Winter / Spring 2011

Some guiding principles for
a Regional Conservation Strategy

by Michelle Berditschevsky

The Regional Conservation Strategy can be defined as a collaborative and proactive bioregional approach to large landscape conservation.

A bioregion is “an identifiable geographical area of interacting life systems that is relatively self-sustaining in the ever-renewing process of nature,” according to Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth. Following are some of the principles that can be gleaned from attunement with nature’s systems, and with like minds who have dedicated deep thought to our relationship with nature.* These are the beginnings that can inform the Regional Conservation Strategy.

The minds that have inspired this vision include Thomas Berry (The Dream of the Earth); John Seed, Joanna Macy, et al. (Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings); Wes Jackson (Becoming Native to This Place); Peter Berg, Raymond Dassman, et al. (A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California); the 1982 United Nations World Charter for Nature.

Glass Mountain from Mount Hoffman Photo by Peggy Risch

Life community

We are a single interrelated community of life whether we know it or not. Its wellbeing is our wellbeing. Progress of the human venture at the expense of the life community must ultimately lead to diminished human life. Farmer Wes Jackson talks about consulting the “genius of a place” to harmonize our practices with the life community.
Balanced living evolving systems.

Every species has a part to play in an interwoven life system. A bioregional system is regulated through self-governance that evolves through its interrelationships unless the balance is upset.

Diversity and uniqueness

Each species has a part to play. This requires that we recognize the rights of each species to its habitat, its migratory routes, its place in the life community.

Co-evolution

This is the principle that everything is evolving, including the earth itself, and that human activities should not be at the expense of other species as we are evolving together. Each bioregion is a system with emergent properties of its own.

Nature as a model for human actions

Nature runs its systems with a minimum of entropy, without toxic waste or non-decomposing litter. Through a respect for wild processes we can hold to a standard by which to evaluate our human practices. Biomimicry is a recent way of scientifically learning from the way nature carries out its operations with an economy and productivity far beyond that of industrial practices and inventions.

From isolated piecemealing to whole systems thinking

On every level we can see how isolated approaches to issues lead to problems because they fail to consider the larger interconnected system. The analytical way of thinking brings clarity and precision, but these must then be reintegrated into the whole.

Bringing principles into an effective program of action.

We see the need for a concerted regional effort to plan for the conservation of vital resources in view of ongoing population, corporate and climatic pressures, as well as in the light of the new impetus to conserve and live sustainably.

We have taken this vision several steps farther since our last newsletter. Currently we’re beginning to etch out a process and a possible framework that will serve as a platform for building bridges and collaboration with other groups. The goal is to design a conservation program that would be integral with the function of the natural world, so that both can continue on a sustainable basis into the future.

If this vision is something you want to help evolve with us, please contact michelle@mountshastaecology.org.