By Hal Michael
The phrase “Elephant in the Room” is a metaphor for situations where there is an obvious problem that the people who are supposed to be making or influencing a decision are unwilling to recognize, discuss, or address. For those active in the conservation and management of natural resources there are a number of these “elephants” that I would like to put out for discussion.
Part of the problem, and I will get into this, is that people often confuse the “problem” with the “solution”. Because if a solution to a problem is unacceptable to someone, they won’t be willing to even discuss the problem because they don’t want to see a particular solution they oppose implemented. There are always many possible solutions depending on the desired outcome. I will try to keep these two threads separate but point out where this has occurred.
The first Elephant, and the one that drives all the others, is human population. Even though technological developments can, to a degree, affect the capacity for life, the Earth has a finite capacity for it. There is only so much fresh water, so much arable land, so much in non-renewable resources such as metals and petrochemicals, and so on. Note that I said, “capacity for life” and not “capacity for humans” as these are two different things. The capacity for humans, as with all other living resources, varies with the choices we make about how the earth will be shared.
Because I believe in sharing the earth with other life forms, I believe that we currently have too many people on earth. The vast African savannas and their herds are declining, the Great Apes are declining, the vast Bison herds in the Great Plains are gone, the California Grizzly is gone, many of our Atlantic and Pacific salmon runs are gone, we are observing significant declines in birds, insects, and amphibians, and so on. These animals lived in areas that are now used to support people living in mostly urban environments. In order to restore those resources and their ecosystems would we remove the people and infrastructure currently in place? If not, how do we intend to restore them?
The first problem, then, is actually defining how many people we want and where they are to be distributed. We may, for example, say that Lacey-Olympia-Tumwater (L-O-T) can remain within fixed boundaries, but the trade-off might be that other lowland, estuary, grassland, and prairies will be preserved in, or restored to, a natural state. But, in order to support L-O-T there needs to be provision for food, water, fiber, energy, minerals, and similar things so decisions will need to be made to provision the people because many of these materials are not produced within L-O-T. This same exercise needs to be done globally. We then have a number to shoot for that we all agree on. An integral part of the population setting is the need to clearly establish where more, or any, people can live.
At this point, the “how” gets discussed and decided with the knowledge that we have already agreed to the endpoint. Arguments over goals often become surrogate arguments over policy choices. Without the endpoint agreement, we will never actually preserve natural resources in their natural state because there will always be pressure for humans to move in, develop, and exploit materials. We can all remember areas where we lived or recreated as children that are now much more developed. As a fish manager, I often was asked “why can’t we have the seasons and limits we used to have?” Often, the questioner does not even recognize how the landscape has changed. Even setting population levels and defining boundaries leaves the problem unresolved in the long term because the earth, its geology, and climate are not static. We may decide, for example, that Seattle and Tacoma can exist within defined boundaries and the Cascadia Subduction Zone or Mt Rainier may forcefully express an alternative opinion.
The second Elephant that I see is that we are good at opposing proposals such as development of a mine, logging some woods, building a freight transfer site, developing a facility, building a dam, demanding removal of a dam, and so on. While opposition to such projects is laudable and is often “environmentally necessary” such opposition more about where the material such as lithium, silica, gold, or copper will come from. For example, we need metals to operate such mandatory items as computers, cell phones, and tablets in addition to automobiles, planes, houses, and consumer goods. The rare earths, lithium, silica, cobalt. Molybdenum all have to come from somewhere and to simply go NIMBY may save our neighborhood but moves the problem to somewhere else like Asia, South America, or Africa. I believe that we must, as part of opposition to a proposal, offer a more viable alternative. I emphasize “more viable”, but it at least needs to be as viable both economically and environmentally. We also need to make the costs of some of our choices, like salmon fueling electric vehicles through hydropower, more visible to ourselves. Otherwise, I fear that if all the conservation community ever expresses is opposition that we will be ignored because we are ignoring human needs.
The third elephant I see is that we tend not to form mutually beneficial alliances unless the ally checks all of our boxes. We ignore the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The last few elections have shown rather clearly that we no longer value cooperation across our own society much less internationally. Many countries are quite willing to supply L-O-T with whatever we want, for a price. We do not need to agree with all of a group’s positions but should cooperate when we can. For example, Ducks Unlimited works very hard to preserve and restore land to the benefit of huntable waterfowl. At the same time a myriad of other species utilize these marshes, wetlands, potholes, and such while at the same time offering hunting opportunities. Simple opposition to hunting, then, prevents working together to preserve and restore needed habitat.
I mention these alliances because the single item holding back much desired land acquisition, preservation, and restoration is money. Consumptive hunters and anglers in the US have sponsored legislation that taxes their equipment (Dingall/Johnson and Pittman/Roberts) and various State and Federal “Duck Stamps” to provide funding to manage, enhance, and restore consumable resources. The non-consumptive community has resisted efforts to tax their equipment. Whether or not you believe that conservation of natural resources is the responsibility of the entire population, we are currently not collecting, or maybe not disbursing, sufficient funds to meet education, infrastructure, public safety, mental health, healthcare, and associated needs. These needs are often seen as a higher priority, which leaves natural resources far down the list of funding priorities.
As I noted in the beginning, my goal is not to provide answers but to have an open discussion. In my view, if we do not deal with these, and probably other, elephants in the room we have already decided that the long term survival of naturally reproducing and evolving wild resources will not occur. We are simply managing the rate of extinction and should clearly admit this and move on.
To provide the perspective from an opposing view, here is a link to as response to similar pitch (Agenda 21). We have to understand their arguments and concerns and be able to offer viable alternatives to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOERWe0qX68
Lastly, as the recent Inauguration Speech by President Biden emphasized, we solve problems by working together. While difficult, it is what we must do.
