Startling Discovery?
Dick Cheney
Is for the Birds
A woodpecker re-emerges. Will individual environmentalism do the same?
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, May 6, 2005 12:01 a.m.
This week Americans broke out in awed smiles at the news that a feisty woodpecker, thought to have gone extinct in the 1940s, had risen like a phoenix in Arkansas. The jubilation was perfectly apt, but I couldn't help wondering if Dick Cheney was also taking a bow. It was only a few years ago that the vice president was tarred and feathered for his observation that environmentalism is a "personal virtue." Yet if there's a lesson in the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, it is that the path to conservation runs straight through the hearts of average Americans.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the prevailing view matched Mr. Cheney's. Americans used their resources, to be sure, but also felt a responsibility as individuals to preserve the bees and trees. Then in the 1970s, with the passing of massive legislation that gave the government control over things environmental, all that changed. Americans not only lost interest but became, in many cases, enemies of the very goals they'd once pursued.
With the feds threatening to freeze up their land if a spotted owl came to call, rural Americans adopted a new philosophy toward species preservation--one that came to be known as The Three S's: Shoot, Shovel and Shut-Up. Private citizens who cared about nature found themselves fighting to earn a living or use their land, parrying lawsuits from green fanatics, and trying to meet the demands of excessive regulation. They didn't have the time, or the stomach, to tend to the natural world around them as they might have wished. This helps to explain why, 30 years after the Endangered Species Act was passed, we'd recovered a total of 10 species out of the 1,304 listed.
Thus two recent dispatches are heartening. The first, of course, is the news of the ivory bill, the second-largest woodpecker in the world (with a bill so ferocious that you'd never want to be mistaken for a tree). Logging and agriculture took such a toll on its habitat that, by the mid-1940s, it was considered lost. The story of how it was found again is a testament to the great leaps we take when private individuals and organizations unite.
Much credit goes to the Nature Conservancy, one of the few environmental outfits to put its money where its mouth is. Unlike the Sierra Club, which pours its dollars into high-profile, low-impact lawsuits or political campaigns, the Conservancy often directs its money to . . .the environment. It buys land or negotiates easements with willing landowners, drawing more people into habitat preservation. Over the years, it has bought and tended thousands of acres in the Big Woods of Arkansas. Alongside were the other great land stewards: hunting groups. Some 20 duck clubs own land in the area, and its sporting use has helped preserve the swamps and trees that the woodpecker loves.
The actual tracking of the ivory-billed woodpecker we owe to an amateur ornithologist, Gene Sparling, who caught a glimpse of one while kayaking. He reported it to a bird watchers' Web site, and then several academics accompanied him on another trip. In late February, the great beast itself swooped in front of their canoe, and the rest is fine-feathered history. Notice that nowhere in this account are the usual enviros filing lawsuits or government officials bringing down the heavy hammer of regulation.
Nor, with any luck, will there be. The Bush administration seems to understand that a litigation- and regulation-driven environment doesn't work. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has tried to work with landowners rather than against them. In the case of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the cooperative approach is crucial for the bird's survival, given that a lot of its habitat is on private land owned by citizens who have already been burned by other species "finds." Much of the $10 million that Ms. Norton is asking for the bird's preservation will go, or so one hopes, to incentive grants and assistance to these owners, saving the ivory bill from a midnight "Three-S" treatment.
The other heartening nature-news came a week ago, when President Bush planted an American Chestnut on White House grounds. Once the dominant tree in the Eastern hardwood forest, this giant was wiped out by blight in the early 1900s. Yet for 21 years a dedicated group of individuals, the American Chestnut Foundation, has worked with the Agriculture Department to breed a blight-resistant tree. Soon this new genetic wonder will be reintroduced to national forestland. This, too, is one for the "personal virtue" files.
Never able to let a good party go uncrashed, greens are already trying to ball-up these good works. Within days of the woodpecker news, the National Wildlife Foundation threatened a lawsuit over an irrigation project that the group claims will hurt the bird. They might be better off chatting with Mr. Cheney, so he can explain the true meaning of "environmentalism."
Ms. Strassel is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.
Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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