The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

Vermont Chapter State Director Bob Klein (c)Jon Vachon

Bob Klein

The State Director for more than 30 years, Bob has spent many hours exploring, researching, photographing and protecting nature in Vermont.

From Vermont State Director Bob Klein

(Published in The Oak Log, Winter 2011)

A heated debate is underway within The Nature Conservancy and in the Letters section of the last few Nature Conservancy magazines. Depending on who you listen to, it’s about the soul of the organization, or perhaps it’s only about tactics. The core question is this: should we conserve nature for nature’s sake, or are we more about conserving the “environmental services” that natural systems provide for people – drinking water, fresh air, renewable fisheries, etc. This started with a provocative article from Peter Kareiva, the Conservancy’s Chief Scientist, that favored the nature-for-people approach. Historically, our mission has been something else – to “conserve the diversity of life on Earth.”

Personally, I’m comforted when nature is a part of my life. And I love how the line between people and nature sometimes gets a little blurred in Vermont. Digging in our vegetable garden in early summer, my wife and I often uncover clutches of painted turtle eggs – which we carefully rebury. The Phoebes that wedge their nest atop a window shutter of our house are welcome guests, even though they aren’t the tidiest visitors. Every fall, when we refill our woodshed with firewood that’s been stacked outside to dry for a year, we find tiny, red-bellied snakes hiding out in our wood piles. They are sleek, delicate, harmless creatures. They are exquisite. Nature is at our doorstep in Vermont, and in today’s world we are exceedingly fortunate to have this.

If nature is what makes Vermont so special, an organization that protects “the diversity of life on Earth” should work for us here. And I think it has. Conversely, though we don’t often frame it this way, Vermont’s forests, wetlands, rivers and mountains are also a mother lode of “environmental services.” You can’t meter them like water, but without the outdoors – without hiking trails and swimming holes, fireflies and spring peepers, hooting owls and starry skies – our experience of Vermont would be fatally diminished. So an “environmental services” focus could make sense for us as well.

Philosophical debates are important, but they can also be distracting. In my book, it’s more important to actually do conservation than to talk about it. Actions speak louder than words.