenkins said in 1975. "We shall protect entire biological
systems" (Morine 77). The main obstacle with protecting larger systems, unlike relatively
intact, pristine wild areas, was that people were already living in these places. The
Conservancy could hardly buy these people out as it had landholders in the past, especially
given the extent of these ecosystems; the Great Plains, Virginia Coast and Colorado
Plateau covered thousands of square miles. Thus, the Conservancy opted to work with

local communities to ﬁnd ways economic livelihood and environmental preservation could

lll

coexist. The model for TNC's "Last Great Places" initiative was the Virginia Coast
Reserve, a chain of barrier islands where the Conservancy began acquiring property in
1969.

The "bioreserve" model, as TNC came to call these projects, would eventually
include 75 sites in the United States and abroad. Although each would differ in the
particulars based upon the geography, human settlement and activity and other factors, all
of these bioreserves would be created under the guiding belief that long-term, sustainable
environmental protection depended on long-term, sustainable local economies that do not
jeopardize the integrity of the land. In other words, Conservancy ofﬁcials argued that
unless local populations saw it in their best economic interests to protect their
environments, they would exploit them. Thus, in the developing nations, indigenous
populations would slash and burn the rainforest for short-term economic gains of farming
marginal lands or providing nonrenewable resources like lumber to western nations,
instead of preserving these places for ecotourism or more compatible agricultural
ventures. In the United States, the problem tended to be overdevelopment of ecosystems
from suburban sprawl, the building of second-homes in wild places, pollution and
nonrenewable resource extraction, such as clearcutting (Godchaux 4).

Many environmentalists and conservation biologists share TNC President John
Sawhill's belief that ﬁnding a balance between the trade-offs of economic development and
environmental protection is the "most pressing environmental issue of our time" ("Last
Great Places" 9). Unlike the earlier wilderness preservation, biodiversity conservation is
not limited to relatively pristine tracts of natural wild land. Sometimes, biodiversity-rich

places exist, surrounded and interspersed by human development Such was the case in the

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19705 when TNC began working in the Virginia coast, an area of rare aquatic and coastal
species under pressure from development. The Conservancy found that given the nature
of this water-based ecosystem pollution upstream and overﬁshing throughout the region
were negatively impacting on its preservation efforts and the ecological integrity of the
whole ecosystem.
To combat this, over the years TNC has created sanctuaries of 43,000 acres in
critical wetlands and estuaries, worked with local landholders to put conservation
easements on their properties, and combined efforts with federal agencies like the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service to study wildlife and helped revitalize a sagging seafood industry
by improving sewage treatment in nearby communities and starting a ﬁsh hatchery ("Last
Great Places" 30). Although the Conservancy's efforts were initially resisted by locals,
today local residents embrace TNC as the ﬁshing industry has rebounded, tourism is
healthy and the ecosystem is ﬁinctioning as it should (Willis 18). Among its "Last Great
Places," the Virginia Coast Reserve is a crown jewel and one officials point to again and
again in internal promotions and press coverage as an example that "rare species and
renewable economic resources" can ﬂourish with this new model (Sawhill 53). Ofthis
approach, President Sawhill has said,
To save our last great places, where the ﬁill array of Earth's natural
diversity is represented, we must adequately factor ourselves into the
picture. We are past the point where we can treat "nature" as separate
from the human race. (qtd. in Willis 14)

Unfortunately for TNC, not every one of its bioreserves has gone as well as the Virginia

Coast Reserve. In 1991, TNC purchased the Gray Ranch in New Mexico, an ecologically-

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signiﬁcant, 500 square-mile, working cattle ranch. As part of the $18 million deal, TNC
agreed to let ranching continue with certain restrictions. It was the biggest private
conservation land purchase ever done, and it drew a lot of attention from the press. The
New York Times Magazine ran a front-cover article on Gray Ranch on June 3, 1990 and
Smithsonian ran an article in February 1992.

The Times article touched on the fact that TNC had an abundance of "Ivy League
MBA's, lawyers, biologists and real estate experts" and counted as its donors "Chevron,
Exxon, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, duPont, Philip Morris, several Western mining and timber
companies . . ." (Selcraig 52). In fact, the Conservancy has 1,000 corporate sponsors
(Annual Report 1994). Although it was generally positive, the article also mentioned the
local opposition to the Conservancy buying the ranch and concerns that it would halt
cattle grazing. Further, it also noted that the ranch was closed to the public, even TNC
members -- something which disappointed many members who wanted to visit it. The
reason the ranch was closed to the public follows TNC's long-standing policy of not
protecting places for the sake of people, but the species themselves. Reporter Bruce
Selcraig characterized the issue as follows:

The politics of preservation also poses another conundrum for
organizations such as the Nature Conservancy: Is it possible to protect a
natural habitat solely for the good of the plants and animals being
protected? Or must the Conservancy show the public what it has
protected, and thus perhaps change the place's wildness? John Sawhill,
who wants to increase Conservancy's membership to three million within

ﬁve years, says, "We must show the people what we've protected or they

 

114

won't be as enthusiastic as they should be."

For Gary Bell [preserve manager], it is an issue that must be resolved in the
interests of science, not politics. "I don't do this for the public," he said
without arrogance. So, I asked would you be willing to manage Gray
Ranch with no public access? The politician within him smiled. "I

believe," he said, "this is where I say 'no comment.” (Selcraig 53)

The tension between those in the Conservancy charged with the task of promoting

its conservation work (the president, fundraising staff, communications) and those whose

task is the conservation of species (biologists, preserve managers) is a constant within the

organization, as this passage illustrates. It is the paradoxical nature of the conservation

business that promotion helps bring in needed ﬁmds to do the science and conservation,

but this promotion can often create problems for the science and conservation. In the case

of Gray Ranch, in 1993 TNC abruptly sold the ranch and in doing so received criticism

from all sides. A 1993 article in Common Ground characterized the mood around the

sale:

TNC's ownership of the ranch evoked widespread controversy. Ranchers
protested any hint of possible transfer to the government. The outcry was
again loud last year when Ted Turner and Jane Fonda negotiated to buy the
ranch. After negotiations with the Turners failed, the Hadely family

stepped forward. (7)

While the terms of the agreement stipulated the ecological values of the land would be

protected, while a viable cattle ranching operation would be allowed to continue, fostering

the local economy, the appearance was that The Nature Conservancy had sold out its

 

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principles of protecting biodiversity-rich land when it became too difficult and costly to do
so at Gray Ranch (TNC bought the ranch for $18 million and sold it for a $5 million loss)
(7). Internally, Gray Ranch became somewhat of as locus non gratas among staff and was
not promoted heavily as a Last Great Place once it was sold.

Nevertheless, it illustrates the problem of working on such a large scale with such
high visibility. Further, it demonstrates the problematic nature of sustainable development
and its companion, ecotourism: deciding in favor of the environment in these situations is
often a difficult and frequently an unfavorable position to take. With Gray Ranch, the
Conservancy became caught between local and national interests: ranchers wanted to
continue to graze here unrestricted without outsiders; some TNC ofﬁcials wanted to
restrict grazing and possibly add a new land use to the area, tourism. Meanwhile, TNC
conservation biologists preferred no additional land use and a severe curtailing of grazing.

In the end, the property was sold without these disagreement being worked out and TNC
looked inept and unprincipled in the process.

Environmental economists and thinkers disagree about whether sustainable
development and ecotourism are the tools to solve the age-old impasse between economy
and ecology. Academic journals, books and popular articles abound on these subjects.
"Ecotourism: Can It Protect the Planet?" a New York Times article asks (Weiner F15).
Experts disagree not only about the merits of sustainable development and ecotourism, but
also about their deﬁnitions, what qualiﬁes as legitimate ventures in either and which of the
two concerns -- the economy or ecology -- take precedence in decisions that are
necessarily based on trade-offs. One of the most astute environmental thinkers today,

Donald Worster, expresses a reservation that is shared by many environmentalists and

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environmental scholars. Looking back in history, Worster observes that the economy has

always taken precedent over environmental protection, leading to a series of dammed

rivers, depleted aquifers, dust bowls, over-logged public forests, pollution and species

extinctions (Wealth of Nature 146). According to Worster, history would indicate that

combining the two in a mutually-advantageous relationship in the 19905 is unlikely.
I fear that in the partnership it will be 'development' that makes most of the
decisions, and 'sustainable' will come trotting along, smiling and genial,
unable to assert any ﬁrm leadership, complaining only about pace of travel.
(153)

Other critics of sustainable development and ecotourism have argued similarly.

In Conservation Biology, David Ehrenfeld writes of this new trend in "The Business of

Conservation" that
A large part of the natural world has been damaged or destroyed by
unregulated commerce. Now, various groups of conservationists are trying
to save some of the most spectacular remnants of nature -- both species
and ecosystems -- with more commerce. The idea is an interesting one,
and it is always nice to turn the tables and use the methods of exploiters to
prevent more serious exploitation, but the risks are high and not everyone
in the business of saving by selling seems to have much thought to them.
(1)

The Conservancy has engaged in the "business of saving by selling" to great success in

recent years, although it has approached that gray dividing line between appropriate and

inappropriate conduct in a worthy effort.

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This was so in January 1994 as TNC geared up promotions of a Last Great Places
preserve called the Tallgrass Prairie. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma is
30,000 acres of remnant prairie that once totaled 142 million acres across the nation's
midsection. Acquiring the preserve took more than 60 years of dealings and a $15 million
price tag. Rare native ﬂowers and grasses, such as big bluestem and Indian switch grass,
cover the preserve. In prairie ecosystems, many species of plants rely on natural forces to
rejuvenate them, such as wildﬁres. Conservancy biologists often do "proscribed burns" of
habitats to eliminate competing exotic species or promote seed dispersals from cones like
the jackpine that need heat to burst them open. In the case of the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve one natural force that had been missing from the land for almost a century was
American bison. In a public relations coup, in January 1994, TNC brought bison back to
this prairie (Bayles D1).

General Norman Schwarzkopf, a TNC trustee, presided over the release of some
300 bison on the preserve in an event that included Osage tribal leaders, state and national
dignitaries, the national press corp and major donors and corporate sponsors of the Last
Great Places. National media was there and Schwarzkopf appeared on "CBS This
Morning" to talk about the Conservancy and its work. Prior and subsequent to the event,
TNC members were offered a chance in Nature Conservancy magazine to "adopt a bison
and help The Nature Conservancy save part of America's vanishing heritage". This
"adopt-an-animal" approach had been little used by TNC before, in part, because it
resembled too closely the single-species focus of groups like Defenders of Wildlife and the
World Wildlife Fund. The text accompanying the adopt-a-bison advertisement included a

brief explanation that the bison were key to restoring this native prairie, thereby, including

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a more "biodiversity-based" plea.

The dramatic and symbolic impact of video and still pictures of bison gamboling
across the prairie caught the attention of both the public and the corporate world. Print
ads began appearing in summer 1994 in national magazines, including this tag line: "We've
got three trucks and 300 bison and we've never had a single trafﬁc jam." The
accompanying photo showed a man (TNC President Sawhill) standing on the bed of a
pickup and scanning with binoculars a herd of milling bison. Additional text of the ad
touted the Tallgrass Prairie preserve and TNC's work.

The goal: safeguarding the environment without destroying jobs or
businesses. That's the goal General Motors shares. So we're supplying
funds, talent and even GMC Trucks used to maintain Tallgrass. (The New
Yorker)
A similar, but longer advertising section appeared in the New Yorker during the fall of
1994. The ad extolled GMC's "Jimmy" sports utility vehicle and The Nature
Conservancy's work.

The Nature Conservancy, as do many of the big environmental organizations, has a
director of "cause-related marketing" and a number of others who do nothing but court
corporate ﬁnancial support. Corporate support, unlike individual support, is often quid
pro quo. People give money to land conservation for altruistic and aesthetic reasons: they
believe nature has rights, they want to preserve a natural legacy for others, they want to
preserve beauty. The big environmental organizations get the vast majority of their money
from individuals. In the case of the Conservancy, 70% comes from individuals, which is

about the same for the others (Greene 50).

 

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The reasons corporations give money to environmental organizations is less
altruistic. True, some do so out of a sense of civic duty, especially those who do pro bono
work for environmental groups and ask for anonymity. Those are rare, however.

Instead, corporations give money to an environmental cause because it puts them in the
favorable light of being "green," an asset among today's environmentally-concerned
American public. "Environmental concerns are becoming a measurable, mainstream factor
in directing the ﬂow of future investment into the marketplace," wrote Peter Osgood, a
business analyst (Business and Environment 2). "Corporations are merely responding to
national concern and a growing awareness of environmental issues," another executive
told Advertising Age (Zbar 16). An American Express executive said of his company's
sponsorship of a Nature Conservancy program in Costa Rica:
There's a growing awareness at American Express that protecting the
environment is very important to our customers and the travel industry.
Because of this, the relationship we have forged with the Conservancy is a
critical element of our business strategy. (International Update)
A November 1994 internal TNC memo, "Cause-Related Marketing" cited a study that said
cause-related marketing "builds credibility in the eyes of consumers."
2/3 of consumers are very/somewhat likely to switch brands if a product is
cause-related. . . . 26% of consumers can name a company they believe to
be socially responsible. l in 5 consumers say they have brought a product
a service in the past 12 months because it was associated with a cause or
issue. (Cause-Related Marketing Update)

In short, "eco-commercialism," as a Time article dubbed it, like sustainable development,

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is a hybrid between two old nemeses: ecology and economy (Cramer 48). "Green
marketing," as it also called, is one of the fastest growing trends in advertising. It is a
bandwagon issue and one which the automobile industry is hitching its cars and trucks to
with more regularity, especially, the most popular new niche of "sport utility vehicles"
(Krebs F33).

Roughly two percent of the nation's lands are covered with paved roads and
roughly the same amount exists as wilderness (Krebs F 33). Wilderness advocates charge
that the nature of these four-wheel drive vehicles allow it to penetrate into wild areas
where a conventional car could not go. Many groups like the Sierra Club have called for
bans on four-wheel drives on many public lands because of the damage they do (Krebs
F 33). Nevertheless, auto companies continue to advertise their product in natural settings,
going so far as Jeep did in a 1994 campaign to label a pristine desert canyon and mountain
as a "pothole" and "speed bump" that were no match for "Jeep engineers" (Outside).

As part of the GM deal, The Nature Conservancy lent its name and photos of some
of its preserves to an advertising campaign beyond the Tallgrass Prairie. In this campaign
photos of 1995 Cadillacs were superimposed on top of "a few of the 1,500 preserves
maintained by The Nature Conservancy." At this, many Nature Conservancy employees,
including myself, felt TNC had sent the wrong message to the public about its
conservation work, especially since these preserves have limited access to people on feet
and do not allow any vehicles on them. So, the question for many TNC employees and
outside observers is whether GM or TNC cut the better deal. TNC got $15 million, trucks
and exposure in a national print and television campaign paid for by GM and General

Motors looked green by advertising its vehicles in nature preserves.

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For environmental purists, the answer is simple. They argue that the development
of "green advertising" or "green consumerism" or "free market environmentalism" over the
last two decades is an insidious trend. In Sierra, Thomas Power and Paul Rauber write,

Free-market enthusiasts assume that market-oriented, calculating, self-
regarding (i.e. greedy) behavior is all that is needed for a good, responsible
society. . . . The basic operating principle behind a "free market society" is
an anti-democratic one: that people's preferences, whatever they may be,
should be accepted and given an importance in proportion to the dollars
that back them up. (94-95).
Others like Paul Harrison in The Amicus Journal worry that the ongoing high
consumption rates in western nations, spurred by consumer economies, far outstrip any
gain that green consumerism might offer. Combined with rising population growth,
especially in developing countries, Harrison concludes that
consumption will be the hardest nut to crack . . . growing at roughly 2
percent a year. . . . Consumption can be cut if consumers and producers
have to pay for the damage they do through higher prices or taxes -- but
politically, it is not easy. (23)
One of the criticisms of green consumerism or free market environmentalism is that it is a
false panacea: a "win-win" solution for ecology and economy. The thesis of Harrison and
other well-known ecologists such as Dennis and Donella Meadows and William Ophuls is
that a steady two percent growth in consumption translates into more depletion and
pollution of an already depleted and polluted environment than can be offset by the

number of sustainable development schemes in places (21). In this paradigm, I believe the

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authors would argue that the support GM provides to introducing bison to the Tallgrass
Prairie is minuscule compared to the environmental damage its vehicles cause worldwide
with emissions, and ﬁrrther, GM, as the largest corporation in the nation, is culpable as the
engine of the American consuming way of life. What's good for GM is not what's good
for the environment.

In an article in Environmental Ethics, L. M. Benton questions the wisdom of
environmental organizations adopting commercial strategies to promote their cause. The
author focuses primarily on products from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club -- which,
incidentally, published the Power's and Rauber's harsh critique of free market
environmentalism. Products such as tote bags, calendars, T-shirts and books are an
important source of income for environmental groups, including the Conservancy. The
Conservancy also has had a partnership with the Nature Company, which sells arts, maps
and gadgets with ecological themes. A portion of sales goes to The Nature Conservancy
which lends its name and logo to certain products. The National Wildlife Federation has
similar arrangements with Sears and K-Mart (Cramer 48). All of which is to say, as
Benton does, that mixed messages abound in commercial efforts by environmental
organizations.

Does merchandise which displays the message to preserve contribute to
environmental despoliation by encouraging us to explore, experience, and
care? These are difficult questions with no neat and clean answers.
Environmental organization officers could get sidetracked with a proﬁtable
business of commodity production, forgetting their criticism of

consumerism and their long-range goals of social and economic

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transformation . . . (21)

None of the issues surrounding the current trend of free market environmentalism
is easy to answer and many rely on long-range forecasts on both the health of global
economies and global ecologies -- neither of which, given the multitude of variables, can
be deﬁnitively predicted. Still, these are issues which contemporary environmental
organizations must all revisit. The boards of the major environmental organizations are
rife with corporate CEOs. The annual reports of the majors have lengthy lists of
corporate sponsors, a few of which like Exxon and Union Carbide have been responsible
for two of the worse ecological disasters in history -- the Valdez oil spill and the Bhopal
catastrophe (Environmental Almanac 126). Does that mean these environmental groups
have been compromised?

The Conservancy seems to adopt the attitude, as do many environmental
organizations, that it will take money and support from anywhere and use this to carry on
its good works and advance its mission. It is a practical, stopgap, and perhaps, ﬁnally,
wise course to take given the entrenched "laissez-faire economic system" and the fact that
our society "has an enormous vested interest in the continuation of growth" (Ophuls 23 7-
8). Creating a "steady state" economic system as many environmentalists argue is a worthy
goal, but one that can only be reached incrementally, as William Ophuls argues
convincingly in Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited. Ophuls characterizes this
steady state as the opposite of today's laissez-faire system, founded on competition, the
grab for dwindling resources and wealth and a short-sighted view of the future. Instead,
the steady state takes as its directives the lessons of ecology: community, niches, diversity

and ﬁugal use of resources. Among the factors necessary for this change, Ophuls

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considers "stewardship" to be tantamount.
The character of economic life will change totally. Ecology will engulf
economics, and we shall move away from the values of growth, proﬂigacy,
and exploitation typical of "economic man" toward sufﬁciency, frugality
and stewardship. The last especially, at least in its minimal form of
trusteeship, will become the cardinal virtue of ecological economics. (287)
In this sense the Conservancy, despite the guise and method of a free marketer itself, has
moved American society further in this direction than any other steward of natural lands.
It has done so by not playing politics with its lands, as the Federal government is apt to,
opening up sanctuaries to drilling as is the current talk about doing with the Arctic
Wildlife ReﬁJges. It has done so more than other environmental groups because it has
focused its sizable resources in large part on this one task alone -- buying land. Unlike
many others who lobby and litigate, the Conservancy still is essentially creating private
nature preserves that it will own and manage in perpetuity. While other groups like the
Sierra Club have done far more for advocating and raising awareness of environmental
issues, the Conservancy's quiet approach has done more for actually saving all the pieces,
as Leopold once said as the deﬁnition of "intelligent tinkering" or conservation ("The
Round River" 190). As the largest private nature preserve holder in the world, one
challenge TNC faces in the ﬁtture with its ecosystem protection project is to maintain its
track record of saving land and not, instead, have its limited resources go to developing
compatible industries, ecotourism ventures and other conservation strategies that are not
actually putting aside land. The Conservancy has had success, where others have faltered,

because it has taken the ecological principle of a niche to heart. If it forgets that lesson

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and becomes too diffused in its agenda as many of the other environmental groups have it
will compromise its mission.

The Conservancy's niche is clearly demarcated in its mission: "to preserve plants,
animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting
the lands and water they need to survive." This mission embodies the "essential message
of ecology [which is] limitation" -- these species and systems are ﬁnite -- and, in that
regard, challenges the status quo of our consumer society (Ophuls 40). In a nice irony,
the Conservancy uses the tools of capitalism to accomplish what is essentially a goal quite
different from business' preternatural ﬁxation on growth, competition and proﬁts. This
point was well made by an unnamed TNC ofﬁcial in an interview with Donald Snow in
Inside the Environmental Movement:

We can't be who we are without the hard-core activist groups. They allow
the Conservancy to be as conservative as it is. . . . I'm absolutely convinced
that if it wasn't for the more activist groups, there's no way we could get
support from corporate America. We don't look good to corporate
America -- we look good in comparison to other people. We need those
organizations, and we need that spectrum to successfully occupy our niche
along the way. (177)

That The Nature Conservancy does not look good to corporate America might
seem an odd comment from a TNC official, since the organization has gone out of its way
over the years to appeal to business. But this official is essentially right. The Nature
Conservancy and the Environmental Movement as a whole have gotten big and powerﬁtl

enough that corporate America has been forced to deal with them. Business has had to go

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to the bargaining table by environmental impact laws, by negative press coverage and by
the insistence of the American public -- consumers -- that the environment matters. This
fact was pointedly driven home for me on May 18, 1992 when I attended a meeting of the
Economic Club of Detroit addressed by President John Sawhill. It was the ﬁrst time an
environmentalist spoke to this body of automobile executives and business leaders.
Sawhill's message was essentially that a thriving economy and healthy environment can
exist without the sacriﬁce of either. Sawhill, an economist himself and former director of
a chemical company, was the right messenger for this audience. Sawhill told the audience
that it "makes good business sense for companies to pursue aggressive -- and well-
publicized -- environmental initiatives" (Speech Transcript). He also said businesses
should protect the environment because it was the "right thing to do." It was statement
Sawhill did not elaborate on, but one that was interesting from the fact that the
Conservancy does not talk much about its work in a moral sense. Instead, it presents the
impetus for its work as preserving nature for "future human generations." For instance,
The Michigan Chapter of The Nature Conservancy published an article in its newsletter
offering "10 Reasons" to save biodiversity. Only one of the ten listed touched on intrinsic
worth of other species ("Saving Biodiversity" 10).
At the Detroit Economic Club in Cobo Hall, Sawhill was introduced by a Michigan

TNC Board Member who bore the most famous last name in town, William Clay Ford, 111.

In the history of conservation, Sawhill‘s talk hardly matters much, except from the
standpoint that an awful lot of preaching in environmentalism is to the choir and not to
those who have potentially the power to do the most damage or the most good for the

environment. On May 18 for 45 minutes, several hundred corporate executives were a

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captive audience to a viewpoint that many had been trained to regard as antithetical to
their version of the American Dream. Sawhill's speech was a soft-sell, to be sure, saying
he was not arguing for "limits on growth" or "more regulation," but for "cooperation,"
"less governmental interference" and more "market-based approaches." Nonetheless, it
carried the message that more needed to be done to protect the environment and that
business must assume the leadership. When his speech was over, Sawhill received polite
applause. Sometime later the Michigan Chapter enjoined several new corporate sponsors
because of Sawhill's appearance and promptly, as is its custom, put the money into

projects to protect biodiversity throughout the state.

CHAPTER 5

THE PRESS AND BIODIVERSITY

“What ’s the news? "
Thoreau, 1854

"If the estimates / of biodiversity loss] are true, why is the
media not doing more reporting on it? "

Jim Detjen
Environmental Journalist, 1995

A conundrum has existed for biodiversity advocates in the 19905 who desire to use
the news media as a disseminator of information and defacto messenger for their cause.
While surveys and opinion polls demonstrate that the majority of Americans rely on the
media for information about the environment, a majority of Americans, to date, have never
heard of biodiversity loss. A 1993 Defenders of Wildlife Survey found that "only one in
ﬁve Americans (22%) say that they have heard of an issue called 'the loss of biological

diversity. Additionally, the survey found the public relies on the media more than
scientists, politicians and environmental groups for "most of their information about the

environment." Therefore, environmental reporting "can be a very important vehicle for

disseminating facts about biological diversity" (Defenders Survey).

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129

Other studies and environmentalists have said as much about the potential for
environmental reporting to aid the biodiversity cause. Lester Brown of Worldwatch is
typical of the belief about the role the media can play:

We don’t have time for the traditional approach to education -- training
new generations of teachers to train new generations of students -- because
we don’t have generations, we have years. The communication industry is
the only instrument that has the capacity to educate on the scale needed in
the time available. (qtd. in Hertsgaard 49)
Biologists such as E. O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy and leaders of environmental groups
such as The Nature Conservancy's John Sawhill and Defenders of Wildlife's Rodger
Schlickeisen consider the enlistment of the media as a key component to the biodiversity
cause. Schlickeisen has said,
What is needed is a bold new plan for protecting the ﬁJll diversity of
species and habitats that will capture the public's imagination and command
the attention of government policymakers. A key initial component of such
a plan should be a massive campaign to increase the public's ecological
literacy. (17)

The issue of the public's ecological literacy is a serious impediment to the
Biodiversity Mission. Biodiversity proponents like Wilson and environmental studies
professor David Orr consider the public to be largely ecologically illiterate and broad
studies on the level of general scientiﬁc knowledge among the masses are discouraging.
"The general level of scientiﬁc knowledge, even among educated people, is very low.

There are a lot of people who don't know the sun is a star, " concluded one scientist

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(Detjen S60). Thus, educating the public about a complex subject via the news, a medium
that by deﬁnition simpliﬁes and abbreviates, is challenging both for biodiversity advocates
and the environmental journalists reporting on the issue. Small wonder that there is an
"immense perception gap" between what scientists consider the most serious ecological
threat to the planet -- biodiversity loss -- and what the public does -- pollution (Defenders
Survey).

Another problem with the media's coverage of biodiversity and environmental
issues as a whole has to do with competence and trust. Surveys have found that both the
public and environmental journalists themselves think the press does a mediocre or poor
job of covering the environment. "Only 3% of the journalists said they consider overall

environmental coverage to be 'very good, according to one survey. The same survey

found public Opinion to be equally low (F ACS Survey). In a similar vein, the public does

not trust the media for providing good information.
Though they rely on the media for environmental information, Americans
say they would place the greatest trust for accurate information on
biodiversity loss in scientists (42%), environmental groups (39%), and the
EPA (36%). The public exhibits the least trust in the president (6%) and
members of Congress (2%), news reporters (5%), and business leaders
(4%). (Defenders Survey)

The paradox, here, of course, is that the main source of information the public

turns to on the environment is the media -- newspaper articles, TV news reports,

science/nature TV shows and magazine articles -- and it trusts this source very little.

Conversely, while the public may trust environmental groups and scientists most, only 9%

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of the public gets their environmental information from these sources (Defenders Survey).

The difficulty of relying on the media gets ﬁthher complicated if the increasingly
politicization of environmental news beginning in the 19805 is factored into the equation.
"The politics of the environment," as it has been called, has created a contentious
atmosphere in the 19805 and 19905 as environmental and anti-environmental forces have
lined up, attempting to sway the media and the public to their position through shrill
rhetoric and sometimes outright distortion of the facts. The recent example of the
spotted-owl controversy in the Paciﬁc Northwest speaks to to this as the hype around the
issue reached fever pitch with two U.S. presidents weighing in and national
newsmagazines such as Time trumpeting on its cover: "Owl vs. Man." This kind of
reductive, sensational environmental reporting has become all too familiar as the news
outlets compete in a market in which they must not only be informative but entertaining
as well. Thus, "infotainment" rules the media today, according to many critics, and sober,
factual reporting has been sacriﬁced. "Why bore people with corporate America's assault
on environmental protection when they can be entertained instead?" Carl Pope of the
Sierra Club has said of the current climate (12).

In their defense, environmental reporters also ﬁnd themselves victims of this
contentious atmosphere. Lou Prato, in Covering the Environmental Beat, advises
reporters to doubt everyone in an environmental debate.

Politicization of environmental issues is so prevalent that even scientists,
policymakers, and public-interest groups that are normally credible and
responsible are distrusted. . . . The issues are often so complicated,

contradictory, and technical that one can easily be overwhelmed. The best

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some reporters can do is learn all they can and to be skeptical about
everything. (8)
Thus, the end result in recent environmental reporting is often a kind of gridlock effect
with a reporter covering a technical issue like ozone depletion or biodiversity 1055, quoting
one expert saying the situation exists and another saying it does not. These antipodal
claims in the interest of “balance” stymies not only the reporter's ability to assess the
veracity of either claim, but also leaves the audience unsatisﬁed and conﬁtsed.

Even if and when a reporter does offer analysis this can be problematic.

Unlike political reporters who often assess a policy or governmental performance,
environmental reporters are hard pressed to say whether species extinction models are
accurate, the greenhouse effect is worsening or an ecosystem is failing, in part, because
the evidence behind all of these is so complex and technical that journalists don't have the
necessary expertise to comment one way or another. Only 2% of environmental
journalists studied the sciences, according to a recent survey, and 72% of environmental
reporters said they feel they lack the necessary training to cover technical issues (FAC S
Survey).

Biodiversity loss is nothing if not esoteric and it needs a reporter who is competent
at making this issue understandable to the masses without oversimplifying or distorting it.
This assignment is considerably harder than a reporter assigned to cover the impact of an
oil spill on a wildlife refuge. In contrast to this disaster, conveying the insidious loss of
species, halfway around the world, is a difficult assignment. Reporter John Maxwell
Hamilton found himself in this situation in the mid-19805 when biodiversity 1055 ﬁrst began

to be heard outside of scientiﬁc circles. He went to one renowned biologist and asked

133

him to explain why people should care about the loss of biodiversity in the tropics. The
biologist responded, "Because, if you live in Des Moines and care about New York City,
you should care about Costa Rica" (4). As Hamilton later reﬂected on this encounter, it
becomes the task of the reporter to make the public see this enigmatic ecological
connection. "But," he wrote,

the templates that help reporters easily turn a local ﬁre into a news story

don't exist for the global environment. Journalists have a lot of learning

and a lot of explaining to do. . . . As one learns in the Costa Rican jungle,

this is the time to complicate the story (14).

In the 19905, reporters like Hamilton and others have been "complicating the
story," and despite the many failures and limitations of environmental reporting, there is a
movement afoot to improve biodiversity coverage. In fact, I will argue shortly that
biodiversity coverage, at least in several inﬂuential mass circulation publications, has been
quite good. Further, there is a concerted effort among environmental journalists to
improve biodiversity reporting in the mass media by providing better training and
information exchange with experts, thus, making available a new kind of environmental
reporting that is not the "crisis-of-the-month" variety that is all too familiar. Instead, this
reporting would parallel more closely the nature of the biodiversity problem, that is, it
would be more frequent, complex, interconnected and sustained.
These developments and others in environmental reporting are advantageous to the

Biodiversity Mission. With this in mind, the remainder of this chapter will focus primarily
on the positive changes taking place, rather than simply catalogue the failings of the news

media. To be sure, the media has a myriad of problems, particularly the "tabloidization" of

1 3 4
the institution -- evident by the discouraging fact that NBC and CBS evening news

devoted 40% of their coverage last year to the OJ. Simpson trial (Pope 12). But, the
media alone is not to blame, which leads to the other seemingly intractable problem for
biodiversity advocates utilizing the media to further their ends. While the media is
culpable for the lack of solid environmental news reaching the public, it is not alone in
blame. The media, at least in part, responds to the interests of their audience. The public
seems to crave "infotainment" rather than "hard news." Although some surveys show
that the public wants more environmental news, an even more persuasive indicator of
public opinion contradicts this. In "The Public Opinion Paradox," George Pettinico argues
in Sierra that surveys showing vast majorities of Americans consider themselves to be
"environmentalists" are misleading.
When pollsters ask people if they are concerned about the environment,
most answer "yes." However, when not prompted, survey show that the
majority of Americans do not pay as much attention to the envrionment as
to a host of other concerns. (Online)
Pettinico elaborates,
In the ﬁve decades that Gallup has posed this question [What is the most
important problem facing the country today?], environmental concerns
have never registered as the number-one issue for more than 7 percent of
respondents. (Online)
Thus, for biodiversity advocates, utilizing the press to get across their message is once
again more difficult since there is weak evidence that the public truly wants more coverage

and weaker evidence still that once getting this message, it will be mobilized to the cause.

135

Nevertheless, there is reason for cautious optimism that the media can make this issue vital
and important to the lives of average Americans by making biodiversity loss a more local,
or at least national issue and tying it to previous environmental issues, notably wildlife and
wilderness preservation.

There is precedence for the free press to be a tocsin and a watchdog of
environmental abuse, alerting people of toxic waste in their neighborhoods, pollution in
their cities, endangerment of wildlife and destruction of wilderness (Shabecoff xiv). Many
sociological and media studies have found correlations between press coverage of
environmental issues and subsequent concern among the public. One of the most
comprehensive and famous of these studies by A. Clay Schoenfeld concludes that the
press is instrumental in deﬁning a "social problem," such as environmental degradation and
has aided in the "success of environmental claims-makers" by "increasingly call[ing the
issue] to public attention" (47). Other media scholars have said similarly, arguing that the
press has an "agenda-setting" capability within society with regard to environmental
issues, particularly in raising the salience of these issues (Atwater 393).

A high correlation between intrapersonal salience and perceived-media
salience would suggest that when individuals say environmental subissues
are personally important to them, those judgments are not made
independent of perceptions of media presentations. (Atwater 397)
In more common parlance, if The New York Times feels biodiversity loss is worthy of
coverage, its readership will also consider the issue worthy of concern. Thus, I believe the
media can do for the biodiversity issue what it has done for other environmental causes

like pollution and wilderness destruction: make it a national political issue.

136

Localizing a Global Story

Since scientiﬁc work in the tropics in the 19705 and 19805 ﬁrst detected the
biodiversity crisis, it is not surprising that the press coverage which followed would be
focused on far-ﬂung locales. Additionally, as experts like E. O. Wilson have said,
biodiversity conservation most be focused in these places (Interview with Boume 13).
Therefore, initial press coverage of the issue of biodiversity 1055 focused on it as a global
crisis -- which it is -- but in doing so ignored the problem at home. For instance, Time
reported in 1989 that "It is in the tr0pics . . . that the battle to preserve what scientists
call biodiversity will be won or lost" where 7 % of the earth's surface houses between 50
and 80% of the planet's species (Linden 32). Prominent scientists in the 19805, such as
Wilson and Norman Myers, reiterated the importance of saving tropical habitats, which for
the Amazon rainforest alone, was disappearing at staggering rates. In response to this, in
the 19805, rainforest conservation groups, such as Conservation lntemational, formed and
the mass media ran numerous articles and broadcast documentaries on the plight of the
rainforest. Even rock stars such as Sting made the rainforest an issue for MTV audiences
(McDowell 76).

As disturbing as this environmental news was, however, it seemed removed and
remote, which as noted earlier is one of the essential conceptual problems of biodiversity.
It was Costa Rica's problem, not Iowa's, as reporter John Maxwell pointed out.
Traditionally, environmental press coverage has been focused on environmental protection
-- largely urban issues such as pollution and toxic waste (Shabecoff 218-19). This makes

logical sense since the media, like its audience, is concentrated in urban environments and

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one of the essential qualities of news is that it must be of "human interest" (Anderson 19).
A toxic dump in a local community has the immediacy and human impact that the slashing
and burning of a rainforest do not. Furthermore, despite the world becoming a global
village, the "news mix" of most media outlets is weighted considerably more to the local
or national news story than it is to the international news story (Anderson 27). Exceptions
to this exist, of course, most notably The New York Times, which considers itself the
"paper of record" for world news (Anderson 27). Therefore, the biodiversity story would
naturally get less play in most media outlets because it is not regarded as meeting the
journalistic criteria of "proximity." This was the case throughout the 19805 with
biodiversity coverage either nonexistent in smaller markets, or in the case of national
publications and broadcasts treated as problem of developing countries and not that of the
United States (Detjen S59).

But this began changing gradually in the 19905 as the press started chronicling
biodiversity loss in this country. Their coverage followed efforts of national
environmental groups such as The Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife whose
mission throughout the 19805 and 19905 was primarily to preserve biodiversity in North
America. Further, as the Federal Government began adopting biodiversity protection
strategies for its national parks and other landholdings, the issue became more closely
identiﬁed with national interests. This could be said to be a version of NIMBY, which
environmental reporter Philip Shabecoff believes is one of the more potent new forces in
the Environmental Movement since the 19805. The NIMBY or "Not-In-My-Backyard"
movement has been largely grassroots, and thus local in focus and scope.

No mass nuclear waste repository. No mass burn incinerator. No toxic

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waste repository. . . . Not in my backyard. It is happening with such
regularity around the country that some speak of a "NIMBY movement." .
. . When a community reﬁJses to have a shelter for the homeless or a drug
treatment center in its midst, it may reﬂect selﬁshness. But where it is
aimed at rejecting environmental hazards, NIMBY is the authentic voice of
people stating in no uncertain terms that they do not want the assault on
their air, water, and soil to continue (237).
While some environmentalists regard NIMBY as selﬁsh and short-sighted, others suggest
that global issues like biodiversity loss can become potent NIMBY or NIABY issues,
given the right presentation. NIABY stands for "Not-in-anybody's-backyard" (Shabecoff
237)

Biodiversity press coverage in the 19905 seems to follow this NIABY focus, as
journalists report of biodiversity loss at local, regional and national locales and the
implications it has globally. In other words, this kind of reporting is particularizing an
abstraction, personalizing the (global) political, to paraphrase a feminist saying. For
example, a 1994 article in The New York Times addressed this shift in focus: "Redeﬁning
Diversity: Biologists Urge Look Beyond Rain F orests" (Angler Bl). "Environmental
activists have succeeded in adding the term biodiversity to the common lexicon, and it has
been identiﬁed above all with the tropical rain forests," writes Natalie Angier, who then
goes on to detail how biodiversity is beginning to be measured differently and in places
outside the tropics, such as the Great Lakes, Paciﬁc Northwest and Appalachia (B1, B9).
A year prior to this article, an A nn Arbor News reporter, Karl Leif Bates, had already

gotten this message. A lead he wrote on a story about a local Nature Conservancy

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preserve said pointedly, "Biodiversity. It isn't just for Brazil anymore" (B1).

Localizing or regionalizing the biodiversity story has been an important component
of The Nature Conservancy's work for years. A confederacy of state chapters publicizes
their land trust work within the state, while the national office concentrates on promoting
ﬂagship and larger projects, such as the Virginia Coast Reserve and The Great Plains
Initiative. In a similar way, the Wildlands Project, a North American wilderness
preservation effort, works to identify and safeguard biodiversity regionally in the United
States with grass-roots work by groups such as the Greater Salmon-Selway Project and
the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project. Coterminous with this is the activism of
conservation biologists who, according to Michael Soule, are writing op-ed pieces for
their local newspapers, attending local planning meetings and highlighting the threats to
biodiversity within their communities, as well as worldwide (Phone Interview).

Perhaps the best example of the recent phenomenon of biodiversity becoming a
local or regional story occurred on Tuesday, February 22, 1994, when The New York
Times ran an article entitled "Rare Species and Ecosystems Abundant in Great Lakes
Region" on page B of its Science Section. The article summarized a newly-released joint
report by The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Protection Agency called "The
Conservation of Biological Diversity in the Great Lakes Ecosystem: Issues and
Opportunities." The crux of l 18-page report and the subsequent press coverage revealed
that the Great Lakes region was far richer in biological diversity than scientists and
environmentalists previously thought, let alone the public. Furthermore, the report
concluded that conservation efforts needed to be stepped up in order to save this

surprising cache of biodiversity here, which faced imminent danger from human activities,

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such as coastal development (Conservation of the Great Lakes).

In its February 22, 1994 issue, the Times gave the story good play, running it
across the top half of B, accompanying it with illustrations of Great Lakes plants and
animals, as well as a map identifying "Biodiversity Around Great Lakes." John R.
Luoma's reportage "set the standard of coverage" for other news outlets, as one Nature
Conservancy official said (Rankin phone interview). Additionally, The Times piece went
out on the wire and was picked up by numerous newspapers in the Basin and throughout
the Midwest, such as the small weekly Grand Marais Pilot & Pictured Rocks Review in
Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Other media covered the story as well: the Christian Science
Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, National
Public Radio and WGBN-TV in Chicago. Most of the news reports focused on the
surprising ﬁndings of the report. "You don't have to go to the Amazon rainforest to ﬁnd
something globally unique," a EPA ofﬁcial was quoted as saying of the Great Lakes in the
Chicago Tribune (Swanson A7). The Nature Conservancy's David Rankin said of the
report and subsequent coverage that, "Usually the news about the Great Lakes is bad --
the toxic-chemical-of-the month. This is deﬁnitely a good-news report about the basin"
(Kinch 19).

But there was a downside to the Great Lakes biodiversity story a year later, which
is typical of environmental news coverage. Since the news is predicated on something
being "new," biodiversity advocates struggled to ﬁnd a new hook to keep this story alive
in the press and thus in the public's mind. The Nature Conservancy media coordinator
sent a memo to Great Lakes state chapters as to this situation:

As most of you know, last year about this time The New York Times

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covered the Great Lakes biodiversity study with a story in the Science
Section. This coverage provided good visibility for the Conservancy's
science work . . . A follow up to this story could be to pitch it as a "one-
year later" story and promote the unique and special aspects of each
project. (Carpman Memo)

The desire for a "follow-up" hints at one of the challenges of keeping the
"biodiversity story " before the American press and public. While a project to study rare
plants along the Great Lakes shoreline might make a decent scientiﬁc paper someday, it
might not necessarily, as Carpman's memo suggests, make it as news. One of the reasons
it does not make it as news has to do with the hierarchy of a newsroom and the "shrinking
environmental newshole." Onejournalist told me that she has a better chance "selling" a
story about headaches to an editor than biodiversity these days because "They think the
environment has been done. They did it in 1990 with the last Earth Day" (Dold phone
interview). Jim Detjen, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, has said that environmental
coverage often relies on the politics of the newsroom. "If the environment is of interest to
the editor, more than likely an environmental story will get covered. If he isn't, then there
is a good chance it won't" (qtd. in Chepesiuk 19).

Finally, as mentioned before, the biodiversity loss story or efforts to preserve it do
not follow the standard paradigm of an environmental story having human interest,
immediacy and crisis. Journalism scholars Craig Lemay and Everett Dennis write,

much of today's environmental coverage -- if not most of it -- is about
pollution rather than conservation. Stories about preservation -- about

values of nature for nature's sake -- are few and generally poorly done.

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They are usually of the variety that suggest a simple if painﬁil choice
between an owl and an industry . . . and do little to examine either the
nature of the industry or the nature of what is to be preserved. (xv)
Steven Yaffee, a environmental policy expert, charges that like our government,
the press "reacts" to situations and
As a result, we are faced with the crises of the month: the garbage crisis,
Earth Day, the AIDS situation, drugs in school, the old growth crisis, and
the like. In almost all situations, it is not the case that the concerns decline
over time, rather media attention and our public interest level wanes as
satiation occurs, and the next crisis looms on the horizon. (21 1)
The "biodiversity crisis," unlike an oil spill, is long-term, widespread and not easily, if
ever, solved. Many environmental problems, even major ones such as urban pollution, can
be ameliorated to varying degrees in relative short periods of time with visible results.
This aspect of the biodiversity problem plays against it in the press, since
environmental news is typically about human impact and short-term crisis. Take, for
example, the perceived relative importance of biodiversity to pollution. "When
environmentalists talk about biodiversity, that biodiversity fails to include the homeless,
the indigent, people who are in poverty and suffering from despair," one environmental
justice activist told the Detroit Free Press (Askara 1A). There remains, therefore, an
entrenched perception among the public that biodiversity loss is not relevant and that its
preservation is a luxury of the middle to upper classes.
Still, environmental reporters seem to trying to make biodiversity issues more

immediate as pollution is to the average American. Again in a New York Times article,

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reporter William K. Stevens points out that biodiversity loss is literally a "backyard" as
well as a global problem. Stevens discusses the impact of suburbanization on
biodiversity, citing conservation biologists who argue that new human-altered
environments are favoring "exotic" and "generalist" species that, in turn, are outcompeting
native ﬂora and fauna. What is most signiﬁcant for the biodiversity message in Steven's
article is that it goes beyond chronicling the well-known impacts to biodiversity such as
draining wetlands and clearcutting forests to the impacts of chemical run-off from
suburban lawns to songbird predation by domestic cats (B12). Stevens writes,
Humans [in suburbs] have quite unintentionally determined the makeup of
the [wildlife] community and to the extent that some species become
dominant and others weaken, people are acting much like an instrument of
natural selection. (B12)
Although Americans may not be the ones slashing and burning the rainforest, they are
making an impact on biodiversity, even in seemingly innocuous ways. This is one of the
essential messages of the Biodiversity Mission, and, it is one that has only recently begun

to be forwarded by the press.

Improving Biodiversity Coverage from Within

Finding a local angle such as biodiversity in the backyard on a global story has
been a focus of a new organization, the Society of Environmental Journalists. Formed in
1990, SE] is a non-advocacy group of journalists and scholars dedicated to "enhanc[ing]
the quality and accuracy of environmental reporting" (SE/ournal 3). SE] founder Jim

Detjen and other members believe that in the era of the tabloid, "environmental reporters

144

walk an increasingly ﬁne line between accurate reporting and colorful writing, between
responsibility and advocacy" (Ohnuma 8). Further, as the environmental story grows
increasingly complicated, reporters need to network with each other and environmental
experts, so they can provide accurate and responsible reporting.

With more than 1000 members, SEJ publishes a quarterly newsletter and sponsors
regional workshops and a national conference which have been addressed by Secretary of
Interior Bruce Babbitt and E. O. Wilson, among others. SEJ is one example of what
industry observers have called the overall "greening of the press" in the 19905 which has
as its aim better reporting.

The environment story is one of the most complicated and pressing stories

in our time. It involves abstract and probabilistic science, labyrinthine laws,

grandstanding politicians, speculative economics, and the complex interplay

ofindividuals and societies. . . . Perhaps more than most stories, it needs

careful, longer-than-bite-sized reporting and analysis, now (Stocking 37).
Towards this end, SEJ and other organizations have been trying to reform the press from
within by "information sharing and discussion among journalists, scientists, educators,
government officials, industry representatives, environmental advocacy groups and
concerned citizens," as SEJ's mission statement states (3). With regard to biodiversity
stories in particular, SEJ has offered a number of workshops over the years, including one
in 1995 on "Making Biodiversity a Local Story." Other workshops on biodiversity have
included primers on satellite GIS, or "geographical information systems," and the
fundamentals of conservation biology.

Well-meaning efforts to improve biodiversity coverage, however, have, as yet,

145

been no guarantee of across-the-board improvement. Betsy Marston, an SEJ member and
editor of the High Country News, an environmentally-oriented monthly newspaper, says
the press is still not doing a good job of reporting on biodiversity at either a national or
local level (Electronic mail interview). Reed Noss says similarly.
Press coverage on biodiversity is usually terrible. However there are
occasional exceptions. For example Bill Stevens did a great front-page
story on our endangered ecosystems in The New York Times. The secret is
to ﬁnd a reporter who understands the issues and can "sell" a story to the
editor. Coverage could be improved by getting reporters who are more
knowledgeable (Electronic mail interview).
Noss's criticism of reporters is that they too often lack the scientiﬁc background to do a
good job; many reporters are "generalists," so to speak, covering several beats, including
the environment. "I don't have time to talk to the press very often and I ﬁnd most
reporters very annoying. However, I can tell when a reporter has done his/her homework
and knows to ask the right questions. Then I give them my time," Ross says (Electronic
mail interview).

Doing one's homework as an environmental reporter, as Detjen has pointed out,
entails "knowledge about biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, statistics, public
health, law, government . . . " ("Traditionalist's Tools" 96). Many environmental
journalists believe that their beat is far and away the toughest, since they must not only
simplify a highly complex issue, but they must also "sell" the story to their editor -- many
of whom have little knowledge themselves of the subject matter (Detjen Interview). Many

environmental stories, reporters have told me, have died on their editor's desk because

146

they were too technical and lacked a good hook. In this regard, the profession of
journalism needs reform and some journalism schools are beginning to do this. For
example, Michigan State University now offers an environmental reporting course where a
couple years ago there was none. At least one journalism school, Western Washington
University, integrates training in journalism with a broad background in science and the
history of environmentalism (Monaghan A35). Graduates of this program are all
environmental reporters, so to speak.

The director of this school, Michael F rome, goes even further than creating
environmental reporters: he wants his students to become environmental advocates as
well. Frome has criticized the mainstream press, saying, "You must examine what is the
media. . . . The role of the media is not to dispense news, it's to make money for people
who own it" (Phone interview). F rome believes that the press has an obligation to become
advocates for the environment since reporters are often made privy to information about
the environment, business and government that the public is not. F rome's argument is
much the same as some conservation biologists who believe their insiders' knowledge
about the natural world demands they become advocates for it.

The debate whether environmental journalists are, or should be, advocates has
existed since this kind of reporting became a distinct specialty in the 19705. Experts
disagree as to the degree the press has functioned as an advocate for environmentalism
over the decade. At one end of the debate are people like F rome and journalist Michael
Hertsgaard, who are unabashed environmental advocates. Herstgaard, in a much cited,
controversial Rolling Stone article from 1989, argues the press is shirking its social

responsibility by "covering the world and ignoring the earth" (47). "Because of their

147

enormous power to shape public opinion, the men and women who are in charge of the
media have an immense responsibility in the struggle to avert ecological catastrophe,"
Hertsgaard believes (49). At the other end of the spectrum,there are revisionist reporters
like Gregg Easterbrook and anti-environmental columnists Alston Chase and Warren T.
Brookes, who argue that the environmental crisis has been exaggerated by scientists and
environmentalists and any environmental claims should be met with distrust. "Many of us
have been taken in by environmentalist scare scenarios over the last three years," Brookes
charged in a 1991 article in The Quill (14). Between these two extremes are moderates,
like Jim Detjen, who argues that advocacy journalism undermines the credibility of the
press, ﬁirther eroding the public's trust (94).

Certainly, if one follows the mainstream press with any regularity, one ﬁnds
various degrees of pro and con attitudes toward the environment. Take, for instance,
Time's celebrated "Endangered Earth" issue in 1989 compared to its "Owl vs. Man" issue
a few years earlier. In terms of being pro or con, these two issues cancel one another out.
In fact, the moderate-to-liberal mainstream press does not speak with much consistency
with regard to the environment. Instead, it seems to make a virtue out of divisiveness.

The clearest example of this over the last two decades has been Gregg
Easterbrook's revisionist environmental reporting, which has appeared in The New Yorker,
Newsweek and The New Republic, among others. Easterbrook's reportage essentially
maintains that the headline-grabbing environmental news stories of today, such as acid
rain, climate change, mass extinctions, are "fashionable alarmism" and exaggerated (14).
That Easterbrook's reporting appears in mainstream newsmagazines with the message that

"the sky is not falling," according to a Mobil newspaper advertisement which cites

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Easterbrook, angers and concerns environmentalists and scientists. A number of them
have taken Easterbrook to task in the media, charging Easterbrook with "selective use of
evidence, outright error and caveats" that hedge all his revisionist optimism (Orr 66).
The amount of controversy generated by Easterbrook underscores the commonly
held belief of environmentalists, journalists, cultural critics and politicians that the press
does, in fact, wield signiﬁcant inﬂuence on society and public policy. "A Moment on the
Earth [Easterbrook's book] is already out of date, but its inﬂuence will, unfortunately,
linger for a long time," environmental studies professor David Orr wrote in Natural
History (67). However, quantifying and qualifying the depth of this inﬂuence has
remained elusive to scholars and pollsters alike. As one scholar observes,
The ﬁttility of attempting to relate public opinion on environmental issues
to mass media coverage arises perhaps primarily from the simple point that
this amounts to relating two macro-categories which, because of their sheer
macro-ness, obscure more than they reveal. (Hansen 445).
Anders Hansen elaborates this point at the conclusion of his essay "The Media and the
Social Construction ofthe Environment":
Agenda-setting studies, difﬁJsion studies, public opinion and media
inﬂuence research . . . . have contributed in various ways to our
understanding of "mass media and environmental issues." But because of
their media-centeredness they are not, on the whole, capable of explaining
why media (and to a lesser extent, public) concern about environmental
issues fades in and out of focus, or why certain issues come to enjoy

prominence while other, equally "serious," issues fall by the wayside. (454)

149

This ebb and ﬂow of environmental issues has been well established by scholars.
Sociologist Riley E. Dunlap regards the 19805 and 19905 as a period of rebirth for the
Environmental Movement with a broad-based constituency of government officials,
activists, scientists, nonproﬁt researchers, academics and a "sympathetic mass media."
This along with

ecological realities have combined to generate enormous societal attention
to ecological problems in recent years. Scientists and government officials
are constantly joining environmentalists in publicizing the latest aspects of
ecological degradation, and their efforts have been validated by an endless
array of newsworthy events (Bhopal, Chernobyl, . . . rainforest depletion .

. .) that receive tremendous media attention. The success of these efforts in
attracting public attention can be seen in newspapers, on TV news
programs, and on the covers of our nation's most important news

magazines. (106-107).

Reauthorization

Biodiversity loss has been a "big news" story only once. It received a lot of
attention during the summer of 1992 when the United States participated in the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It especially received attention as it became a hot political
issues when President George Bush refused to sign the "Global Biodiversity Treaty"
(Perlez Al). When Bush's successor signed the treaty a year later, biodiversity was again
on the front page of major daily newspapers, such as The Washington Post and The New

York Times (A18, A16).

150

Most recently biodiversity is appearing as front-page news as the battle over the
Reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act heats up. Since 1993 biodiversity-related
news has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Times and Post,
among others. On May 20, 1995, Mollie Beattie, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, told a group of environmental journalists that they must be the ones to alert the
public about the threats to the Endangered Species Act and other key environmental
legislation being mounted by the 104th Congress and its "Contract With America."

Polls . . . consistently show that while Americans are concerned about the
environment, a majority of peOple believe our major environmental
problems have been solved. They believe that when we passed the Clean
Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and other
landmark environmental laws, we did thejob. In fact Americans did a
great piece of the job, and they should not be afraid to celebrate their
success. But most Americans don't realize that these laws are up for
reauthorization, that their key elements may be in clear and present danger
of repeal, and that their success can be reversed (1).
The battle to either preserve, strengthen, or reverse these laws, particularly the
Endangered Species Act, has begun and by virtue of the prominence of the players -- an
environmentally-friendly White House and environmentally-hostile Congress -- this battle
is sure to be news in the months ahead. Ironically, the conservative opposition that is
mounting to weaken the Endangered Species Act is just what will bring more public
attention to biodiversity loss in this country. The reason this is so is that environmentalists

want to not only preserve the Act, but strengthen and expand it to include protection of

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"endangered ecosystems and biodiversity,” as a front-page New York Times article
reported (Stevens Al).

Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt backs this plan to avoid "the downward spiral
of listing, and then the long, contentious legal process that is triggered when the
Endangered Species Act takes hold" (Stevens A1). In the last two years, major
newspapers and news magazines have featured Babbitt espousing this view, making him
the highest-ranking government ofﬁcial consistently championing biodiversity and
ecosystem protection. Babbitt, conservation biologists and environmentalists consider the
Endangered Species Act a crucial, if ﬂawed, piece of legislation that, according to
scientiﬁc research over the last three decades, needs to be updated and strengthened. On
May 25, 1995 The Washington Post reported that a blue-ribbon scientiﬁc panel concluded
that

Habitat protection is prerequisite for conservation of biological diversity . .
. [and is] essential not only to protect those relatively few species whose
endangerment is established, it is also in essence a preemptive approach to
species conservation that can help avoid triggering the provisions of the
Endangered Species Act. (Kenworthy A3)
This kind of prominent coverage bodes well for the Biodiversity Mission because it
presents the cause as one grounded in consensus science. It offers, as Babbitt says,
“preemptive” conservation strategies, intended to avoid "contentious" litigation and to
effectively stop the loss of native species and habitats. By presenting biodiversity
preservation as the next logical step in the effort to preserve endangered species,

biodiversity advocates boost their cause signiﬁcantly simply by presenting it in relation to

152

this piece of legislation.

In terms of popularization, biodiversity loss and protection are now moving away
from jargon-ﬁlled technical discussions of population models and tropic webs into the
more popular and familiar public discourse of politics. Thus, in the 19905, proponents of
saving endangered and native species are presenting their arguments in the context of
saving American landmarks -- the Everglades, Florida Keys, Yellowstone. Biodiversity
proponents are well advised to continue this course, linking this cause to the larger
nationalistic environmental value of "beauty, health and permanence" (Hays 2). As
Christopher J. Bosso observes about environmental activism as a whole in the 19905, it
has "begun to fashion itself into a form of patriotism -- to express a concern with the
continuity of community linked to the integrity of place" (48). The creation of national
parks, the preservation of wilderness and endangered species like the bald eagle and
grizzly bear have a long tradition in American conservation. Ecosystem protection and
biodiversity preservation continue this, not for the sake of economic gains, so much as for
the intrinsic rarity, diversity and beauty of wild things and places -- a potent national value
(Oelschlaeger 292).

According to scholars, the "contemporary environmental movement is based on a
transformation of human social values," which are in turn mobilized to affect public policy
(Paehlke 350). Among these core values "the protection of biodiversity, ecological
systems, and wilderness" are "relatively new" yet "signiﬁcant actors on the stage of
political ideas" (Paehlke 350). The most potent trend in the evolution of environmental
values over the last 30 years has been the adoption of public policies based more on

ecological principles (Paehlke 351). Certainly, this is evident with regard to biodiversity,

153

as large federal landholders like the BLM and National Forest Service have recently begun
integrating biodiversity and ecosystem protection into their management strategies.
Furthermore, the move by the Clinton White House to begin restoration of the Everglades
ecosystem indicates an emerging consensus within Federal administrative agencies to do
more to protect ecological systems than has ever been done before (Cushman A1).
The best thing that could have happened for the biodiversity cause in the press
over the years would havebeen for the news media to adopt a policy of routinely
publishing updated stories on biodiversity for no other reason than it is vital and ultimately
more important than celebrity murder trials. But in the real world, the best thing that
could happen for biodiversity advocates and their cause is to ﬁnd it in the middle of what
will undoubtedly become a national political debate. As George Pettinico predicts,
Ironically, hope for the next and ﬁJture elections originates in the radical
actions of the current Republican leadership. As Congress attempts to
hobble environmental legislation . . . voters should reawaken to green
issues . . . When voters realize that they can no longer take even the most
basic environmental safeguards for granted, and that past successes may be
reversed almost overnight, environmental issues should hit home once
again. (Online)

As the 19905 draw to a close, the news media will do even more to redress its past of not

giving biodiversity loss enough coverage, if only because it will be obligated to respond to

powerﬁil political and social forces in the United States that create the news.

 

CHAPTER 6
“CRYPTOS” VERSUS "GONZOS":

THE CHALLENGE OF BIODIVERSITY PRESERVATION

"The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to
include soils . . . "

Aldo Leopold, 1949
"Biodiversity is the mosr infonnation-rich part of the known universe.
More organization and complexity exist in a handful of soil than on the
surfaces of all the other planets. "

E. O. Wilson, 1993
"Crypto-what? "

Mountain biker's response in Moab, Utah, when
asked if he'd heard of "cryptobiotic soil," 1995

Cryptos versus Gonzos

The interplay of the media and the public underpins a situation in Moab, Utah,

which was dubbed the " gonzo capital of mountain biking" sometime in the 19805

within the popular and mountain biking press. Travel articles in national newspapers

such as The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times touted Moab as an "adventure

sport" mecca, where during the day one could bike alongside cliff walls decorated with

ancient petroglyphs a few miles out of town and at night grab a brew-pub beer on Main

Street (Clifford 3, Reynolds L1+). But by the early 19905, the town of Moab and two

154

155

nearby National Parks had decided that "ecotourism" was presenting a serious downside
for the fragile surrounding desert ecosystem. Since then, Moab, located in the heart of
beautiful redrock canyon ~country, has been trying to counteract the image of it being an
outlaw mountain biking town. Courting the national press, such as The Los Angeles
Times and The New York Times, local environmentalists and ofﬁcials have tried to get
the word out that Moab is not the place to come to "run roughshod" over the desert
(Williams A5, Kinch A13).

The clash over mountain bikes and the environment in Moab is part of a larger
battle over what was once believed to be the "ecofriendly" sport of mountain biking.
Numerous articles have appeared in recent years in environmental and mainstream
publications. The mountain biking industry itself is even trying to reform this fact and
image of the sport, establishing "minimum—impact" education programs, and, in the
case of Moab, encouraging the hundreds of thousands of mountain bikers who come
here every year to go somewhere else next year (Blumenthal phone interview). This
conﬂict is also part of the still larger issue of "ecotourism" and whether or not this
supposedly environmentally—sensitive economic endeavor is truly what it proposes to
be.

In Moab, the conﬂict over ecology and economy is embodied by
"cryptobiotic soil crusts," a natural community that is the "ecological anchor of the
desert" and one being severely degraded by adventure recreationists, primarily
mountain bikers, according to one expert (Belnap interview). In fact, deserts as a
whole are some of the most imperiled of all ecosystems in the United States due to

migration to the Sun Belt states in recent decades and continued use of arid and

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semiarid lands as range lands (Saving, Noss 221). The accelerating degradation of arid
lands and loss of native biodiversity in these places is poorly understood and
appreciated by land managers, the public and even conservationists, according to
critics. "The importance and the plight of cryptogamic soil crusts are almost
universally unrecognized by conservationists concerned with western North American
arid lands," ecologist David Hogan has charged (26).

In an effort to protect cryptobiotic soil around Moab, a coalition of ecologists,
environmentalists, Federal land managers, town ofﬁcials, business leaders and
mountain bikers launched a campaign to raise public awareness and protect the desert
ecosystem in the 19905 that seeks both ecological and economic viability without

sacriﬁcing one for the other. It is a vexing problem in Moab with no easy answers.

The Ecology of Cryptos: Underfoot and Underappreciated

Cryptobiotic soil looks like dirty, lumpy sand, appearing in pockets of a few
square feet to a few hundred square miles scattered across the desert ﬂoor. Often it is
found tucked among exposed slickrock sandstone and in among sparse desert
vegetation. Eclipsed by towering redrock cliffs, sculpted arches and blue sky, few who
traveled in the desert notice the scruffy material beneath their bootsoles or tire treads.

However, soil ecologists have known about cryptobiotic soil for years and like
their counterparts in the tropics, they know that this example of biodiversity is
fundamental to the functioning of this ecosystem. Cryptobiotic soil ﬁrst began to get
attention from scientists in the 19705, but it wasn't until the late 19805 that it became

known outside a small sphere of experts. By 1992 in Utah, when The Nature

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Conservancy had drafted a strategic plan for the "Colorado Plateau Bioreserve," a four
million-acre conservation initiative to preserve endangered and representative species
and ecosystems of southern Utah and western Colorado, cryptobiotic soil preservation
had become a priority. Using inventorying and Gap Analysis, The Nature Conservancy
determined that among the thousands of species and natural communities in a three-
state region, those receiving the highest priority were only a dozen, and among these
were "cryptogamic soil communities" (Colorado Plateau Bioreserve Plan 5).

The importance of the soil conservation is nothing new. Preserving soil, of
course, is central to Aldo Leopold's land ethic, orginally written in the 19305 during
the decade of the Dust Bowls. The Dust Bowls led the Department of Agriculture to
create Soil Conservation Districts, which still exist today. This was in response to the
Department's conclusion that the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl was "a wholly
manmade disaster produced by a history of misguided effort to 'impose upon the region
a system of agriculture to which the Plains are not adapted'" (Nature '3 Economy,
Worster 231).

As Donald Worster makes clear in his environmental history of the West, Rivers
of Empire, the Federal government and agri-business interests developed and used the
arid lands of the West throughout the ﬁrst half of this century with little consideration
to the ecological consequences (332). It was not until the 19605 when the Sierra Club
took on the Federal dam-building apparatus and the 19705 with the cult popularity of
Edward Abbey's 1968 Desert Solitaire and activism of Earth First! that many people in
America began to consider desert ecosystems worthy of preservation. Of course, the

government had been establishing large national parks in Utah's deserts throughout the

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20th century, the last being Canyonlands in 1964. But these parks until only recently
were operated to maximize proﬁts from "industrial tourism," as Abbey dubbed it
(Lowry 18, Abbey 45 ). It was not until the 19905 that a new emphasis on preserving
representative species and habitats at the expense of public access would be adopted by
the National Park System (Lowry 197).

Cryptobiotic soil crusts are found throughout both Canyonlands and Arches
National Parks, as well as the millions of acres of BLM land. The ecology of cryptos
makes them ﬁt neatly into the "cosmology" of biodiversity research and preservation.
The Biodiversity Mission makes a virtue out the "microscopic creepy-crawlies," as
ecologist Donella Meadows has said (149). In this regard, cryptobiotic soil is ready-
made for biodiversity proponents. Cryptobiotic soil crusts are made up of
cyanobacteria, soil lichens, mosses, green algae, microfungi, bacteria,
microarthropods and inert components like sand ("Cryptobiotic Crusts," Belnap 5).
This composition is signiﬁcant on a conceptual level, in that, cryptos are "neither ﬁsh
nor fowl." They are a composite of a number of kingdoms of nature, and as such,
even the experts have trouble characterizing them. Joel Tuhy, a botanist with The
Nature Conservancy's ﬁeld ofﬁce in Moab, said their ofﬁce has called cryptobiotic soil
variously an "element," a " feature," a "community" and a "microecosystem."
Further, cryptobiotic soil is not formally recognized by the Natural Heritage
inventorying arm of the Conservancy since it is technically neither a species nor a
natural community, the two main classiﬁcation categories (Interview). It is noteworthy
that "cryptobiotic" means "hidden life," and according to Belnap, "recently,

cyanobacteria have been reclassiﬁed and are now considered to be either their own

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kingdom, or the kingdom Monera, which also includes true bacteria" ("Cryptobiotic
Crusts" 7).

The emphasis of soil's importance and vitality is an essential fact and metaphor
of the biodiversity message. E. O. Wilson has called the micro-life found in soil "the
fundamental unit" of all life (Diversity 35). Paul R. Ehrlich has argued that destroying
the life on lowest level of the "biomass pyramid" has ramiﬁcations up the line. "The
basic point," Erhlich writes, "is that organisms, most of which are obscure to
nonbiologists, play roles in ecological systems that are essential to civilization" (24).
This can be said of soils in the tropical rainforests of New Guinea where Wilson had
done much research, the temperate American Middle West of Leopold and Donald
Worster and the Colorado Plateau where Jayne Belnap and others have been studying
the unique nature and role of cryptos in the desert ecosystem. In the arid West, cryptos
are especially important to the ecosystem given the harsh climate and equally harsh uses
of the land by people for mining, grazing domestic animals and recreation for 150
years.

The "image problem" of cryptos is not surprising, given it is comprised of
bacteria, fungi, algae and microscopic arthropods. These things do not elicit a strong
"biophiliac" reaction in most people. One mountain biker whom I interviewed in
Moab in May 1995 called cryptobiotic soil, "the tundra" -- an environment with limited
appeal to most people. National Geographic magazine put the qualities of such
foreboding landscapes another way in the context of the Everglades: "While our heads
say ecosystem and biodiversity, our hearts still say swamp" (Mairson 3).

Since cryptos have little aesthetic appeal, biodiversity proponents, true to their

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calling, have stressed its ecologic-scientiﬁc values. From scientiﬁc monographs to
popular articles to public education brochures, all three levels of ecological discourse
have emphasized the function cryptobiotic soil crusts have in the desert ecosystem.
Cryptobiotic soil, according to ecologists, ﬁxes atmospheric nitrogen, contributes
organic matter, enhances minerals for plants, prevents erosion and stores moisture
("Cryptobiotic Crusts," Belnap 5-7). Desert plant life is more likely to grow in or near
patches of cryptobiotic soil (Cole 1). At ﬁrst appearance, cryptos seem to be found
among cacti, sagebrush and juniper. In fact, i i's the other way around, these plants
are found on the edges of cryptos, which provide nutrients and moisture (Hogan 27).
Crytpos account for more than 70% of the living ground cover in the desert, the
remainder being grasses and trees ("Cryptobiotic Crusts" 5). Of all it does, perhaps the
most important function cryptobiotic soil performs is preventing erosion by increasing
the "tensile strength of soil through the interconnection of many billions of separate soil
particles into a single unit of topsoil . . (Hogan 27). Arid lands, as the Dust Bowl
proved, are especially susceptible to soil erosion caused by wind and drought (Hogan
27). Around Moab, the primary defense against erosion or "deseritiﬁcation" is
cryptobiotic soil. Thus, this soil literally "anchors" the ecosystem from blowing away
in much the same way the roots of plants and trees hold the soil in place.

Cryptobiotic soil is an "interconnection," or in Belnap's words, an "intricate
webbing," among the living and nonliving that is best seen under the power of an
electron microscope. The image of a "web" of lichens, mosses, and other life, of
course, connotes biodiversity's central metaphor of "the web of life." It is this fact

about cryptos, I believe, which give it its most persuasive quality among nonexperts.

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In patches of cryptobiotic soil, a few square yards or few square miles, is a complex,
intricate, interrelated world that has hundreds of species, millions of individuals,
sustaining itself, sustaining nearby plants, sustaining the entire desert, perfect in its
design and efﬁcient in its function. This is the biodiversity message and ethic, and one
popularizers in Moab are trying to convey to the public.

Around Moab, numerous brochures published by the BLM and National Park
Service emphasize this the essential quality of cryptos: "a self-sustaining biological
unit," a "complex of soil and slowly growing algae, mosses . . . ," "the building
blocks of the desert . . (BLM "minimum impact" brochure). Outside one Moab
mountain bike shop is a display of cryptobiotic soil which includes a sign that reads
"Don't bust the crust! Please go out of your way -- literally -- to avoid stepping on,

rolling over or Otherwise disrupting this living carpet. When I wrote an article for
The New York Times about Moab in June 1995, I followed this lead, introducing
cryptobiotic soil in the story as the "living web of lichens, mosses . . ." (A13 ).
Although somewhat anecdotal, the mountain bikers to whom I spoke about cryptobiotic
soil may not have known its name (e. g. "the tundra"), but they did know it was
ecologically important because of all the publicity. They knew the crust was alive and
kept soil in place, stored moisture and was easily damaged.

However, knowing something is ecologically important and actually protecting
it can be quite different matters in environmental campaigns. For example, most
Americans likely know that wetlands are important for wildlife habitat and cleaning

water, but historically Americans have denuded wetlands until only 45% of the original

remain and those are often under threat of development (Saving, Noss 65). A parallel

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situation existed in Moab in 1995: people knew cryptobiotic soil was critical to the
functioning desert ecosystem, but the mechanisms to protect it were inadequate to the
task because of a variety of political, ecological and cultural factors.

The political problems, which I 'll discuss more later, have to do with historical
mandates of the BLM and NPS, which are not well-suited to adopting biodiversity
preservation as a priority. The ecological challenges have to do with the nature of
cryptos themselves -- spread out across thousands of square miles of public lands,
which for centuries has been used for mining, grazing and recreation. The other
ecological aspect of cryptobiotic crust which makes it a tough case to preserve it that is
remarkably slow-growing and fragile. Studies by Belnap and others suggest that it
takes hundreds of years for the crust to re—form, once trampled (Kinch A13). Because
of the slow regenerative properties of cryptobiotic soil, Belnap's prediction for the
desert ecosystem is not optimistic. "The same prediction I have for the globe," Belnap
said. "We're going to simplify the system. It's not going to be this great cataclysmic
end when we no longer have oxygen to breathe. We're just going to simplify it and I
think that's a big social question whether that's okay" (Interview).

By the early 19905 in Moab, mountain bikes and four-wheel drive vehicles were
"simplifying" the desert ecosystem faster than ecologists could study it and public land
managers could devise strategies to protect it. The environmental community in Moab
began to question the prudence of the high volume of unregulated mountain biking on
the land. But, town residents, many of whom mountain biked themselves or ran
businesses dependent on adventure tourism, did not heed the environmentalists until the

spring of 1993 when a riot broke out at a popular mountain bike trail.

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A Bad Day At Slickrock

The most famous mountain bike trail in the world is the Slickrock Bike Trail
just outside of Moab. This 13-mile loop trail, much on steeply undulating slickrock
can get 20,000 riders on a popular weekend (Kinch 13). As Moab's reputation grew
throughout the late 19805 as a great mountain bike destination so did the crowds at
Sand Flats Recreation Area, where the Slickrock Trail is, as well as a campground.
The small campground there was easily overwhelmed by the numbers and people began
to camp illegally anywhere. Powerful four-wheel drive vehicles sped off in every
direction into the desert, tents were pitched pell-mell, branches were snapped off
centuries-old juniper pines for ﬁrewood, vegetation and cryptobiotic soil was soon

trampled, human waste and garbage littered the area.

This abuse escalated on Easter Weekend 1993 when a melee broke out between
several thousand drunken spring break campers and local police. It was the last straw
for the community of Moab and Federal land managers in the area. For Jayne Belnap,
who had gathered cryptobiotic crust samples for years from Sand Flats, the situation
there served as a ominous sign for the future of the entire region's ecosystem.
"Everywhere I go, all the roads have been ridden off of or walked off of. It wasn't
like that ﬁve years ago. It's gotten astronomically worse," Belnap said (Interview).
Although the Sand Flats is an extreme example of environmental degradation brought

about in part by mountain biking in Moab, it is, unfortunately, not isolated due to the

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ecology of the desert. Belnap explained,
Since this crust is the only thing stabilizing the surface, when you wreck
them, what you do is destabilize that surface and the sand starts to blow.
So, it's not just that everybody stepped on every square inch, but
you've got all this sediment blowing and the sediment blows and buries
nearby plants and nearby crust. And then they die. (Interview)
Belnap went on to explain that when you get enough of these barren, windswept places
in a region, they will eventually begin to link together. With enough time and the right
climatic conditions, such as prolonged drought and high winds, much of southern Utah
could cease to be a diverse and vibrant arid landscape and be more like a wasteland of
sand.
A year or so after the riot, on August 18, 1994, the district manager of the
BLM Moab District approved the Sand Flats Recreation Area Management Plan, a
document which grew out of several years of impact studies and recreation-user surveys
by a task force of ecologists, BLM and NPS managers, local government ofﬁcials and
concerned citizens. It was a plan that tried to address the environmental degradation
caused by mountain bikes and related uses at the Sand Flats and other areas around
Moab, while maintaining the town's tourism (Sand Flats Plan). Similarly, the
following year, on January 6, 1995, Canyonlands National Park adopted a new
Backcountry Management Plan to address impact and overuse by swelling numbers of
adventurers to the park (Canyonlands Plan). Both plans were compromises and as with
all compromises, they displeased the extremes: some environmentalists believed the

restrictions didn't go far enough to protect the land; tourism promoters felt the

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sanctions were too strong and hurt business in Moab. For my purposes here, I am less
concerned with the particulars of the plans -- for example, the reduction of the number
of backcountry permits Canyonlands will now issue for the popular White Rim Trail --
and more interested in how these plans reﬂected an evolving mentality and policy
within both agencies toward their mandates of environmental or " resource"
management and human use. Despite the limitations of both plans, each represented a
new era of more environmentally-friendly policies within two of the largest landholders
in the West.

The BLM manages 325 million acres of rangelands throughout the West
(Saving, Noss 248). In Utah, the BLM manages 22 million acres —- 42% of the state's
area (Utah! 21). Around Moab, the BLM oversees 5 million acres (Utah! 21). BLM
lands are managed for a variety of activities from strip mining to camping, grazing to
wilderness exploration, ORV use to ecological research areas. The competing and
conﬂicting uses have been a part of the BLM since its formation in 1946 and are
present today in its land management plans. As environmental historian Samuel Hays
notes in Beauty, Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States
I 955-] 985 , the BLM had to adapt to environmentalist's pressures following World
War II, culminating in 1976 with the "Federal Land Policy and Management Act"
(Hays 102). This act called for environmental-impact statements on traditional land
uses on BLM property, such as grazing. The act also charged the agency with
managing public lands so as to protect "the quality of scientiﬁc, scenic, historical,
ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water, resource and archeological

values" (FLPMA Act). This new emphasis upon environmental concerns over

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economic ones prompted some western ranchers to stage the "Sagebrush Rebellion" in
the 19705. This failed movement attempted to wrest lands from the hands of the
federal government into the state's, which would, presumably, be more lax towards
resource use (Hays 104). Moab, Utah, was once home to many Sagebrush Rebels and
hostile sentiments there towards government continue to this day. So much so, that
the National Park Service has suspended its traditional practice of relocating park
ofﬁcials to new posts every few years because this did not allow for these ofﬁcials to
become assimilated into the community so they could foster pro-government attitudes
among locals (Frederick Interview). The BLM's slow and gradual movement since
1976 toward being more ecologically-concerned is reﬂected in the Sand Flats plan and
other initiatives. For example, BLM's Colorado region published a BLM Ecosystem
Management Strategy in 1995 in response to ongoing demands on its work. "Over the
past few decades, natural resource management issues have become progressively more
diverse a complex," begins the report, continuing,
Our growing population is placing more and increasingly diverse
demands on natural resources and the public lands that support them. . .
. And a growing body of evidence, such as the decline of salmon, more
intense forest ﬁres, . . . decline of many species, indicates that all is not
well. Clearly, there is need for a change. (1)

The report then outlines its "Vision for the Future. Guided by three principles,
the plan includes the goal that "Natural systems, including native plant and animal

communities, need to be restored and maintained at levels that sustain human uses and

values" (1). Conservation biologists concur that biodiversity preservation should be a

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priority in the BLM planning, saying
Management of the semi-natural matrix (multiple-use lands) will be the
greatest challenge. These lands will continue to be a large portion of the
regional land base for a long time. Yet, to sustain their health and
ability to support human uses, these lands must also maintain their
biodiversity . . . The challenge is to learn how to use these lands while
preventing long—term deterioration. (Saving, Noss 257)
Where environmental activists and BLM ofﬁcials differ most is assessing the success or
failure of the agency's new biodiversity agenda. Reed Noss writes that "Management
of multiple-use rangelands, particularly BLM lands, has been hampered by lack of
understanding and lack of willpower to control damaging activities" (Saving, 257). He
scoffs at the BLM's claim in 1990 that its ranges were "in better shape today than ever
before in this century," pointing out that the BLM's own statistics show that only "3
percent of its rangelands are in Potential Natural (Excellent) condition" (250). Noss
argues that if BLM land is to be managed for biodiversity then removal or control of
incompatible uses, such as mining and grazing, must be undertaken in certain high-
concentration biodiversity areas. Further, "most recreation except that which is of
minimal impact such as day hiking, birdwatching, and in some cases backpacking"
must also be removed or controlled from this areas (254).
This, of course, highlights the problem of Moab. Within a few miles of town
begins millions of acres of BLM land, intersected by thousands of miles of dirt roads
and trails, many left over from earlier mining days. The trails and roads give peOple

access to the remote backcountry. By law, adventurers can be in these places as long

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as they follow such restrictions as staying on the trail and not stealing artifacts and
damaging vegetation. The majority abide by these rules. But, monitoring and
enforcing these restrictions is nearly impossible since the Moab Regional District has
only one patrol ranger for every million acres of land (Kitchell interview). Further,
much of the damage to biodiversity —- unlike archeological damage —- is not malicious,
but inadvertent; people simply do not know better than to pitch a tent on top of
cryptobiotic soil (Kitchell Interview). Thus, the BLM is stressing "minimal impact"
proactive public education. To this extent, general environmental awareness among
mountain bikers seemed high and of the cryptobiotic soil in particular. However, as
Jayne Belnap said,
The scariest thing is that it is predicated on educating people and there's
no good way to get to these people. There are thousands of access
points to the BLM [land]. Even if they were educating them, you're
assuming they would behave. It only takes one person in a four-wheel
drive driving off the road and going bonkers to wreck an incredible
amount of landscape in one day. You can have nine hundred and ninety
nine thousand well-behaved people and have four assholes and lose a
tremendous amount of landscape. (Interview)

The nature of mountain bikes, ORVs and four-wheel drives -— their ability to
go into rough terrain at fast speeds -- makes them more of a threat to cryptobiotic soil
than hiking, according to Belnap. Erosional studies have shown this to be true
throughout the West (Wilson 86). Belnap explained that "People tend to wander around

more with each footprint being discrete, so it doesn't set up that gully thing. A track is

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worse, compressional force is greater with the tire. And you can go a lot further on a
bike" (Interview).

The widespread appearance of the mountain bike in the 19805 caught both the
BLM and National Park Service off guard and led the BLM to create A National
Mountain Bike Outreach Action Plan in the 19903 and also to appoint a National
Mountain Bike Coordinator to address issues of trail access and environmental impact.
The BLM, while trying to control mountain biking, is not about to ban it from its
landholdings. The BLM regards mountain bikes as an important revenue generator
(through fees) during a period when traditional income from mining and grazing
declines throughout the West (Kitchell Interview). In fact, the BLM's "Trails 2000"
program is designed to "identify an integrated trail system in the Four Corners Region"

and has as its "Goal 1" to establish the region as the "back country trail capital" and
" mountain bike capital" of the United States (BLM Mountain Bike Plan 15).

The BLM's sister agency, the National Park Service, on the other hand, is
considerably cooler towards mountain bikes on its property. The reason is largely a
matter of American environmental history. The great schism in American conservation
thought and practice came early in this century as the nation became embroiled in the
Hetch Hetchy controversy. Historians Samuel Hays, Roderick Nash and Stephen Fox,
to name of few, all trace the birth of "preservationism" versus "multiple-use
conservationism" to the events surrounding John Muir's ﬁght to stop a dam from being
built in a valley near San Francisco. Henceforth, American attitudes and governmental
policies have divided along the lines of "multiple—use conservation" and

"preservationists" with environmental groups such as The Wilderness Society, The

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Nature Conservancy and The Sierra Club reﬂecting the latter camp (Nash 181).
Governmental agencies such as the National Forest Service (founded in 1881) and BLM
(founded in 1946) reﬂect the multiple-use school, while the National Park Service
(1916) and National Fish and Wildlife Service (1940) fall more into the category of
preservationist.

Although early motivations to create national parks were not predicated on the
preservation of wilderness and species, as much as they were on "national interests" (to
bust resource extract monopolies, for instance) and scenic wonders, eventually
wilderness and wildlife preservation became prime objectives. National parks became
identiﬁed with "wilderness preserves" in the popular mind. "In fact," Nash writes in
his seminal Wilderness and the American Mind, "since the middle of the nineteenth
century the preservation issue has been the major vehicle for national discussions of
wilderness" (96). Reed Noss agrees, saying, "The national parks have become the
most obvious symbols of this movement . . . " (Saving, 71).

In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed one of the most important pieces of
legislation regarding the rights of nature in America, or, in Nash's words, of the
"nonhuman members of the extended American community": the Wilderness Act
(Rights, Nash 85). In this act is the famous deﬁnition of "wilderness" as a place "where
man is but a temporary visitor." A less-quoted section of the act offers a more tangible,
if less poetic, deﬁnition of wilderness:

there shall be no permanent road within any wilderness area . . . and
except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the

administration of the area . . . there shall be no temporary road, no use

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of motor vehicles . . . no other form of mechanical transport . . (qtd. in

Allin 281)
This section of the Wilderness Act has fueled debate between opponents and proponents
of mountain bikes in national parks and other wilderness areas since the bike appeared.
One side says bikes are "mechanical transports" and, thus, have no right to be in
wilderness areas (Coello 51). The other side says that mountain bikes are "consistent
with wilderness goals of protecting natural resources and providing an opportunity for
solitude . . ." (Staub 41). Further, in an even more dubious claim, one mountain
bike advocate argues that if mountain bikes had existed prior to the act being written,
they would not have been excluded (Staub 41).

It should be made clear that "National Park" and "wilderness" are not
synonyms, although they are often thought to be in the popular mind. Yellowstone
National Park has areas legally designated "wilderness" within it. It also has a hotel,
campgrounds, gift shops and roads that are decidedly not wilderness. Similar situations
exist in most national parks, although the situation in Canyonlands is particularly
unique. Canyonlands like most public natural lands has a complex zoning system
which designates what use is or is not acceptable: overnight camping allowed, day-use
only, foot—trafﬁc only, primitive area. In Canyonlands, no less than 19 zones of
different use exist (Canyonlands Plan 3). But, unlike many national parks, much of
Canyonlands' "backcountry" is open to vehicle trafﬁc. To clarify further, the term
"backcountry" is also not synonymous with a legal deﬁnition of wilderness either,
although in reality, the "backcountry" of a National Park is usually the most remote,

undeveloped part of the park. The problem unique to Canyonlands is that the park has

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no wilderness areas technically -- the roads criss-crossing the backcountry preclude this
designation. However, the whole of the backcountry is managed as "defacto
wilderness" (Frederick Interview). Once a uranium mining region, when the park was
created in 1964, the roads and trails in the backcountry were " grandfather " for
political reasons into the management plans because the nearby community of Moab
and others had always four—wheeled these roads (Frederick Interview). Thus, the
ofﬁcial policy towards vehicles in Canyonlands is unto itself, neither following the
letter nor intent of the Wilderness Act. In Canyonlands, motorcycles and four—wheel
drives are allowed, but for some bureaucratic reason, not ATVs (all-terrain vehicles).
The policy on mountain bikes is as follows:
All areas of the backcountry outside the road corridors are proposed
wilderness. In keeping with wilderness mandates, and to be consistent
with wilderness management policies of the NPS, possession of bicycles
or mountain bikes (mechanized means of travel) off roads, on hiking
trails, or out of developed campsites is prohibited. (Canyonlands Plan
20)
This amounts to a kind of environmental gerrymandering, twisting deﬁnitions and
intent to ﬁt the circumstances. In Canyonlands, the road itself is not managed as
wilderness; however, a few feet off this road, the land is treated as wilderness. While
. asking vehicles to stay on the road is a reasonable request, it is also one park ofﬁcials
know that people do not always abide. A similar situation exists on BLM land, which
has several small parcels of lands designated as "Wilderness Study Areas." The

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a coalition of public interest groups, charges that

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ORVs, including mountain bikes, are destroying these wilderness areas because of this
policy allowing them near these places on good faith that they will stay out of them
("Off-road Vehicles" 4—11).

Larry Frederick, spokesman for Canyonlands, said the park will likely maintain
its cumbersome policy, although in the decades ahead it will also continue to close
more roads to vehicle trafﬁc as it began doing in 1995 in the decades ahead
(Interview).

I think we took some bold moves to protect the park. You talk to park
managers today and they will tell you this: they're going to err on the
side of protecting park resources because if they don't protect the park
resources, one hundred years from now there isn't going to be anything
to come back and see. (Interview)

Frederick is alluding to a trend in national park policy of which Canyonlands is
just one of many examples. This trend was characterized by Time on July 25, 1994, as
"Going Wild," which has as one of its goals preserving biodiversity (Seideman 25).
This back-to-nature policy is a response to overcrowding in National Parks. From
1973 to 1993 visitation to National Parks went from 169 million to 273 million
(Seideman 27). Americans in recent years have been ﬂocking to National Parks and
other wildlands to do everything from rock climb Half Dome to ride in air-conditioned
buses along the Grand Canyon's south rim. Canyonlands' popularity has mirrored this
trend, quadrupling from 1984 to 1993, spurred, in part, by the mountain biking boom

(Canyonlands Plan 1).

In response to overcrowding and overuse, many national parks have closed

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areas to visitation, limited or banned cars and struggled to "conserve the scenery and
natural and historic objects and the wild life herein . . . for the enjoyment of future
generations," as mandated in 1916 by the National Park Service Act (Seideman 27,
Lowry 3). The conundrum today for park managers is that "the vast majority of

' potential supporters for preservation consists of tourists and others who want access to
the parks . . ." and there are simply too many people who want access (Lowry 4).
Canyonlands spokesperson Frederick joked that the best way to preserve the parks was
to close them (Interview). The second best way, ecologists and land managers agree, is
to limit public access and restrict what the public can do once inside the gates,
especially in the backcountry.

To preserve biodiversity and cryptobiotic soil crusts in particular, large tracts of
land need to be put off limits to any use for long periods of time, according to Belnap
and other ecologists (Interview). Ecologically this is sound, but politically it can be a
difﬁcult move to make. In 1995 Canyonlands ofﬁcials temporarily closed a few
heavily-damaged areas and quickly drew protests from tourist-based businesses in
Moab. Bob Jones, who works as an outﬁtter in the park, was typical:

I think there's restrictions and regulations that are necessary, however,
I'm not convinced that the government -- the National Park Service to
begin with -- really knows how to manage very well. The Park Service
and the BLM and all of the scientists, they think they have all the
answers, but they thought they had the answers all through man's times.
(Interview).

Jones' criticism of policy based on scientiﬁc evidence speaks to the challenge

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environmentalism has always faced with the public at large: convincing them that the
problem is serious enough for people to give up some of their freedoms and rights to
do with "their" land what they want. This "my land" mindset is certainly operating
around Moab, where the Sagebrush Rebellion took place and the Wise-Use Movement
is active today.

The challenge to biodiversity preservation in particular in National Parks is that
it must be retroﬁtted to other longer-standing priorities within the culture of National
Parks, such as keeping scenic views visible from the road, and as Abbey bitterly joked,
providing Coke machines for thirsty tourists (233). The balancing act of preserving the
native inhabitants while pleasing nonnative visitors is an unenviable task and one that
sometimes results in stopgap, absurd solutions. For example, in Arches National Park
the Park Service recently limited the numbers of people allowed to hike up to the
photogenic Delicate Arch at any one time. This was done because a survey determined
than 30 or more people gathered beneath the Arch created an aesthetically unappealing
sight (C. Smith 8).

With its historical baggage and present difﬁculties, the National Park Service,
nevertheless, remains a crown jewel of America's wildlands. In the near future, those
interested in pushing ecosystem protection conceive of the National Parks as serving as
"core preserves" where the toughest protection regulations can be implemented for
native biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy's Colorado Plateau Bioreserve Strategic
Plan intends this for the ﬁve National Parks in Utah, to which Park Service ofﬁcials
are amenable. However, this Conservancy plan is years away, if ever, from being

realized. In fact, much of conservation biology's goals are so sweeping and require so

176

much cooperation and coordination among governmental agencies, environmental
groups and private landholders that they can sound like well-meaning pipe dreams.
Reed Noss counters such charges, saying, "To think only in terms of what is politically
reasonable, practical, or ﬁnancially proﬁtable is shortsighted. At worst, a lack of
ambition and acceptance of the status quo is an invitation to mass extinction." (Saving,
94)

Yet, his fellow ecologist, Jayne Belnap remains grim about new conservation
strategies being able to rectify the accelerating loss of cryptobiotic soil
anytime soon. We're talking about keeping people out of
an area for 150 years or so . . . We're talking about doing something
we've not even managed to do successfully for ﬁve years. That's the
other thing people keep saying, "We'll just educate people and
everything will be okay. I don't see that happening. I don't see we
have any track record indicating we can manage any of this that way,
especially if you say "Keep out." (Interview)

Whether efforts in Moab, Utah, to preserve the surrounding ecosystem are too
little and too late remains to be seen. Moab is not and will not be alone in the coming
decades, trying to extract economic livelihood from ecotourism and the adventure
recreation craze. The ideal of "sustainable development" in which both local
economies and ecologies ﬂourish remains in many cases just that: an ideal. What was
touted in the 19805 by business and environmental interests is being questioned more by
environmentalists in the 19905. "Evidence is mounting that there are some forests we

cannot log," writes David Dufﬁns in Conservation Biology, "some ﬁsh we cannot

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catch, some streams we cannot pour efﬂuent into, some places where humans can tread
only lightly" (442).

There is no issue in Moab more contentious than the issue of whether or not
tourism can "tread lightly" enough on this fragile landscape so that this spectacular
place can endure. Bill Hedden, a county council member in Moab, perhaps
characterized best the dilemma facing his community and its uncertain future by
drawing an analogy between the town's past and its present, saying,

With iron ore, when it's gone, you could say, 'Well, I guess we used it
up.’ But when your talking about scenery and aesthetics and attractions
like small, friendly, diverse communities in the middle of beautiful
country, how do you quantify that. And who's to say when it's gone?

(Interview)

CHAPTER 7
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND
THE FUTURE OF THE BIODIVERSITY MISSION
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what
we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. ”

Baba Dioum,
20th-century Senegalese Conservationist

"The study of environmental problems is an exercise in despair unless it

is regarded as only a preface to the study, design, and implementation of
solutions. "

David W. Orr,
Environmental studies professor, 1992

At the conclusion of “J ungleWorld,” an indoor re-creation of a rainforest at the
Bronx Zoo, visitors confront three signs. The ﬁrst two are digital. One ticks off the
growing world’s population, adding 125 people each minute. The other sign, the
"jungle countdown," records the amount of rainforest remaining. It decreases by 100
acres every minute. Both tallies began when the exhibit opened in 1985. On opening
day the amount of acres of rainforest in the world was 2,215,384,320 and has been
declining every minute since.

In September 1995, I visited JungleWorld and watched the red glow of the
countdown displays in the dimly-lit exit hallway. I stood before the displays for

several minutes. The message was clear: much of the diverse life I had just seen --
178

179
proboscis monkeys, black leopards, Malayan tapirs, ﬂy river turtles, mudskippers,

black hornbills, Asian crabs, poison dart frogs, millipedes, ﬂowering orchids,
mahogany trees -- may well be doomed in the wild. For many species, their future lies
in such ex situ, or "from site," conservation efforts like zoos and game parks. These
places amount to "rescue operation[s] undertaken in response to piecemeal habitat
management and ecosystem collapses" (Seal 289). They are stopgap, insufﬁcient and
poor substitutes for the real thing. For many rainforest species like those in
JungleWorld, their continued existence in the 2lst century will be an anachronism,
encased under glass and steel in megalopolises like the Bronx or Washington DC,
with no native lands remaining to which they could ever be returned.

Then at J ungleWorld, I came to the third sign concluding the exhibit. It was a
quote from Baba Dioum, a Senegalese conservationist: "In the end, we will conserve
only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only
what we are taught.” It is a powerful statement, albeit one of muted hope, predicated
on enormous "if's" -- if we are taught, if we understand, if we love, we will conserve
nature. Nevertheless, I was moved, buoyed by the words, since my understanding and
appreciation of the rainforest and its plight, having never been there myself, was raised
by this exhibit. The statement was also effective because it stressed the importance of
educating people as a way to change the status quo, a key concept of American
liberalism. Ecological education, Aldo Leopold once said, is aimed at changing our
"intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions" ("The Land Ethic" 210).

Informal and formal education can be powerful tools in an environmental cause against

ignorance, apathy or blithely accepting the way things are.

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For decades, environmentalists, environmental educators and scientists have

repeatedly stressed that an "ecologically literate" public is essential to long-term
environmental preservation. Without this education of the masses, environmental
concern has and will be the cause of a fraction of the population, environmental
victories will remain provisional and more of the natural world will slip away each day.
However, surveys abound in recent years testifying to the general failure of
environmental education, the low ecological literacy of most Americans. Most
Americans do not understand the evolution, functioning, diversity and fragility of the
natural world. "A majority of American adults do not know that humans evolved from
animal species or that the Sun and Earth are in the Milky Way galaxy. And one—third
think that humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time," reported The New York
Times on one nationwide survey in 1994 (Celis Bl2). Without this basic knowledge of
science among the public, how can biodiversity proponents possibly make their case for
the ecological importance of a rainforest located halfway around the globe to life in the
Midwest?

Aldo Leopold once asked, "Does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in
the ecological mechanism? . . . If education does not teach us these things, then what is
education for?" ("Natural History" 210). Leopold wrote this at mid-century and
despite continued efforts of environmentalists, educators and the Government to
inculcate the science of ecology into the American educational system, the question
remains, does the educated citizen think ecologically? In the 19603 and 19703, there
was much enthusiasm about the possibility of ecology forming the "core of a general-

education curriculum" in higher education (Reed 24). The integrative nature of the

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science of ecology, experts believed, would pull together diverse disciplines in the

sciences, humanities, business and political science, creating a bold, new educational
matrix. Ecologist John Reed wrote in Bioscience in 1964,
Ecology is a unifying and synthesizing discipline among the sciences . . .
it is by its nature appealing to the intellect. Ecologists must inﬁltrate the
committees which devise curricula; they must speak loudly and clearly
for their discipline. (24)
Similarly, another environmental educator has written that
Conservation education need not be an oxymoron. But if it is to become
a signiﬁcant force for a sustainable and humane world, it must be woven
throughout the entire curriculum and through all operations of the
institution, and not conﬁned to a few scattered courses. (Ecological
Literacy, Orr 152)
These comments are from David Orr, a contemporary environmental studies professor
who has written widely about biodiversity, ecological literacy and environmentalism.
Orr's call for an ecological overhaul of higher education came in 1992. Anyone
familiar with the American education system of the last 30 years knows that Reed's
hopeful pronouncement of a widespread ecological-based curricula has never
materialized.
However, there has been reason to hope that this is changing in recent years.
The 19905 seem to be a time of resurgence of environmental education in classrooms
and other institutions. This development bodes well for the Biodiversity Mission.

Biodiversity proponents and environmentalists are once again venturing unto this breach

182
in hopes that this time environmental education can fulﬁll its promise of creating a

systemic change in American life.

In this chapter I will discuss two new developments in formal education,
speciﬁcally, in higher and primary education. The ﬁrst development is the growth on
college campuses in the last ten years of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
environmental programs, broadly known as "environmental studies." The second
development has to do with recent attempts to enlarge environmental education
programs among school kids, with at least one program in particular targeting
biodiversity education. Experts believe that instilling an environmental ethic in
children and reinforcing it throughout their school careers is the only hope for solving
generational environmental dilemmas like biodiversity loss, for it is they who will grow

up to be either part of the problem or part of the solution.

Environmental Studies in the 19905
The subheading to an October 29, 1995 article, "The Greening of the

Humanities," in The New York Times Magazine declared that "Deconstruction is

compost. Environmental studies is the academic ﬁeld of the 90's." The author of the

article was Jay Parini, a Middlebury College English professor, who argued that
Environmental studies marks a return to activism and social
responsibility [in academia]; it also signals a dismissal of theory's more
solipsistic tendencies. From a literary aspect, it marks a re—engagement
with realism, with the actual universe of rocks, trees and rivers that lies

behind the wilderness of signs. (52)

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"Environmental studies" got its start in the early 19705. Since then, as Holly

Brough notes, "it has grown in ﬁts and starts -- and in the past few years has been
blooming on many campuses" (26). Statistics as to the number of environmental
studies programs in the nation's colleges indicate that while they are relatively low --
125 to 200 out of 2,900 universities offer such a program according to one survey --
they are growing as students ﬂood existing courses and demand more (Brough 26).
Environmental studies programs vary across the country, but they tend to have
several basic characteristics: they are multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary; they
emphasize biology and ecology; and they seek multidisciplinary solutions to complex
environmental problems (Brough 28). Conservation biologist Reed Noss's description
of his profession is a good example of the scope of a typical environmental studies
focus. With a slight shift in emphasis, Noss's description could apply to other
environmental study ﬁelds such as environmental economics, environmental law,
environmental history and environmental politics:
Conservation biology is not a typical science. Although it is
fundamentally ecological and relies on principles of ecology, it is also
cross-disciplinary and depends on the interaction of many different
ﬁelds. Geography, geology, sociology, education, philosophy, law,
economics, and political science are just as important to the successful
practice of conservation biology as are wildlife biology, forestry,
ecology, zoology, botany, genetics, and other biological sciences. (Noss
84)

The trend of environmental studies is part of the larger interdisciplinary trend in

184
academia in recent years which has seen the increase in popularity of other

multidisciplinary pursuits such as women's studies, minority studies and American
studies (Parini 53).

While this overall trend is encouraging for environmental studies -- "a natural
place for various branches of knowledge to meet, where connections are celebrated," as
Parini notes -- there is still much more that needs to be done to fully integrate
environmentalism into a broader curricula (53). Richard Wilke, an associate dean of
the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, ﬁnds
that "basic instruction in environmental literacy" is lacking in most universities as part
of students' core education requirement (28). Holly Brough, a WorldWatch
researcher, also ﬁnds that "entrenched interests and traditions in higher education"
make it difﬁcult for the nonconventional environmental studies major to gain
widespread acceptance by academics (26). As such, students who choose to focus in
environmental studies, as is the case at Michigan State University, often must do so as
a second major or under the rubric of another program. However, Michigan State
University does integrate biodiversity issues into some of its "Integrative Studies
General Science" core curriculum. Dr. Catherine Bristow, an entomologist, teaches a
course which touches on "biodiversity and the value of many species," within the
context of a course entitled "Application of Environmental and Organismal Biology."
Similarly, Michigan State Professor Henry Campa teaches "Conservation Biology
(FW444)" to undergraduate natural resource majors (18). Additionally, most new
general science textbooks, such as Environmental Science by Morgan, Moran and

Weisma, address biodiversity and even non-science texts, such as Norton's Reading the

185
Environment, treats "Biodiversity and Ecosystems" in humanistic contexts (144-213).

National programs, such as Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute in place since
1990 and the National Environmental Education Act of 1990, are slowly changing the
culture of higher education. The Tufts initiative trains faculty in a variety of
disciplines to incorporate environmental issues into their pedagogy (Cortese 33). The
National Environmental Education Act targets formal and informal public education at
all levels by providing grants, teach-ins and expertise to create an "environmentally
conscious and responsible public" (Browner 6). Similarly, a white paper coming out of
the 1992 Earth Summit, Agenda 21, outlines ways universities can improve
environmental education through their curricula (Wilke 28).

These top—down measures are encouraging, but less so than the fact that recent
generations of students have been calling for more environmental education in their
college curricula, as Brough and other experts have noted. Perhaps this is most
noticeable and encouraging by the phenomenon of the "greening of the MBA," as The
Chronicle of Higher Education recently dubbed it (Mangan A19). In the cosmology of
environmentalism, MBAs and other highly-educated and ambitious persons have often
been regarded as evil-doers in the garden of nature. Environmental studies professor
David W. Orr typiﬁes this belief, noting that the destruction of the natural world has
not been

the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the results of work by
people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs and PhDs. . . . More of the same
kind of education will only compound our problems. This is not an

argument for ignorance but rather a statement that the worth of education

186
must now be measured against the standards of decency and human

survival -- the issues now looming so large before us in the twenty-ﬁrst
century. It is not education, but education of a certain kind, that will
save us (Earth in Mind 7).

To be sure, Orr is right in his assessment that the "masters of the universe"
behind industrialism and consumerism have been far worse for the planet than hunter-
gatherers in the Amazon. While it is all well and good that English majors and
philosophy majors are turning their attentions to environmental issues, Orr would say
that those students who will go on to be leaders in business, politics and industry must
also be converted to the environmental cause, particularly to the idea and practice of
"sustainable growth." This is not a new idea in environmental thinking; Lewis
Mumford, Barry Commoner and Aldo Leopold all have spoken of the environmental
consequences of a culture's belief in unbridled economic growth. One of most
vexing problems facing humankind in the 21st century, if not the most, according to
experts like Paul Kennedy, is to ﬁnd ways to curb consumption of natural resources,
achieve zero-population growth and create sustainable global economies (346-347).
Kennedy writes,

The concern about environmental damage does not, of course, imply that
all economic growth should be halted . . . Instead, politicians and
publics ought to take far more seriously the proposals for "sustainable
growth" which development experts have formulated. (347)

One logical place to start such an enterprise is in business schools, as has been

the case lately. "Five years ago, only a handful of the nation's 700 business schools

187
offered elective courses on the environment," Katherine S. Mangan wrote in the

November 2, 1994 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Since then, the number has grown to more than 100. More schools are

inserting environmental issues throughout their curricula, and several are

offering concentrations in environmental studies. (A19)
The EPA Journal reported similarly in its Spring 1995 issue, noting that in 1989 few
business schools were doing much with environmental issues, but in the period since
"the situation has improved, due largely to the efforts of the Harvard Business School;
National Wildlife Federation . . . and the Management Institute for Environment and
Business (MEB). " The MEB is a nonproﬁt organization, supported by the EPA,
corporations and environmental groups, that helps universities, businesses and other
institutions incorporate environmental issues into business curricula and agenda (Jubeir
33). It is an example of the encouraging trend of business, environmental groups,
government and academia coming together to cooperatively problem solve. This kind
of broad-based coalition building is a prominent feature of Third Wave
Environmentalism and, as I discussed before, one at which biodiversity advocates such
as The Nature Conservancy and conservation biologists excel.

Business schools are getting greener, in part, because the realities of the market
require it. More and more, consumers are demanding that business and industry
cooperate with environmentalists and cease to exploit and pollute the land (Hall 22).
For these companies environmental responsibility have been forced on them in the past
by governmental regulations such as the Clean Air and Water Acts. But business and

industry are gradually recognizing today that not only does noncompliance with

188
environmental protection hurt their public relations, it also hurts their bottom-lines.

Further, often industrial environmental damage -- pollution, clearcutting, oil spills,
overdevelopment -- cannot be easily rectiﬁed with after-the-fact ﬁnes. Thus, today’s
business schools are emphasizing training managers who practice an ounce-of-
prevention approaches to the environment.
"Traditionally, when environmental issues have been taught, the focus
has been on environmental regulation and how it affects business," says
Dirk Long, executive director of the Management Institute for
Environment and Business. "What's happening now is that the
environment is seen as a focus of non-regulatory strategy." (Mangan
A20)
In a similar vein, law schools have seen a surge in student interest in environmental
law. There has been in increase of almost 70% of environmental law courses in the
nation's law schools since the late 19805 (Myers 4). Presumably, many of these future
attorneys will be aligned in the years ahead to make sure that their counterparts in
business will practice in good faith the new environmental ethic they have learned as
part of their MBA. And, if neither of these groups remain true to the cause, there is
always the new generation of environmental reporters being trained in universities
where environmental journalism is enjoying popularity.
Unfortunately, experts cannot say if these recent efforts to reform higher
education will necessarily translate into a more environmentally-responsible citizenry.
One survey of college students in 1990 compared to those in 1970 found the new

generation less willing to "make personal sacriﬁces" for the environment, such as

189
taking mass transit as opposed to driving and doing with fewer consumer items

(Gigliotti 22). The study found that students recognize the environmental problems
caused by industry, for example, but fail to make the connection of the "individual's
role" as the root cause (Gigliotti 22). Another study found that environmental
education
may be able to change behavior. Knowledge of science is a good
predictor of willingness to take action in support of the environment.
Moreover, some college curriculums also seem supportive of collective
action. (K. Smith 603)
However, the study concluded that
Because conventional economic curriculums tend to document the
reasons why collective behavior can fail, as Frank et al. found with
general collective actions and college students, it may also reduce
inherent tendencies in college graduates to participate in collective
activities intended to improve the environment. (603)
In other words, our education system rewards competitiveness, singular
accomplishment and self-reliance, just as our culture does -- qualities antithetical to
protecting the natural commons. According to David Orr, the failure of the American
educational system is that it causes "students to worry about how to make a living
before they know who they are . . . render[s] students [into] narrow technicians who
are morally sterile . . . [and] deaden[s] their sense of wonder for the created world"
(Earth in Mind 24-25). Environmental studies, while having made important strides in

academia in recent years, still faces the formidable adult American mindset that the

190
individual has primacy, not the group and not the land community. Signs, however,

are encouraging that higher education has been trying to do more of late, including
principles of ecology and messages of environmentalism in the training of tomorrow’s

professionals.

Children and the Environment
In contrast to adults, children, psychologists and sociologists have found, are

much more likely to consider themselves part of a group, and what’s more seem

naturally predisposed to appreciate nature. Paul Shepard, in his famous work Nature

and Madness, argues that newborns and young children are above all else, "natural,"

not social beings.
Even as socially intense as we are, much of the unconscious life of the
individual is rooted in interaction with otherness that goes beyond our
own kind, interacting with it very early in personal growth, not as an
alternative to human socialization, but as an adjunct to it. The fetus is
suspended in water, tuned to the mother's chemistry and the biological
rhythms that are keyed to the day and seasonal cycles. . . . Identity
formation grows from subjective separation of self from not-self, living
from nonliving, human from nonhuman; it proceeds in speech to employ
plant and animal taxonomy as a means of conceptual thought and as a
model or relatedness. Games and stories involving animals serve as
projections for the discovery of the plurality of the self. (36)

Shepard's idea of an "unconscious life" rooted in "otherness," or nature, shares

191
afﬁnities with E. O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, which maintains humans are

genetically predisposed to nature because of a long evolutionary past in contact with
nonhuman life. Both Wilson and Shepard consider the cause of malaise of modern life
to be found in modernity. Shepard writes,
The high percentage of neuroses in Western society seems often to be
interpreted as a sign of a highly stressful "life-style." If you add to it ~-
or see it acted out as -- the inanities of nationalism, war, and biome
busting, it seems a matter less of life-style than of an epidemic of the
psychopathic mutilation of ontogeny. (36)
Wilson writes,
when humans remove themselves from the natural environment, the
biophilic learning rules are not replaced by modern versions equally well
adapted to artifacts. Instead, they persist from generation to generation,
atrophied and ﬁtfully manifested in the artiﬁcial new environments into
which technology has catapulted humanity. (32)
One piece of anecdotal evidence for Wilson that humans constantly pine for contact
with the natural world comes by the fact that "for the indeﬁnite future more children
and adults will continue, as they do now, to visit zoos than attend all major professional
sports combined (at least this is so in the United States and Canada) . . . " (32).
In some ways, this seems a trivial point to raise. Except, when one considers
what child development experts and parents have known a long time about kids, as Paul
Shepard says, "Animals have a magnetic attraction for the child, for each in its way

seems to embody some impulse, reaction or movement that is 'like me'" (28). One

192

vestige of the primitive world in which all children were once raised and some are
today that can be found in every child's bedroom in the West are representations of
animals -- toys, games, books, videos and posters. Anyone who has spent any time at
a zoo with children or walked with kids in the woods knows that nature can hold them
rapt, and can elicit unbridled joy, awe, curiosity. They relate to nature on a visceral
level, not yet ﬁltered through the socially-constructed intellect of the adult.
David Orr has noted that most environmental thinkers and conservationists had

formative experiences with nature as small children.

Jane Goodall, age two, sleeping with earthworms under pillow . . . or

John Muir "reveling in the wonderful wildness" around his boyhood

Wisconsin home . . . For Aldo Leopold it began in the marshes and

woods along the Mississippi River. For young E.O. ("Snake") Wilson it
began in boyhood explorations of the "woods and swamps . . ."

("Biophilia Revolution," 427-8)
Environmental educators like David Orr and Judy Braus of the World Wildlife Fund
argue that "if by some fairly young age, however, nature has not been experienced as a
friendly place of adventure and excitement, biophilia will not take hold as it might
have" (Orr 428). Biophilia, or love of nature, will not develop without experience and
reinforcement, according to environmental studies professor Stephen Kellert. "Absent
that experience, social reinforcement, opportunity to learn, it will still remain in kind
of atrophied and frustrated way, but it won't occur" (Kinch 9). Reed Noss agrees and

says what many environmental experts believe, "Our society -- parents, teachers,

television -- generally discourages biophilia" (Kinch 9).

193
The solution environmental educators propose for children is more

environmental education, coupled with practicum, "greater contact with nature during
the school day . . . establishment of more natural places -- places of mystery and
adventure where children can roam, explore, and imagine" ("Biophilia Revolution,"
Orr 432). In recent years, several innovative programs have been introduced in
primary and secondary schools, founded on the belief that "children who learn about
the ecosystem and how to protect it often become committed young environmental
activists" (Bovet 24). It is interesting to note that these new programs were in response
to student requests for more environmental education in school.

According to one nationwide survey, children rank protecting the environment
as the "'single most important issue for America to work on in the future'" and far
outranks their concern over drugs, education, homelessness, and the economy (Brody
10). Similar surveys of adults ﬁnd the environment ranking below these other social
problems. The survey of children further concluded that the more kids know the more
"optimistic they are about personally being able to help solve the environmental
dilemma" (12). While some may say this is merely the naivete of youth, one cannot
ignore that the convictions of ﬁgures such as Leopold, Rachel Carson and Wilson to
protect the environment began early in their lives as well.

As far as educating kids about biodiversity in particular, the World Wildlife
Fund began a program in 1995 called "Windows on the Wild." The program was
made possible in part by funds from the 1990 National Environmental Education Act
and the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (Braus 850).

Windows of the Wild provides schools and educators biodiversity educational

I94
materials, such as magazines, workbooks, videos and lesson plans. The program

educates students to the importance of biodiversity and the causes of its loss and further
provides students the opportunity to become involved in local, state and national
conservation activities. It also highlights higher education opportunities and careers
related to biodiversity that students can pursue (Braus S51). One educator commented
that the program teaches kids "to critically examine biodiversity issues and see how
they contribute to the problems . . . but most important, we need to get them to care . .
. because these are issues that they will be dealing with the rest of their lives"
(Windows of the World Online).

As I've said before in this dissertation, making the causal link between
biodiversity loss and individual behavior is one of the most challenging hurdles for this
cause. It takes a level of environmental literacy that is largely lacking in the
population. For older generations, perhaps, it is a conceptual linkage that cannot be
made because they have been conditioned to thinking differently about the world. An
analogy to this would be computers and how readily children take to and learn this new
technology, while many adults are befuddled by concepts of pixels, RAM and
information highways. If the "eco-psychologists" are right and children are more
"natur " than adults and if educators are also correct in saying that kids especially care
about the environment, learn easily and then go on to become adults who have an
environmental ethic, then clearly, emphasis needs to continue, and be increased, in this
area.

Environmental educators believe that teaching ecology in the classroom has a

limited impact on students, and can only be fully manifest if accompanied by a ﬁeld

19S
trip to a local natural ecosystem (Bovet 25). Unlike some intellectual pursuits,

successful environmental education requires the student to go into the woods and the
swamp now and then where he or she can, in Wilson's words, form "the habit of
quietude and concentration" in a world that increasingly allows little of either
(Biophilia 92). Examples of experiential outdoor education can be found at all levels of
education in the United States. For school children in particular, outings to zoos and
natural history museums are important in their environmental education. The Wildlife
Conservation Society estimates that its environmental education programs reach 1.2
million children annually in metropolitan New York (Annual Report 20).

For older students, programs such as Outward Bound and NOLS, provide
opportunities for students to discover their "personal strengths and celebrate human and
ecological diversity " (Outward Bound Online). Many colleges and universities offer
ﬁeld experience for students in environmental courses or majors. Williams College in
Massachusetts, for example, encourages environmental studies students to "pursue
summer internships in their Home communities, or to do semester of Winter Study
courses at locations outside the temperate zones" (Online). Prescott College in Arizona
features a curriculum that is integrated throughout with ecological science and
environmental values.

Thus, for those older and younger students who have the interest or money,
opportunities to experience nature beyond the classroom may well be plentiful.
However, critics of modern society ﬁnd this experience is far overshadowed by
artiﬁcial experiences to the degree that much of the "younger generation has lost direct

experiences with the natural world," according to Gary Nabhan, a ecological and

196
cultural scientist. Nabhan argues that children and youths understand the natural world

primarily through the electronically-mediated experience of television or computers
(242). "Now that the global electronic media dominate their knowledge of nature,
these children are losing the kind of local awareness that television documentaries
cannot supply" (241). This criticism of the modern global society is echoed by others
like Wendell Berry or Gary Snyder, who says people are "rapidly becoming nature-
illiterate" (12). While nature outings offer a chance at connection and understanding
that transcends the classroom, skeptics would point out these ventures are the

exceptions not the rules to education and life in America.

Biodiversity and Sim City

In 1995, Consumer Reports estimated that there were some 1700 "edutainment"
computer games on the market with 450 new ones coming out each year (763). Many
of these interactive games are for children and adolescents. One the more popular of
these games is "Sim City." "Sim" is short for "simulation" and in each game the
player can choose from a myriad of options to develop a metropolis: clearing land,
creating infrastructure in the context of an economy, dictated by the amount of
development and tax rate (Gorton 367). Maps display land use, crime rates, land
values, city services and approval ratings of the player or "mayor" among Sim
residents. The game generates a number of variables with which the player must
contend, such as natural disasters, inﬂation, soaring crime rate and other realistic urban
problems. For example, the mayor can choose to exploit the region's natural

resources, bringing economic prosperity to the city, more immigration, high approval

197
ratings and other positive effects. However, these are short-term gains and eventually,

such a policy will visit dilemmas upon the mayor. Reviewing the software game in
Professional Geographer, Steven 1. Gorton writes,

One can build a city over a number of years where the ratings are high,

the budget is doing well, and the mayor is popular. Then, congestion,

pollution, and other problems appear that are difﬁcult to resolve. (367)
Gorton ﬁnds this aspect of the game to cause "frustration" in the player as opposed to
the "sense of adventure" a player has in ﬁguring out trafﬁc ﬂows, laying out power
grids, and even, if the game becomes a bit slow, unleashing Godzilla onto Sim City for
several minutes of virtual destruction (367).

Gorton’s complaint that the game makes it difﬁcult to balance off economic
good times with ecological sustainability strikes me as ridiculous, given that the
intention of this game is to simulate reality. If Sim City has a valuable feature, it is
that it demonstrates to youths playing the game the consequences of certain economic
actions to the Sim environment and eventually to Sim city itself. In the real world,
environmentalists know that disaster for civilization need not strike suddenly as an
earthquake or nuclear monster; disaster, as with biodiversity loss and ecosystem
destruction, can be slow, incremental and insidious, such as the suburban sprawl of a
city.

As I've tried to emphasize in this dissertation, the Biodiversity Mission of the
last two decades is an attempt to address "real world" problems. Its emphasis upon
long-term, widespread, inclusive protection of the biotic community, as opposed to the

earlier model of single-species, preserve approach marks a new and important departure

198
for American conservationism. Biodiversity proponents are reaching out to experts in

other ﬁelds, such as economics, politics, business, education in an attempt to create a
broad-based coalition among citizens who are not necessarily environmentalists.
Global dilemmas as complex as the greenhouse effect or biodiversity loss, since they
are "non-point source" problems, require multiple solution strategies. Unlike point-
source environmental problems, such as pollution or oil spills, biodiversity proponents
cannot point to smokestacks and single-hulled oil tankers as the sole culprits of
environmental decline. Biodiversity loss, as school children are learning, is
everybody's problem. If the move to preserve biodiversity is to be successful, it will
take more than breakthroughs in ﬁnding cleaner fuels, in creation of community
recycling programs, in saving the few remaining individuals of an endangered species
in zoos, in preserving fragments of wildlands, surrounded by suburbia; it will take a
I revolution in ecological consciousness among the masses and a environmental
protection effort on a huge temporal and spatial scale.
Kirkpatrick Sales and other environmental historians, such as Samuel Hays,
haveargued that
American environmental consciousness has been progressing since World
War II. Within the space of a single generation, environmentalism has
become embedded in American life, in law and custom, text and image,
classroom and workplace, practice and consciousness, in such a way that
suggests that, far from eventually fading away, it will continue to grow,
in numbers and impact alike, at least for some time to come. (Green

Revolution, Sales 96)

199
Sociologists and environmental historians have argued that the American

Environmentalism remains one of the most viable, enduring social movements in
American history (Dunlap 4). And, although the movement is cyclical, going through
periods of resurgence and recession, it remains viable and increasingly popular. In
fact, according to polls, in 1990 widespread public concern about the environment was
higher than it had ever been before and although it has decreased some since then, it
still remains higher among the populace than it did 20 years during the so-called Age of
Ecology (Dunlap 113). The cultural critic Roger Rosenblatt argued in a recent New
York Times Magazine article that environmental values, like other American liberal
values, such as equal rights, have been absorbed so much by liberals, moderates and
conservative alike that they are no longer thought of as "radical " (34).
Environmentalism like Civil Rights has gone mainstream.

To date, biodiversity supporters have won a number of important victories in
the political and public arenas, legitimizing their cause in the eyes of the public and
policy makers. Important biodiversity legislation, such as the reauthorization of the
Endangered Species Act, will further raise public salience to this cause. Press coverage
continues to improve. The academic and science communities have rallied behind the
issue of biodiversity, evidenced by conservation biology's meteoric rise and the sheer
volume of scholarly writing on the subject from ﬁelds as diverse as environmental
ethics, economics, cultural anthropology and history. Related issues such as
sustainable economies are also getting a good deal of scholarly and popular attention.
The emerging discipline of "environmental economics" in particular is of note, since it

is trying to reform measurements of national economic growth, arguing that resource

200
depletion and degradation of habitats should be measured against the "Gross Domestic

Product," instead of ignored as has been the historical case (Cobb 72). In terms of
"networking," biodiversity issues are found throughout the Internet as various groups
and individuals working on biodiversity conservation and science share information.

The Biodiversity Mission is moving American Environmentalism closer to the
ideal laid out by Aldo Leopold in his "Land Ethic" and other writings a half century
ago:

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant:
"What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then
every part is good, whether we understand it or not. 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 keep every
cog and wheel is the ﬁrst precaution of intelligent tinkering. ("Round
River," 190)

Keeping as many of the cogs and wheels is the ambitious mission of biodiversity
proponents. This "mission-oriented crisis" endeavor of inventorying and protecting
"whole assemblages of species, habitats, and ecosystems before they decline further" is
the start to redress limitations and failures of American conservation in the past
(Saving, Noss 27). Environmental leaders label this more holistic conservation
approach to nature conservation as a "paradigm shift" and a "revolution" in American
Environmentalism (Schlickeisen 11). In the past, despite good intentions conservation
has" been treating the symptom, the loss of single species, and not the disease -—

destructive human activities that are causing the collapse of entire ecosystems"

201
(Schlickeisen 12). This new, systemic approach intends to rectify this.

To accomplish such a mission, it will demand more from both the
environmentalists and scientists promoting this cause and more from the American
people as whole. It will take a sense of citizenship that is not only global, but
ecological as well. It will take, according to Michael Soule, "big, selﬂess and costly
acts of biOphilia to protect nature. . . . giving of yourself for the sake of the large self"
(Kinch 9). Aldo Leopold, E. O. Wilson and others have argued that the "evolution of
ethics" makes this transformation of American culture possible. From a socio-political
standpoint, the environment has become, as Samuel Hays and others maintain, a
hearth-and-home issue and one increasingly important to the public. The social history
of humankind has been a history of the individual extending his or her sphere of ethical
consideration beyond the self, the family, the tribe, nation, race and in more recent
history, certain nonhuman species. On the eve of the 2lst century, the full diversity of

the "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land" awaits this inclusion.

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