The newspaper headlines continue to predict environmental doom and gloom. Various experts predict global warming, ozone depletion, with severe overpopulation, famine, and floods. The overall outlook is not optimistic, yet I maintain that there is no place for pessimism. We must be careful to separate pessimism from what most of these warnings are--which is a good dose of caution.
If we are constantly faced with no hope, the situation quickly becomes hopeless. In ideological discussions with folks worried about restoration of the environment, it is difficult to dispute that it all may be a lost cause. The sheer impact of the human race is hard to ignore, and numbers just keep growing. The alternative to hoping for the best, however, is despair. This can have an added impact as people often capitulate with the statement, "What difference will my effort make, anyway?" So, heed the warnings--but never give up hope!
I recently attended the Pacific Seabird Group meetings in Portland. Here, the Marbled Murrelet is often the center of heated debate. Over the years, this bird has mystified researchers. Attempts to even understand its basic biology, let alone plan for its recovery, have met with extreme pessimism. The murrelet posed an impossible challenge. To get population data, it is normal to monitor reproductive success. To do that, one needs nests to observe. Since the discovery of the first North American Marbled Murrelet nest in 1974, additional nest discoveries have been few and far between. Amazingly, at this year's meetings we learned of one study that located 41 nests! Further good news was that murrelets may be gaining some protection in Canada and that some birds have reproduced in less than optimal habitat. What was once a hopeless case that we may never have understood might be showing signs of being resolved. Balancing this exuberance was the sobering fact than only four of the nests in the study produced chicks (nest predation by corvids is a significant impact). And, if we thought the Marbled Murrelet situation was bad, deer mouse predation of Xantus Murrelet eggs may be bringing this more southerly species perilously close to extinction.
My point is that if all the murrelet biologists just gave up under pessimistic pressure we wouldn't have made the advances we have to date. Tough as it may seem, the situation is never hopeless and one should always hope &emdash; and work &emdash; for the best. I have often recounted that the small murrelet chick perched on a limb, faced with all of life's challenges epitomizes the spirit of our society. If it can launch itself off that branch and head to an ocean it has never seen, on wings it has yet to use, I can at least maintain the hope that (despite the world's woes) life and the environment will persist.
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