Land Conservation and Restoration: Moving the the Landscape Level
By David J. Hayes
INTRODUCTION
I am pleased to keynote your timely conference: “Saving Nature: Theories, Tools and Strategies in Environmental Conservation.” By sponsoring this conference, you are bearing witness to a new environmental movement that is gathering steam. It is a movement back to the “roots” of the environment - to nature - and to natural systems - as an organizing principle.
The discernable trend toward giving greater attention to our natural resources, and to our natural systems, represents a departure from our traditional environmental policies. On a number of levels, those policies have yielded wonderful results over the last 30 years. Specific insults to the environment have generated specific, effective countermeasures: industrial air and water pollution have led to emissions limits;1 toxic waste disposal sites have led to cleanup requirements; and the use of dangerous toxins and pesticides has led to bans or restrictions on specific chemicals.
Despite the wonderful accomplishments associated with this traditional approach to protecting the environment, however, we sense that our environment still is coming up short. Our air and water are cleaner, and our Superfund sites are being cleaned up, but we notice that the physical environment around us remains under pressure, and often is losing out. The loss of our fields, forests, and open space to the march of uncontrolled growth is one such example. Atlanta is losing more than 50 acres of tree canopy per day. Nationally, 7,000 acres per day of farmland and meadows are being plowed under for the final time.
In addition to losing open space and green space, we are finding that important ecosystems are beginning to crash, despite the panoply of regulatory requirements on our books. From the Everglades in Florida, to the Chesapeake Bay in this area, to the Bay-Delta in California, important ecosystems are demanding - and getting--attention. Rather than relying on traditional environmental laws - which have proven largely ineffective in addressing these large ecosystem problems - we are moving out with new ideas and approaches for protecting and restoring our landscapes and ecosystems. We are thinking creatively, and big.
The Interior Department (the “Department”) during the Clinton Administration was a virtual laboratory of new thinking and, yes, experimentation, as we sought to fill in the missing links in our system for protecting and restoring the environment. Our Department's mission to protect and restore America's environmental resources made us a natural leader in this regard. And under Secretary Bruce Babbitt, we stepped up to the plate, and delivered on the promise of stewardship over our natural environment.
Today, I would like to discuss with you a number of Interior's initiatives that are changing the face of our physical environment for our benefit, and for the benefit of future generations. In virtually each case, we are using different means toward a common end: the conservation and/or restoration of our physical environment and our natural systems. In so doing, we are building a toolbox of ideas and approaches that may be setting the framework for the next generation of environmental protection.
I am pleased to keynote your timely conference: “Saving Nature: Theories, Tools and Strategies in Environmental Conservation.” By sponsoring this conference, you are bearing witness to a new environmental movement that is gathering steam. It is a movement back to the “roots” of the environment - to nature - and to natural systems - as an organizing principle.
The discernable trend toward giving greater attention to our natural resources, and to our natural systems, represents a departure from our traditional environmental policies. On a number of levels, those policies have yielded wonderful results over the last 30 years. Specific insults to the environment have generated specific, effective countermeasures: industrial air and water pollution have led to emissions limits;1 toxic waste disposal sites have led to cleanup requirements; and the use of dangerous toxins and pesticides has led to bans or restrictions on specific chemicals.
Despite the wonderful accomplishments associated with this traditional approach to protecting the environment, however, we sense that our environment still is coming up short. Our air and water are cleaner, and our Superfund sites are being cleaned up, but we notice that the physical environment around us remains under pressure, and often is losing out. The loss of our fields, forests, and open space to the march of uncontrolled growth is one such example. Atlanta is losing more than 50 acres of tree canopy per day. Nationally, 7,000 acres per day of farmland and meadows are being plowed under for the final time.
In addition to losing open space and green space, we are finding that important ecosystems are beginning to crash, despite the panoply of regulatory requirements on our books. From the Everglades in Florida, to the Chesapeake Bay in this area, to the Bay-Delta in California, important ecosystems are demanding - and getting--attention. Rather than relying on traditional environmental laws - which have proven largely ineffective in addressing these large ecosystem problems - we are moving out with new ideas and approaches for protecting and restoring our landscapes and ecosystems. We are thinking creatively, and big.
The Interior Department (the “Department”) during the Clinton Administration was a virtual laboratory of new thinking and, yes, experimentation, as we sought to fill in the missing links in our system for protecting and restoring the environment. Our Department's mission to protect and restore America's environmental resources made us a natural leader in this regard. And under Secretary Bruce Babbitt, we stepped up to the plate, and delivered on the promise of stewardship over our natural environment.
Today, I would like to discuss with you a number of Interior's initiatives that are changing the face of our physical environment for our benefit, and for the benefit of future generations. In virtually each case, we are using different means toward a common end: the conservation and/or restoration of our physical environment and our natural systems. In so doing, we are building a toolbox of ideas and approaches that may be setting the framework for the next generation of environmental protection.
