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12 ADVOCACY ~ Throwing Your Weight Around Edwin P. Pister If not for AIdo Leopold, I likely would not have become a conservation advocate. Mter reading ''The Land Ethic," first as a student in A. Starker Leopold's Wildlife Conservation class at the University of California at Berkeley, then again at a critical stage of my career several years later, it was difficult for me to avoid that fate. AIdo Leopold's summary precept -"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise "l-caused me to examine critically not only my own programs, but also those of my agency (the California Department ofFish and Game). There is probably no stronger call toward advocacy anywhere in the literature of conservation. Bolstered by Leopold's precept, I found it a simple matter to separate the "good" from the "bad." Yet the "bad" programs (for example, the indiscriminate stocking of non-native game fish in yet unstudied waters), those which tended to diminish the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, were often the most popular among the public-and, therefore, among higher echelons of resource management agencies. They were politically expedient but often biologically flawed and indefensible . Even with essentially benign programs (for example, planting putand -take trout in waters containing no threatened species), there was reason for concern. These programs were depleting financial and personnel resources that should have been devoted to more enduring and meaningful efforts, such as species inventories and habitat evaluation and protection. Leopold's words strengthened the commitment of those who saw flaws in the status quo. We gained resolve from his admonition: "In such matters we should not worry too much about anything except the direction in which we travel. The direction is clear, and the first step is to throw your weight around on matters of right and wrong in land-use."2 This clarion call, along with the observation that "nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals," provided us with all the courage we needed to move in a new and better direction.3 As a pio178 Advocacy 179 neer in the role ofadvocate during a crucial period ofthe American conservation movement, Leopold prepared the way for those who would follow. There are risks involved in becoming an advocate within an agency not yet ready to accept what one is advocating. On a September afternoon in 1972 I was called on the carpet by my department's top leadership and admonished for my work involving the conservation of California 's rare and unique desert fishes. "What you are doing," I was told, "is embarrassing to us and to our colleagues" (meaning the agency directorships of other Western states). In a career that now stretches over fifty years, I have never encountered a more blatant effort to suppress advocacy or employee initiative. At that point I had to move underground. I continued on as before but simply failed to report my activities. Fortunately, my immediate boss was sympathetic (and headquartered more than three hundred miles away). No one other than my closest associates knew that, on my own time and expense, I was providing testimony-on a Nevada fish in Las Vegas-for the Department of the Interior. Those who were aware of my actions expressed gratitude but were firmly convinced that I was out of my mind. In Rnund RiverLeopold wrote that "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world ofwounds."4 This statement rings profoundly true under such circumstances. The "penalties " seem especially severe when agency policy-makers do not possess an ecological education or refuse to acknowledge or practice it for political reasons. Mercifully, this may be less of a problem today than it was in 1972! The recent burgeoning of conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has made it easier for advocates within government to make their voices heard. NGOs played a vital role in the case of the desert fishes. In the early 1970s legal action was contemplated as the only feasible means of saving from extinction the Devils Hole pupfish. The actions of the newly formed Desert Fishes Council and the threat of a mandamus action by the Sierra Club provided the necessary stimulus . The Department of the Interior began a series of three court actions that ended in a favorable decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (Cappaert vs. United States, 426 U...

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