Serendipity

Sometimes it's only a word, hotly debated, misused and little understood. Today's word is conservation, used in the context of TU and thrown around by members like a baseball, a weapon or a misguided cause.
Back in the days of TR, Gifford Pinochet and the great leaders of the American Conversation movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, natural resources were being used and abused. Herds of buffalo faced extinction, whole forest of the north east and upper Midwest just disappeared. The abuses lead to the founding of our National Park system and here in NY the constitution amendment that created the forest preserve. It's creation was motivated by the need for a source of clean drinking water for the burgeoning cities of an industrial NYS. Wide spread fires throughout the Adirondacks as a result of logging activities spurred the action.
Preservation, mmm another misunderstood word. Different from conservation? Do you know the difference? It's big and here lies the problem. Most folks think they are similar, but they are like night and day. To preserve is to keep in its original state, to conserve is the planned wise use of a resource. So if your a conservationist fishing the Carmen's River for trout is an okay activity, practicing catch and release is a planned use. If your a preservationist, then fishing would be a no no, stocking of any alien trout would be prohibited. Simple? No!
Here lies the gray area, we like the fish, the fishing but we miss the boat on conservation because we confuse it with preservation. The simple truth is the first time someone decided to dam a river, preservation went out the window. We are in reaction mode. The first attempt to restock " native fish" we missed the boat.
Back to TR, his uncle was one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History and today one can find TR's collection of birds and mammals he collected. Collected? TR was he a conservationist or a preservationist ? Some food for thought!

Tight lines,
Art Flick
Opinions expressed here are those of the author a long dead , oh never mind