My favorite sight on the planet is the vista that opens up as you enter the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, traveling east along the I-84 from Portland, Oregon. For the past nine years I have hiked, camped, kayaked, and surveyed and photographed insects throughout the Gorge. I have forced my aching calves up 2800 feet elevation gains, through mountainsides turned butter-yellow with extravagant blooms of balsamroot (Balsamorhiza), lifting my eyes from the busy scurryings of oil beetles (Meloe strigulosus) on the path to gaze out at the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Cascades. But each time my eyes sweep along the river floodplain, I am reminded by the patchwork of logged hillsides, farms, and homes, and the threads of interstate highway and railroad that run along the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon, of just how drastically altered this beautiful landscape is. As much as I love this place, I know that the sight that delights my eyes today would bring tears of grief and rage to the eyes of the First Nations peoples who lived along the river’s shores—much as it did to their descendants when multiple dams buried waterfalls and tribal fishing grounds in the 1900s. I was better able to appreciate just how much this landscape had changed in 2008, when "Wild Beauty" was published, a book that brought together over 130 images from early photographers of the Columbia River. Starting in 1867 and ending in 1957 (the year The Dalles Dam flooded Celilo Falls), these images showed facets of the river that are long gone, like broad swathes of sandy beaches and waters boiling with the thrashing bodies of salmon returning to spawn.
Columbia River Gorge on a misty morning.
Those of us who work in conservation face uncomfortable truths on a daily basis. No amount of restoration can return the habitats we love to some idealized, former state; in the U.S., benchmarks of “pre-European settlement” are often a goal, but truth be told, we usually don’t know exactly what those pristine historic conditions were, and the reality of humans on the landscape makes such a return improbable at best. Money poured into sustaining an endangered species may be futile if the larger, interconnected ecosystems on which that species relies are still being diminished and degraded. This is not to say that we should just throw up our hands in despair, however. People have been holding the line for decades, maintaining and improving what they can at the local and regional level, and much larger areas of land have been protected under federal designations as national parks or wild and scenic areas. The Clean Water Act has reduced point-source pollutant discharge into waters of the U.S., bringing life back to some waters that were not only lifeless but actually flammable (and incidentally making it possible for me to not just kayak but swim in Portland’s Willamette River, which would have been unthinkable and excessively unhealthy in the 1930s). The Endangered Species Act has helped prevent 99% of the species under its protection from going extinct and promoted recovery for over 100 species throughout the country (“A Wild Success”, Center for Biological Diversity, 2016), though speaking as an entomologist, I am compelled to say that insects continue to receive far less attention and protection overall than they should.
Sailing, wading, and kayaking in Portland's Willamette River (left & center); restoration of Johnson Creek, a highly urban stream in Portland, has seen the return of spawning salmon (right)
These laws are hardly perfect; they had flaws when they were created, and since their establishment various corporate and political entities have continued to challenge and chip away at them, but they are the best we have to work with. And since the events of November 2016, many of us are feeling a deep sense of dread at the future of environmental protection in the United States. People with horrific environmental records are being tapped to lead federal departments that they have vowed in the past to dismantle, voices of scientists are being stifled, realities of climate change we can see with our own eyes today (and can still take actions to mitigate) are being denied, and bills are being introduced into the House and Senate that could open up millions of acres of federal public lands to mining, drilling, and logging. Many of us have become more proactive recently in calling and writing our representatives, upping donations to to environmental organizations, and signing petitions. All of that is necessary, important, and effective, but it can also feel removed from our daily lives, and perhaps like tilting at windmills.
So I urge you to get involved with the natural resources where you live. Have you visited your public lands lately? Take a trip to the nearest BLM, US Forest Service, or national wildlife refuge area and appreciate these places held in trust for everyone to hike, camp, bird watch, photograph, and, at appropriate times, hunt and fish—and if you have a friend or relative who’s never visited public lands before, take them with you. Many wildlife refuges as well as state and regional parks and natural areas have Friends groups—volunteer-based organizations that adopt an area and work together to restore habitat, educate the public, and advocate for their patch of ecosystem. If there’s a place you love to visit, ask if they have a Friends group you can join, and if they don’t, think about organizing one. Many places have natural resource programs such as Stream Team and Master Naturalist that offer environmental stewardship opportunities; explore the directory at the Alliance of Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs to see if there are programs in your state. Contact your state, county, or city parks to see if they have programs for underserved youth (and advocate for such programs if they don’t), and be a volunteer to help create the next generation of conservationists. If your city or county parks have signs and interpretive materials only in English and you speak more than one language, contact the managers and ask if they’d like help with translation to make these sites more welcoming and accessible for everyone. If you are able to garden around your home, whether you rent or own, explore planting more native species and reducing or eliminating pesticides. Even small patches of habitat can make a big difference in the lives of native insect populations, and since these insects are a huge food base for songbirds and other animals, your yard or community garden plot can have a much wider impact—especially if you urge your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Aldo Leopold wrote “A handful of individuals have always taken care of the resources at their feet – not always because it was fashionable but because it was right.” With over 300 million people in the United States, if we all do whatever we can, in big efforts or small, to promote and engage in conservation and stewardship at the local as well as the state and national level, we can do a lot to ensure that we pass on the places we love today to the generations that follow.
So I urge you to get involved with the natural resources where you live. Have you visited your public lands lately? Take a trip to the nearest BLM, US Forest Service, or national wildlife refuge area and appreciate these places held in trust for everyone to hike, camp, bird watch, photograph, and, at appropriate times, hunt and fish—and if you have a friend or relative who’s never visited public lands before, take them with you. Many wildlife refuges as well as state and regional parks and natural areas have Friends groups—volunteer-based organizations that adopt an area and work together to restore habitat, educate the public, and advocate for their patch of ecosystem. If there’s a place you love to visit, ask if they have a Friends group you can join, and if they don’t, think about organizing one. Many places have natural resource programs such as Stream Team and Master Naturalist that offer environmental stewardship opportunities; explore the directory at the Alliance of Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs to see if there are programs in your state. Contact your state, county, or city parks to see if they have programs for underserved youth (and advocate for such programs if they don’t), and be a volunteer to help create the next generation of conservationists. If your city or county parks have signs and interpretive materials only in English and you speak more than one language, contact the managers and ask if they’d like help with translation to make these sites more welcoming and accessible for everyone. If you are able to garden around your home, whether you rent or own, explore planting more native species and reducing or eliminating pesticides. Even small patches of habitat can make a big difference in the lives of native insect populations, and since these insects are a huge food base for songbirds and other animals, your yard or community garden plot can have a much wider impact—especially if you urge your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Aldo Leopold wrote “A handful of individuals have always taken care of the resources at their feet – not always because it was fashionable but because it was right.” With over 300 million people in the United States, if we all do whatever we can, in big efforts or small, to promote and engage in conservation and stewardship at the local as well as the state and national level, we can do a lot to ensure that we pass on the places we love today to the generations that follow.
American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) at Finley National Wildlife Refuge in OR (left); Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge, SC (center); Striped Meadowhawk (Sympetrum pallipes) at Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge in OR.
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