CONSERVATION IN ACTION

It is often hard to determine the precise impacts of conservation action. Community conservation takes perseverance and integrity. To succeed, one must build deep trust with those individuals who live and rely on the land to survive. Only through this trust can individuals come to realize that there are a variety of valid perspectives to viewing the viable components on an integral landscape.

My professional journey started years ago, working as a domestic Vista employee on recycling in Seattle in 1974, where I started one of the first home collection recycling programs in the nation, but it was my affiliation with Independence Institute, a non-profit think tank in Colorado, that got me thinking about the validity and needs of people and the kinds of approaches and mechanisms that might enable us to learn to co-exist within a landscape of native plant and animal communities and viable, functioning ecosystems.