Tag Archives: Culture of Conservation

Faces of Flight – Bird by Bird

Conservation, Faces of Flight, Opinion, Recreation, ,

Painted Bunting
How does one come to a life with birds?

Are there sentient peoples that have walked this planet and not known them? Not the Inuit, with streams of murres, guillemots, and puffins cascading across their arctic landscape. Certainly not the ancient Egyptians, who balanced their deification of the cat with heiroglyphical cranes, geese, and falcons. There are prehistoric stone sculptures of echidnas from New Guinea, quetzals from the ruins at Chichen Itza, and sea eagles atop Alaskan totems. To breathe, to open one’s eyes and ears each morning, is to know birds.

I came to birds with, but not through, my parents. My father hunted birds (he would later abandon his shotgun for binoculars), and I often accompanied him on late summer dove hunts in rural central Texas. I suspect that my life with birds began at a much earlier age, though, and stemmed from a fascination with birds as accessible expressions of life.

I point to my mother’s archives as evidence. She neatly squirreled away most of my kindergarten drawings, elementary grade report cards, baseball team photos, and prom invitations, and passed these family heirlooms my way late in life. Rummaging through these “treasures” I found a number of my construction paper drawings in which birds are clearly and recognizably rendered. In one there is an obvious northern cardinal, tinted with a fiery color only found in a Crayola box. Given my age at that time (four or five) I can only guess that my life with birds began as childhood curiosity, one that eventually flowered into a passion that would eventually transcend science, recreation, or reason.

At the University of Houston I majored in journalism. Although I matriculated high school in the late 1960s, Woodward and Bernstein were only peripheral or distant inspirations. My heroes were Roger Tory Peterson, Elliot Porter, and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Journalism (particularly photojournalism) swelled my interest in photography both as art and as information. With birds as a subject, I could now explore ways in which the photographed bird might advance beyond “documentation.” For a birder, the photographed bird is proof that it existed. With proof a birder “scores.” I wanted to do more with my photography, to show birds as I perceived them metaphysically. I wanted to show birds as individuals, not as species or specimens. I wanted to capture life on film.

My studies exposed me to more than photography’s immediate possibilities; I also learned of its past. From Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Galveston That Was to George Hurrell’s Jean Harlow and Jane Russell, I began to grasp that the photographic process was far more complex and demanding than “point-and-shoot.” I learned of photography’s discipline and rigor, of the basic principles of composition, of the power of the well-placed highlight. I studied Cartier-Bresson’s talent for blending into the background, the street, enabling him to closely approach his subjects and capture what he described as “the instant sketch” with only a rangefinder Leica camera and a 50 mm lens. For a time I practiced by photographing birds only in black-and-white, subordinating the seductive power of their dramatic colors to the subtle art of shadow and light.

My early results were desultory, photos taken as through another’s camera. I photographed hoping to recreate pictures I had seen before. With time, though, I developed a perspective, an eye. My wife, Virginia, helped me understand the concepts of expression and impression and the photographer’s obligation to allow each picture to live up to its emotional (not just documentary) potential. Through her I began to understand that the lens has the power to reshape and redefine reality, to peel away artifice and allow the emotional essence of each subject to show through the clutter and disorder that surrounds them.

With Faces of Flight I focused the eye of the camera on one essential truth – the universal appeal of birds. These are intended as glamour shots, intimate portraits that display each individual bird in the most intricate detail, each feather precisely mapped. Each individual portrait stands alone, evidence that this particular bird and I shared a precious moment and space on this planet. All were captured in and released back to their native habitats without harm. The photographs only record a brief second in time, an “instant sketch,” and reflect only a short interlude in what I hope were otherwise long and fecund lives.

Only late in life, though, have I developed an additional understanding of these birds and their photographs. I began as a birder, evolved to being a naturalist, and only now, with six decades under my belt (and the scars to prove it), am I trying to see beyond the evident and the puerile. Through a life with birds I have come to a better understanding of my life with my fellow man. My essays are a pilgrimage, a solemn journey to a distant corner of the psyche where I might glance back at who I am.

Pablo Neruda, in “The Poet Says Good-Bye to the Birds,” wrote of himself as

…A people’s poet, provincial and birder/ I’ve wandered the world in search of life/bird by bird I’ve come to know the earth…

Picture by picture, essay by essay, I have come to know Neruda’s earth as well.

Ted Eubanks
18 Oct 2010

For those interested in seeing the exhibit, I have load the images as well as the interpretive panels and poster we designed here for your enjoyment. The original is now in the hands of Karla Klay of Artist Boat, and I hope that she will use the exhibit to help raise funds for her wonderful organization.

The Culture of Conservation

Conservation, Fermata, Research

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture—Gaylord Nelson

Ted Eubanks on Mount Livermore, Texas

For the past couple of weeks I have been posting a series of articles about the Culture of Conservation on the BirdSpert blog. Given the impact that these ideas and this concept have on our work, I am going to link the articles here for Fermata viewers. Although still rudimentary, these posts will ultimately be expanded to become a book on conservation interpretation.

Culture of Conservation

Culture of Conservation – Take it to the street
Culture of Conservation – Space for place (1)
Culture of Conservation – Space for place (2)
Culture of Conservation – Keep it simple, not simplistic

I will keep the list updated in the sidebar. Enjoy!

Ted Eubanks
16 Sep 2010

Culture of Conservation – Keep It Simple, Not Simplistic

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Gulf Gusher, Opinion, , , , , , , ,

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler—Albert Einstein

The third principle of the Culture of Conservation is to keep the message simple. Effective marketing is little more than simple messages and images repeated endlessly. Remember the earlier quote that 93% of American children can recognize McDonalds by the golden arches? I wonder what the percentage is now for the Japanese?

McDonalds sponsoring the Osaka sumo basho

Simple messages and images rise above the cacophony that is modern life. Simplicity and volume (both amplitude and amount) help messages battle through the noise. Doubt this? According to the Associated Press, BP’s been spending more than $5 million a week on advertising since the blowout. Remember BPs original simple message? Beyond Petroleum.

Freeman Tilden inspired what we now know as the interpretation profession. Tilden stressed the need for interpreters (guides, museum staff, National Park Service employees and the like) to know their audiences. My impression is that most conservation groups consider their members to be the audience. No wonder the messages are so obtuse, and geared toward fund raising.

Freeman Tilden
Our professional organization for interpretation is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). I am a NAI supporter, and I am working to have myself certified by them in every way possible (Freeman didn’t write about interpretation until the age of 62). But in recent years Jon Kohl, Sam Ham, and I have been thinking about conservation interpretation, and the need to train staff that can communicate and interpret conservation, not just nature, history, or culture. We have completed organizing the training program, and once I finish with my current NAI certification projects I want to turn my attention to this component of our work.

Why? Because I believe that conservation as a movement is fundamentally inept when it comes to devising ways in which people can relate to our work (another of Tilden’s principals).

Rather than continue to offer Tilden’s principles in a piecemeal fashion, here are the six principles from Interpreting Our Heritage:

1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.

2. Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation include information.

3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical, or architectural. Any art is to some degree teachable.

4. The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction but provocation.

5. Interpretation should aid to present a whole rather than a part and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.

6. Interpretation addressed to children should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

NAI offers a number of certification programs, and I endorse them all. Interestingly, most conservation groups do not have certified interpretive staff, a mistake in my opinion. But I also believe that there is a need for us in the profession to develop a certification program in conservation interpretation, a program that does not exist currently. For those interested in where we have taken this idea, there is information here on the Fermata blog.

The key to successful simplification, however, is (as Einstein said) to keep things simple but not too simple. In conservation we deal with complex issues like global warming, oil spills, biodiversity, and extinction. These topics do not lend themselves to simplicity. Yet, as Tilden stated, our presentations, programs, and messages must address the desires, experiences, and limitations of our audiences. In this way I agree with Tilden that interpretation is an art, one practiced well by a few. Read Enos Mills, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Peter Matthiessen to get a sense of the interpretive art as it relates to conservation.

Enos Mills
This helps us understand the recent debate here about the Ted Williams’ article in Audubon, and Drew Wheelan’s reports for the American Birding Assocation. Williams is a journalist, a master craftsman. His work can be judged by its lucidness and accuracy. Unfortunately, as journalism Williams’ article failed miserably. Drew did not pretend to be a journalist; instead, he functioned as an observer. Drew placed himself in situations in the Gulf that allowed us to experience the blowout and its impacts through his eyes. Yes, Drew is passionate about his work, an attribute that contributes to effective interpretation. Williams debated facts and completely missed the story. Drew didn’t sweat every fact and captured the story in all of its horror, devastation, and pathos.

The National Park Service (NPS) has devised an equation to show the key components that go into the interpretive experience – (Kr + Ka) X AT = IO. Remember, however, that this is metaphor, not math. The equation states that a knowledge of the resource (Kr) plus a knowledge of the audience (Ka), multiplied by well-grounded interpretive techniques (AT), will create an interpretive opportunity (IO). The equation is often displayed as a teeter-totter, where an overemphasis on one factor, such as knowledge of the resource, can outweigh and overwhelm the audience and any interpretive technique. In my experience this is the chief failing of conservation groups. Yes, they can all impress with a knowledge of the resources, but most have no concept of how to communicate that knowledge or a conservation imperative to the audience.

Let’s recap. I have now presented three of the Culture of Conservation principles:

1. Take it to the street
2. Make space for place
3. Keep it simple, not simplistic

Keep tuned for the next principle – Aim straight for the heart.

Ted Eubanks
15 Sep 2010

The Culture of Conservation – Space For Place (2)

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Recreation, ,

Part 1 of Space For Place ended with we need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America. First, let’s stitch. Places often exist independently, islands within an ocean of other places. An Audubon place, such as Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, shares little with the other Audubon places such as the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary, Mill Grove, or Rowe Sanctuary other than the name. The name certainly has space, but the places themselves are effectively isolated.

There is much to be gained from knitting discrete, disparate places into a seamless fabric. To hack a cliche from Aristotle, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. For example, the National Park Service (NPS) manages around 400 “units.” Certainly the NPS as an entity occupies significant American space, particularly in those places that it manages that are so much a part of the American identity. Yet most Americans, I suspect, could not tell you the difference between a national forest, a national wildlife refuge, a ACOE recreation area, or lands owned by the BLM or the Bureau of Reclamation. All of these are public land stewards, and the land is managed for the American people. Yet these forests and refuges occupy a much smaller space in the American psyche than the national parks.

Technology, however, can begin to help us stitch places into spaces. One method that I use is to organize “trails” out of like places. By “trail” I do not mean only paths through forests, such as the Allegheny Trail. In my work a trail is a way of connecting important places so that they portray an overarching space.

Let me offer an example. Here is the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail that we are developing in Indiana. Click on “Map” and you will see the 54 places that have been interlaced to create a space called the Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail. My company, Fermata, has now developed signage, guides, a blog, a website, and a SmartTrail (more on that later) to help solidify the space. Of course each place is capable of standing on its own. But how much more powerful is the cementing of these places into a single, consolidating space?

Here is another example from our work – the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway in Kansas. In the byway we have again linked numerous places into a single space. These places include Quivira NWR, Cheyenne Bottoms, several communities, and a number of additional parks and historical sites. To solidify the space we developed a website, audio guide, interpretive signs, wayfinding signs, a printed guide, a printed rack piece, and an interpretive plan that provide a roadmap for the entire consolidation. Quivira NWR is a place (which actually can be subdivided into additional places), while the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway is a space. The Smithsonian is a space, and the individual buildings and facilities are places.

These projects, though, are long, drawn-out affairs. In both cases we and the clients invested years. We need a simpler, more expedient way of making spaces.

Enter technology. Only in the past year or so has geolocation become a tool for the masses. I know; GPS units have been around for some time. But the Iphone 3G and the Android are relatively new, and smartphone geolocation is the way to the masses. According to Pew,

Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps. Among cell phone owners, 29% have downloaded apps to their phone and 13% have paid to download apps.

Yes, we are early in the evolution and adoption of the smartphone technologies. But consider this. According to Dr. Allan Kanner from Berkeley,

Recent studies have also shown that by the time they are 36 months old, American children recognize an average of 100 brand logos.

How many birds can children name that are seen in their yards? How many parks other than playgrounds have children visited by the time that they are in kindergarten? How can we effectively lead people from a psychological space to a physical place? When compared to American marketing, we do not exist. We need every tool that we can find, and to be content with marginal gains. We are starting at zero.

For the past couple of years I have been watching an Austin company as they have been developing IPhone and Android technologies for tours and trails. They are typical Austin computer geeks, and not in the business of nature or historical interpretation. But they have developed a fantastically simple and effective application, and I recently entered into an agreement with them to begin offering it through Great American Trails. Given the number of places we have inventoried in the U.S. (thousands), we have a backlog that can be brought to the public rather quickly. But I am also convinced that we need to be able to attract others to organize their places into spaces as well. In other words, I want to be able to offer an application that people can use to make spaces from places. We are still in the early stages of this project, but I am excited about the potential.

But how to we educate, promote, and deliver these new spaces to the people? We should (in fact, must) begin with the web. Web 2.0, and in particular the newest blog platforms such as WordPress 3.0, are the web-based technologies that will allow us to engage the public in a dynamic, vital way. The third step in my culture of conservation strategy is to keep the messages simple, and this is precisely what I envision in this web offering. I have secured space4place.org as well as spaceforplace.org, and I suspect that you will be seeing something about this shortly as well.

Finally, I have been working with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council in Pittsburgh, and we will roll out these two programs first there. I am speaking at the Western Pennsylvania Trail Symposium October 26 near Pittsburgh on SmartTrails. I will actually conduct a workshop where we will develop a SmartTrail on the fly. This, to me, is a key component in any space for place strategy. We must be able to organize and connect places in real time. The forces that work against place are not constrained by time or money, and we have no choice but to have ways of responding in kind.

My next installment will be a discussion of keeping messages simple. Why? Think about this – the average American reading level is between the 8th and 9th grade.

Here is a paragraph from the National Audubon Society website about global warming:

All organisms depend on their habitats for food, water, shelter, and opportunities to breed and raise young. Climate changes can affect organisms and their habitats in a myriad of ways. In fact, global warming impacts all life on earth, from individual organisms to populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. It can alter behaviors, population sizes, species distributions, plant and animal communities, and ecosystem functions and stability. How strongly different species will be affected varies, depending on differences in their ecology and life history. Species with small population sizes, restricted ranges, and limited ability to move to different habitat will be most at risk. Similarly, different habitats and ecosystems will be impacted differently, with those in coastal, high-latitude, and high-altitude regions most vulnerable.

Now here is a headline from the blog I Hate The Media:

Global warming causes more snow. Except when it causes less snow. And that’s a scientific fact.

Here is your homework. Which of these would connect better with average Americans like your grandmother or your neighbor? More importantly, if I asked people at a local mall about these two statements which do you think they would grasp more quickly?

There will be a test.

Ted Eubanks
14 Sep 2010

The Culture of Conservation – Space for Place

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Opinion, Politics, Recreation, , , , , , , , ,

A place for everything, everything in its place.

Benjamin Franklin

Wissahickon Creek, Philadelphia

Everything in its place. In Franklin’s case, the place is Philadelphia. For the past year I have been helping Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the nation’s first. More than 300 years ago, William Penn designed Philadelphia to be a “Greene Country Towne,” where squares, parks, and open spaces would allow residents to escape the pace and unhealthy conditions found in 17th-century European cities. In 1690 Governor Penn required for every five acres cleared one acre of forest should be preserved. Franklin led a commission to regulate waste water in the city (leading to the first waste water treatment in the country). Where I am working, Fairmount Park encompasses 9,200 acres, a full 10 percent of the land in Philadelphia (city and county).

Recently I have been rereading Jane Jacobs, and mulling over how our concepts about cities might also apply to conserved lands. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities she commented on how many of the City Beautiful centers failed, attracting not successful small business and shops but “tattoo parlors and second-hand-clothing stores, or else just nondescript, dispirited decay.” Jane died too soon. Perhaps it took cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh longer than she expected to revise their approaches to their once-celebrated centers. Philadelphia’s city center now ranks among the tops in the nation in downtown residents. Pittsburgh has been ranked by Forbes as America’s most livable city.

My work is with parks and open spaces, not with buildings and the urban core. Yet in recent years I have been increasingly interested in how these once flourishing cities, places where city leaders once invested in parks, museums, and grand esplanades, are now using these same inherited assets to reinvent themselves. These cultural, historical, and natural amenities anchor cities, and offer a stable platform for reconstructing and reinvigorating the society that surrounds them. Yet there is an undeniable rule of law that governs these places. To have treasured places, you must protect treasured spaces.

How do the two differ? Place, for my purposes, is a physical location with defined metes and bounds. For example, the national park lands that include the Grand Canyon can be shown on a map with clear, defined boundaries. Most conservation organizations and land conservancies are focused on place.

Grand Canyon - The Place

Space, however, is psychological rather than physical. The federal lands that comprise Grand Canyon National Park do not limit the psychological space occupied by the Grand Canyon. That space includes Flagstaff, Sedona, the Havasupai Indian Reservation, the bordering national forest land, the smell of pinyon burning, the sounds of elk bugling, the crashing of the Colorado River as it slices through the canyon, and the colors of a sunset painted on the canyon walls. The Grand Canyon space is filled individually, with each person defining “Grand Canyon” based on their personal experiences and exposure. Space is the sum of all that is known and felt about a given place or group of places. Space is identity rather than body. While place has discrete, physical boundaries, space has soft, amorphous edges. Space is of the mind; place is of the land.

Grand Canyon Space Example

This chart shows a rudimentary space model for the Grand Canyon. The number of places I am showing is arbitrary; certainly, Grand Canyon is a far more complex landscape than this. More importantly, this model should be three dimensional (at least more than this Powerpoint chart illustrates). If you have visited the Grand Canyon, what do you recall about your visit? What spaces do these sensations occupy in your mind? Mine would include the smell of pinyon in a Flagstaff restaurant, an American three-toed woodpecker feeding in a burned area in the national forest, and the thrill of standing with my grandchildren at the South Rim mesmerized by the sunset.

Grand Canyon Sunset

Here are a couple of additional examples to mull over. The White House is a small place, occupying an extraordinarily large space in the American mind. The Alamo in San Antonio is similar. Many visitors to the Alamo are surprised that the mission is so small. Fairmount Park is an expansive, diverse place, but a small space. Few people know the actual extent of the Fairmount Park system, and relate only to their favorite place within it.

Conservation agencies and organizations are understandably focused on place. A place can be purchased, fenced, posted, and protected. However, how people relate to these efforts (and their willingness to support their protection) is defined by their personal perception of the space. Whether or not they value a place is determined by how they perceive the space.

Therefore my second step in reshaping our conservation movement (remember the first? Take it to the streets!) is that we need to create more spaces for places. The world is full of place conservers. We need more space makers.

McDonalds is a fast-food joint that sells hamburgers. There are around 14,000 McDonalds in the US, and each occupies a discrete place or location. But what about the space that McDonalds occupies in the American psyche? Consider that 93% of American children can identify a McDonalds by its golden arches. How many can identify a national park by the arrowhead logo? Which has a larger American space – McDonalds or the National Park Service?

Fortunately, the technology exists for us to create space for place. We do not need McDonalds advertising budget to construct an American space for American places. Consider all of the places that should be brought to the attention of the public, and the spaces they combine to form. I am interested in the smallest neighborhood park to Yellowstone National Park. How many are in your community? What spaces do they occupy in your and your neighbor’s lives?

The U.S. is in the midst of the worst economic recession in my lifetime. When state and federal budgets are slashed, who gets cut first? Places, such as parks, refuges, and sanctuaries are the first to go. Is this because they are not valuable places? Of course not. Political leaders hatchet our treasured places because they occupy limited space in the interests and concerns of the voting public. In other words, our places are easy marks, and we who strive to protect them are defenseless chumps.

I am not willing to go through another budget or political cycle so defenseless. We must develop the tools to collect our places into aggregations that occupy critical social space in the lives of our citizens. It is not enough to limit our efforts to simply protecting places. We have no choice but to squeeze ourselves into the American space.

I do have ideas about how to accomplish this, and I will write more in the near future. We need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America.

In the meantime, let me remind you of my first two steps of a renewed conservation movement:

1. Take it to the street
2. Space for place

Ted Eubanks
13 Sep 2010

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