Our current “stewardship” model seems flawed.
My brother has some land on a lake that has Eurasian Millfoil. The lake association owners are concerned that their “recreational use” of the lake will be impacted, the lake will fill in, and become a swamp, and land values will plummet. They really aren’t making choices based on what is actually a benefit or detriment to the ecosystem, they are basing choices on the invasive species impact on property value and recreational capability. Are they really being stewards of the environment or are they being stewards of their own interest?
In the long run having more wetland could very well be advantageous to the local environmental ecology. It would provide habitat for all sorts of species that are currently loosing their habitat due to our activity. The problem I see with the stewardship model is we aren’t really being stewards out of consideration for the long term impact on the environment, we are basing our choices on the short term impacts on our economics practices. The lake association members aren’t really concerned with diversity and breadth in an ecosystem, (true stewardship) they are concerned with the monetary impact in will have on their investment and using the term steward to access funds from the state to pay for the eradication efforts of Milfoil in “their” lake. The lake, by the way, does meet the minimum requirements for being a public waterway, there is one parking spot and a ‘path’ 200 yards through the woods to a cove where a stretch of shore is accessible to someone interested in dragging a canoe through the woods, and this we call stewardship. The lake association didn’t provide this access out of stewardship, they provided it as requirement of accessing public funds to combat their invasive species problem. The lake has been a target of management practices for a while. It’s been drained, poisoned, sterilized, refilled, restocked in the past all under the ruse of stewardship when in fact the practices had one goal, to maximize the pleasure the lake afforded to its association members, and that has very little to do with an interest in environmental preservation.
As the lake is nearly private, the only way millfoil would have gotten into the lake in the first place is if someone who owned land on the lake accidentally transferred it. Now under the banner of invasive species control and ‘stewardship’ the state is helping fund the eradication efforts.
The notion of management/stewardship has little to do with the benefit to the environment or ecology but rather, is focused on maximizing it’s benefit to human collectives. The farmer is concerned with the damage a dear population does to their investment in a crop, while the hunter is concerned with the dear population and his ability to bag a buck. If an invasive species were introduced that competed with the dear population farmers could be thrilled while dear hunters would be up in arms, seeking to control the invasive species. It doesn’t belong, it’s affecting my usefulness, it is affecting my convenience.
I don’t see the case for stewardship as being one that is really looking at the capacity of the environment to adapt, or considering in the longer run the adaptation may provide greater benefit to the ecosystem then the existing circumstance. Our “stewardship” does not appear focused on what is best for the environment, it is focused on what can be done to maximize our investments.
True ‘stewardship’ to me at least, seems to require that it is in the best interest of the environment that should be the focus, and not what is best for our human utilization that is maximized. Lets face it, our knowledge and understanding of the ecosystems in play and the mechanisms of their interactions are fairly poorly understood, and how does one practice true stewardship under condition of such ignorance?