In a word, and at best – chaotic.
It would probably be easier if it didn’t exist at all. What we have now is equivalent in some ways to the field of medicine in the late 1800’s. Medical practitioners in 1890 included a very few science-based MD’s who were beginning to see the future of medicine, some number of folk doctors and midwives with real, practical skills, all mixed in with witch doctors, snake-oil salesmen, quacks and charlatans of all sorts, taking advantage of medically desperate people. It was this desperation, along with the inevitable tragedies of egregious malpractice, that drove and then guided medicine toward a more scientific approach. Medicine remains far from perfect, but when you walk into a medical facility, at a minimum, you can expect that the doctors, nurses and other practitioners have been more or less vetted, have received some basic training and are overseen by at least one professional board.
Sir William Osler (1849-1919), a Canadian physician, is credited with founding the field of modern medicine, although many other great minds empowered the shift from charlatanism to medical science. Osler and other foundational modern physicians understood that data and facts could shine a light on what works and what doesn’t in the healing of the human body. Ultimately, facts-based, experiential practice began to “miraculously” cure people and save lives, while the snake-oil salesmen and quacks continued to hurt people or steal their money, and modern medicine finally emerged from the smoke, then went on to become the unwieldy behemoth that it is today.
Fortunately, I know of no one who has died as a direct result of restorative land management malpractice, although the thousands of deaths and injuries related to western wildfires could be pinned to terrible land management choices. And unquestionably, at least on the restoration side of things, the field is mostly populated with well-meaning people who have respect for science, if not a grasp of it. But most people aren’t looking at land management critically, nor are they distinguishing between industrial foresters and natural area managers, neither of whom has actually been trained in the art and science of holistic land management. As a result, the costs of poor management aren’t being accounted. So we have no obviously compelling driver – no dead bodies or smoking guns – and as a result our field, which theoretically exists, is at least 125 years behind medicine. We have no defined training or curriculum, no real accreditation, and no oversight boards. We have no Hippocratic oath, and indeed, no agreed-upon value statement, vision or guiding principle. We have a few good minds, a whole lot of organizations implementing work of various sorts and quality, a largely unexamined legacy of past work, a whole heck of a lot of money spent, but honestly not a lot to show for it.
Interestingly, we had our own Sir William Osler, and if we had adhered to and built upon his principles, we wouldn’t be so far behind. Aldo Leopold got it, and he gave us the right words and concepts to build the field of holistic land management. But these concepts got in the way of industrial forestry, so they were shoved aside and replaced with the ugly capitalist disaster that is modern forestry, with all its attendant environmental decline and human wreckage.
We can do better, but we have to get serious about this work. Even a brief consideration of what it means to “manage land” reveals that this field is more complex even than medicine, if we wish to achieve lasting positive results. Given the fact that neither land nor money are infinite, and that we absolutely depend on land and nature to support all of humanity, this is a field that is worthy of development. Developing restorative management as a field will require recruiting apt students with the brightest minds, training them in plant sciences, taxonomy, evolution, ecology, genetics, and land management practices, then overseeing their work until they either exhibit a true professional grasp of the field or are nudged out of the picture.
We built Scholls Valley to serve the needs of these theoretical, future restorative land management professionals, and if this industry is to serve humanity, we need to actually vet and train the next generation of them, just as the medical field does currently. We are setting this as a priority here at Scholls Valley. We are working with individuals and organizations to support curriculum development and training programs specifically geared for restorative land management. We have a very long way to go, but this has to happen. Once it does, and we have apt, highly skilled practitioners finally applying the scientific principles of restorative land management at a large scale, we will have turned the corner toward a better world. But not until then.
I want to close this out by being clear that this better world is not just a better world for “nature.” It is a better world for humans, and human contributions and needs are woven into it intricately. It is a world where technologically advanced humans co-exist with and enhance a sustainable world, not a discordant parsing of the landscape into protected parks and human enterprise zones. This is imminently possible if we stop being subservient to the sociopaths that run things now, and start being smart.
’til next time
-George