Fighting Fire with Fire

Having recently spent time out West, in a region stricken by drought and fire, I was reminded of my conflicted relationship with Smokey Bear. That’s right, you read correctly — not “Smokey the Bear.” As a child growing up in in the 1970s in Washington, DC I would regularly visit Smokey at the National Zoo after he’d been rescued from a wildfire in New Mexico. Smokey received so much fan mail the Postal Service gave him his own zip code. His message, “Only you can prevent forest fires,” was seared into our collective consciousness.

A pine cone release its seeds following a fire in the Pine Barrens © The Nature Conservancy

It was, and still is, an important message – don’t be careless with fire. Protecting lives and property is a priority. But we went too far. We forgot that many of our natural habitats depend on fire for their health and survival. Fire is needed to open the cones of the majestic Ponderosa pines so they can reproduce. Fire allows new grasses to emerge where our prairies have become decadent, and in many places fire helps keep non-native species from invading.

A century of fire suppression has caused many forests to become unhealthy and contain too much natural fuel, like logs, accumulated leaf litter and other natural materials that burn too hot or too long when ignited.

We need more fire to fight fire. Putting controlled fires back into fire-dependent ecosystems can keep natural fuels from accumulating to dangerous levels, allow fire-dependent species like Ponderosa pines to thrive, and help prevent catastrophic fires. When conditions are right we can prescribe fire by lighting it ourselves or allow naturally ignited fires caused by lightning to burn while taking appropriate steps to contain it.

Across the country many cities depend on fire-dependent forests for their drinking water. For example, here in New York City we are close to the pine barrens of Long Island and New Jersey, where the fire-dependent pine forests capture water for millions of people. There are plant and animal species in nearly every part of the country that depend on fire for their survival. And yes, humans count as an animal species, including urban dwellers, that depend upon it too.

The good news is Smokey has changed his tune. He now is spreading the news about the role of fire in fire-dependent ecosystems. As I write this column 54 wildfires are burning across the West. My hope is that as we better appreciate the importance of fire we will use it as a tool to prevent the big blow up fires like many of those raging today. This would allow us to keep our natural areas healthy, our drinking water clean, our property safe and our families and friends out of harm’s way. That would be something that both Smokey and I, as an urban conservationist, could be proud of.

Sky Islands

Rick Cook knew he had something special when, out the corner of his eye, he saw a cloud of feathers. A peregrine falcon had just seized a small bird from the rooftop terrace that his architectural firm, Cook + Fox, built on their nearly hundred-year-old office building in Manhattan. Cook + Fox, who also worked on the first LEED Platinum skyscraper in New York City, had created not only a green roof, but a living roof.

There are many kinds of roofs that are good for both people and nature. They come in a variety of colors — black, white, blue and green.

Butterfly on the Highline © Theo Morrison

Black roofs have the potential to hold solar panels. They can generate abundant, clean, renewable energy. White roofs cool their buildings and reducing energy consumption. In urban areas like New York City, roofs that are painted white reflect the sun’s heat, rather than absorbing it, as conventional black roofs do. Blue roofs catch rain water. Buildings like One Bryant Park in Manhattan, Cook + Fox’s first LEED skyscraper project, cycle rain water into the building for use in cooling systems and bathrooms. Other buildings channel water to irrigate vegetation or store it for later use.

But green roofs are the most exciting for The Nature Conservancy. These roofs, like Cook’s, are about restoring nature and bringing things to life. These roofs can grow food, host garden parties, and even help restore wildlife habitats in cities.

Once you plant a roof green, the first wildlife to arrive are the insects. Important pollinators like beetles, butterflies and bees begin buzzing around their new oasis. The birds follow, feasting on the buffet of insects. And then, just as the birds are getting comfortable, the predators — much like the falcon on Cook’s roof — swoop in, completing the cycle of life in the heart of the city that never sleeps.

We have big parks here in New York City like Riverside, Pelham Bay and Central Park. We can connect them for wildlife by dotting the city with mini parks on top of our buildings. These green roofs will allow our urban wildlife to fly or be carried among them, pollinating crops and flowers, producing honey and serving as prey to predators like hawks and falcons.

We have 14,000 acres of rooftops in New York City. That’s plenty of room to generate electricity, reduce energy consumption, capture rainwater, grow food—and restore nature.

And we can have fun along the way. My family and I recently went to a party held on a large, living terrace 16 stories high with beautiful grasses, bushes and 20-foot-tall trees. My 8-year-old daughter approached me with a sheepish look and said, “Daddy, my clothes are a mess. I’ve been playing in the dirt all afternoon.” Let’s add people to the list of species who will thrive on urban sky islands.

Urban Promise

 

Highline Park © Theo Morrison

I am an unabashed city kid. I grew up in Washington, DC, where urban parks—no matter how small—were my nature. That is why my column is called “Urban Conservationist.” It sounds like an oxymoron: Urban centers are beyond conservation, right? Wrong. Urban conservationists are exactly what the world needs. Lots of urban conservationists. Billions of urban conservationists.

When I began working for The Nature Conservancy after graduate school, I had the opportunity to see some wondrous places through my work—the Amazon rain forest, the high peaks of the Andes, the grasslands of the Mongolian steppe, the reefs of the Caribbean and the majestic forests and prairies of the Rocky Mountain West.

But now I am living in New York City and I am, once again, a city kid. And as a conservationist, I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I believe cities are civilization’s greatest invention to address the conservation challenges of our time. Scientists project that global population will reach nine, perhaps 10 billion people this century. Two thirds to three quarters of the world’s population will live in cities. That means that by 2100, there will be nearly as many people living in cities, as there are people on Earth today.

Cities are where we are most innovative, most diverse, most egalitarian. In cities our children get better educations, and our communities live more sustainably. Cities have the most efficient energy and transportation systems, smaller carbon footprints, more expansive recycling programs, and the opportunity—nay the imperative—to provide clean air and clean water for billions of people.

And our cities have nature. New York City has more kinds of plants and animals than Yellowstone National Park. While Yellowstone may have bison, wolves, elk and grizzlies, New York City has humpback whales, sharks, seals, world-class migratory bird sites, species found nowhere else, and the fastest animal on earth—the peregrine falcon.

Urban conservation is about harnessing the potential of our greatest invention, the modern city, and using it to connect urban people to nature. That might mean wild nature, rural nature, or suburban nature, but it can and should also mean urban nature. There is nature right here in our backyards and our parks; even the green strips running down big avenues like Broadway contain natural value. By harnessing this potential we connect people to nature—and nature to people. In doing so, we will conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.

The Nature Conservancy has been around for more than 60 years, working in places like the Amazon, the Coral Triangle and the Adirondacks. We’ve intentionally steered clear of cities. That won’t work for us anymore. It’s time we became urban conservationists. It’s time we all became urban conservationists.

Why I Run In Nature

2010 ING New York City Marathon

Of course I run for many of the reasons we’re told to run. Running helps keeps me fit, and for someone who loves to eat in general but who particularly loves ice cream with hot fudge (and passes Ben & Jerry’s on the way home every night) I need all the calorie-burning help I can get. Running helps manage my stress—my family and my colleagues at the Conservancy can tell the days when I’ve exercised and the days I haven’t.

But another reason I love to run is it is great way to see world, including the natural world. I have had the chance to run in some remarkable places over the years—including the Eastern Steppe of Mongolia, the largest intact grassland in the world, where I saw huge herds of Mongolian gazelles and the first wolves I ever saw in the wild. I’ve run in the Peruvian Amazon, where I could see the dramatic impacts that a new road from the city of Iquitos to the town of Nauta is having on the tropical forest (I do recommend running before sunup in the Amazon, as I didn’t quite make it back by sunrise and as a result wasn’t sure I was going to make it back at all, as my water bottles were drained). And I’ve run through the Ecuadorian Andes, where condors were flying over mountain passes that were so high half my run was ascending, the other half descending (I took a bus back).

A boardwalk trail at the Mashomack Preserve

Here in New York I’ve run through the woods around Boreas Pond in the Adirondacks, part of a 175,000 acre project, the largest ever undertaken by the Conservancy in New York; I’ve run on the Mashomack Preserve, where the Conservancy has protected a third of Shelter Island from development and helped restore shellfish in the Peconic Estuary; and I run right here in New York City, where I saw my first bald eagle in New York, flying a few feet above the Hudson River along Riverside Park as ice floes passed downstream beneath its wings. Running gets me out into the world, wherever I am. It’s a way to see and experience the natural world in a more intimate way.

For someone who had only lived in New York City a little over a year at the time, running the ING New York City Marathon last year was a remarkable experience. Starting over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and running through all five boroughs, to the cheers of more than two million spectators, it was a way to experience the City in a way that few do. So I will run again this year. By running the marathon I stay fit and manage my stress, but I also support The Nature Conservancy. And by supporting the Conservancy I help keep all those special places where I run in New York and around the world as they are, for people and nature.

The Future is Bright

LEAF interns in Keene Valley, New York © Amy Deputy

The other day I saw a glimpse of The Nature Conservancy’s future – and it didn’t look like the present, but it was bright.

The Nature Conservancy in New York, as part of a larger overall Conservancy effort, is looking for ways to broaden our base of support for conservation and environmental sustainability for all life on earth. The Nature Conservancy has a million dedicated members who are primarily white, college-educated Baby Boomers. They have historically been the backbone of the organization and their support has helped us for the past 60 years become the largest conservation organization in the world and the eighth-largest charity in the United States. Our members are deeply passionate about and fervently committed to conservation. Without them, the Conservancy could not do what we do.

As the world sees a rapid change in national and global demographics, we need that passion and commitment to blossom and grow a new generation of conservationists like never before. We must seek to create a larger conservation consciousness that resonates in the 21st Century as New York, the United States and the world become increasingly young, urban, and more diverse.

New York City skyline © IslesPunkFan / Creative Commons

By 2050, the median age of the world’s population is projected to be 37 years old and 68 percent of us will live in cities. In the United States, people of color are projected to represent 54 percent of the population by 2050. Even with the Conservancy’s tremendous track record of success conserving lands, freshwater and oceans we run the risk of becoming quaint and irrelevant in the next 40 years if we don’t connect with younger audiences, people of color, and youth. This isn’t just about growing the membership of the Conservancy. This is about building a consciousness — in America and throughout the world — that appreciates the importance of conservation, wildlife and nature for economic prosperity and human well-being. It’s about inspiring people who refuse to allow the U.S. Congress to reject critical climate-change legislation. A people who insist we use public resources to protect our lands and waters for the benefit of people and nature.

In New York City we are launching an effort to look at ways that the Conservancy can bring its strengths (science, collaboration, partnerships, non-partisanship and a solutions-oriented approach) to a place we have too long ignored. We have some valuable contributions, including the Leaders for Environmental Action for the Future (LEAF) a 15-year-old program that puts urban (and predominantly New York City) public high school juniors on Conservancy preserves all across the country. The experience is often the students’ first paid job, and I believe, a powerful combination of Fresh Air Fund, Outward Bound and Civilian Conservation Corps. We have also created a Young Professionals Group with more than 300 active members. But given New York City’s role as a global capital, it has, for too long, been the Conservancy’s “hole in the doughnut.”

Young Professionals Group canoing at Great Swamp © TNC

For decades, we’ve worked around New York City, but not in it—conserving lands and waters on Long Island, in the Adirondacks and Catskills, and around the Finger Lakes. These are all critically important regions and great work, but it’s not enough anymore. It’s time we found ways to better reach out and resonate with New York City. We need to set and achieve urban conservation goals, to influence conservation policy, to engage young adults and the broader audience who will become the conservation leaders of today and tomorrow. There are many successful organizations working in the City and we approach this knowing that partnerships are the way to go, working with others who know the socio-political and physical landscapes, bringing the Conservancy’s scientific expertise, financial resources and collaborative approach.

Not too long ago we held a meeting of New York Conservancy staff and trustees. Victor Medina, a LEAF alum, spoke to the gathering. He told the group how he was so inspired by his summer in nature that he lost 60 pounds and has spent the last several years climbing as many high peaks as he can find, including Pico Duarte in his native Dominican Republic. He spoke about his LEAF experience, his passion for conservation and how his LEAF summer internship helped him become the leader he is today. After he closed his remarks, Victor headed to his seat. As he walked past, someone shouted, “Bill, you’d better look out—here comes the next New York Director of The Nature Conservancy!”

Got that right.

Earthrise

Earthrise © NASA

Whenever I visited my granddad I would stare at a picture on the wall in his office.  He was a geographer who worked in remote sensing and geographic information systems when they were in their infancy, so he often used images taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft.  The picture that captured my attention was taken in December 1968, the year I was born, when the Apollo 8 astronauts orbited the moon.  It was an image of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon.  The Apollo 8 astronauts, essentially, discovered the Earth.

For the first time we were able to see Earth from space.  Ironically, for the first three orbits the astronauts had their backs to Earth each time it rose over the moon’s horizon  On the fourth orbit they turned around and said, “Oh my God!  Look…over there!” and snapped a photo.  It was then, in 1968, that a new perspective and appreciation of the Earth was born.  Shortly thereafter, thanks in part to heightened awareness from that Earthrise photo, the Clean Water, Clean Air and Safe Drinking Water Acts were passed, the Endangered Species Act was passed unanimously by the Senate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, and the first Earth Day took place.

At the time the photo was taken the Earth’s population was 3.5 billion people. Today the global population has doubled to close to 7 billion. It is projected that there will be 9 billion people by 2050, and a new U.N. report suggests it could reach 10 billion by 2100.  Increases in demand for food, water and energy have accelerated our impact on the Earth’s natural systems, and the resulting effects of climate change are broad, pervasive and unpredictable.

We know that enduring prosperity for people depends on the health of the natural world and conservation is vital to sustaining progress.  The scale of our solutions must match the complexity of the challenges we face.  This is one of the things that makes me most proud to work for The Nature Conservancy — we are tackling our planet’s challenges in the right places, in the right ways, and at the right scale.

We have come to appreciate the fact that wildlife habitat, wildlands and open space in remote locations and right here in New York City are essential to our well-being, including our economic growth.  Nature provides us with our clean drinking water.  Our clean air. It offers the chance to adapt in a world with changing climate. And it is the foundation for what are here in New York multi-billion dollar industries — tourism, recreation, farming, forestry, hunting and fishing.

In Long Island’s Great South Bay, our restoration of sea grasses and hard clams will not only bring back decimated wildlife, but also help restore a way of life and economic livelihoods that disappeared with the decline of an ecosystem.  Our conservation of Adirondack forests provides the opportunity for the sustainable harvest of timber and recreational opportunities while protecting the lands, waters and wildlife of the region.  And our efforts to conserve the watersheds that provide drinking water for millions of New Yorkers around the state helps stave off the need to build multi-billion dollar water treatment plants where nature already provides the necessary filtration.  These are big projects at scales that make a difference.

In 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts wouldn’t have been able to see any of The Nature Conservancy’s projects from their spacecraft.  Forty acres can’t be seen from thousands of miles away.  But our projects today can be seen from space.  Lake Ontario is the size of New Jersey, the Adirondack Park is bigger than Massachusetts, and Great South Bay is unmistakable.  Overseas the Yangtze River in China, the indigenous lands in the Amazon and the Northern Rangelands of Kenya can all be seen from the heavens.

These places give us hope.  They are what sustain us.  Perhaps in my lifetime people will travel into space and marvel at these conservation successes, just as the Apollo 8 crew marveled at the Earth. They will exclaim, “Oh my God!  Look over there!”  And they will name a protected landscape, a healthy river, a conserved lake or even an entire continent that they can see from space, and they will say, “We did that.  We conserved that for our and future generations.”

My Story

Rock Creek Park.  Battery Kemble Park.  Growing up in Washington, DC, even the small, half-acre triangular park with a labyrinth of azalea bushes a few blocks from our home in the city was “wild” to me.  These were the urban parks where I grew-up, the places where I spent time outdoors. At home, my interest was further fueled by evening television shows, like Nature. Every week I waited in the living room for Wild Kingdom’s Marlin Perkins in his safari khakis and ascot to talk about wildlife, while his assistant, Jim, ran around in the mud, mosquitoes and heat in pursuit of crocodiles, anacondas and tigers.  Before I was 10 years old I had fallen into a lifelong relationship with nature and it wasn’t through experiences growing-up on a farm or family trips to national parks, although those would come later.

During my junior year of college, thanks to a scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I had the opportunity to go anywhere in the world for my final summer vacation.  Friends suggested scuba diving in the Red Sea and backpacking in Europe, but my granddad sat me down.  He had been stationed by the US Army in Rio de Janeiro during World War II and had used early remote sensing technologies to map the Amazon in case it became a theater of war.  He regaled me with stories of caiman, piranhas and capybaras, of being chased by locals as he attempted to ground truth in the field images taken from the air. He did this work only a few decades after the Brazilian government had launched its more modern geographic expeditions and Theodore Roosevelt had traveled down the River of Doubt. He told me, “If I could go anywhere in the world it would be back to the Amazon before it’s gone.”

I went on to have a remarkable summer conducting research on the ways settlers along the rivers of the Peruvian Amazon, called ribereños, developed livelihood strategies based on indigenous practices that took advantage of dramatic annual changes in the water levels of the region’s rivers to farm, hunt and fish.  This was a much more sustainable approach than what was being pursued in other parts of the Amazon.

What I remember best about that summer is listening.  Listening to the sounds of the forest as I paddled my dugout canoe in the early morning or late afternoon.  Listening to villagers talk about life in the forest.  Listening to the earth breathe, and to my life permanently changing course.

Years later I would return to these very same villages.  After spending six months working in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, then nearly two years in Panama and Costa Rica before graduating from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, I returned to the Yarapa while working for The Nature Conservancy.

The Yarapa River lies inside Peru’s Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, a protected area the size of Massachusetts, that would occupy much of my attention for the next decade; first as I worked with the Peruvian government, conservation organizations and local communities to identify conservation strategies that sustain the region’s wildlife and natural communities while providing economic benefit for local residents; and then as The Nature Conservancy’s Peru Director, where my proudest moment was the successful negotiation of a debt-for-nature swap between the US and Peruvian governments that in exchange for the US forgiving Peruvian foreign debt to the US, the Peruvian government made commitments to provide a steady stream of resources towards the management and community-based conservation efforts of the Reserve.

I worked for nearly a decade in South America for The Nature Conservancy before my wife, Natalie, and I moved to the American West.  In some ways there were dramatic changes – the high deserts, grasslands and pine forests of the West were, at least ecologically speaking, a far cry from the Amazon.  And yet, at the heart of the matter, nothing in my life had changed.  My work with ranchers, farmers and local communities echoed all my previous work – answering the question, “How do we find ways to protect our lands and waters and provide people with the opportunity to thrive economically?”

In the last few years I have traveled and worked on behalf of the Conservancy in Mongolia, the Dominican Republic (where my wife is from), Northern Kenya and Tanzania. As someone who is now living in the United States and who continues to spend time abroad, New York City is the ideal place to call home.  From the time of Theodore Roosevelt, New York and New Yorkers have played historic leadership roles in the creation of our modern, American conservation consciousness.

Sixty years ago this year, The Nature Conservancy itself was started just outside New York City in 1951. Of the 3.5 million acres of conserved lands in New York, The Nature Conservancy has played a direct role in nearly a million.  In that same vein, the Conservancy’s supporters in New York City are eager to engage and support our work around the world.  Talk at our meetings is of China’s Yunnan Province, the highlands of Ecuador, coral reefs in Micronesia, and the savannahs of East Africa.  When the opportunity arose just over two years ago for me to become the Conservancy’s New York Director I thought, “This is a role I have been preparing for my entire life.”  A life that started in the urban parks of our nation’s capital, and that now sees me in the largest metropolitan area in the country.  You never know where safaris in the concrete jungle will take you.