An agent of change or a millstone?
Excerpt
OR is your conservation district out of touch, out of date, and fossilized?
Now some observers suggest that many conservation districts cannot change! I've heard the phrase, “you can't teach an old dog new tricks.” Or the old Popeye saying, “I am what I am!” My reply to both was a saying from my grandmother, “Can't never did anything!” More importantly, what can your district do?
For the landowner
While most of us realize the necessity of landowners developing a conservation plan that details how he or she will protect water quality, wildlife habitat, wetlands, etc., we also need to be in touch with what they expect, need, and want from a conservation district. A good conservation district employee understands farmer and rancher's motivations for practicing conservation. They have a sense of what services others expect, and know about current governmental and non-governmental programs?
The best conservation districts not only lead in defining the appropriate conservation and environmental goals, but then assist with the development of the institutions essential for progress toward those goals. This is in addition to ...
Footnotes
Stephen B. Lovejoy is a Soil and Water Conservation Society member and a professor of Agricultural Economics and associate director of the Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences program at Purdue University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Copyright 2003 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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