Acadia Partners Blog

“Play that is good for kids, and presented as such–by best selling authors, by teams of experts, by parents–doesn’t strike me as all that playful. It sounds like eating your peas.”

So writes Walter Kirn in an article titled “Boys Gone Mild” in this week’s New York Times Magazine. Kirn is responding to the popularity of the recently published Dangerous Book for Boys, a book that encourages boys, and their fathers, to get out and do stuff–stuff ranging from coin tricks and tying knots to hunting and cooking a rabbit.

We are in the final days of making preparations for the arrival of Maine School of Science and Mathematics students who will participate in the Winter Watershed Geochemistry field school run by Sarah Nelson. Preparations include setting up a speical blog page for students particpating in the class. See the full story for detials.

Acadia Partners’ business is conservation. Sure, we have a special niche to fill in the world of conservation, supporting the scientific research that the Park needs and promoting related science education,  But, in the grand scheme of things, we’re conservationists. 

Here’s the rub:  People don’t conserve when they are living on the economic edge — instead, they use whatever is at hand, ignoring the ecological costs. In an earlier article I have written about the need for a conservation ethic — a sense of obligation to the land in place of the conviction that nature is there for us to use.  But we also know that such a reciprocal relationship between people and land — that sense of obligation and connection to place — can emerge only when people are meeting their own needs.

Put simply, conservation emerges out of economic stability.

That’s why Thomas Friedman’s most recent best selling book, The World is Flat,  is required reading for conservationists.  It is also required reading for anyone concerned about the future of scientific research.  I’ll go one step farther.  It is required reading for anyone thinking hard about the future of the United States.

A remembrance and recognition of Fitz Eugene Dixon’s contribution to Acadia Partners and some thoughts about how that contribution extends much deeper and encompasses much more than the financial support that he committed to this organization.

We often make the case for conservation by arguing that conservation brings benefits to mankind. This may be true, but it also takes us away from what may be the real work that needs to be done, which is to develop a “land ethic.” Focusing on the utility of Acadia National Park and of other conserved places reinforces the idea that the Park and the animals and plants that live there are just property and that our relationship to the Park, as Aldo Leopold put it, “is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.” This essay argues for a deeper, more reciprocal relationship with nature, and for a different rationale for conservation.

This summer I am spending part of each day working out of the Research Building at SERC. The Park and Acadia Partners have just opened this building up this year for the summer season, and what is going on here is exciting. The building is the daily workspace of a group of scientists and students doing interesting work that is good for the Park, good for the researchers, and ultimately good for the community. This post takes a look at what is going on and at why it is important.

Yesterday, after we finished our morning walk, Molly the dog and I encountered two young moose. They were surprised to see us and made for the woods. I tend to think of moose as big and ungainly, but their movement, though quick, was graceful as they ran across an open area into the forest. Their disappearance was sudden and complete once they were in the woods. Gone.

Molly has seen moose before, and she is obviously impressed with them. Her response has been the same each time. She moves from standing to sitting and then watches, looking at the spot where the moose were last visible before disappearing.

I am impressed too. There is something thrilling about seeing a big animal in the Park. Part of the thrill, to be sure, is that such sightings are uncommon.. But the thrill reaches deeper than that, to something more basic in my own animal makeup. My guess would be that seeing big animals sharpens my sense that the Park still has some wildness left.

One of the most consistent, striking messages to come from the research opportunity catalog work that took place here at SERC in March was that the Park really does not have a complete inventory of the different species of plants and animals in the Park–and does not have a full understanding of important natural systems. This is not just because funds are short–which they are– but also because of the way that scientific work is valued. It seems to us that the valuation does not reflect the full “market” of information needs and of sources of financial support. It is the kind of problem that Acadia Partners was created to solve.

A couple of days ago I began a series of three short articles about Richard Louv’s important book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. In the first article, I described Louv’s compellingly simple story about how Americans have changed the way that they relate to nature. Currently, it appears that children are growing up disconnected from nature. In the second article I summarized some of Louv’s thinking about how we got into this spot and about what it might take to get out of it. I ended with the observation that Louv’s description of the problem is simpler and more compelling than is his solution. Today I try own hand at finding a perspective that opens up a bigger picture and some insight toward reconnecting children and nature.

First–up until the end of the 19th century–we set out to use and conquer nature. Then, with much of the conquest behind us, we romanticized our view of nature and decided to protect some of it, setting aside the National Parks as an inspiration to future generations. But the surprising dilemma is that the future generations aren’t paying attention. The iconic images for children are no longer cowboys and Indians or Davy Crockett out on the frontier, but rappers on the city streets. For most children growing up today, nature is simply not relevant. So … what do we do now?