Posted by: "Bernie Krause"
>
> Then you need to hang out in this neck of the woods where there is
> strong and constant local action, Walt. It ranges from kids in
> kindergarten cleaning up sites as part of the curricula, to post grad =
> to retired folks in their mid-eighties, restoring wetlands, meadows,
> forests, former cattle grazing areas, inter-tidal zones, etc. As far
> as ArcticNWR is concerned, for those of us who've been and worked
> there, we can't imagine any kind of multiple habitat more worth
> preserving and dedicating our energies to doing just that. As far as I =
> know WE are the government, here. So I guess it's up to us-'uns to
> make the changes necessary and to make things work. I'm just not ready =
> or willing to lay that responsibility on anyone else...either elected =
> or anointed.
I make periodic trips out through the west. I see the extent of the
expansion of development out there not on a daily basis but with time
intervals in between. It is shocking the rapidity with which the
natural systems are going under the bulldozer, seemingly even faster
than here.
Yes it's up to each individual. Though one could question just how
accurate saying We are the government is. This is exactly what I'm
talking about. Those kindergarteners will grow up expecting a home,
transport and all the rest. The same ones that volunteer in a cleanup
probably are part of the development sprawl too. We do have that here too.
Are you working on protecting the flight paths and wintering grounds of
all the wildlife that only spends a small part of the year in the Arctic
NWR? For water birds the loss of wetlands is extreme and continuing.
For forest birds the forests are going. For many others their habitat
is being plowed under to produce alcohol. So that we won't need the ANWR
oil. Protecting ANWR is a tradeoff that's damaging somewhere else.
Population is the key, without population control none of the rest
matters in the long term. In the time scale of ecology or evolution.
Yes, Bernie, I know you are very active in all this, but you are a
exception.
I'm sure that ANWR was put in more danger by the recent gas shortage in
our part of the country. We stood in lines for gas, most stations were
closed for several weeks. Caused primarily by the Eastern US being
dependent on refineries clustered in a Hurricane alley. But I bet a lot
of folks just got more interested in drilling domestically. Even if you
drove a hybrid, you got to set in lines. A lot of hybrid owners had
convinced themselves they were safe until this.
> For the record, I first heard the expression, "ecology," in 1968 while =
> researching the subject for an album my late music partner, Paul
> Beaver, and I were composing for our Warner Brothers debut , In A Wild =
> Sanctuary. The the word (and concept), itself, was coined by Ernst
> Haeckelin in 1866. I KNOW you're old, but you're not THAT old, Walt,
> unless you're hiding something from us.
No, I'm not that old, but I'm not talking about a few specialists. When
did the press know the word ecology? Or the common man on the street?
When did high schools even include the word in their biology courses?
You will find that's much more recent.
By 1968 I'd been engaged in studying ecology for some time I'd already
been through some college level courses in it. In other words I was
already a ecologist then and had been for some time.
Though at the moment I feel far older than just 1866, I'm not that old.
Walt
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