Some History of Biodiversity Conservation

“The world was on the verge of the worst biological extinction in 65 million years, 

  and it was high time academics and conservationists overcame the barriers 

  between their fields to work together and save plants and animals.” 

Michael Soule 1978

We need good history to help us think. There is no history that tells the story of biodiversity conservation.

There are related histories - accounts of ecological restoration, for example. There are also many histories of endangered species losses and rescues.

But the subject of “biodiversity conservation” is so much more profound and significant than sub-sets like “restoration” and “endangered species.”

Oddly, some writers have referred to me as “a restorationist.” I try to tell them that restoration is one tool among many that contribute to conservation. It’s like calling a builder of houses “a hammerist.”  

As a teacher, I look for valuable books to recommend to students. Because I’m also a student, I ask teachers to recommend books for me. Recently I asked Curt Meine, Jack White, and others (see Endnote 1) for "recommended reading" in the history of biodiversity conservation.

Meine wrote to me:

A definitive, comprehensive book doesn't exist.  
If I were teaching a course on the topic, the reading list might include:

M. V. Barrow Jr., Nature’s Ghosts:  Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology (2009).

T. J. Farnham, Saving Nature’s Legacy: Origins of the Idea of Biological Diversity (2007)

David Quammen, Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions (1996)

None of these quite fill the bill, but each contributes essential stuff.

Okay. Thanks, Curt. But Barrow and Quammen focus on the conservation of single species. People argue that when you save a large area for a big species, you save everything else too. Yes and no. The biodiversity of the plants and animals of the tallgrass prairie and savanna are not being saved that way. 

T.J. Farnham writes about academics and their words. If you don’t write about strategies and actions, battles and victories and defeats, you aren’t writing the real history.

Jack White suggested:

Curt Meine’s biography of Aldo Leopold.

Arthur Pearson’s biography of George Fell

Croker, R.A. 1991. Pioneer Ecologist: The Life and Work of Victor Ernest Shelford, 1877-1968. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington. 

McClain, W. 2005. Natural Areas Day, October 6, 1972: Beginning of the Natural Areas Association. Illinois Steward 14(2):6–10.

Okay, again. These are good. I was glad to see Curt Meine’s fine biography of Aldo Leopold at the head of Jack’s list. But where’s the overall history of biodiversity conservation? The ecosystem is so much more essential than individuals’ lives or an organization. 

The rest of this post consists of what feeble contributions I can make to such history, from the perspective of how I experienced it. I hope it will be poor enough to irk or inspire some capable historians to do real histories. I want to read them.

We are very new. The ecosystem – with its biodiversity of hundreds to thousands of interdependent species – was only understood “as a thing” within the last century – beginning with Eugen Warming (University of Copenhagen), Arthur Tansley (Oxford), and Henry Cowles (Chicago) in the early 1900s. Cowles brought his students on field trips to the Indiana Dunes, where he pioneered work in ecological succession. 

Actual saving of ecosystems was then promoted systematically by Victor Shelford (a student of Cowles and later a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign). Shelford had organized the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in 1915, hoping (over-optimistically) that its mostly academic members could focus on conserving nature. They didn’t. They wanted to study. (As you’ll see in this account, much eco-conservation history seems to have started in the Midwest. Why? See Endnote 2.) 

Disappointed with dithering by the ESA, Shelford established a Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions (1917) that identified 600 areas in North America that were “preserved or worth preserving.” They were listed in a remarkable book, The Naturalists Guide to the Americas (1926). Typically, the “preserved” was in name only, so far as the ecosystem was concerned. Sites had been set aside as parks principally for recreation. 

The academics continued to get nervous whenever Shelford proposed to “do” rather than “study.” He butted his head against that wall until 1946, when he organized the “Ecologists Union” – once again wanting to save ecosystems. They discussed how it could it be done. And who'd do the work? 

Semi-miraculously, George and Barbara Fell appeared in 1949 to transform the Ecologists’ Union into The Nature Conservancy. (George is the guy who would later hire me, after many battles lost and won, in 1978.) The Fells had vision and some skills. Most importantly, George was willing to work full time without compensation, and Barbara was able to find an actual paying job to support them both, as they together launched the planet’s first ecosystem saving machine.

Around a makeshift Washington D.C. office, they strategically assembled a broad community of conservationists (not just professors this time), raised funds, set priorities, reached out to partners, hired staff, promoted local chapters, and cultivated experts. George put much of his initial energy into establishing an arm of the federal government with the resources to do the job right. His legislative efforts failed, but simultaneously he fostered local action with chapters and professional staff. He had high dedication – but was deficient in some personal skills. Conservancy chapters and groups raised funds to buy “hemlock gullies” and other marginally important but attractive land. In 1958, The Nature Conservancy – though methodically developing according to Fell's plan – fired George over strategic disagreements and managerial needs.  

George Fell supported the Conservancy (“TNC”) for the rest of his life, but he believed he saw flaws that would limit it. So, back to the drawing boards, he and Barbara returned to Illinois and launched the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC) – a government agency with power and prestige – alongside the Natural Land Institute (NLI) – a nimble non-profit that could do the parts that couldn’t be done by a government bureaucracy. Both INPC and NLI were headquartered in an old house in Rockford, in part to protect them from becoming mired in the Illinois state bureaucracy of Springfield. 

Many triumphs emerged from that Rockford office (see Endnote 3). Scores of individual sites were permanently dedicated as Illinois Nature Preserves. The first (or one of the first?) state endangered plant list was drafted. NLI staffer Jack White got a mission, funding, and staff to do an inspired update on those “600 North American areas worth protecting.” The Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (INAI) asked the question “Where does nature survive in Illinois?” In the process, the Inventory defined “natural area” – which might seem trivial but turned out to be important and challenging. 

Shelford’s “Naturalist’s Guide” defined “natural areas” as lands that continued to support the continent’s “original biota” but didn't go much farther. The description of a not-atypical site in Georgia reads: “Shorter College Reserve ... a tract of open ravine woodland and meadowland … probably much modified by artificial ‘improvement.’ Apparently in part a pleasure ground … Hotel accommodations … good.” 

The Illinois inventory defined its goal as “natural communities that are relatively undisturbed, so that they reflect as nearly as possible the natural conditions at the time of settlement in the early 1800’s.” It divided nature into eight “Community Classes” (forest, prairie, savanna, pond, cave, etc.) and listed 85 distinct communities (dry-mesic sand forest, wet prairie, low shrub bog, etc.), providing soil information, characteristic plant and animal species, and hydrologic factors to define them.

It found 14 types of forest and 27 types of prairie. It made management recommendations for long term health of the ecosystem. Unlike the “Naturalist’s Guide” – the INAI recognized that prairies evolved with and needed regular fire, a dramatic reversal from earlier conservation guidelines. The focus on "undisturbed" handicapped its ability to identify quality oak woodlands (which, like Illinois grasslands, are fire dependent).

The INAI identified 610 surviving natural ecosystem fragments, comprising 7/100^ths of 1% of the state’s surface area. Some tracts were already owned by conservation agencies – but threatened with gradual loss from lack of needed management. Black soil prairies were one of the rarest communities, comprising a mere 1/100^th of 1% of the original, but (unlike eastern states, which had been “settled” hundreds of years earlier) some rich little plots of nature still survived.

I received the miracle of a great job in response to that Inventory. The INPC/NLI hired me and four others to get those 610 areas protected. My principal beat was the six counties surrounding Chicago, which surprisingly had more natural areas than the rural corn counties. (Remnants were in forest preserves, owned by land speculators, on estates, etc. In corn and soybean areas of the state, many counties had not a single surviving quarter-acre prairie or 20-acre woods.) My job was to make friends with landowners, establish constituency (local residents, political leaders, donors, partner organizations), influence public agencies, and spread the word through them and the media as urgently as I could.   

The campaign was fueled by a Joyce Foundation grant made jointly to George’s Natural Land Institute and the Illinois chapter of TNC (that organization’s first chapter). The job of TNC would be to buy as many of the 610 ecosystems as they could, with businesslike prioritizing and professionalism, and then transfer them to government agencies (state, county, or local) that would dedicate them into the Illinois Nature Preserves System – which would then assure their survival forever. That strategy worked well in the short term. For example, in 1979 and 1980, thirty nature preserve lands were acquired (fourteen of them by TNC), and nine sites were permanently dedicated as nature preserves. Soon hundreds of preserves were owned by the state, county forest preserve districts, cities, park districts, individuals, and special cases including cemetery associations and a power company. 

Two major flaws or challenges soon became apparent. The first was that there was far too little capacity to take care of these precious preserves. George’s initial focus had been to protect nature from logging, mowing, plowing, and other forms of “development.” Legally, that was straightforward. Every preserve was to have enforceable Management Plans, which, in the earliest versions, were mostly long lists  of what the owners could not do (log, plow, fish, hunt, ski, trample, allow overuse by nature lovers, etc.). But my other mentor, Professor Robert Betz, began to stress that nature needed affirmative care. He had found prairies to degrade under neglect. They required weeding of invasives, controlled burns, and in many cases expansion so that plant and animal populations of sub-viable size would not flicker out. This “nature needs care” concept was new and difficult to get across. People had to learn much ecology – and indeed it was an ecology without much literature or “best management practices.” It became apparent that many nature preserves were gradually losing their nature, as brush or invasive weeds triumphed. (Birders reported that bird species were disappearing, but most other animal groups were harder to monitor.)

The other flaw might be attributed to George’s lack of personal skills, or, some would say, to overconfidence in his abilities to oversee public-private collaborations. Many agencies own nature preserves, and as elected officials and administrations changed, some failed to understand the nature preserve commitments that had been made. They wanted to use parts of nature preserves for many other uses. Fell, with the law on his side, said no. He blocked demands for roads, fire stations, dams, and exercise facilities in nature preserves. He succeeded in every case, but he made enemies.

Every second year, the INPC published a “Two Year Report.” Each report listed every preserve, its owner, key features, and conservation updates. Those updates included threats to preserves, actions taken successfully to resolve them, and failures of commission or omission. Thus the 1979-1980 accounts included such items as: “Farming encroachment on the south end should be corrected;” “A regular burning program is needed for the marsh, prairie, and savanna communities;” “More boundary signs are needed. Brush should be removed from the north half of the preserve;” “A wide bridle path through the preserve is disturbing natural conditions along the trail and threatening to destroy several colonies of rare plants.” 

Such comments educated the interested public, gave ammunition to agency staff seeking budget increases, and infuriated the leaders of some agencies whose shortcomings were thus pointed out. High on the list of those taking umbrage at the righteous (self-righteous?) demands of the INPC were the upper level staff of the Illinois Department of Conservation (DOC). They considered Fell to be their employee – and insubordinate. They found it unacceptable that people like me carried two business cards, one identifying me as a state employee of the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and another as not-for-profit staff of the Natural Land Institute. I could therefore speak and act too freely, in the view of some bureaucrats.

George had argued from his early days at TNC that the job was too urgent and too big for any one agency. We had to engage governments, businesses, universities, conservation organizations, and publics. The flexible INPC/NLI organization was the creativity and glue that held it all together. 

By 1980, grumblings about George festered widely. In return, George pointed out that DOC had arranged that five of the nine INPC commissioners now worked for agencies that benefited from DOC grants. One day, George said to me, darkly, “the vultures are circling.” Ralph Brown, Illinois TNC director, called me repeatedly, urging me to come work for him, insisting that NLI’s days were numbered. I resisted for some time – out of a deep allegiance to the INPC vision. In the end, I agreed, under the perhaps odd-sounding condition that my salary not be raised. I did not want to sell out. 

The Joyce foundation grant had now run out. DOC staff announced that it would no longer fund INPC through NLI. In August 1982, as I remember it, the Commission listened grimly to a presentation from DOC's lawyer and, in effect, fired George as Executive Secretary and ended the contract with Fell’s Natural Land Institute. Among some, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. With no funding to pay them, the entire INPC staff was let go. By that time, I was already at TNC, and Brown somehow then also found funding to temporarily hire the rest of the INPC Field Reps. DOC and INPC agreed to hire Karen Witter as the new INPC director. It was her job to rebuild the INPC staff, and she was outstandingly committed and effective at it. 

TNC was at that time becoming famous for its positive and effective approach – in contrast to old-fashioned environmentalists, who were seen by many (especially by rich donors) as protesters, hippies, complainers, and losers. At the same time, under the surface, national and Illinois TNC were two very different beasts. Both were celebrated for their creativity and accomplishment. Both subscribed to the national slogan: “We preserve land the old-fashioned way. We buy it.” TNC made much use of a photo (from the cover of Time? Or Forbes Magazine?) showing a green forest populated by mostly young gray-suited men carrying briefcases. TNC received the best scientific advice money could buy and used real-estate expertise to acquire vastly more land than any other conservation group. 

Ralph Brown, our Illinois TNC director, turned out to be a great partner for me. He was an MBA who relished saving land through smart use of real-estate and tax law, matching grants, and influential contacts. He thought and studied night and day to bring to our board “leveraged deals” that saved the best and most land at the least expense. I thought and studied night and day about preserve threats, ecological restoration, volunteerism, and public support for stewardship.

My early months with this business-oriented, MBA-led TNC surprised me. Everything in our office was rational, supportive, friendly, and clear. The gulf between national and Illinois TNC emerged only slowly. The National wanted us to raise big money, buy land, keep it, and manage it according to best science. The Illinois board and staff proudly considered themselves trailblazers in a different direction. We raised modest amounts of money, acquired land (typically for much less than if a government agency bought it directly), sold it at cost to public agencies that agreed to Nature Preserve status, and then re-used those funds to buy more land. We also worked to assure that the new owners and INPC would care for the land’s ecosystem according to best science. 

At one point I remember Ralph saying to me something like, “I don’t understand what you do and never will. But I know that stewardship is a missing piece on our team, as the National keeps reminding me, and you’re respected for it. Go ahead and do what it is that you do. I’ll support you.”

My principal strategies were two. Both were positive – in contrast with most environmentalism at the time and in concert (or so I thought) with the overall TNC strategy. The first strategy was raising awareness and building constituency. Day and night, I gave speeches to any group that would hear me, led tours, organized workshops and conferences, wrote up materials on individual sites and on basic principles, and circulated them privately and through groups, newsletters, and eventually the media. It was crucial that there be broad public support for these new ideas (especially controlled burns and woody invasives removal) if public agencies were to become good land stewards. 

The second strategy was to recruit volunteer stewards. When all went well, such a person would develop a long-term commitment to a certain preserve and good relationships with the staff people who had official authority over it. This work had started earlier with the North Branch Restoration Project and later with the little groups I’d organized for INPC/NLI. But when George and NLI were fired, suddenly the Nature Preserve commissioners led an important statewide program without staff. Eight of us had done the work that the commissioners had supervised and were proud of. In the name of the Conservancy, I now proposed to the Commission that they and TNC assemble something new, to be called the “Volunteer Stewardship Network.” Previously INPC commissioners had expressed reluctance to empower volunteers, and some commissioners still gritted their teeth (see Endnote 4), but a consensus now accepted the offer of free help. 

Ralph Brown arranged to fund this work through the Chicago Community Trust. Their grant offered more respectability than actual resources. It was for $5,000 per year for three years, needing to be matched twice. Brown had to raise funds for something that was poorly understood. He achieved one 5K match from a small foundation that he knew well. Beyond that, he struck out, so the third 5K came from Charlie Haffner, our wealthy board president. 

I was surprised to learn later from Brown that TNC’s national office had been dubious about our project. He got it approved as an experiment, to be reviewed annually. The National staff would have been happier if Illinois Nature Conservancy had kept the land it bought and hired professionals to manage it. But the Illinois board continued to strongly support the Illinois strategy (launched to a considerable degree by George Fell): buy land, sell it at a bargain price to an agency that would take care of it, use the funds to buy more land, and then do it again - all under the protection of the Illinois Nature Preserve System. But now, with the whole Illinois Nature Preserve staff gone, that protection suddenly vanished.  

I wrote emergency appeals (“Whole staff fired!” “Emergency need for stewards!” “Training available.”) and got them published by Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Illinois Environmental Council, and other sympathetic publications. Soon sixty stewards were being mentored to care for sixty preserves. They included all of INPC’s major nature preserves in northeastern Illinois and some unpreserved areas like Wolf Road Prairie (largely owned by people who wanted to build houses on it) and Bluff Spring Fen (owned by a sanitary agency that wanted to build a sewage treatment plant on it). 

To get the attention and build trust of owning agencies, stewards would "surveil" the sites four times a year and report to the Conservancy, INPC, and the owners. Was there garbage dumping, pest invasions, etc.? Most stewards of Nature Preserves were authorized to do needed work within a year or two. In the case of unpreserved land, stewardship groups became powerful advocates – helping lead in every case to acquisition or dedication. They did good work. 

New TNC employees like me were sent to headquarters in Arlington, Virginia for orientation. My experience was disorienting but helpfully so. The heads of the various departments conveyed their perspectives and didn’t hesitate to challenge what we’d heard from the others – basically making the point that in this organization you fight for what you believe in. Vice President for land acquisition and legendary deal maker Dave Morine warned us that “the inmates have taken over the institution.” By that he seemed to mean that TNC bureaucrats and scientists sometimes got in the way of TNC land deals. Chief scientist, Dr. Robert Jenkins, told us that ecologically, “Bigger is better; forget the scraps.” The INAI prairies I was dedicated to were such scraps, often less than an acre. Dave Morine later described “Dr. Bob’s” style as “scientific, dogmatic, and territorial.” Jenkins did emphasize stewardship, telling us in arch tones that “The Nature Conservancy's chief job in fifty years, if there is a Nature Conservancy, will be trucking!” His point in early 1980 was already that global warming would force most species north, if they were to survive. 

The Illinois program grew to hundreds of sites with hundreds of stewards, larger and larger acreages (like Cap Sauers Holding and Nachusa Grasslands), more and more restoration, and closer ties with government landowning agencies and scientific institutions.  

During my 15 years with TNC as Illinois Director of Science and Stewardship, I participated in many rounds of regional and national planning exercises and noticed staff and national board members increasingly impressed by my reports. When TNC renewed itself through the “Last Great Places” campaign, much of it reflected the successes of programs like ours. Three major changes marked the “Last Great Places.” First, the Conservancy aimed at much larger landscapes. Second, we therefore needed much bigger partners - including government organizations and conservation constituencies - no more just the simple-minded "we buy land". Third, these landscapes were going to need a lot of restoration management. No longer a probationary experiment, the Illinois stewardship program was honored by a TNC award as the best in the country. States from coast to coast began trying to hire stewardship volunteer coordinators like me.

Federal conservation-connected agencies like the Fish & Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and many others developed biodiversity conservation plans and did much good, but also often found themselves tussling with (and sometimes thwarted by) local resource-using folks (grazers, loggers, dam builders, barge operators, wetland drainers etc.). Often there was a national constituency for conservation but little locally – and that national support was thin, while the local opposition was robust. 

As biodiversity conservation ideas spread, internal debates also developed. The “natural areas” folks contended with the “restoration” folks. Natural Areas Journal readers were mostly state government conservation staff, descended from early George Fell initiatives and Nature Conservancy attempts to “leverage” and “out-source” their science responsibilities to state departments of natural resources. The readers of the journal Restoration & Management Notes (later Ecological Restoration) initially restored prairies on former cornfields but later often became natural area stewards. I especially remember a conference confrontation when Mike Homoya of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources stood to challenge the Nature Conservancy’s bison manager and prairie restorer Al Steuter. (Both of them are highly respected and fine people.)

Steuter explained that part of the Conservancy’s strategy was to befriend ranchers, demonstrate that conservation grazing could be a viable option, and conserve plants and animals over the tens of thousands of acres that would be needed for some species. That meant that TNC demonstrated conservation grazing on some of its preserves. Homoya countered that over-grazing had destroyed his state’s prairies. Steuter said, “Okay, thanks.” 

Homoya aggressively retorted that Indiana would never allow a cow on a prairie remnant! Steuter (who wears a cowboy hat and speaks with a different and somewhat world-weary accent) again explained TNC goals and strategy. Homoya bristled and sputtered, “When I go out to see Nature Conservancy prairies, I don’t want to see cows on them!!!!” 

Steuter replied calmly, “We don’t care” and called on the next questioner, as the room gasped. Biodiversity conservation was evolving to match the complexity and reality of changing ecosystems and human impacts ... and developing disparate sub-communities. 

I had hoped that Illinois TNC would continue to protect precious remnants while we also assembled Chicago Wilderness (our Last Great Place) and continued to restore the first eastern prairie large enough for bison (Nachusa Grasslands). But the board and staff mostly lost its interest in remnants and by 1999 had also dispensed with me and most of the volunteer stewardship program. Not-for-profit organizations with business-oriented boards often seem to follow funding toward new directions. By 2011, Peter Kareiva (TNC's chief scientist, successor to Dr. Bob) was debunking the “Last Great Places” concept:

“Every species cannot be saved, pristine wilderness is and has always been a myth, restoring systems to their natural state is more nostalgia than science, and human impacts are everywhere.” ... “Our isolated 'last great places' need not wither if we also take better care of the human-dominated lands that surround those islands of nature. Ecologists have found that farmlands can contain a surprising richness of birds and bats if they are managed properly, and some cities (Berlin is a great example) are homes to an amazing array of wildlife. Even though the last great places may not be the temples to nature we once hoped for, conservation still supports both the psychological and the material well-being of people.”

See: https://www.conservationgateway.org/News/Pages/what-ever-happened-last-g.aspx

My colleagues and I considered such statements ignorant and foolish. But while the Conservancy's chief scientists may have turned elsewhere, others continued to steward the biodiversity of natural areas. (See Endnote 5.)

This post ends at the turn of the millennium. For a blog post, it’s probably too long already. While focusing on the state and local, I’ve neglected the national and global (See Endnote 6.)

All comments on this post, along with questions, rebuttals, and additions are appreciated.

Other recent contributions to history in this blog include:

The Early Years of a Movement

After the Miracle

Episodes 14 and 15 of the Grand Narrative

Endnotes

Endnote 1

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer. He is author of Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (1988, reissued 2010). He is also a biodiversity conservation activist (is there a better word for that?) in central Wisconsin.

John (Jack) White is best known as the coordinator of the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (1978). He's a long-time biodiversity conservation activist, researcher, and writer in central Illinois. 

Endnote 2

Is it really true that so much of this history started in the Midwest? Or is this pride just local bias? Perhaps so, in part, but there’s also the interesting fact, unlike Europe or the east coast of the U.S., we had tiny fragments of rare major ecosystems left, and other parts of the country hardly did. 

Even by the time of Thoreau, the rich forests and grasslands of Massachusetts had been cut, grazed, and plowed out of existence. Smart professors had come to Illinois while remnant natural areas survived. The richness of millennia-old prairies and woodlands inspired the founders of the Illinois movement. They saw remnant after remnant being destroyed. They were compelled to study and act. 

Further west, most people thought that nature still survived fairly well in massive national parks, forests, etc. If anyone tried to build a case that federal lands needed rescue from overgrazing, predator elimination, and fire suppression - major constituencies would resist. (By comparison, there was little constituency that would object to volunteer restoration work on abandoned cemeteries or railroad rights-of-way.)

When John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt wrote about and campaigned for Yosemite ("preserved" in 1864) and Yellowstone (1872), people saw the waterfalls, cliffs, valleys, peaks, and geysers for tourists. But in Illinois, when Victor Shelford and George Fell stumbled toward biodiversity conservation, they hardly knew how to describe what they sought. An appreciation for natural prairies emerged in the 1970s. Professor Betz, a biochemist, prowled the state in his free time, learning how to recognize the last remnants. Betz urged people to care about these formerly invisible scraps – and recognize that they needed care. The activists who emerged were computer programmers, high school teachers, carpenters, and nurses. Yes, professional conservationists were included, but a broad constituency developed - and with it, social and political resources. 

For more on the Midwest's early role, see Ronald C. Tobey's Saving the prairies: the life cycle of the founding school of American plant ecology, 1895-1955. University of California Press, 1981.

Endnote 3
If this were more of a history and less of a memoir, it would review the scores of state nature preservation programs, coast to coast, some of which followed George's model, and modified it, for better or worse. Natural Areas Inventories were created in many states, derived in part from Jack White's Illinois work; comparable efforts also proliferated within federal agencies. The Nature Conservancy developed such programs nationally and internationally. Also out of Fell and others in Rockford emerged the Natural Areas Association and Natural Areas Journal.

Endnote 4

Yes, our approach was positive, but no, it was not always sweetness and light. Ken Fiske was both chair of the INPC and executive director of the McHenry County Conservation District. After approving the program for the Commission, he announced at a number of public meetings that the Conservation District would have stewards arrested if they set foot on District properties that were not open to the public. When in response to panicked messages from would-be stewards, I gave him a call, he peremptorily schooled me on the differences between his two roles. The Commission had approved the program. The District had not. Many wrinkles with many agencies needed ironing out.

The director of the Kane County Forest Preserve District treated me to a high decibel phone complaint which began, “The Last Thing I Need Is Volunteers Making Lists of MORE THINGS FOR ME TO DO!!!” I assured him that he would come to appreciate the spirit and help of the stewards. Within a year he'd appointed all dozen of the Kane County stewards we'd recruited to a Kane County Conservation Advisory Committee and had staff working creatively with them.

Endnote 5

How do local biodiversity issues relate to global ones?

It was put so well by Missouri Nature Conservancy's wise and experienced Director of Science and Stewardship, Doug Ladd. To paraphrase Doug from memory, “People who say that climate change will wreck nature preserves have it backward. The biodiversity of healthy ecosystems will be much better able to withstand and adapt to the stresses of climate change and make it more possible to take whatever next steps are needed, fifty or one hundred years from now.”

Dr. Robert Jenkins, the former science director of the Nature Conservancy, said that the task of conservationists is to create as many “lifeboats” as possible. “We have always thought that what we were doing was sustaining the materials with which the earth could one day be reclothed after the human species gets its affairs in order.” ... “I like restoration,” says Jenkins. “It's the only really proactive kind of thing we do. Everything else is an orderly retreat.”

                                             From Miracle Under the Oaks by William Stevens (1995), page 149.

Also - the biodiversity conservation community is a motivated and informed constituency that will support a great many other good things.

Endnote 6

I had forgotten an important book until I'd almost finished this post. 

Reed Noss and Allen Cooperrider
Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity

1994

https://books.google.com/books?id=awa8BwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=saving+nature%27s+legacy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtkKvjouHhAhUKXa0KHXLeANkQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=saving%20nature's%20legacy&f=false

Neither Meine nor White had mentioned it. Indeed, it's not a history, although it provides a good summary of many of the issues of this post. But Noss and Cooperrider wrote little about the “Natural Areas” and “Restoration” communities. There wasn’t much overlap with what we’ve been doing in the Midwest – rolling up our sleeves, buying little remnants, pulling weeds, and doing burns. Noss and Michael Soule focused effectively, politically and intellectually, on grand landscapes like those owned by the federal government. All these contributions influenced each other.

Soule was an important voice and organizer, expanding on Thoreau, Muir, Shelford, and Leopold with his strong background in population and conservation genetics – and his 'mission driven' commitment. But we in the Midwest seemed to have a different focus, trying harder to reach out to the average person, in the spirit of Jane Addams, May Watts, and Rachel Carson. 

I remember Wild Earth (a major journal associated with Noss and Soule) interviewing me at one point and publishing a supportive account of Illinois restoration and constituency-building work. But the article introduced our arena as the “greater Chicago death zone.” There was an underlying alienation from most people's lives that put Wild Earth more toward protest. Protest only works as a temporary strategy. The rabid anti-conservationists need to be seen as few, ineffectual, shallow, and selfish. Conservation needs support of the majority if we are to succeed. 

Sierra, Earth First, and other groups have often made the most of youthful energy and have often fought for and achieved positive results. But alienated idealism may settle into protest by the few. Youthful, brief, rebel energy sometimes is helpful - and sometimes becomes a negative in the democratic process.

I often am reminded of a dramatic change during the years when we first started restoring forest preserves along a bike trail. Passersby would see us with tools and would inquire. When we tried to respond "restoring nature” – folks would give us blank looks. When we'd answer “saving habitat for endangered species” – folks would typically brighten and say, “oh, cool.” But in a few years the spotted owl controversy changed America's mood. Now half the people would say “oh, cool.” The other half would adopt sour expressions and say something like “Yeah? What about jobs?!” The question had no application in our case, but those folks didn't like us. A former general public environmental positivity was splitting into angry divisions. As we adopt leaders and tactics, we need to consider both benefits and costs. Effective unifiers deserve respect and support, side by side sometimes with effective radicals.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for helpful comments to Reed Noss (under "Comments," below) 

and to Curt Meine, who wrote a good history of conservation biology. 

Thanks to Kathy Garness and Eriko Kojima for editing and catching typos.