Excerpt
NOT only is there a need for resource managers to believe that resource management is important, they must also convince others that managing natural resources is important.
I believe that one of the greatest longrange problems facing society is the general public's ignorance about natural resource management and their people's apathetic attitude concerning the importance of managing natural resources. Many individuals living in urban areas simply do nut see the relationship between soil erosion, overgrazed rangeland, polluted groundwater, or fire-ravaged forest and their own well-being. People are no longer closely associated with the natural resources that provide for their existence. Few people even understand the relationship between the food they eat and fertile agricultural land. They don't realize that it is natural resource wealth that enables a society to develop and that these resources will only last under good conservation management systems.
There is now and will continue to be a tendency to base decisions about natural resource management upon political, social, and economic points of view. Part of the resource manager's job is to insist that a natural resource (or other scientific) point of view be included when major …
Footnotes
- Copyright 1987 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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