One of the other obvious reasons for the importance of continuing education throughout our careers, regardless of the way we assimilate the continuously occurring "new science," is that we career conservationists should be leading the conservation movement, based on legitimate new science. We all know of cases where emotionalism and "bad science" or "old science" has resulted in poor resource decisions. The emotionalism and wrong-headed thinking of those opposed to the Brown County State Park deer hunt is a classical local example. How could any conservationist, ecologist, or other "ist" knowingly allow the destruction of much of an ecosystem, when only one currently practical solution exists to restore the ecosystem while at the same time sustaining the offending species?

Finally, keeping up with the new science allows us to most effectively present our cases for SAVING THE DIRT, when dealing with economic and other forms of development that do not always include adequate consideration of natural resources. Throughout the conference, we have learned more about wetland characteristics, biology, and management. Simply synthesized, wetlands are generally considered to be the best overall wildlife habitat, providing the most life necessities for the largest array of critters. And wetlands are becoming one of our most endangered habitats, having decreased about 65% in the lower 48 United States during the last two centuries. The reasons for these losses are many, but agricultural, industrial, and residential development lead the list. Now for the vision, or what does the future hold for our wetland resource. Perhaps we should first step back in time to gain a better perspective about how we can best prepare a plan to address the future fate of our wetlands. Wouldn't each of us part with something of immense value to be plunked down in the 1600's amidst the half-million acres of the Grand Marsh of the Kankakee, to absorb an example of wetlands at their biotic best? Other vast wetland areas such as the everglades, the Great Lakes marshes, the San Joaquin Valley complex, the numerous coastal wetland chains, and other wetland systems, formed the crown jewels of more than 240 million acres of wetlands in the lower 48 United States. But, today, those 240 million acres have dwindled to about 90 million acres and our best trends and analysis calculations show we are still losing wetlands to various development interests. In Indiana, we have fared worse than the national average, having gone from about 5.7million acres in pre-white settlement to about 800,000 acres – a decrease of approximately 86%. And similar to the national situation, and in spite of the best efforts of the conservation community, our most accurate knowledge indicates Hoosier wetlands continue to decrease as a result of various development.

Based on this historical perspective, today's conservationists are faced with a challenge far more complex, frustrating, and frightening than our conservation comrades of the past. We do not have the opportunity to discover and work to protect vast tracts of unexplored, unaltered habitat as did our visionary ecological antecedents. Consider the example of Yellowstone National Park. During their western expedition in the years 1804-1806, Lewis and Clark passed near, but did not venture into the magnificent Yellowstone area where rumors persisted of "boiling cauldrons" and thunderous water spouts, gigantic yellow canyons with mammoth crashing waterfalls, and vast herds of bison, elk, and moose. But adventurers in the expedition, such as John Coulter, ventured into Yellowstone several years later and verified the unspoiled, mystical land.

Later yet, the mountain man Jim Bridger confirmed Coulters' observations, but it was not until 1870, that Yellowstone area rancher-adventurer Nat Langford urged Ferdinand Hoyden, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, to organize an official scientific group to explore and document Yellowstone's biological and physical wonders. Hayden's group produced hundreds of pages of biological, botanical, and geological data, in addition to numerous paintings and photographs, chronicling the unparalleled natural value of the area. Soon thereafter, Hayden hounded Congress to set aside and protect much of the Yellowstone country and in 1872, 2.1 million acres of Yellowstone become America's first national park.

Talk about a vision far the future! Could Hoyden and his contemporaries really have predicted how serious future population and related development problems would affect natural resources? In their day and age of foot travel, horses, and buggies, could they have guessed the coming of mass transportation and human invasion of every recess and mountain top of this country? I prefer to think they could, and then acted accordingly. Following visionaries such as Theodore Roosevelt and J. Ding Darling continued to play major roles in setting aside vast tracts of natural, national landscape for future generations. However, this era of laying off massive landscapes was winding down by the 1930s. A legend of the wildlife profession, J. Clark Salyer, literally drove himself blind networking the country identifying the last, best remaining large tracts of habitat for potential inclusion in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

But, now it is 1993, and in the purest sense, opportunities to protect large, natural landscapes do not exist. For the most part, no really large segments of even relatively natural habitat exist to be protected. Using Indiana as an example, perhaps the U.S. Army's 55,000 acre Jefferson Proving Ground harbors the most significant, basically unbroken tract of relatively natural habitat available for protection.

So, what are the opportunities today's conservationists, especially we midwesterners, have to SAVE THE DIRT? Let us travel to the Rocky Mountains and look east. Probably 90% of that land is privately owned, and segmented. Prairies and old growth forests are virtually gone. Wetland acreage has been more than halved and continues to be lost. In Indiana, we have lost 99% of our prairies, almost all of our old growth forest, and 86% of our wetlands. Our river systems still exist, of course, but are almost systematically degraded by physical alteration and a broad spectrum of contaminants. It seems abundantly obvious that our challenge as midwesterners is to primarily work with private landowners to rebuild - to put back some of our wetlands, prairies, old growth forests, and other habitats. Furthermore, once these habitats are replaced, they must be protected. At the same time, we must continue to try to prevent further losses. Collectively, in our respective conservation jobs, we are all trying to SAVE THE DIRT in one form or another, but there is no comprehensive coordinated effort: there is no state-wide biotic plan to serve at least as a general guide for long term habitat restoration and protection goals. It is past time to start developing that plan. But the big questions are: WHO can do this? WHEN can it be done? HOW will it be done? and WHERE will it be done?

In Indiana, as elsewhere, the WHO is easy - it is the entire conservation community; private individuals, conservation organizations, academia, and local, state, and federal governments. The important consideration is that we all work as a team, for there may not currently be enough of us together to do the job. A diverse group of conservationists formed during the Spring of 1991, the '80%ers," serves as a good example of a cooperative conservation spirit. This group believes that conservationists can agree almost 100% of the time on saving land, the DIRT, for natural resource purposes, and can basically agree about 80% of the time on general conservation issues. Regarding the roughly 20% of the time when disagreements occur (almost always over what biota or "products" are to be grown on the DIRT, e.g., old growth forest, certain species of huntable wildlife, endangered species, etc.) the 80%'ers do not pull out of the conservation movement, thereby single-mindedly, bull-headedly, or otherwise destructively draining their talents from the overall conservation pool so necessary for SAVING THE DIRT. The WHEN is ever easier -Now!

The HOW, of course, is through development of dedicated, patient, and goal-accomplishing partnerships. The partnerships would set conservation priorities, and efficiently parlay money, people, and equipment to accomplish the goals.

The WHERE may be the most difficult part of the equation. Let's look at Indiana's wetland situation. We have gone from 5.7 million acres to about 800,000 acres. How many acres do we want: 1,000,000 acres; 2,000,000 acres; 3,127,625 million acres? Should they be replaced in large, historic areas where they previously existed such as the Grand Marsh of the Kankakee, the Patoka River Bottoms, the Spreads of the Elkhart, the Great Lakes marshes, the northeast "prairie pothole" country? Should they be scattered throughout Indiana primarily based on hydric soils? Should there be a combination of large, historic wetland areas and state-wide scattered restorations? These are the kinds of tough questions for which we will have to try to reach a consensus. Simply put, today's Hoosier conservationists need an Indiana Biotic Plan. This plan should be built on the foundation of sound science and then laced with the widest input of the Indiana conservation community, thereby forming the most practical biotic plan to assure the best chance for acceptance and implementation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service in Indiana, in collaboration with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the academic sector, and the general Hoosier conservation community, is attempting to produce a draft Indiana Biotic Plan, a "first-cut" document to get the ball rolling. The initial phase of development is underway in the form of utilizing satellite imagery as the basis for gathering some of the data for a geographical information system (GIS). Some of the first data bases will include wildlife models for Indiana's 539 terrestrial vertebrate species, Vegetation mapping, endangered species mapping, and delineation of all land effectively protected through local, state, federal, or other ownership. Future data collections would include; but not necessarily be limited to soil types, wetlands, prairies, old growth forest, invertebrate species representation (butterflies?), and other data sets. This data would eventually be manipulated and displayed using a computerized GIS map to determine areas of high biological diversity (the genetic alphabet soup). This information would be overlaid on maps of protected areas, thereby showing where areas of high biodiversity are located, and whether or not they are protected. We can also determine where a singularly important, but unrepresented habitat type is locate. that is not currently protected. If not protected, these "gaps" may be the first places that the Indiana conservation community might focus on protecting. Then, or concurrently, restoration of wetlands, prairies, old growth, and other or more of the same habitat could be planned around these areas to form more viable, self-sustaining complexes. Obviously, however, restoration of habitats such as wetlands could be completed elsewhere as guided by the Indiana Biotic Plan, or where opportunity or threat of destruction would set priorities. In an ideal world, all States would be developing similar plans based on the same scientific foundation in an effort to integrate the state plans into larger, geographic landscape plans disregarding political, subdivisions. Such regional plans, based on sound science should result in a greater ability to develop wide-ranging political partnerships to provide more funds personnel and equipment to implement the overall plan.

An integral part of the Indiana Biotic Plan would be protection of the restored resources. Land acquisition of course, is the ultimate salvation. However, in an economy currently beset by suffocating debt and increasing competition for funds, other measures of compensation would need to be utilized including easements, leases tax incentives, and other inducements.