Painted BuntingHow does one come to a life with birds?
Are there sentient peoples that have walked this planet and not known them? Not the Inuit, with streams of murres, guillemots, and puffins cascading across their arctic landscape. Certainly not the ancient Egyptians, who balanced their deification of the cat with heiroglyphical cranes, geese, and falcons. There are prehistoric stone sculptures of echidnas from New Guinea, quetzals from the ruins at Chichen Itza, and sea eagles atop Alaskan totems. To breathe, to open one’s eyes and ears each morning, is to know birds.
I came to birds with, but not through, my parents. My father hunted birds (he would later abandon his shotgun for binoculars), and I often accompanied him on late summer dove hunts in rural central Texas. I suspect that my life with birds began at a much earlier age, though, and stemmed from a fascination with birds as accessible expressions of life.
I point to my mother’s archives as evidence. She neatly squirreled away most of my kindergarten drawings, elementary grade report cards, baseball team photos, and prom invitations, and passed these family heirlooms my way late in life. Rummaging through these “treasures” I found a number of my construction paper drawings in which birds are clearly and recognizably rendered. In one there is an obvious northern cardinal, tinted with a fiery color only found in a Crayola box. Given my age at that time (four or five) I can only guess that my life with birds began as childhood curiosity, one that eventually flowered into a passion that would eventually transcend science, recreation, or reason.
At the University of Houston I majored in journalism. Although I matriculated high school in the late 1960s, Woodward and Bernstein were only peripheral or distant inspirations. My heroes were Roger Tory Peterson, Elliot Porter, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Journalism (particularly photojournalism) swelled my interest in photography both as art and as information. With birds as a subject, I could now explore ways in which the photographed bird might advance beyond “documentation.” For a birder, the photographed bird is proof that it existed. With proof a birder “scores.” I wanted to do more with my photography, to show birds as I perceived them metaphysically. I wanted to show birds as individuals, not as species or specimens. I wanted to capture life on film.
My studies exposed me to more than photography’s immediate possibilities; I also learned of its past. From Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Galveston That Was to George Hurrell’s Jean Harlow and Jane Russell, I began to grasp that the photographic process was far more complex and demanding than “point-and-shoot.” I learned of photography’s discipline and rigor, of the basic principles of composition, of the power of the well-placed highlight. I studied Cartier-Bresson’s talent for blending into the background, the street, enabling him to closely approach his subjects and capture what he described as “the instant sketch” with only a rangefinder Leica camera and a 50 mm lens. For a time I practiced by photographing birds only in black-and-white, subordinating the seductive power of their dramatic colors to the subtle art of shadow and light.
My early results were desultory, photos taken as through another’s camera. I photographed hoping to recreate pictures I had seen before. With time, though, I developed a perspective, an eye. My wife, Virginia, helped me understand the concepts of expression and impression and the photographer’s obligation to allow each picture to live up to its emotional (not just documentary) potential. Through her I began to understand that the lens has the power to reshape and redefine reality, to peel away artifice and allow the emotional essence of each subject to show through the clutter and disorder that surrounds them.
With Faces of Flight I focused the eye of the camera on one essential truth – the universal appeal of birds. These are intended as glamour shots, intimate portraits that display each individual bird in the most intricate detail, each feather precisely mapped. Each individual portrait stands alone, evidence that this particular bird and I shared a precious moment and space on this planet. All were captured in and released back to their native habitats without harm. The photographs only record a brief second in time, an “instant sketch,” and reflect only a short interlude in what I hope were otherwise long and fecund lives.
Only late in life, though, have I developed an additional understanding of these birds and their photographs. I began as a birder, evolved to being a naturalist, and only now, with six decades under my belt (and the scars to prove it), am I trying to see beyond the evident and the puerile. Through a life with birds I have come to a better understanding of my life with my fellow man. My essays are a pilgrimage, a solemn journey to a distant corner of the psyche where I might glance back at who I am.
Pablo Neruda, in “The Poet Says Good-Bye to the Birds,” wrote of himself as
…A people’s poet, provincial and birder/ I’ve wandered the world in search of life/bird by bird I’ve come to know the earth…
Picture by picture, essay by essay, I have come to know Neruda’s earth as well.
Ted Eubanks
18 Oct 2010
For those interested in seeing the exhibit, I have load the images as well as the interpretive panels and poster we designed here for your enjoyment. The original is now in the hands of Karla Klay of Artist Boat, and I hope that she will use the exhibit to help raise funds for her wonderful organization.
TLE in RKAI lie between the dead and the living, my eyes barely cracked, my skin licked by a million tiny molecules of dank, sour air. The neighbor’s blue tick is baying at an imaginary foe, and a chainsaw is slicing the remaining silence to remind me that no one sleeps in on Sunday. As I struggle to the coffee shop my path is blocked by police escorting the dozen UCLA charter buses back to the airport and the land of milk and honey sans offshore drilling. Edward Abbey said that “there is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”
Skimming Huffpost on my IPad, I notice the story that Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell has called evolution “a myth” and backed up her claim with the question: if evolution is real, “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” While isolated in Iceland last week [a grand place to get away; nothing is distracting in Reykjavik], away from the yapping heads, I thought about how partisanship in the U.S., while hardly new, has once again returned to its roots – base ignorance. Nothing motivates voters more than blind hate and mindless fury. I cannot imagine people more blind and mindless than those moved to passion at this moment like O’Donnell.
I have yet to hear a single word from the Tea Party or their kind that resonates with me. To be honest, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to expose such silliness in public. For the Western world the Age of Enlightenment centered on the 18th Century. What is forgotten is that the time preceding the Enlightenment, the Dark Ages, was a self-imposed devolution and backwardness. The Roman and Greek classical ages were temporarily lost not through a force of nature but through the force of human ignorance and religious myopia and corruption. The classics were restored to the West through the benevolence and enlightenment of Islam. I wonder who has our back now (forget Islam, by the way).
A multi-party system of government gives rise to partisanship, a natural outcome of competing ideologies vying for power. But what happens when the parties share a basic ideology? Rather than competing over grand ideas, the parties must battle over minutia. Grand philosophical debate is reduced to petty partisanship and ad hominum attacks. Welcome to our time, the age of microscopic people espousing nano ideas. Change in our age is not about transformation; change in our age is no more meaningful than a change of clothes or sheets.
Conservation has become distinctly partisan as well. Most environmentalists like me are liberal Democrats. Republicans oppose us not because of our ideas but because of our ideology. We embed conservation into a liberal social agenda, and support the party (the Democrats) who are more aligned with liberalism as a whole.
The result is that the Democratic Party presumes that our support will be freely given rather than earned. The partisan alignment of the environmental movement guarantees that the Democrats will ignore us while the Republicans will oppose us. We have convinced ourselves that the Democrat’s passive acknowledgement of environmental issues is better than outright Republican opposition. As a result Democrats are rarely blamed and Republicans rarely credited.
Home in IcelandI offer this as background to the topic of the moment – the British Petroleum blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Administrations are judged by how they respond to acute challenges. Successes are celebrated for all ages; failures are never forgotten. America spent two years in the lead up to WW II, but Pearl Harbor is all that is remembered of the early rounds. The Bush administration will forever be haunted by Katrina, and Carter by Iran. The BP fiasco will be seen as President Obama’s day of reckoning, and, to date, I have found him lacking. I suspect that history will as well.
The Deepwater Horizon gusher is an act of man and therefore unlike Katrina, a natural phenomemon or act of God. The federal government had oversight responsibilities of the well from the outset. In this both administrations failed. The MMS cozied up to the industry it regulated in both the Bush and Obama years, and the USFWS permitted the well without an EIS during the Obama administration. Unlike Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon could have been prevented, and in this both administrations were negligent. With that said, we supported Obama because he promised change, not continuation of the disastrous policies and practices of the past. Blaming Bush for BP is as meaningless as blaming Clinton for 9/11. All Americans want to know is who’s on watch.
Where Katrina and BP are alike is in the political responses to the disasters. Simply go back and review press releases from both administrations during the early days of these events. I understand the fog of war, but why are the estimates of negative impacts always low balled? Why do administrations, no matter the party, always grossly understate the obvious knowing full well that the truth will eventually out? The Bush administration estimated that the war in Iraq would cost $50 billion to $60 billion; now the total cost is in the trillions. President Bush praised FEMA in the early aftermath of Katrina (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”), and the final estimates of oil gushing into the Gulf exceeded early Obama administration numbers by orders of magnitude. How should we, the public, respond to such obvious errors or obfuscations? Oops?
Exactly what has the Obama administration accomplished for the environment that should earn our unquestioning support? Despite a clear majority in Congress, the administration failed to advance cap-and-trade. The America’s Great Outdoors initiative is palliative care (like the Last Child in the Woods campaign), long on meetings and talk but short on substantive change. As Frank Rich said during the early days of the BP gusher,
Obama was elected as a progressive antidote to this discredited brand of governance. Of all the president’s stated goals, none may be more sweeping than his desire to prove that government is not always a hapless and intrusive bureaucratic assault on taxpayers’ patience and pocketbooks, but a potential force for good.
I still believe in government as a potential force for good. I still believe that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. But I also believe, as did Jefferson, that “all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Early this summer I wrote an article about the environmental movement’s abdication of advocacy. An aspect of this surrender is the partisan alignment of the movement today. Advocacy should be focused on the issues and the cause, not on any particular party or power. For example, Martin Luther King found it necessary to split with President Johnson over the war in Viet Nam in his Beyond Viet Nam speech. This critical shift, while consistent with his cause, led to him to be ostricized by many who had previously supported him. President Theodore Roosevelt battled with his own Republican party over his progressive agenda, particularly conservation and public lands. No matter how vilified or disputed, they remained true to their beliefs and the causes.
The Gulf gusher has been a moment in time that begged for clear, unambiguous leadership and action. When Harry Truman faced a railroad strike that would have crippled the country, he responded by threatening to draft all railroad workers into the Army. Theodore Roosevelt used John Lacey’s new Antiquities Act to circumvent a recalcitrant congress and protect millions of acres of America’s heritage. Franklin Roosevelt closed the banks for a “bank holiday” to stop the hemorrhage that threatened to bleed the country even deeper into the Great Depression.
The BP disaster has been Barrack Obama’s defining test, that one event in time when a presidency is made or broken. Only at these critical moments can a president step outside of his or her political skin and lead the nation as an individual, a fellow American. The country forgave Roosevelt’s being caught off guard at Pearl Harbor because he and the nation he led ultimately won the war. Roosevelt honed in on the prize (victory) and swept away the conventions and structures of the past that kept him from that goal. In the Gulf this president has continued with the shopworn policies and agencies of the past, and has offered little in the way of a grand idea for the Gulf restoration beyond platitudes and promises.
Conservation and the environmental movement (not necessarily the same) should embrace a return to the nonpartisan advocacy of the past. Let me be clear – there are two forms of nonpartisanship. The first is to avoid all forms of advocacy, as seen with groups such as the Nature Conservancy. The polar opposite is an advocacy that believes that all should be held accountable, and that the basic tenants and beliefs of conservation must transcend (rather than ignore) the politics of the day. I care little for the former, but the latter is the advocacy that I embrace and promote.
Let’s return to the Gulf. Here the Obama administration has done little more than promulgate the mistakes and inefficiencies of the agencies and allies that he inherited. Where is the change promised just two years ago? Where is the bold, daring leadership that challenges the country to rise to this occasion, to be its best? The Gulf has been an America colony since the end of the Civil War. Wealth is extracted, with little returned. Isn’t the restoration of the Gulf and its people worthy of this president’s interest and investment?
Here is where I would begin. No one disputes that a lot of oil lies untapped under the rocky floors of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans off the U.S. coasts. Yet drilling in these areas has been banned by Congress since 1982. Recently six U.S. senators from the states along the West Coast including Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein jointly introduced legislation to ban all future drilling along the Pacific shoreline. Notice that drilling rigs in the Gulf stop at the Florida Panhandle. Drilling is banned offshore of Florida as well. Why? Why are Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, along with Alaska, bearing the weight of coastal oil and gas production and refining in the U.S.? And if the Gulf is being sacrificed so that others in the U.S. can drive in their SUVs to their oil-free beaches or ship their crops to foreign markets, shouldn’t the impacts to the Gulf be mitigated for with revenues from these economic activities? Shouldn’t the federal government be investing these revenues back into the Gulf states to build local capacity, expertise, and the research necessary to respond to future spills and future dead zones? Shouldn’t national environmental organizations be aiding local groups and institutions in developing the financial and human resources that would aid this capacity building, rather than sucking even more funding from the Gulf to New York and Washington?
Gulf of Mexico Oil Production
To date reinvestment has not been the trend. Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife has received a $216,625 noncompetitive contract from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a seabird survey in the Gulf. Manomet, based in Plymouth MA, has received a similar grant to survey shorebirds. Bird cleaning funds have gone to three out-of-area firms. Local universities have been unused, and volunteers have been kept on the sidelines. The issue is not whether or not Defenders and Manomet are well-meaning, worthwhile organizations (they are). My concern is how Gulf environmental interests, as limited as they are, have been effectively locked out by those who should have their best interests at heart.
Did the USFWS believe that Defenders is better qualified to count seabirds than Van Remsen’s LSU, Frank Moore’s Southern Mississippi, Texas A&M, or the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory? Is Manomet more familiar with the shorebirds and their habitats along the Gulf than local birders and scientists that have been surveying shorebirds here for decades? Why aren’t the national environmental organizations insisting on local involvement in the NRDA and environmental assessments, or are they too busy trying to snatch their own slice of the pie?
For those along the Gulf, the refrain is familiar. Funds dedicated to those with the least often end up in the hands of those with the most. For example, five years after the passage of the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, more of the tax-free benefits from the Katrina disaster have gone to the Louisiana’s powerful oil industry than to development in hard-hit areas. According to Newsweek,
New Orleans has so far received a total of $55 million in bonds shared between eight projects—or less than 1 percent of the more than $5.9 billion issued statewide. None of the bonds issued for New Orleans projects went to development in hard-hit and still-struggling areas like the Lower Ninth Ward.
Instead, the federal largesse has been poured into oil companies operating far from New Orleans. Since Congress’s unanimous approval of the GO Zone Act, Louisiana officials have issued nearly $1.7 billion in tax-free bonds—about one third of the total issued—for projects that contribute to the production of oil.
I blame the Democrats for continuing with the bankrupt policies and strategies of the past and their continued reliance on organizations and institutions that haven’t conjured a new idea since the 1970s. I blame the Republicans for equating environmentalism with socialism (although I admit that both have relied on strong central government and coercion rather than consent), and for their mindless opposition to our issues no matter the stakes. I especially blame rational members of both parties for not stepping outside of party ideology and allowing themselves to intelligently consider the conservation challenges of our time. As Huey Long said,
The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down.
Finally, I blame many in the conservation movement for divesting themselves of an honorably passionate past in the quest for political aggrandizement and financial reward. The Gulf gusher can still serve as a catalyst for change within the conservation and environmental communities. Good can be salvaged even from the wreckage of the Gulf. As I said earlier, there is nothing that I find agreeable in the Tea Party, with one significant exception. At least the Tea Partiers know when to be angry. They are often furious at the wrong people about the wrong issues, but at least they show up. Anger is a potent catalyst, and the time has passed for us to kindle that fire.
[Let me add a comment about the Tea Party. The degree to which the Tea Party is viewed favorably is a measure of how disenfranchised people feel at this moment. The fact that much of the economic and social malaise can be dated to the Bush administration is irrelevant. We elected Obama as a force for change, not to enforce a status quo. The Democrats will be spanked in November, and we will see if this president learns his lessons and salvages his legacy in the last two years of his first term. At this moment, he has only himself and his fellow Democrats to blame.]
We should begin by stripping ourselves of rote partisanship and start embracing an advocacy that towers above politics. Political leaders are not preordained to failure or success. Change is always possible. The advocate’s responsibility is to point out failures, no matter one’s political affiliation, and to suggest measures that may succeed. Spare us the platitudes. With measurable, tangible results will come our support, and not before.
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture—Gaylord Nelson
Ted Eubanks on Mount Livermore, Texas
For the past couple of weeks I have been posting a series of articles about the Culture of Conservation on the BirdSpert blog. Given the impact that these ideas and this concept have on our work, I am going to link the articles here for Fermata viewers. Although still rudimentary, these posts will ultimately be expanded to become a book on conservation interpretation.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler—Albert Einstein
The third principle of the Culture of Conservation is to keep the message simple. Effective marketing is little more than simple messages and images repeated endlessly. Remember the earlier quote that 93% of American children can recognize McDonalds by the golden arches? I wonder what the percentage is now for the Japanese?
McDonalds sponsoring the Osaka sumo basho
Simple messages and images rise above the cacophony that is modern life. Simplicity and volume (both amplitude and amount) help messages battle through the noise. Doubt this? According to the Associated Press, BP’s been spending more than $5 million a week on advertising since the blowout. Remember BPs original simple message? Beyond Petroleum.
Freeman Tilden inspired what we now know as the interpretation profession. Tilden stressed the need for interpreters (guides, museum staff, National Park Service employees and the like) to know their audiences. My impression is that most conservation groups consider their members to be the audience. No wonder the messages are so obtuse, and geared toward fund raising.
Freeman TildenOur professional organization for interpretation is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). I am a NAI supporter, and I am working to have myself certified by them in every way possible (Freeman didn’t write about interpretation until the age of 62). But in recent years Jon Kohl, Sam Ham, and I have been thinking about conservation interpretation, and the need to train staff that can communicate and interpret conservation, not just nature, history, or culture. We have completed organizing the training program, and once I finish with my current NAI certification projects I want to turn my attention to this component of our work.
Why? Because I believe that conservation as a movement is fundamentally inept when it comes to devising ways in which people can relate to our work (another of Tilden’s principals).
Rather than continue to offer Tilden’s principles in a piecemeal fashion, here are the six principles from Interpreting Our Heritage:
1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
2. Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation include information.
3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical, or architectural. Any art is to some degree teachable.
4. The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction but provocation.
5. Interpretation should aid to present a whole rather than a part and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.
6. Interpretation addressed to children should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.
NAI offers a number of certification programs, and I endorse them all. Interestingly, most conservation groups do not have certified interpretive staff, a mistake in my opinion. But I also believe that there is a need for us in the profession to develop a certification program in conservation interpretation, a program that does not exist currently. For those interested in where we have taken this idea, there is information here on the Fermata blog.
The key to successful simplification, however, is (as Einstein said) to keep things simple but not too simple. In conservation we deal with complex issues like global warming, oil spills, biodiversity, and extinction. These topics do not lend themselves to simplicity. Yet, as Tilden stated, our presentations, programs, and messages must address the desires, experiences, and limitations of our audiences. In this way I agree with Tilden that interpretation is an art, one practiced well by a few. Read Enos Mills, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Peter Matthiessen to get a sense of the interpretive art as it relates to conservation.
Enos MillsThis helps us understand the recent debate here about the Ted Williams’ article in Audubon, and Drew Wheelan’s reports for the American Birding Assocation. Williams is a journalist, a master craftsman. His work can be judged by its lucidness and accuracy. Unfortunately, as journalism Williams’ article failed miserably. Drew did not pretend to be a journalist; instead, he functioned as an observer. Drew placed himself in situations in the Gulf that allowed us to experience the blowout and its impacts through his eyes. Yes, Drew is passionate about his work, an attribute that contributes to effective interpretation. Williams debated facts and completely missed the story. Drew didn’t sweat every fact and captured the story in all of its horror, devastation, and pathos.
The National Park Service (NPS) has devised an equation to show the key components that go into the interpretive experience – (Kr + Ka) X AT = IO. Remember, however, that this is metaphor, not math. The equation states that a knowledge of the resource (Kr) plus a knowledge of the audience (Ka), multiplied by well-grounded interpretive techniques (AT), will create an interpretive opportunity (IO). The equation is often displayed as a teeter-totter, where an overemphasis on one factor, such as knowledge of the resource, can outweigh and overwhelm the audience and any interpretive technique. In my experience this is the chief failing of conservation groups. Yes, they can all impress with a knowledge of the resources, but most have no concept of how to communicate that knowledge or a conservation imperative to the audience.
Let’s recap. I have now presented three of the Culture of Conservation principles:
1. Take it to the street
2. Make space for place
3. Keep it simple, not simplistic
Keep tuned for the next principle – Aim straight for the heart.
Part 1 of Space For Place ended with we need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America. First, let’s stitch. Places often exist independently, islands within an ocean of other places. An Audubon place, such as Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, shares little with the other Audubon places such as the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary, Mill Grove, or Rowe Sanctuary other than the name. The name certainly has space, but the places themselves are effectively isolated.
There is much to be gained from knitting discrete, disparate places into a seamless fabric. To hack a cliche from Aristotle, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. For example, the National Park Service (NPS) manages around 400 “units.” Certainly the NPS as an entity occupies significant American space, particularly in those places that it manages that are so much a part of the American identity. Yet most Americans, I suspect, could not tell you the difference between a national forest, a national wildlife refuge, a ACOE recreation area, or lands owned by the BLM or the Bureau of Reclamation. All of these are public land stewards, and the land is managed for the American people. Yet these forests and refuges occupy a much smaller space in the American psyche than the national parks.
Technology, however, can begin to help us stitch places into spaces. One method that I use is to organize “trails” out of like places. By “trail” I do not mean only paths through forests, such as the Allegheny Trail. In my work a trail is a way of connecting important places so that they portray an overarching space.
Let me offer an example. Here is the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail that we are developing in Indiana. Click on “Map” and you will see the 54 places that have been interlaced to create a space called the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail. My company, Fermata, has now developed signage, guides, a blog, a website, and a SmartTrail (more on that later) to help solidify the space. Of course each place is capable of standing on its own. But how much more powerful is the cementing of these places into a single, consolidating space?
Here is another example from our work – the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway in Kansas. In the byway we have again linked numerous places into a single space. These places include Quivira NWR, Cheyenne Bottoms, several communities, and a number of additional parks and historical sites. To solidify the space we developed a website, audio guide, interpretive signs, wayfinding signs, a printed guide, a printed rack piece, and an interpretive plan that provide a roadmap for the entire consolidation. Quivira NWR is a place (which actually can be subdivided into additional places), while the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway is a space. The Smithsonian is a space, and the individual buildings and facilities are places.
These projects, though, are long, drawn-out affairs. In both cases we and the clients invested years. We need a simpler, more expedient way of making spaces.
Enter technology. Only in the past year or so has geolocation become a tool for the masses. I know; GPS units have been around for some time. But the Iphone 3G and the Android are relatively new, and smartphone geolocation is the way to the masses. According to Pew,
Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps. Among cell phone owners, 29% have downloaded apps to their phone and 13% have paid to download apps.
Yes, we are early in the evolution and adoption of the smartphone technologies. But consider this. According to Dr. Allan Kanner from Berkeley,
Recent studies have also shown that by the time they are 36 months old, American children recognize an average of 100 brand logos.
How many birds can children name that are seen in their yards? How many parks other than playgrounds have children visited by the time that they are in kindergarten? How can we effectively lead people from a psychological space to a physical place? When compared to American marketing, we do not exist. We need every tool that we can find, and to be content with marginal gains. We are starting at zero.
For the past couple of years I have been watching an Austin company as they have been developing IPhone and Android technologies for tours and trails. They are typical Austin computer geeks, and not in the business of nature or historical interpretation. But they have developed a fantastically simple and effective application, and I recently entered into an agreement with them to begin offering it through Great American Trails. Given the number of places we have inventoried in the U.S. (thousands), we have a backlog that can be brought to the public rather quickly. But I am also convinced that we need to be able to attract others to organize their places into spaces as well. In other words, I want to be able to offer an application that people can use to make spaces from places. We are still in the early stages of this project, but I am excited about the potential.
But how to we educate, promote, and deliver these new spaces to the people? We should (in fact, must) begin with the web. Web 2.0, and in particular the newest blog platforms such as WordPress 3.0, are the web-based technologies that will allow us to engage the public in a dynamic, vital way. The third step in my culture of conservation strategy is to keep the messages simple, and this is precisely what I envision in this web offering. I have secured space4place.org as well as spaceforplace.org, and I suspect that you will be seeing something about this shortly as well.
Finally, I have been working with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council in Pittsburgh, and we will roll out these two programs first there. I am speaking at the Western Pennsylvania Trail Symposium October 26 near Pittsburgh on SmartTrails. I will actually conduct a workshop where we will develop a SmartTrail on the fly. This, to me, is a key component in any space for place strategy. We must be able to organize and connect places in real time. The forces that work against place are not constrained by time or money, and we have no choice but to have ways of responding in kind.
My next installment will be a discussion of keeping messages simple. Why? Think about this – the average American reading level is between the 8th and 9th grade.
Here is a paragraph from the National Audubon Society website about global warming:
All organisms depend on their habitats for food, water, shelter, and opportunities to breed and raise young. Climate changes can affect organisms and their habitats in a myriad of ways. In fact, global warming impacts all life on earth, from individual organisms to populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. It can alter behaviors, population sizes, species distributions, plant and animal communities, and ecosystem functions and stability. How strongly different species will be affected varies, depending on differences in their ecology and life history. Species with small population sizes, restricted ranges, and limited ability to move to different habitat will be most at risk. Similarly, different habitats and ecosystems will be impacted differently, with those in coastal, high-latitude, and high-altitude regions most vulnerable.
Global warming causes more snow. Except when it causes less snow. And that’s a scientific fact.
Here is your homework. Which of these would connect better with average Americans like your grandmother or your neighbor? More importantly, if I asked people at a local mall about these two statements which do you think they would grasp more quickly?
