Consider impact of resource use and timing on sustainability

Excerpt

I enjoyed reading “Science and stewardship in a nonmonolithic conservation movement: Facilitating positive change” in the September/October 2008 issue of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (Anderson-Wilk 2008). I'd like to discuss another dimension of the challenge, one that is particularly linked to the “attempt to better measure and quantify the value of ecosystem services.”

I have been concerned—recently and over the years—with several important aspects of the economic issues of conservation. The first was the initial national conservation battle of the last century between the two prominent “conservationists,” Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, over the Hetch Hetchy dam proposal to supply water for San Francisco on land newly administered by the US Forest Service. A “win” for the dam set the stage for the creation of the National Park Service in 1916 and the much later controversy over Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument, administered by the National Park Service. There are more examples of action/reaction in conservation.

To me, conservation is concerned with the rate of resource use and timing and the relationships between them. I derive this from S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup's midcentury (1955) suggestion that conservation be defined as “shifting rates of use toward the future.” Thus,…