A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR BIODIVERSITY:
CONSERVATION ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU

Soulé and Belnap energize Colorado Plateau Conference

Over 120 persons attended the March 11-13 meeting of the Colorado Plateau Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology in Prescott, Arizona. Attendees from all 4 states on the Colorado Plateau were engaged by Michael Soulé’s opening plenary address, in which he described several epiphanies of his career as a conservation biologist and a human being. These culminated with the insight that the three life-affirming movements (humanism, animal welfare, and biocentrism) are each motivated by compassion for life (or part of life), and that the success of each movement will require each to expand its compassion to include the foci of the other two movements. The conference closed with a stirring address by Jayne Belnap (the “Queen of Crusts”) who argued that the Hindu-Taoist-Buddhist virtue of non-attachment is the key to remaining, sane, optimistic, and joyous as a conservation advocate. This attitude will also make the activist more effective – an irony given that the activist is not attached to the effects of her actions! Jayne’s nimble way of serving up paradox, and her frank acknowledgment of the inevitable cycle of backsliding and re-learning this lesson, earned her a standing ovation.

Between these two plenary addresses, concurrent sessions addressed various conservation issues on the Colorado Plateau. Each session consisted of 3-4 short presentations from invited speakers on each topic, followed by a half-hour discussion among all participants. This less-frantic, more-interactive format was enormously popular. Each participant attended one of the Saturday afternoon fieldtrips. I attended the “Deep Time” hike – in which Lon Abbott explained the 3.5 billion-year geo-history of the Colorado Plateau in 3 hours! I learned more of that history than in my dozen backpacks into the Grand Canyon (which largely reflects a tectonically boring 500-million year subset of the big picture). Participants claimed the other field trips (from grasslands to agroecology) were just as great, but I find that hard to believe.

We were the first external event to be held in Prescott College’s new Crossroads Center. Although the facility was only 3 weeks old, all the parts worked well. The outstanding food included salads made from wild plants gathered locally. During the Saturday night social, Chapter President Tom Fleischner played drums with the Moving Edge Ensemble, whose set gave way to a free-for-all drumming session to end the evening.

This was our Chapter’s 4th general meeting (following November 2001 and November 2003 meetings in Flagstaff, and an April 2004 weekend in Marble Canyon). At the members meeting in Prescott, we resolved to co-convene with the Biennial Conference for Research on the Colorado Plateau in Flagstaff in Novembers of odd-number years, and to hold weekend stand-alone gatherings (like this one) outside of Flagstaff in Novembers of even-numbered years. We look forward to seeing all Chapter members in Flagstaff November 7-10 2005 and we solicit suggestions (to cpc-p@dana.ucc.nau.edu) for meeting locations outside Flagstaff for the first half of November 2006.

Paul Beier