We live in an era of unprecedented change – in the composition of the American population, in Americans’ relationship to the landscape, in the complexities of the environmental challenges we face. For those reasons, the Conserving the Future conference comes at a critical time.
When I was growing up on the prairie in Moorhead, MN, we had a cabin on the edge of Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge. I spent my childhood fishing, swimming, exploring the outdoors of Northern Minnesota, and learning to hunt.
Do kids today learn to hunt and fish at an early age? Do they get binoculars for their 7th birthdays? Can they identify what kind of duck just flew overhead? Some can, but not enough.
In the last few decades, we’ve seen dramatic fragmentation of the landscape and a gradual erosion of the wild places where wildlife can flourish and young kids can explore. Fragmentation is hardly our only environmental challenge. Experts tell us that nearly a quarter of the world’s mammals, a third of amphibians and more than 10 percent of bird species are threatened with extinction.
But this conference is about hope – not dire predictions. We will do what our forebears did generations ago when they faced unprecedented challenges.
We will muster the same energy and innovation shown by early conservation heroes when they tackled the twin challenges of the Great Depression and the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl. We will bring the same professionalism to our tasks as did those in the 1960s and 70s when they faced DDT, fought for clean air, clean water and wilderness protection and sought to protect ecological functions that are the foundation of our nation.
We bring fresh energy to move landscape conservation forward.
But we won’t succeed alone. Hunters and anglers, state and tribal agencies, refuge Friends and nonprofit organizations are essential — as they have been for decades.
The conference agenda is not only packed with high profile speakers and thinkers, but it is also filled with opportunities to hear vibrant and emerging ideas in dozens of facilitated discussions and workshops. We will find ways that Refuge Friends, refuge staff, partners and neighbors can make the Conserving the Future vision real in communities across the nation.
We will work with the urgency displayed in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to build a conservation constituency today. We have bold ideas for new urban refuges, more community support groups, more volunteers, new recreational opportunities, and a more diverse and inclusive workforce. Those ideas will energize our fellow citizens, the next generation of conservationists.
Working together, we can change the world. I look forward to starting in Madison.
By Greg Siekaniec, Chief, National Wildlife Refuge System
