Hard to believe, but it has been nearly 6 years since my last post. Not that I have not been active, I have a lot of activism interests and passions.
While waiting for a particular rental to open up, I moved my life into a storage unit, research and all. My "hobby", Montana conservation, began filling more of my time that I had previously spent on "Historical Baggage" research and working on my book.
Years ago, I remember sitting on the floor of the Stitt Theological Library, back in Austin, Texas, before my move to Montana. I was reading one book, The Annals of the Kings of Assyria, all their boastings of conquests, empire building and canned hunts, where they had beaters circle around a large area to drive all the animals in for a slaughter, hundreds and thousands of animals recorded. I didn't realize it at first, but there were silent tears rolling down my cheek. As a subsistence hunter, I was appalled by the slaughter of so many animals, wiping them from the landscape, merely to boast of being a mighty hunter. As a person into sustainability, I was horrified by whole forests being destroyed to build a palace, wondering why someone didn't stop the devastation that leads to desertification.
While the research into archaeology involved the past, moving to Montana, with so much wildness, so many wildlife, forests everywhere, and the massive threats to our Public Trust, I realized that I did not want someone in the future to be reading some book on the devastation and desertification of Montana, with tears running down their face, wondering why someone hadn't stopped it before to was too late. That is why I began Enhancing Montana's Wildlife & Habitat website and the EMWH Newsletter, which has nearly 1000 subscribers from at least 32 different States now. The motto... Putting the Public Back in Public Trust. I turned all my time, previous researching and technology skills, into conservation news aggregating, public access information and research, providing scientific papers to the public, so that we could submit more informed public comments; I have included public comment opportunities with deadline dates, law cases, investigative journalism and legislative bill alerts. All to help network and advance conservation, to hopefully protect it for future generations.
Anthropologist and author, Richard Nelson warned, “After we've lost a natural place, its gone for everyone – hikers, campers, boaters, bicyclists, animal watchers, fishers, hunters - and wildlife – a complete and absolutely democratic tragedy of emptiness. For this reason, it's vital that we overcome our differences, find common ground in our shared loved of the natural world, and work together to defend the wild.”
Aldo Leopold was an inspiring conservation maverick. Leopold, spending so much time amongst predators he came to respect them, developing an ecological ethic. Leopold's new attitude was an intelligent humility towards man's place in nature.
He wrote in his essay, The Ecological Conscience, “I have no illusions about the speed or accuracy with which an ecological conscience can become functional. It has required 19 centuries to define decent man-to-man conduct and the process is only half done; it may take as long to evolve a code of decency for man-to-land conduct. In such matters we should not worry too much about anything except the direction in which we travel.”
Here's the rub, it hasn't been just 19 centuries for decent man-to-man conduct. And if you factor in women and gender diversity, it has been about 6000 years we have been fighting the same patriarchal Indo-European bullshit involving civil rights, racism, caste systems, class warfare and gender diversity.
I have watched, horrified, as these issues have become worse since the 2016 election; threats against equality and humanity, as well as that of our environment, have risen like a many headed hydra.
Just recently the New York Times reported, "The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law." In response, 1642 scientists wrote a letter stating, "This proposal is fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity."
Part of me was torn between getting back to all of the research/activism I had invested in prior to boxing my life up in the move and my current conservation work. Both conservation and equality required so much time, I couldn't see way to balance them. But, we are not one dimensional beings. Piece by piece, I have begun the journey for balance.
We need far better human-to-human and human-to-environment relations, especially when anti-science, bigotry, fascism and intolerance are not only on the rise, but are being governmentally directed.
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