Practicing conservation where the people live

Excerpt

We should have learned our lesson over 60 years ago. Unless you can blow a brown cloud over the East Coast of the US, people will not pay a lot of attention to soil conservation and erosion prevention. That's not a conservation lesson; it's a communication lesson. But I think there is new hope for communicating conservation by focusing our message right where most people live in North America—cities, towns, and suburbs. SWCS's conference last winter on urban erosion, sediment control, and stormwater management brought to the surface a high level of skill and experience among conservationists in working where there are large population concentrations.

For too long, we have tried to sell conservation on the basis of the need for an adequate supply of food and fiber. If you worry every day about starving children in faraway countries, I suppose you will be concerned about adequate supplies (and perhaps more concerned about adequate allocation systems). But to any nation well-fed and well-clothed, a message based on supply usually falls on deaf ears.

Urban conservationists have different messages, and if we pay careful attention to them, we may advance conservation …