Laura Erickson's For the Birds

I’m writing this at the beginning of December to be aired the last day of the year 2000. What a divisive time this has been, from Florida elections to the Great Lakes Aquarium issue in Duluth. We live in such a sadly polarized time.

As an environmentalist and someone deeply committed to doing everything I can to preserve the natural world for birds, I want as little disruption to their world as possible. But as a human being who loves other human beings, I want energy, food, and paper and other wood products available at a reasonable cost for me and the people I care about. It makes sense to me that power and wood products companies and loggers and farmers would want to earn the maximum amount of money for the least possible expenditure. It makes equal sense to me that environmentalists would want the natural world preserved in a pristine state. The final solutions to issues must be made by impartial, reasoned people who fall between these extremes-people aware of the complexities of ecology and at least some of the specific requirements of components of various natural communities, but also aware of some of me needs and bottom lines of businesses and individuals who impact the natural world.

Sometimes the best solution to a problem is somewhere in the middle. When US West proposed to construct a 300 foot guyed, lighted cell phone tower on Moose Mountain in Lakewood Township in the late 80s, I fought the proposal with everything I had. It was to be erected right in the heart of the hawk and songbird migration pathway that I loved and knew intimately. There was a growing demand for cell phones in the area, but with my arsenal of information about the dangers towers present to birds and the unique importance of this particular migration route, and an excellent lawyer helping me for free, we arrived at a solution satisfactory to just about everyone. US West did build a tower in the location they wanted, but downscaled it to a 100- foot wooden pole cemented in the ground so it didn’t need guy wires, short enough that it didn’t require the lights required for airplane safety that are so fatally attractive to birds. US West gave ground-the tower doesn’t transmit as long a distance as a taller tower would. And people who didn’t want any tower at all had to give ground, too. But overall, we arrived at a satisfactory solution that protects birds and provides cell phones for the many people who use them. In this case, the tower US West constructed was less costly to them than the one they” d proposed.

As we start a new year with a new Administration, I hope people on both sides of issues can learn to trust in the basic humanity of their opponents. Sometimes, of course, people on either side of an issue can be just plain wrong. But to start out with mistrust of an opponent’s motives muddies issues, making it difficult or impossible for people in the middle to make wise choices.

Big companies in this area provide services that all of us use, like electricity, food, paper, and the homes we live in. And environmentalists provide expertise and passion for the wild elements that make this area so uniquely wonderful. I wish loggers and people running big companies could for a day see the world through the eyes of birders, conservationists and environmentalists to see the deeply-held values and complex knowledge they hold. And I wish those birders, conservationists, and environmentalists could, for a day, see the world through the eyes of loggers and people running big companies. In the real world, our only hope is that people in the middle will learn to see both sides, to listen carefully, trust in the fundamental goodness of human beings and the value of nature, and make decisions with wisdom and fairness. And I hope people fighting their battles learn to not compromise their values in exchange for winning. As John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife, “We cannot ensure success, but we can deserve it.”