When Scientists Take Bad Advice....

If only the people dispensing bad professional advice,
actually wore this label. 

A colleague (and friend of over 10 years) was recently pushed out of a job that she meant to keep for the remainder of her career.  She didn't do anything (criminally) illegal, waste her employers' resources, or commit any kind of timesheet fraud, or call in sick from Disney World.   She took some bad professional advice and paid dearly.

This colleague had the pleasure (or displeasure, depending on the day) of overseeing construction compliance with water projects in Annapolis, which happens to be the Maryland state capital in addition to being nearly surrounded by water.  This means a few things:

1.  Some people in Annapolis expect to be able to access (or build over) the water, regardless of laws.
2.  Most people with waterfront property in Annapolis have access to disposable money.
3.  Most people with waterfront property in Annapolis have access to political influence.
4.  Most people with waterfront property in Annapolis have access to good legal counsel.

In other words, if you have to deal with these folks in a situation where they want you to approve something you're not sure you can legally approve, you'll need to be highly competent, extremely patient in the face of petulance and immaturity, and have the good fortune or good judgment to be receiving good counsel, both in a legal sense and in a mentoring sense.

My friend, at her former job, had all of those things except a good mentor.   She worked on several contentious cases over the years, and worked diligently.  Although there were many complaints, that could be seen as a reflection of doing a good job in an "enforcement" position.   I mean....maybe.  But then she encountered one of "those" people, asking for permission to build something that my friend wasn't sure she could approve.  The person proposing the work was:

1.  Someone in Annapolis who has been very effective at getting his way with water regulations.
2.  Someone with access to disposable cash (in a general sense).
3.  Someone with a great deal of political influence
4.  Someone who was, in fact, a lawyer with a license to practice.

Letters from the "lawyer with free time" and my "stick in the mud colleague" flew back and forth for months.    Very little progress seemed to be made with each volley.   My friend then asked an elder colleague, someone who is very politically insulated, how she should handle it.  She was told that "if it were him," he would reject the proposal outright, partly because the final approval window was closing just two days after she received the last volley of written responses.  

My friend denied that permit. Such a denial gives the permit applicant 7 days to file an appeal in circuit court, which he did.  The court summarily ruled against the state, calling the permit rejection "arbitrary and capricious" and directing the agency in charge to issue permits within 7 days.    Eventually the permit was issued, and the project was constructed.

The person seeking the permit still has his job.   The elder environmental spokesman dispensing bad advice to my colleague still has his job.  But my colleague does not.  How is that possible?

I suppose I don't know how to answer that without saying, "We all have to be grownups."  If you're 25, or 30, or 40 or 50, and you take bad advice from someone who is your senior, you'll be the one held accountable for the lapse in judgment.  Unfortunately, I've been there - I'm glad it did not cost me a job.   But this is how life works.   All of us have college degrees.  Most have a graduate degree or some amount of graduate school under our belts.  If you aren't sure when you're getting good or bad advice, have a plan in place to ask others around you.   Keep an eye on whether you can stomach the (realistic) possible consequences of taking such advice - just as if it were your own idea on how to handle the situation.

It's true that in a highly functioning work environment, your fellow professional would stand up and say, "That's my fault - I gave poor advice and the junior staff took it."  But that kind of admission is rare in both corporate and government offices, and you'd be foolish to expect that level of protection, especially if you are considered by others to be a "junior" employee.

Networking and giving/receiving advice are critical to your success as a scientist.  But just because something wasn't your idea doesn't mean it doesn't count, once things go wrong.  Hasn't that been true in other phases of your life?  You know, your parents with that dumb, "If your friends all jumped off a cliff....." story?

If a senior colleague with nothing to lose tells you, "Go jump off that cliff, I'll be right behind you!", you'd be best to seek the counsel of another colleague to confirm the plan.

Ecological Function for Dummies...and Preservationists

There's a local issue here in Maryland that involves the potential development of a mostly retired farm that has a few patches of pretty nice woods on it.    Most field ecologists would describe it that way, certainly, with additional details about the declining health of some very large specimen trees, or the unstable nature of eroding streams on the property.    Or even categories like "primary buffer" and "priority forest." These are all assessments based on "form," which in the environmental assessment world, lies somewhere between "appearance" and "function."   And since one of the six classically defined functions of a natural place is "aesthetics and viewshed," and since observations like, "numerous infected nut-bearing trees" have direct ties to ecological function, let's not dismiss "environmental form."

The problem arises, as it has on this individual project, when passionate environmentalists and occasionally the odd "cubicle ecologist" decide to do their own assessment....one that's based on basic appearances.   The eroding creek onsite is causing significant pollution problems downstream (a river defined as "biologically dead" for most of the summer), and yet these advocates have stated that the farm "keeps the watershed clean and healthy downstream."  What?    Another claim has been that the property should be saved because of its value to wildlife (note: no one from the environmental community has in any way proposed to purchase the property, they only seek to deny development rights to the landowners).  The document proceeds to list the wildlife of concern: "Deer, frogs, and turtles."  Here's the thing.  I live in a 75 year old house inside City limits.  We have deer, frogs, raccoons, foxes, rabbits, hawks, snakes, bald eagles, and even nesting herons.  Hopefully these folks don't find out about my neighborhood, or they'll petition the City to force us to abandon it.  It's also worth noting that the City intentionally annexed this property and zoned it for dense development for several years ago, with no complaint from the environmental community because there was no immediate threat. 

So what really needs to be saved - protected - denied from development?  It has to do with function.  Why in the world would we battle to save (read: leave alone) a stream that is eating its own banks and shooting the polluted sediment right downstream into public fishing and crabbing waters?   Why would we save (read; buy with tax dollars) a woodlot that is actually an old pasture that somebody forgot to mow too many years in a row, and so some trees of questionable to moderate value popped up?  Is there seriously no higher priority resource anywhere in the area in need of saving?

So, what is ecological function?  Function is an expression of the relationship between patterns, processes, and mechanisms that drive environmental form (and possibly environmental appearance).The notion of environmental preservation is - or should be - based on the notion of permanently protecting, usually via fee simple purchase or easement purchase, the highest-functioning at-risk habitats under consideration by the folks with the money.  

What does "high functioning" mean? High functioning habitats are those whose biogeochemical interactions span across numerous temporal and spatial scales.  Or, as some may put it, multiple feedback loops with very few "free radicals."  Everything has value.  Everything is used.  Very little leaves the habitat.  A recent study by US Fish and Wildlife Service found that functionally "clean" water in suburban areas is correlated with a drainage area less than 10% covered in impervious surface.   Drainage areas covered 10-25% in pavement were "moderate functioning," and USFWS declared that most drainages over 25% impervious are biologically impaired.   So before you claim that the water coursing through your favorite site is "clean and fresh,"  make sure, at minimum, that it drains less than 10% pavement.

What is Environmental Leadership?

Fundamental change is starting to occur within the realms of leadership within the environmental world.  The change is based upon three premises - a transition of generations, a tiredness for protocol that never satisfied a scientific need and no longer satisfies political fancy, and an economy that demands accountability and direct results for startlingly tiny amounts of money.   For those in the evening of their careers, it is certainly a dynamic time.  I've been alarmed, however, that more senior environmental "leaders" don't feel positively about the "new generation" or about what is coming next.  What follows will read to some as an ageist rant - it's anything but that.  No, this is a rant about academic platitudes and literary happy hours. About 40 year old soap boxes that were never hurled through a window or burned in the street, but instead, kept on display as a monument to themselves.

What is leadership?  There are two standard definitions, which both require examination for our purposes.

Leadership:
1. The action of leading
2. Having the position of a leader

The people who read this blog are smart people, and as a result, I shouldn't have to continue past that definition.  You now know what I am preparing to say.  But I'll say it anyway.

As a prime example - but one of very many on the scientific and political landscape - there's a certain "group of senior leaders" within the Chesapeake Bay watershed who think pretty highly of themselves and their CVs.  They craft position papers for elected officials about once every 18 months, and true to the nature of such a group, they celebrate any success as a result of their input and leverage.....and deride any failure as the result of "corruption."  Obviously I find that tactic a little childish but I tend to give them deference - good people trying to effect positive change.  It has come to my attention that they also have a blog, which you can find here.  Look again at those two definitions of "leadership," above, and peruse some of the most recent blog topics:

1.  Complaining about a comprehensive plan revision after the comment period has been closed.

2.  Bragging about their critical influence in the development of animal manure regulations, while simultaneously complaining that the resulting regulations are critically flawed and will not work.

3.  Complaining about Perdue Chicken's disinformation campaign (that's truly what it was) associated with what most conservationists knew was an ill-advised dud of a lawsuit against Perdue Chicken.   Now Perdue seeks $3 million in legal fees from the environmentalist plaintiffs....wonder if the Senior Leaders will help fundraise?

What consistently lacks in any of this is a road map to doing things differently.   These "leaders," and so many thousands like them, still believe that their name or their organization's name gives them distinct political leverage (there's that second definition of "leadership" again) to have their voice heard above other voices - particularly, those singularly based in a motive for profit.   They are wrong.  They don't favor engagement or compromise.  They simply tell stories of how good it all once was, how bad it currently is, and how much worse it could be, and hope that somehow, someone else will actually do the good work of conserving the world's air, soil, water, and biota.  Increasingly, true political decision makers, as well as their anti-environment opponents, just shake their heads at best, and laugh at worst, as the platitude-holding "leaders" demand the same regulations they've been demanding for 30 years, with rapidly decreasing impact.

We - and I - don't need any more "senior environmental leaders" who are going to "tell us" how things are bad, fully lacking coherent, new ideas to make them better. Other than the passage of several (now) poorly enforced pollution laws over 40 years ago, their business plan of organizing and complaining has accomplished little.  It is time, sirs and madams, for a new model.

We need leadership rooted in the "first definition."   If I had my way, anyone touting themselves as a "leader" - let alone a "senior leader" - should be required to spend their time considering the following:

1.  Teaching the next generations (two new generations are already in the field) about all of the science's (or the movement's) past failures and successes since 1969.  What models are there?  What pitfalls can be expected?  How are opponents and antagonists created, emboldened, and eventually dissolved? What mistakes were made - were they inevitable? Were they necessary? How do we understand what that even means?

2.  Having a high ranking government position and writing a book about environmental problems does not make you an environmental leader.  It's great that you had some book tours, and you met two presidents.  So what, if your life's work (cleanup of a river) remains totally incomplete?  Consider writing a book that won't sell a million copies but will change lives - something like, "What the next generation must do to truly save the Bay."  Or "How Your Home Must Save the Bay."

3.  Stop complaining about problems that occur far after the point that they've exited your locus of control.  A true leader is either connected enough to impact policy at its inception, or tactful enough to rally meaningful support at future decision points. STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THINGS YOU DO NOT INTEND TO ACTUALLY EMBARK ON FIXING.

4.  The 1970s model of environmental stewardship was essentially "My job is to bring awareness to the unwashed masses, and magically that will transform into a small army of activists that does not include me, who will then ensure that massive change occurs."  Unfortunately, Eco Darth Vader, the last decade of behavioral environmental studies has shown that your generation's theory of creating engaged citizens absolutely DOES NOT WORK.    We know the harm of tobacco, and we still smoke (I enjoy a Nicaraguan in a natural wrapper from time to time, myself).  We know the harm of texting while driving, and we still do it.   We know that we are strangling our own life support system (this planet), and yet, we don't stop.  If you want to be a leader, now is the time to snap out of your 10, or 20, or 40 year slump and realize that you need to go out and build leaders, not just tell sad stories and threaten lawsuits from time to time.

When my generation (Generation X) retires in 30 years (60 years in the work force, no pension), our grown children will ask, "What did you do to make it better?"  We know that will happen because we asked our parents (hippies turned venture capitalists) the same thing, and they've - by and large - never had an answer beyond, "We got the clean water act passed!"   Those of you in that generation still have many years in front of you - make them the most impactful.  Go out and recruit new scientists, new citizens, new activists.  It's time to realize that a meaningful legacy will be carried out by those who respect and admire your actions to save life on earth, not just postulate about its hazards and woes over the course of a well-paid, pension-ensured career.

Leadership:  The action of leading

Is the Use of Regionally Sourced Plant Material a Valid Requirement for Plants in a Climate Change Scenario?

Here in Maryland, as in many states, the assembly of a restoration planting plan often requires the explicit statement: "All plant material is to be sourced from (name physiographic province of the state) region of (name a term that describes five states including yours)."  The idea, and it is a noble one, is to ensure that the New York Finger Lakes wetland you are building is populated by plant material that was not sourced from Washington state, which could cause a dilution of high quality genetics from the regionally appropriate plants.   One of the first (academic or regulatory) problems of this rule is that it is only applied to live plant material, and not to conservation seed mixes, even though those seed mixes contain seeds for perennial native plants.  Oops.

But there's a much larger problem with focusing on New York-bred plants for New York projects.  Take a look below.

The vast majority of the country should experience a 5 to 7 degree increase in mean temperature.  Now, mean temperatures are deceiving because it's actually the minimum temperatures that impact things like growing seasons, insect overwintering mortality, and seed viability.  But let's ignore that, or, rather than ignoring it, let's take a look at the USDA growing season map, which is dictated by lowest temperatures, not mean temperatures.

You gardeners may recall that just a year ago, USDA revised its plant zone map based upon climate change data that is already rolling in.   How might a 5 degree change in the next 40 years impact this map further?  Well, let's look at Maryland, largely a Zone 7a state (0-5 degrees - we haven't seen temperatures that low in a decade).  An increase of 5 to 7 degrees could place Maryland in Zone 8a, a solid subtropical coastal growing zone.   That's a lot of change in a short amount of time.  Maryland ecosystems could quite feasibly start acting like South Carolina ecosystems.  Which brings us back to the topic of regional plant genetics.

If I'm planting an emergent wetland where even perennial plants will succumb after less than 10 years, it seems to make great sense to utilize the most locally native plant genetics possible.  But what about planting an oak swamp?  An alder thicket?  An upland hickory forest stand?  What about plants that quite conceivably could still be alive as the climate changes drastically over the next 40 years?  

For long-lived plants used in forestry and restoration work, I propose abandoning the "regional plant genetics" preferences and requirements, and instead, for us to begin looking to our south to find strong genetics for plants that are tolerant of the stresses that climate change is likely to bring us - increased flooding, increased drought, unpredictability of precipitation, and warmer minimum temperatures.   In Maryland, for example, the Shumard Red Oak exists in the wild in our southernmost county.  Yet, it's never mentioned in conversations about forestry, forest habitat management, or habitat restoration because "It's Not Native."  I think this is foolish, and currently there are 200 Shumard acorns from northern North Carolina now hardening in my basement refrigerator, to be used on habitat restoration sites.

"This is preposterous!" you might say.  An alternate example with a different story ending is the Sugar Maple.  Most foresters and landscape architects stopped planting sugar maples in the Mid-Atlantic in the early 2000s because the summer droughts were killing huge numbers of trees.   Yet, our DNR Forestry Division still refers to Sugar Maple as a "Maryland Native Tree" - providing it to citizens to plant on their property!

Here's what's going on with the Sugar Maple:

The species is predicted to lose over 90% of its range.  It's already happening.  Why - as a professional community - can't we agree to change and accept new conditions around us?

So when you're considering a list of long-lived trees for a forestry, landscaping, or habitat restoration site, there's no need to stick to "the standards" for native plants in your area.   Please plan ahead, and perhaps your innovation to prepare habitat for climate change will be noted as part of your legacy.   It's certainly better than being known as "the idiot who planted all these dead sugar maples 40 years ago."

Your Consultant Is Not A Corps Certified Wetland Delineator

I frequently run across the CVs of high-level wetland professionals who each claim to be a "USACE Certified Wetland Delineator." Hmmm.  That's all well and good - after all, the annals of wetland management and regulation are full of tales of both consultants and regulatory staff making egregious wetland boundary errors during wetland delineations - errors which impact everything from legitimate economic uses of land, to vital aquatic habitats that might be hard to recognize.  There could - and should - be some way to make sure everyone in the field, including government employees, is competent to do this type of work.  Here's the problem - there's no such program at the federal level.  No such certification.  No such thing as a "USACE Certified Wetland Delineator."   From a 2007 mailer released by NC State University:

"The US Army Corps Wetland Delineator Certification Program (WDCP) was canceled in 2003 before implementation.  The WDCP does not exist (emphasis added) and the Corps has no plans to resurrect it."  

In 2011, a webpage from Rutgers University similarly stated,

"There is currently no official certification program offered through the ACOE." 

So, now that we can verify that there are, in fact, no Corps-certified delineators, let's back up a bit.  In 1992, the Corps announced the formation of the Wetland Delineator Certification Program (WDCP).     Meetings between the regulated and regulatory community produced an important bridge concept - that both regulatory staff and for-profit consultants should be certified prior to making legal determinations (or recommendations) on wetland boundaries.  In the halls of Congress, as well as in the headquarters of the US Army Corps of Engineers - this made perfect sense.  That's what produced the first failure.

A select group of Corps, USDA, and USFWS wetland experts worked quickly to develop the certification program - one that would include both written and field testing.  As the mythology goes (I wasn't in the room, and trust me, this is not well documented), upon seeing drafts of the exam, Corps regulatory managers began to increasingly voice concerns that their staff may not have the basic wetland delineation training or professional experience necessary to pass the two-part exam that was being prepared at that moment by the Corps' wetland experts.  Then (this part we know to be true), magically, without notifying the "regulated community" (infrastructure agencies, developers, etc), the portion of the WDCP that required certification of Corps field staff was quietly eliminated.  Suddenly, this new grand plan - one that arose from massive wetland delineation failures on the part of permit applicants as well as regulatory staff - only sought to scrutinize and certify permit applicants - not government staff.   Of course, this is problematic at its most basic level because Corps field staff wield an enormous amount of legal authority over wetland boundaries, and whether avoidance, minimization, and mitigation approaches are appropriate.  If the "mythology" is true, then, to concede that their staff was not competent to represent the agency was a major blunder.

The ranks of private sector supporters of the WDCP shrank very quickly, but the process went on anyway. The end result was a "provisional certification" that would be awarded, and perhaps revisited if - not when - the WDCP became a formal, nationwide program.   Several hundred consultants took the exam and nearly half of them passed the written portion.  Nearly all who passed the written portion also passed the field portion of the exam.   These several hundred men and women - most of them now age 45-55, were awarded the title "Provisional Certified Wetland Delineator."

Side note: for those of you unfamiliar with the legal moniker of "provisional," I'll provide an example.  If you apply for a hunting license and lack a piece of required information, like the ID# on your hunter safety card, then the state will issue you a "provisional" license.  It's "provisional" because it requires additional steps to take place for you to actually garner the title of "licensed hunter."  Basically, "you are certified...PROVIDED THAT..(insert requirements for future action). "  Back to our story...

At the time, the "Provisional" delineation title was granted because the program was not official, and had not passed "official rule making," a critical part of any time of federal award, certification, or regulation.  The "provisional" status of those professionals who passed the two-part exam was intended to be immediately (say, within three years) rolled into the nationwide WDCP in 1997, at the very latest.  But although the Corps proposed its final recommendations for the WDCP to Congress in 1995, the program languished until the Corps officially eliminated the WDCP in 2003.  Most telling, perhaps is the Corps' final report to Congress in 1998, which reports the following: "Government Levels Affected: None."  That only is important if your title related to that Congressional action is "provisional" - in which case, your status is now nil. 

Finally, adding insult to injury for the then-young professionals who jumped through the hoops of the written application, the written test, and the field test (all administered by agency staff who would never have to take the test) have to suffer through the knowledge that the Corps of Engineers does not maintain a list of their names.  Why? I don't have a good answer for that.

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen.  If an agency certified you provisionally as a wetland delineator 20 years ago, in a test/demonstration program that was never offered throughout the agency's jurisdiction, a program that was never funded, never fully approved by Congress, then you actually cannot be a "Corps Certified Wetland Delineator."   Then, if they never converted your provisional status to "full certified" in those 20 years, and on top of that, they do not maintain a list of you and your cohorts who successfully completed your exam, then you, my friends, are unfortunately not "Corps Certified Wetland Delineators."  You are, of course, a "Formerly Provisionally Certified Wetland Delineator, 1992-1997, Expired" which is not AT ALL the same thing as a "Corps Certified Wetland Delineator."

I'm not blaming  you - please don't think I am.  I'm blaming the Corps, who let this die on the vine, and your certification with it.

Why Federal Wetland Regulations Still Don't Work - 40 Years After CWA

40 years ago, the Clean Water Act was passed, requiring the cleanup of the nation's interstate waters to a "fishable, drinkable, swimmable" standard by 1984.   It's nearly 2013, and despite billions of dollars invested in regulatory programs headed by the EPA, US Army Corps of Engineers, and environmental agencies in several states, we are still losing wetlands.  Even when those lost wetlands are replaced with new ones, the new ones almost always fail to reproduce the natural functions of the lost wetlands.   For 20 years, American presidents and their EPA Directors have been talking about "no net loss" of wetlands.   So let's look at the baseline for "no net loss."

Wow.  So "no net loss" really means "We are accepting that we'll never get back the 30-90% of wetland acreage and functions that we already lost."   From a conservation perspective, that is pathetic.   Now let's look at what our esteemed wetland regulators are actually doing to preserve the functions and acreage of the remaining 10-70% of wetland acreage in the United States.

The Army Corps of Engineers, charged with protecting wetlands and streams with interstate connections, approves over 80% of all impact requests (filling, draining, dredging), and the agency has historically bragged to developers and Congress that they approve over 99% of completed applications for such impacts (many permit applications come with sketchy information and inadequate documentation, and are not deemed "complete").

So what about the "replacement" or mitigation, for these impacts, which is critical to achieve the elusive "no net loss" of wetland and stream acreage?  One study found that permittees routinely recreate less than 50% of the required acreage.  To say nothing of the "functional replacement" of the wetlands approved for filling/draining.   In a similar study in Colorado, over 50% of designed mitigation wetlands were constructed smaller than promised.   Other studies have shown that while "some" mitigation wetlands achieve the required acreage, none of them achieve the functional requirements and needs stipulated by scientists and regulatory agencies. 

In fact, in 2005, the US Governmental Accounting Agency issued a report whose actual title was - I kid you not - "Corps of Engineers Does Not Have an Effective Oversight Approach to Ensure that Compensatory Mitigation is Occurring."  Ouch!  I mean - that's just the title!!!!  It goes into 47 pages of detail on the topic.
I've been in meetings with Corps managers since that report, and those staff have basically said, "This surprised us - we'll get right to it!"

But it shouldn't have surprised them.  Witness the 1988 GAO Report, entitled, "The Corps of Engineers' Administration of the Section 404 Program." From the report:

"Undetected (wetland and stream) violations of permit requirements may be occurring.  Also, some suspected unauthorized activities reported to the Corps may not be investigated for months after they are reported, and many projects are not inspected by the Corps for compliance with permit conditions."

Hmm.  So....how the Corps was surprised in 2005, when they (and Congress) were informed of the same issues in 1988 is a little beyond me.  How in the world can these federal agencies be claiming "no net loss of wetlands" with straight faces, as they are consistently documented as not having even laid eyes on wetland impact and replacement/mitigation projects?  Certainly is a mystery to me.

Then we can head back to 2004, when the GAO issued a report to Congress entitled, "Corps of Engineers Needs to Evaluate its District Office Practices."  The main theme?  Even though every office of the Corps of Engineers follows the same federal laws and standards, there is little to no consistency across the country of what, and how, and why the Corps of Engineers might enforce.  This inconsistency and failure to follow official federal protocol has led to 15 years of crushing defeats in the US Supreme Court (and DC Federal Court, whose rulings impact Corps Headquarters, and thus, all Corps offices) that have drastically undercut the federal government's ability to regulate interstate waters and wetlands.  That's right, incompetence did that.

And there's more:

GAO 2005: "Army Corps Needs to Better Support its Decisions"

GAO 1993: "Scope of 404 Program Remains Uncertain"  (22 years after passage of Clean Water Act)

The sad fact is that when a federal wetland regulator states that "this impact" or "that impact" are not allowed and would not receive a permit, they are generally lying.  The documents linked above, and hundreds of similar documents and court findings, have shown that our federal wetland regulations, and regulators, are not  particularly effective at protecting a whole heck of a lot, particularly once politics, money, constitutionality, and basic professional competence and protocol come into the picture.  

Source: USFS

Is 150 Years of Ecological Research Enough?

For over 100 years, humans have known that the exhaust from fossil fuel burning causes low-altitude air pollution, which makes workers and city dwellers sick.  For 150 years, we've known that cholera and other diseases are carried by water that is untreated and mismanaged. For 1,000 years, we've understood the nature of human-to-human contagions, their propagation in nature, and their utility on the world's battlefields. The use of pesticides goes back at least to the Roman rule of France.  Which has been over for awhile.

These issues continue to pose significant problems for the future of our species, and yet, our inability or unwillingness to tackle them have absolutely nothing to do with a lack of science, or inability to define the problem and the potential solutions.

So, as a natural resource manager, excuse me if I grow tired of hearing that this government agency (career position, with pension) or that university researcher (tenured, with pension) are not ready to proceed with environmental cleanups because there's no guarantee that conventional or existing, innovative restoration techniques may or may not be more effective and efficient than techniques that could perhaps be developed 50 or 100 years from now.   And yet, from some quarters within the highly environmentally aware community, that's exactly the meme that's being pushed from highly comfortable offices.

Obviously, there are fields in which continued - if not accelerated - research and research funding are critical.   Like cancer and genome research.  Those are good ones.

About five years ago, I was invited to do a presentation to a group of EPA scientists on the topic of ecological restoration efficiency.  They seemed pleased enough to listen to what I had to say, but as a group, were extraordinarily concerned with the possibility that, "What if 10 years from now, we find out that we could have been doing it a smarter way, all along?"  Which led to a strong head-nodding agreement that, "We should wait, let's not do anything now."

If you search through ecology blogs, as I occasionally do, there's a wealth of people writing about their research on this wolf, or that lichen, or that endangered fern.   I'd never claim that those are not worthy undertakings for a career in ecology or forest management or whatever.

But I can't imagine that if the Ogallala Aquifer runs dry, as predicted, in 12-20 years, it will matter.  Or that if our human population does in fact hit 12 billion, that it will matter.  Or that if global food production continues to decrease 0.5% annually, that it will matter.  Or that if China and India - fully making up 50% of the entire world's population - decide to go to war, that any of it will matter.

What will matter then is water, soil, and the food that comes from them.  Whether we beat those odds will be greatly impacted by what we do in the next decade to protect headwaters, protect groundwater, enhance food production (but not at the expense of virgin erodible soils/habitats), protect and enhance sustainable fisheries, and protect and enhance soils.   And by what we "do," I don't mean what we research.  I mean "what work gets accomplished."  Upgrading sewer plants.  Water treatment.  Agricultural targeting (both lands to protect against agriculture, and lands to protect FOR agriculture).  Getting it done.   Yes, we'll find out in 20 years that we can be doing it more efficiently.   That should be a triumph in our process - not the starting point for getting something done.

The only way I could answer those career bureaucrat scientists several years ago was with total honesty.  I told them that if we don't start today, it won't matter.  All those efficiencies we hope to discover in the coming decades will be lost because from 1970 to 2030, we did nothing, while knowing full well that the future of our species depended on sustainable water, soil, and food.   We know so much about the dynamics of water, soil, air, and wildlife.  In some cases, the dynamic nature of systems leads us back to the same point - entropy does, and must, exist.  And as a result, there will be failures.  Aqueducts designed by the Romans failed routinely.    Amsterdam's dike system has been built-and-rebuilt several times over.  Stream restoration projects designed in 1930, 1960, 1990, and 2010 have failed.   But most do not.   And from those efforts that fail, we learn much. 

So what will you do? If you're a researcher, when will you be confident in stating that, "this application of theory to field methods should work, most of the time."  If you're an agency biologist, when will you take the authority given to you by your agency and say, "Go ahead with this project.  It's far better than doing nothing."  Or will you say, once again, "more research is needed."