Coming Months Offer Extended Opportunity
Past President's Message - Ralph Jersild
President's Message - Clare Oskay
The Challenge for the New Millennium - David T. Suzuki
CILTI has learned that an extension of the matching funds period will keep a window open until Sept. 30, 2000 to double the value of any and all donations made by then. JCCF will match all contributions to the CILTI Fund on a dollar-for-dollar basis until 9/30/00.
Contributions to this fund are tax-deductible. Send e-mail to request a response form or contact the JCCF: 317-738-2213 (phone), 317-736-7220 (FAX).
CILTI's accomplishments are based on the volunteer efforts of many members and friends -- from identifying potential sites and meeting with prospective land owners to active stewardship on properties acquired. This past year, the Land Acquisition Committee inspected with permission and/or contacted the landowners of 21 potential natural areas in our service area. Among these, some were not available, some did not meet our requirements, some are priced for development. Some are still in the works. Shalom Woods in Morgan County, our newest holding, was the year's reward (see January issue of the Newsletter).
CILTI's challenges are great. Marion County and the eight collar counties, where most of our efforts are concentrated, occupy a part of the state in which land values have skyrocketed and much of the natural features already has been reduced to small fragments of the original grandeur or has been replaced by a variety of human intrusions. More expansive natural areas lie at greater distances where maintenance and surveillance are more difficult, but not impossible.
We are told by demographers that the population of the US will double in the next 100 years. As communities expand, what will remain of our most precious resource, our natural spaces, is being decided largely in our generation. As an all volunteer organization, CILTI realizes that our ability for obtaining and managing natural lands is limited. Land trusts with paid staff generally have realized more rapid success in land protection. It is with these facts in mind that CILTI is working to obtain an executive director to head and expand our potential for fulfilling our mission to acquire and manage lands at risk.
In reaching out to the community for financial support in this endeavor, membership remains as crucial as ever. A substantial membership base helps demonstrate to the community a firm belief in CILTI's mission, and confidence in its ability to serve. Please support our effort -- whether it be through vital membership participation or through some greater level of involvement or giving.
While I intend to remain active within the organization, this will be my last message as CILTI's President. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve in this capacity for the past seven years and to have the support of a great group of dedicated individuals. We are entering an exciting time as CILTI takes another step forward to reach a higher level of organization. We will have a continued need for membership strength and volunteer effort as we lay the groundwork for reaching this level. As we move forward, we are fortunate to have Clare Oskay take the helm. Her experience and dedication will provide the organization with quality leadership. Please join me in extending appreciation and support to Clare as she assumes the added responsibilities of the Presidency.
Although my own appreciation for nature and the out of doors started in childhood, I began to fully realize the importance of protecting Indiana's natural areas six years ago when my husband Greg and I purchased a farm in Parke County. Our property includes over 110 acres of woods, ravines, creeks and old fields. We have planted a three acre prairie, and constructed several ponds and wetlands. It is a wonderful place where we can relax in the quiet beauty of nature and retreat from the "busyness" of our daily city lives.
On a recent visit, we enjoyed Dickcissels singing in the prairie, the constant chatter of Yellow-breasted Chats and the beebzz call of the Blue-winged Warbler. As many as five Great Spangled Fritillary butterflies crowded atop a single swamp milkweed blossom at the same time. Three White-tailed deer watched us curiously from across a field before scampering into the woods, while damselflies and dragonflies skittered across the pond. The deep forest provided not just a cool, shad ed respite an a muggy afternoon, but a chance to find Pileated Woodpecker, Kentucky Warbler, Great Crested Flycatcher and Barred Owl. A pile of feathers strewn several yards indicated something bigger, stronger and faster had reduced our resident Wild Turkey population by one -- perhaps the coyote seen patrolling the fields a week earlier.
If there is any drawback to owning this property in Parke County, it would be that our little piece of Indiana wilderness is located an 80-minute drive from our home in Indianapolis. CILTI is working to protect natural areas close to urban communities; to allow nearby opportunities for residents of Central Indiana to enjoy and learn about nature and, we hope, discover their own personal link to the natural world. Our successes in the Indianapolis area include the Gene B. Glick Nature Preserve at 42nd and Mitthoeffer, Burnett Woods in Hendricks County, and our recently acquired Shalom Woods in northern Morgan County.
All of these properties were protected during Bud Jersild's tenure, in the next few years we plan to build on these accomplishments. Thanks, Bud. It is both an honor and a challenge to follow in your footsteps.
Ten years ago the Worldwatch Institute designated the 1990's the "Turnaround Decade" to emphasize the fact that it was urgent that we abandon our ecologically destructive ways within ten years if we were to avoid a catastrophic collision with the planetıs life support systems. As if to punctuate that pronouncement, the largest gathering of heads of state ever to assemble in human history, converged for the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 to sign Agenda 21, a massive plan to turn humanity onto the road to sustainability.
Now as we embark upon a New Year, century and millennium, it is important to recognize that our 1990's consumption patterns actually accelerated the degradation of the planet's life support systems. If we look at the loss of topsoil, forests, fish and ozone, alteration of the atmosphere, water pollution and the ubiquitous spread of toxic pollutants, the state of the world is far more perilous now than it was in 1990. In the past 100 years the world has been transformed by improvements in health, transportation and material convenience and wealth. Most people alive today were born after 1950, so their entire lives have been during this period of spectacular growth and change that is without precedent in the entire history of our species. As a result, most people today only know that change is a constant and predictable part of their lives. Indeed, we are hooked on change -- we expect and demand it. But those changes come at a cost -- that have impacted on and altered the nature of traditional families, communities, businesses and ecosystems and substituted an outpouring of consumer goods.
I grew up in southern Ontario in a town called London that had a population of 70,000 when we moved there in 1949. My teen years were spent fishing for food in the Thames River, watching foxes and skunks on my grandparents' farm at the edge of the city and experiencing magic moments in a beloved swamp near our house. Today London boasts a population of 300, 000 that is still growing steadily and supports a strong economy. The Thames is now so polluted no one would think of fishing in it, let alone eating a fish that lives in it. My grandparents' farm only grows high rise apartment buildings while my enchanted swamp is now covered with a huge shopping plaza and parking lot. Todayıs youth must find their pleasure and inspiration in shopping malls, video games and the Internet.
I am perplexed and humiliated by the fact that in the past forty years, the average size of a Canadian family has decreased by 50% while in that same period, the average size of a Canadian home has doubled. So each occupant of a house today has four times as much space. In Texas, entire subdivisions are devoted to houses with 4 to 6 car garages! Apparently we need all of this space to fill it with stuff, all of which is coming from the Earth.
The global economy since 1950 has expanded six fold, but are we six times more fulfilled or happy? If we were dying of old age and reflecting back on the joys of our lifetime, would we think about all of the stuff we owned like big houses, cars and TV sets? I doubt it. Surely we would revel in family, friends, and community and the meaningful activities and interactions we shared with them.
And what of our sense of place, of belonging in a larger community of life? I travel a lot to different parts of the world and wherever I go, I try to meet elders so I can ask them what it was like when they were young. And everywhere the answer begins the same way -- "It used to be so different..." They go on to describe the fish , insects, birds or trees that were once abundant and no longer are. But there isnıt empty space waiting for displaced species of plants and animals to occupy and fill up. Earth is fully occupied and fully developed. If plants and animals are no longer found in an area, chances are, they're gone. Rachel Carson warned in her prescient classic, Silent Spring, those other species that are our companions and genetic kin, share the air, the soil and the water with us. Somehow that web of biodiversity cleanses and replenishes the very things that sustain us. If the source of our survival and livelihood is disappearing, why do we not pay attention and realize that we too will be affected?
The challenge for the new millennium cannot be to increase consumption or material wealth in the industrialized world. The president of the World Bank recently informed us that 1.3 billion human beings today live on less than a dollar a day while 3 billion live on less that three! We in the rich countries suffer from the consequences of hyperconsumption -- obesity, diabetes, alienation, violence, family and community breakdown, etc. Our challenge is to find ways of living more meaningfully as social and spiritual animals, to rediscover communities and caring, sharing and cooperating in ways that bind us together. We must reconnect with our biological roots that will teach us that without clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and a diverse mix of species around us, our lives will be fundamentally impoverished if not imperiled.