We Must Protect Our Heritage

June 25, 2010

Never in the history of our country have our natural resources meant so much as they do right now. Our forests, our waters, our soil, our minerals, and our wildlife are serving a purpose so great that it makes all the years and millions spent conserving them seem infinitesimal.

Without them our economic, social, and recreational structure would soon collapse. They have meant much to us in times of peace. They will mean more during war.

We should be thankful not only that we are endowed with these priceless heritages of abundance, but that we have been able through proper management and wise use to protect and preserve them.

Let us never forget that they are treasures which cannot be measured in dollars and cents; that some of them once destroyed cannot be replaced. Protect them! Protect forests from fire, streams from pollution, soil from erosion, and wildlife from its natural enemies and starvation.

Protect and enjoy them. It is through their enjoyment that we have become a healthy outdoor-loving people—a spiritually, morally and physically strong people—a people who will sacrifice everything, even life itself, to preserve the country and the freedom which has given us so many treasured gifts.”

- Editorial from Pennsylvania Game News March 1942.

Words of wisdom from the past too often forgotten should never be part of our accepted practice. Some look to ancient scripture to inform behavior today. Many look to the writer’s who lived in times of crisis to pinpoint necessary behavior so essential for our well being as a people. Thanks Mr. Ross L. Leffler for standing up for those who did not have a voice very often.

The Gulf oil spill is speaking to us and the words of 1942 are too late. Now what? May we resolve to shift the paradigm over-night beginning with each of us in power, each with a platform, and each with a commitment to the larger good. The oil has been released; the genii is out of the bottle; it can not be put back in? Our only salvation is large scale cooperative efforts for the good of the whole. And that means – the balance of sound economics with sound ecology and our present system is not working within that framework so it must change; immediately!