Restore Balance, not the Past an interview with Ray Dasmann

Whole Earth,  Spring, 2001  by David Kupfer

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At his home in Santa Cruz, Ray spoke with laconic wisdom and a droll sense of humor as to "what fools these mortals be." Over the past fifty years Ray has made singular contributions to the intellectual scaffolding of modern ecology and environmentalism.

A San Francisco native and UC Berkeley graduate, he did groundbreaking work as a field biologist, studying deer populations in California and, later, African wild game. During the 1960s, while he was at the Conservation Foundation, his pioneering work with UNESCO inaugurated its Man and the Biosphere Program His concept of ecodevelopment and his inclusion of indigenous people as integral to the ecological equation are two of his major contributions to contemporary environmentalism. His book The Destruction of California (1965) altered historical perspectives on the Golden State and became the text of a burgeoning environmental awareness. His textbook Environmental Conservation has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. Peter Warshall remembers seeing it passed among game rangers in Kenya in the 1970s.

Ray was a Professor of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz (1977-89), inspiring a generation to become bioregional agents of change as ecologists, field biologists, and activists.

David Kupfer: Why do restoration? Why not accept the world as it is?

Ray Dasmann: When an environment has become unbalanced, polluted, or devastated to the point where it is no longer healthy or able to sustain lift, restoration becomes necessary. People may choose to do restoration in order to regain a healthy environment or to upgrade the quality of life in their region. Then you must ask, what is it you are trying to restore? What conditions in what time period are you trying to regain? A long time ago? Last week? Earlier today? Sometimes restoration means creating a new web of relationships with different species than were present in the past.

There's no choice in this matter. Either we restore the damage to ecosystems or continue down to the bottom of the hill, and at the bottom of the hill there may be some environmental conditions that humans cannot survive. If we occupy the planet, we need to take care of it, otherwise it will be uninhabitable.

DK: Why try to go back to some point in time?

RD: Ecosystems are always changing. The thing is, what direction are they going in and why? Most restoration aims to regain the condition existing when the Indians inhabited this land prior to the Euro-Caucasians. is restoration to that point in time what you want? Native Americans also changed things and deliberately managed the environment. One of the big things with the restoration community is getting rid of invasive species, e.g., fighting the takeover of grasslands by invasive species. You may be restoring balance to the system rather than putting things back the way they were.

DK: How do you create long-term care of an ecosystem, pieces of landscape, watersheds?

RD: You have to look not just at what goes into maintaining, protecting, and conserving, but also what it is used for, who the users are. Long-term care, needs to involve how people think it should be protected, not just in the immediate area but the surrounding region where people are using the land for different purposes. This is true in the city as much as in the salt marsh. But you have to get people who are users or inhabitants of that ecosystem involved. A lot of safeguards have to be in place and supported by the community or it will break down in the long run or the short run.

DK: What do you think about the changes in the view that local restoration is vital when we now have such a world climate crisis?

RD: We are at the point where we have to think globally. There is no option--the tide is rising and the world is coming to your front door. It used to seem rather simple. Just create a national park or national monument. But protected areas are only the beginning. If you want to keep them, or restore damaged ecosystems, think of the long term, get people involved, not just local people, but people interested in the place.

DK: In light of all the damage you have seen to the environment, how have you been able to live without being in total despair?

RD: You develop a hard shell and you cry a lot (laughs). There's no avoiding it. We keep winning little battles but losing big wars. It is disturbing. But what is the choice? Either you work and fight or give up. If the thing is important to you, you won't give up.

DK: Do you see any possibility in reestablishing old ecosystems in California?

RD: Yes, I see an opportunity for restoring the land to the condition which the Euro-Americans inherited from the Native Americans. I believe the biggest ecosystem challenge will be in restoring the nearshore marine ecosystems, one area which is receiving considerable damage. If you are looking for biodiversity, that is where you will find it. Marine systems are tar more diverse than terrestrial. There is a tremendous amount of life we are affecting and a lot of it we cannot even see. And of course climate change is hitting the oceans particularly hard. So we can sit around and watch Manhattan gradually sink into the water or we can do something about it. If you are living on a Pacific Island, that's no joke.