A long time ago, a Nevada friend and neighbor, who had previously lived in rural interior Alaska for many years, made a simple remark in passing that has always stuck with me and leaves me once again contemplating its significance. He made the remark after passing by my house and seeing a pile of roughly 10 cords of black oak firewood and a freshly taken cow elk hanging visibly. His remark was equally simple and profound. He said, “You’d be a rich man in Alaska with that woodpile and elk.”

enjosmith, Flickr

I’ve always been an admirer of an impressive woodpile, pondering things like the proper use of spacing, circulation, crisscrossed end pillars, softwood vs hardwood, BTU values, and proximity of the woodpile to its destination of use. Fireplace and woodstove burning of logs is increasingly frowned upon for air quality reasons and especially in the many western mountain towns in which winter inversions exacerbate the air quality and associated human health issues. However, a childhood spent cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, toting, and ultimately burning firewood, along with my neighbor’s remark, has me again considering the analogues, particularly as it relates to conservation today.

It’s pretty simple really. In harsh environments and simpler times, the measures of one’s wealth were often more tied to metrics of those things ensuring survival and enhancing quality of life, like shelter, food, and for obvious heating and cooking purposes, the size of the woodpile. The woodpile is also indicative of foresight, future planning, anticipation of need, preparation for harsher times in a way that will improve quality of life or even ensure one’s survival. As humans have grown more distant from the source of their food, warmth, and other related quality of life factors, money as a metric of wealth has supplanted the more traditional measures like the amount of meat in the freezer or the size of the woodpile.

Those who, out of necessity, are more concerned with short-term survival like finding or affording the day’s meals, paying utility bills, having a roof over their head, and simply surviving are both less able and less concerned about long-term consequences of the small or non-existent woodpile. Natural resources and the science of conservation have their own woodpile of sorts as well.

Work Done on a Full Stomach

Conservation work is a lot like cutting firewood. I have heard it expressed many ways - “Conservation is work done on a full stomach” or “conservation cannot happen on an empty stomach”. It all means the same unfortunate thing; conservation as an endeavor typically comes after basic needs are met, such as food, shelter, and security. Only after one has their basic needs met are they willing or able to pivot their energy, attention, and resources to more long-term, community-benefitting endeavors like conservation.

A full stomach for one, may not be a full stomach to another, and the point at which people are able or willing to pivot their attention from short-term needs to the broader conservation needs varies wildly. Some, perhaps without a woodpile of their own, help their neighbors in need, while others may never reach the point of feeling they have a big enough woodpile, never pivoting their resources to the longer-term, greater good.

Imagine a world where people viewed wildlife and wild places through the lens of their intrinsic value, ecological value, and long-term quality of life benefits, instead of trying to shoehorn the value of everything into the lens of the almighty dollar.

Not Mutually Exclusive

Modern society has often pitted conservation against commercial enterprise as a mutually exclusive binary choice. This has been an unhealthy and unproductive framing of conservation that Aldo Leopold recognized and emphasized as a key point of his 1930 American Game Policy. Leopold’s committee in addressing the need for better cooperation between conservation and commercial enterprise wrote, “We submit that recognition of this principle, and a spirit of mutual cooperation in acting upon it, will bend the two hitherto opposing schools of thought to a new and common direction.” Despite Leopold’s stated intent nearly 100 years ago, the struggle remains.

As the markets respond to tariffs and talks of global trade wars ensue, it engulfs the media cycle. What kind of conservation related issue would it take to get a similar level of interest and buzz in society, for individuals to be so significantly impacted, or for a news cycle to become so equally interested?

Modern society has often pitted conservation against commercial enterprise as a mutually exclusive binary choice.

At the most basic level people must be assured of their survival in order to shift their focus to conservation. What level of comfort is enough for people to pivot from self needs to broader community needs? Many mega corporations and billionaires look to find purpose by investing in conservation late in life. Why not sooner?

Natural Resources Are Our Wealth

Natural resources represent our nation’s wealth. Not simply in monetary terms but in quality of life and survival terms. The soil and the fuel, food, and fiber it produces, the clean water, clean air, and ecological services of our natural resources all enhance our existence and ensure our survival. We, in conservation, have long realized that our wealth lies in our natural resources and therefore we have set priorities and created programs to ensure their effective conservation. We recognized the importance of having a natural resources woodpile and established programs to build and secure our natural resource woodpile long ago.

Contemplating the contents and components of our nation’s natural resource woodpile, it’s easy to identify critical elements, both the natural resource variety like grasslands, wetlands, and forests as well as the program variety like public lands, science capacity, and funding. Just as with any actual woodpile, there are times, both within years and across years, where the pile expands or the pile contracts. However, the contraction occurring now for both resources and their associated programs is significant and of great concern for our future.

Our natural resources and related programs are our figurative woodpile. It is our wealth and our future security. Our biodiversity, forests, grasslands, and waterways represent our future quality of life and comfort. More than half of the world’s GDP, almost $44 trillion, is moderately or highly dependent on nature. As markets stress and strain under the tariffs and trade wars and the media cycle is saturated by topic, let’s not forget where our wealth is ultimately measured and let’s not fall into the trap of unnecessarily focusing on commercial enterprise at the expense of conservation. We can and must do both. What if, as Theodore Roosevelt said in his Conservation is a National Duty speech, “people viewed the forests, grasslands, waterways etc. as they viewed the 401(k), IRA, and brokerage accounts?”