Robert C. Sivinski

‘Native Plant Society’ is a wonderful name.  It distinguishes us from exotic plant societies that fascinate over tropical orchids, African violets and other plants from far away.  The word ‘native’ anchors us to the place we inhabit and makes us an organization that appreciates local nature.  We are more than a garden club, and have our roots in the natural world.  I often wonder why more people do not join us, or similar societies, and am confronted with the realities of current attitudes and values.  Here is an example – a true story.

Several years ago, one of my uncles, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, won an all-expenses paid trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico in a raffle drawing at the Omaha Fraternal Order of Police.  Actually, his was third name drawn, but first two declined to accept the prize.  My mother lived in Albuquerque, so her sister and my uncle took the opportunity to visit her.  As always, Mom loved to have any excuse to drive out into the New Mexico landscape and show off her favorite scenery to visitors.  She took them to the Guadalupe Canyon in the Jemez Mountains and could not have better timed their arrival.  Huge thunderheads were billowing up in the northern sky, warm sunlight glowed from the red canyon walls, the Rito Guadalupe gurgled below them and green cottonwood leaves rattled in a gentle breeze, the cascading call of a canyon wren echoed off the towering rocks.  My mother reverently said, “Isn’t this beautiful.”   My uncle’s retort was “Yeah, but what’s it good for?”  Perhaps we could expect such a comment from a resident of farm country where the value of land is measured by its ability to produce crops, but I do not think that was his entire meaning.  Knowing my uncle, I suspect he was just unable to appreciate something natural and unaltered.  He simply found nothing to value in the natural world.  And sadly, he is not alone.  A large and growing number of people find little value in the plant and animal species that share our planet and have little or no desire to experience untrammeled places, which are fast disappearing.

VALUES AND ATTITUDES

“Valuing is felt preferring; value is the product of this process.”   Holmes Rolston III
“Your moral values are your beliefs about what is important in life.”  Danney Ursery

If you were paying any attention at all to the 2004 national elections, you would have heard that moral values were a decisive factor in choosing our President.  There are a multitude of moral values, and unfortunately, most of them were dumped out with the bath water we Americans used to scrub raw the issues of abortion and gay marriage.  Few voters were thinking of their environment as a moral issue.  Is value for a good environment a moral value?  You bet it is.  Any value that requires compassion, empathy, or cooperation is a moral one.  These good traits often meet their antitheses of cruelty, indifference, or greed, on the stage of morality where they play against one another for good or for ill.  So why did most voters not include an environmental ethic on their list of moral dramas of national scope?  Perhaps, because they rarely gave it any consideration at all.  The pre-election PEW Research Center poll on what voters were talking about ranked the environment as tenth on list of important topics, with only 25% of voters saying they frequently talked about it.

For me, the disappointing aspect of American environmental values is that a majority of us value clean water and clean air, but little else.  A recurring Gallup poll from 1990 to 2004 illustrates how unconcerned Americans are for loss of natural habitat and species, and also shows an erosion of concern for all environmental values over this short period of time.  In 1990, 51% of adults were very worried about loss of habitat and species, but that concern has steadily waned to only 36% in 2004 – taking its largest plunge in just the last few years.

Worry a “Great Deal”

	1990	1997	2001	2004
	%	%	%	%
Water Pollution	64	61	57	53
Toxic Waste	63	59	57	48
Air Pollution	58	47	47	39
Loss of Habitat and Species	51	46	44	36
Loss of Rain Forest	40	44	41	35
Global Warming	30	29	30	26

Americans are becoming less concerned with their natural environment because they see it less often and participate in fewer outdoor activities.  Let’s face it, the Baby Boomers are less active and the younger generation is tuned-in to the Internet, video games and cable TV, rather than the real world.  The 2001 to 2003 Roper Survey of outdoor recreation shows our gradual shift away from nature.  While the category of ‘Driving for pleasure’ experienced a 7% increase, the categories of ‘Hiking’, ‘Wildlife viewing’ and ‘Bird watching’ each dropped from 2 to 4 percentage points in participation.  Volunteerism on public land also decreased, and 4 in 10 young adults admitted they engaged in outdoor recreation less than once a month or never.

This Roper Survey also produces an interesting Green Gauge to track environmental attitudes over time.  Of the five major categories of attitudes ‘Basic Brown’, the least environmentally minded, showed a whopping 10% increase in just a short three-year period.

Changes in Environmental Attitudes:  Roper Segmentation

2001 Vs. 2003 in percentages

True-Blue Greens are the environmental leaders and activists.
Greenback Greens are the environmental spenders: people willing to pay to improve the environment but with little time to get involved themselves.
Sprouts are the middling swing group whose attitudes and behavior can cut both ways – both pro- and anti-environment.
Grousers are not much involved in environmental activities for many reasons but mainly because they think others are not doing much either.
Basic Browns are the least involved in the environment because they think indifference to the environment is mainstream.

The reasons for this disturbing trend in attitudes are probably many.  Yet, I have no doubt that political and social attitudes are guiding this trend.  When our political or spiritual leaders tell us that things like endangered species, a wildlife refuge, or water in a river are not as important as industry and the human society it supports, many people will adopt these same attitudes.   The imprimatur of our leadership for environmental degradation seems to relieve us from individual responsibility and it ceases to be a moral dilemma for much of society.

RELIGION AND THE NATURAL WORLD

Any discussion of moral values and human spirit must touch upon the topic of religion.  I sincerely hope I will not offend anyone by making the assessment that the world’s religions have cast very little and weak light on the path to environmental ethics and an abiding value of the natural world.  This earth is replete with cultures of strict religious adherence living within highly degraded environments.  Some religious practitioners, such as the Christian Evangelical Environmental Network, Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, Islamic Guardians of the Natural Order, and a few other heroic grassroots efforts are trying to extract an environmental ethic from their religious creeds.  Their efforts are marginalized, and I fear will continue to be marginalized, by the fact that most religions are entirely preoccupied with the pursuit of spiritual redemption or transcendence.  There is nothing wrong with seeking personal spiritual redemption.  Redemption, however, is the promise of rewards in another world, or another life, and does not steer us towards an appreciation of the living earth we presently inhabit.  A feeling of unity and communion with the natural world is not at the center of any of the world’s dominant religions.  Some Native American religions come close to this feeling, but these will likely remain confined within small, exclusive cultures of ethnic membership.

The world’s dominant religions are all anthropocentric in their core beliefs and ultimate aspirations.  Some more so than others.  For instance, the Abrahamic religions believe that all living organisms were created for the benefit of man.  Humans have dominion over all that walks, crawls, swims, flies, or photosynthesizes upon this earth.  At best, the earth and its biota are sources of awe for the creator of this astonishingly diverse and beautiful world of life, land and sea.  And yet, to date, the Abrahamic traditions rarely teach restraint or thoughtful stewardship in the use of this creation, and the wounds we inflict upon it have no spiritual consequence.

Some Asian religious traditions are ostensibly more appreciative of the natural world.  Yet, these too, carry the anthropocentric biases of spiritual hierarchies and ultimate attainment of spiritual states that transcend or are somewhat disconnected from the natural world.  Ursula Goodenough points out that even Jainism, known for its strict avoidance of harming any form of life, has an anthropocentric bias.  Jaina monks and nuns who wear masks over their mouths to avoid inhaling tiny insects are less concerned with the small life they might take, than the Karmic debt that would accrue, and result in later retribution.

Yet despite their anthropocentric biases and dominionistic attitudes, all the great religions profess the sanctity of life.  From that point, it takes very little effort, for those who are so inclined, to stretch their good will for human life towards the lives of other organisms.  Ancient religious texts can also yield nuggets of golden rule that can be applied to modern-day relations with the natural world.  For instance, Holmes Rolston III points out that biblical Noah was commanded by God to preserve a breeding population of every creature, and asks “Is this not exactly what the Endangered Species Act is attempting to do?”  Noah’s ark was a refuge for nature in a time of danger.  His ark is analogous the wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and national parks we must vigorously protect and create more of.

Religions can be good in that they require spiritual discipline.  Turned inward on itself, the human spirit becomes small and confined within the walls of self and personal satisfaction.  Turned outward, the spirit expands to embrace the thrill of being alive in an awesome universe and reinforces the capacities to wonder and care.  It is, therefore, not unusual that theological scholars, such as Holmes Rolston III (Presbyterian minister and philosophy professor) and Thomas Berry (Catholic monk), are among the greatest environmental ethicists of our time.  If more clergy and laity will embrace their environment as a moral value, then perhaps one day, the sacraments of the natural world will have greater roles in religious faith.  Until that day, the people who are inspired by the natural world will be its strongest allies.

INSPIRATION FROM NATURE

One need not subscribe to a particular religious creed to be a spiritual person.  We are all spiritual beings.  Simply put, the spirit is the vital or animating force, which constitutes one’s intangible being.  To be filled with spirit is to be inspired.  Not surprisingly, the word ‘inspiration’ is synonymous with the act of expanding our lungs to breath in life-giving air.  Conversely, the word ‘expire’ means to exhale, or drop dead.  We must all seek and find inspiration to feel spiritually alive.  Inspiration is an expansion of the spirit that results in action.  Inspired actions are sources of spiritual fulfillment and the places and things where we find fulfillment are the places and things we will always value.  Here are a few of the inspired activities that that bond us to the natural world.

Fellowship and communion:   It is our mutual appreciation of wild, native plants that bring us together in the Native Plant Society of New Mexico.  All valuing of nature begins with individual experience, but those values are validated and reinforced by sharing those experiences with others.  Inspired people created NPSNM as a place to share experiences and it takes the actions of inspired members to accomplish the organizational tasks that maintain our fellowship – like our Board of Directors, Chapter volunteers, and the hard-working people who made this annual meeting possible.  The fact that we have grown as an organization in the last 28 years from a few dozen to several hundred members is the fulfillment of many personal efforts.

For many of us, however, fellowship with other like-minded people is not our primary motive to seek contact with nature.   We are seeking a unity, or communion, with nature that is entirely a personal and spiritual experience.  A sense of belonging to the natural world arises from our physical and psychological awareness of it.  Watching a sunrise while feeling a cool breeze, listening to birds calling, and knowing that the evening-primrose flowers will soon be closing for the day, unifies us with our surroundings.  Such experiences inspire us again and again to seek proximity and participation as the natural world unfolds around us.  This desire for proximity leads some of us to cultivate native plants at our doorsteps to share our living space.  We are doubly delighted when these plants bring us the companionship of hummingbirds, butterflies and other native animals.

Scholarship:  Natural history scholarship is not just a matter of observation or sight, but rather an insight into the drama of life.  Knowing the names of all the orchids in the Sandia Mountains, how they are related, when they bloom, what pollinates them, what habitats you will find them in, and their global range of distribution is all knowledge and insight that arises from curiosity and study, which is the essence of scholarship. The natural world is filled with mysteries and curiosities, and the more deeply we delve into understanding them, the more we learn to care about the subjects of our studies.  For the curious and studious, the scientific fields of plant phylogeny, ecology, reproduction, physiology and many more are constant sources of inspiration.  And with knowledge gained, our prejudices can melt away.  Each native species ceases to be either good or bad, pretty or ugly, useful or useless, but rather amazing products of evolutionary history that are fit for their moment and entwined with their ecosystems in some astonishing ways.

Artistic expression:  The beauty we see in the natural world is an esthetic experience that is entirely within the eye of the beholder.  Every one of us can recall being stopped dead in our tracks by an encounter with natural colors, shapes or patterns that momentarily hold us in a state of fascination.  Some will be inspired by such encounters to capture, express and personalize their perceptions and feelings through the arts of photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, and poetry.  Even a garden that incorporates native plants, seasonal color, and rock or other natural textural elements is a form of art inspired by the natural world.  Yet, not all earth-inspired art is good for the environment.  Extreme examples of this are Walter de Maria’s Circumflex, which is a bulldozed trench 8 feet wide and a mile long shaped like a loop of rope cut across a desert wilderness (on private property), or Christo’s use of huge, suffocating sheets of plastic draped across the landscape.  Such works of art are not only destructive and wasteful, but fail to convey the emotional impact and aesthetic qualities of the earth.

Art can be powerful in its ability to attach the viewer’s emotions and fascination to the essence of spontaneous nature.  An image is imprinted on the mind where it remains as a point of context for our values or future thoughts.  After viewing a skillful line drawing that abstracts the essential qualities of a piñon pine, that person may actually stop to see the beauty in a living piñon tree and feel he or she knows it, instead of walking by, oblivious to its existence.  Art works are also powerful for engaging emotion and conveying a message.  Every nature organization uses images from the natural world as effective symbols of purpose and validation of effort.  For instance, most New Mexicans never have, and never will, actually see Otero Mesa and will have no mental image in which to frame their opinions of the battle between the state and federal governments over oil and gas development there.  However, some may be convinced, by skillful use of photography, that this wild and beautiful place has outstanding natural values worthy of protection.

As an endangered species botanist for the State of New Mexico, I am especially proud of all the fine artists and photographers – many in this room – who have illustrated the ‘Rare Plants of New Mexico’ web site.  Those illustrations have given life to the, otherwise, bare bones of technical writing.

Duty to the natural world:  Our environment is a public good available to everyone and, as such, it is a commons.  Unfortunately, all commons are eventually destroyed by the forces of capitalism and individualism, unless those forces are restrained by rules of public policy.  In setting environmental policy we must mutually agree to a system of mutual coercion.  It is a credit to our country that we have agreed upon such a system in the form of our environmental laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act, Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and many others.  We cannot, however, expect these laws to be enforced, or continue to exist, in the absence of public vigilance.  Those of us who are inspired by, and place great value in, the natural world must make our values known to the political and spiritual leaders of our society.  And since we are democratic society of majority rule, we must also try to elect sympathetic leaders, and instill environmental values and ethics in the general public.  Nature organizations, such as NPSNM, are especially important in accomplishing the latter.  We offer educational opportunities for natural history and conservation, conduct field trips that bring people in contact with our native flora, and with our native gardens, congenially set an example of caring for our environment.  I admire every one of you who have spent some of your time and energy to organize and lead the activities of NPSNM, and I also admire those of you who are inspired to teach, learn, write, and illustrate our values for nature.  Our environment is in dire need of your efforts.

I hope you will all find inspiration from the natural world around you, and value it as an essential part of your life and spirit.