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path of creating a degraded landscape to match our
<br />degraded society.
<br />With that as background, what "public awareness" would
<br />I try to create concerning instream flow? I would convey
<br />the idea that pure water flowing in a natural cycle in a
<br />particular stream will not turn out to be a short-term,
<br />limited step, but the beginning of a move toward the
<br />restoration or reversion of the region's rivers toward their
<br />natural state. I would tell the public that the imposition of
<br />man-made regimes on streams has been found to be
<br />unworkable, economically inefficient, unsustainable and
<br />lacking in joy. As a result of this systemic, endemic failure,
<br />we are searching for alternative ways to earn our livings and
<br />live our lives. The idea of instream flows can be best
<br />understood as part of a larger effort to change the present
<br />industrialized, strong-arm ways in which we earn our
<br />livings and live our lives.
<br />That may seem romantic and revolutionary. I see it as
<br />hard-headed and practical. If we think of instream flow
<br />without thinking of preserving or restoring a watershed, we
<br />are wasting our time. We cannot restore a stream to life
<br />without restoring its watershed. And that means changing
<br />the way in which people in the watershed live and work.
<br />So we must think broadly-and very long term. It took a
<br />century to bring the West economically and ecologically to
<br />its present state, and it will probably take that long to
<br />change it. In order to make such sweeping changes, we
<br />must have on our side major social and economic move-
<br />ments, and we must create in the West the means of
<br />communication, education, and research that it now lacks.
<br />What is our current situation in the West? There are, of
<br />course, many "Welts." But in the arid, inland, rural West,
<br />the fastest-growing economic force appears to be the selling
<br />off of the region for parts. The rural West today can be
<br />compared to a car with 150,000 miles on it and a bad
<br />engine and a bum transmission. When that happens to a
<br />car in a small town, you put the car on blocks in your yard
<br />and run an ad saying: "1979 Plymouth Fury being sold for
<br />parts at 120 Maple St." People then come by and strip off
<br />an alternator, a windshield-wiper motor, or a fuel pump to
<br />keep their 1979 Fury running.
<br />In the same way, the exhausted, unproductive, but still
<br />scenic Western land is being sold off for parts to people
<br />from urban areas who see the West as beautiful and
<br />untouched. I was once a house guest in a very expensive
<br />home overlooking Santa Fe. It took me several days to
<br />realize that the $100,000 lot the house sat on had been,
<br />until recently, a few acres of range. The barbed-wire fences
<br />were still in good shape, and the land was gullied and
<br />covered by pinon juniper, like so much other exhausted
<br />rangeland. So here's a piece of land that wouldn't support a
<br />cow today, selling for a very high price to someone from a
<br />city who thinks they've moved onto pristine land.
<br />As long as this last crop can continue to be harvested, the
<br />areas urbanites are attracted to-much of Colorado west of
<br />the Front Range, northern New Mexico, Phoenix-Tucson,
<br />Montana's Bitterroot Valley, the Yellowstone ecosystem-
<br />are probably not good immediate candidates for renewal
<br />and preservation.
<br />If the West is to be brought back ecologically, it will
<br />probably happen where people do not have the option of
<br />selling off the land for parts: southern New Mexico, the
<br />high plains, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, the
<br />Mormon-dominated parts of southern Utah and southern
<br />Idaho, and Indian reservations everywhere.
<br />These are places that urbanites won't move to on their
<br />first entry into the West. These are places that either seem
<br />"ugly" to them or are culturally inhospitable. As a result,
<br />these are places that will either make it as land-based
<br />economies and communities or that will remain impover-
<br />ished.
<br />I don't wish to be overly pessimistic about the West's
<br />new hotspots, but I do not see how a group of us urbanites,
<br />moving for the first time into the rural West, will be able to
<br />restore land that has been badly punished for the last
<br />century or more. We may establish strong zoning and
<br />wilderness areas, and we may stop logging and grazing. But
<br />that's not the same as re-establishing healthy biological
<br />succession in streams and forests and rangeland. In my
<br />view, that takes a land-based economy-people who live off
<br />the land. And the new entrants into the West (I include
<br />myself) live on the land, but not off it.
<br />Obviously the people who have lived off the West's land
<br />for the past century haven't done a very good job of
<br />keeping it intact, whole, and productive. That's why they're
<br />eager to sell the land for parts. They don't know how to
<br />make a living off the whole. Nevertheless, I see keeping
<br />them on the land and keeping the land out of
<br />suburbanization as the best hope for restoring ecological
<br />integrity, and that includes instream flow.
<br />The two most exciting stories I've covered in the last few
<br />years were both set in the West's hinterland, which is the
<br />nation's hinterland. Both involved ranchers who were
<br />determined to restore range by using cattle as tools, by
<br />reintroducing fire, by restoring shattered watersheds.
<br />As for forested land, my belief is that after the last of the
<br />old growth is cut down or permanently protected, attention
<br />in logged-over areas will turn to the long-term restoration
<br />of this land. Those who are addicted to cut-and-run
<br />policies will leave; those who have the vision to see the
<br />West as it can be will take over these lands and set to work
<br />restoring them.
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