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A SWAN SONG

BY MALCOLM HUNTER

The ancient belief that the mute swan sings a glorious song, for the first and only time, as death approaches has produced an evocative metaphor that is useful for essays like this one. Neither my death nor professional retirement are imminent but as I leave SCB's Board of Governors after 14 years, it does seem like an opportune moment for some reflection.

The prospect of hearing a swan song for nature is, of course, in the forefront of concerns for every person who values the natural world in its own right, or who fully understands how human welfare depends on intact ecosystems. Among all the people who think and care about nature I particularly enjoy the company of conservation professionals because we are motivated, not overwhelmed, by the importance of this issue. We are "can-do" people who strive to make a difference. For people who share our values, but not our professional expertise, the situation must seem highly frustrating because their options for action seem so constrained; many of them have difficulty seeing beyond recycling the trash, sending a donation to an environmental group, or voting for a relatively green candidate. Under these circumstances it would be easy to let pessimism rule the day.

Even professional conservationists regularly are confronted by the issue of balancing pessimism, optimism, and realism. At times it seems that our deep understanding of ecology condemns us, in the words of Aldo Leopold, to "living alone in a world of wounds." But how have things changed since Leopold's day? Certainly there are many more conservation professionals now, so at least our quest no longer needs to be lonely. (Witness the dramatic growth of SCB's membership, and we still are reaching only a small portion of the world's conservation professionals.) More importantly, after roughly a century of concerted effort by conservation professionals, we can report hundreds of good news stories. I am reminded of one every day as I look out over the Penobscot River in Maine, USA, where my wife and I live. When Aldo Leopold was alive, the site of our home was embedded in a major industrial complex designed to bring logs from the interior of Maine to coastal mills. During my first encounters with the Penobscot a few decades ago, the river was utterly befouled by sewage and the effluent of three upstream paper mills. Today we overlook river banks lined by tall pines and I like to boast to friends that we see more eagles than robins at our house. Within the next few years two major dams will be removed and restoration of the salmon run will follow. There are two key elements in this and other success stories: first, given half a chance, many species exhibit remarkable resilience; and second, conservation action can be highly effective. The first element can give us a measure of comfort, the second a measure of pride; both are the basis for some optimism.

Of course realistically, standing at a distance and looking at the global pattern of ecosystem loss and degradation, the current trend is clearly negative and the solace is harder to find. If you are a truly a big-picture person you can broaden your temporal perspective to think about Earth's 600-million year fossil record. The overall upward trend of species richness is clear and it is reasonable to assume that the trend will continue until the sun expires. Those noteworthy exceptions to the overall trend (five previous mass extinction events and the extinction event humans are driving now) may require millions of years of recovery through evolution, but they are relatively easy to accept on such enormous time scales.

As a person engaged in conservation action you also can take solace in the fact that you are making a difference. Stories of success may be outnumbered by stories of loss, but the successes still count. Try to imagine what the world would look like today without hundreds of thousands of conservationists devoting the last century to saving species and ecosystems. We have made a huge difference and I believe we will make a bigger difference in the future. Indeed, I think that it is entirely possible that our gains will outnumber our losses at some point in the next century or so. Call me an optimist but I predict that future historians will look back on this period as the Environmental Dark Ages, beginning with the Industrial Revolution and ending when the human population has stabilized and we have become far more intelligent about resource use. With perseverance and luck, the next era, the Environmental Renaissance, may arrive relatively soon and we will never need to listen for nature's swan song.

Malcolm Hunter (University of Maine, Orono) received a 2007 Distinguished Service Award from SCB for his contributions to the field of conservation biology and for superb leadership as President of the Society of Conservation Biology from 2001 to 2003 as it evolved into a more international organization.

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