From former Executive Director of the Izaak Walton League, Paul Hansen, comes a new book outlining how conservation action has been stymied in recent years and how any progress that has been made was due to bipartisan negotiations and collaboration by broad conservation constituencies. Green in Gridlock: Common Goals, Common Ground and Compromise, released this fall by Texas A&M University Press, provides an inside look at the high stakes battles on environmental issues that have pitted potential allies in the green and sportsmen's communities against each other in pursuit of perfect policy. The book provides important insights for future conservation leaders, and reminders to those currently leading the conservation movement.

"Conservation efforts require coalitions and compromise," he writes. "Groups whom we have identified as 'not us' may, in fact, share some concerns with us. We can get to a similar place without having to agree with every one of each other's reasons for going there? We must resist the urge to view compromise as 'selling out.'"

Hansen's nearly three decades working on conservation policy issues, and his position as the only non-profit executive to sit on both the "Green Group," the ad hoc coalition of the country's most well-known environmental groups, and the American Wildlife Conservation Partners, the ad hoc coalition of the nation's largest sportsmen's groups, provides important context to many of the largest conservation debates in recent years. He outlines issues ranging from conservation funding to climate change to sustainable forestry, documenting the successes when policy makers worked together to get results. He evaluates some of the more recent instances of this happening, including in Minnesota where a tax increase for water, wildlife, cultural heritage and natural areas was passed in 2008, to the history of bedrock conservation laws that were enacted in strong bipartisan fashion and signed into law largely under Republican presidents.

However, the ability for disparate groups to come together and work proactively on an issue has become progressively harder in recent decades where any positive legislative step has been met by two stumbles backward on other issues. Hansen focuses one chapter on the "progress point", citing the early 1990s as a time when the dynamic changed for conservation compromise: "Both sides became hardened. Compromise became synonymous with cowardice. Kindness was mistaken for weakness?. Environmental leaders who adopted the proven strategy for success by negotiating responsibly or considering compromise to obtain the best deal possible at the time faced ridicule or worse. Some even lost their jobs due to efforts to work across political parties or constituencies. We tend to celebrate the most passionate and charismatic defenders of the faith, not the most strategic and effective dealmakers who are responsible for the most progress."

Hansen's book is not filled only with the admonitions of someone who has been in the trenches, only to see battles lost. He also describes positive efforts that have been made in working with industry, large corporations, and religious communities who have an interest in the environment and conservation. The final chapter provides his "Ten Convenient Truths of Conservation Progress" that outline specific steps that future leaders need to embrace in order to once again make strides forward on conservation issues.

He concludes: "If the next generation of conservation leaders can find a way to reach out for success on such a consensus popular issue as conservation, just maybe they can show the way to shake off the partisan paralysis that threatens our nation and our future in so many other ways. If they can succeed where we have not, it will be because they have realized that compromise is essential to the function of a democracy and to the success of the great democratic tradition that is the protection of the natural heritage of our homeland."

Green in Gridlock is available through the Texas A&M University Press for $24.95 and on Amazon. (jas)