by Matt Bennett, Emmett Vaughn Lumber
This past spring, I participated in a panel discussion at The Wildlife Society's (TWS) annual meeting at Lincoln Memorial University. Those of us involved each made fifteen minute presentations, and then participated in a question and answer session, with the audience. One question had stuck in my mind since, and as luck would have it, the day after the meeting, I received a letter in the mail that I believe contained the answer. I'd like to relive history and re-answer the question, "Why doesn't the public care about natural resource management, and how do we get them to participate?"
When you're in the forest product business, sometimes it seems natural resource management, particularly forest management, is all the public does care about. However, exit polls typically show that the environment doesn't rate all that highly among voters compared to jobs, crime and health care. As further evidence regarding forestry, a 1990 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll failed to post forest management among the top 10 leading U.S. environmental issues.
So why doesn't the public seem to care more about something that seems so important to all of us? Why don't they take the time to become better educated about the issues, so they can make better decisions? According to Fred Smith, President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CDI), "... people aren't stupid because they're stupid, they're stupid because they're smart."
Now before you begin wondering how smart Mr. Smith is for making a statement like that, let me explain what he meant. People are busy, with dozens of things on their minds and on their schedules. Therefore, they spend time learning about things that they can actually do something about, something that affects their immediate welfare. Smith refers to the work of the late Aaron Wildavsky when he suggests "that in areas where
to spend much time determining the facts of the case - people are rationally ignorant. The average citizen will determine that he has little chance or interest in impacting forest policy, thus he will spend little time learning about it. That's a rational decision, and a smart decision.
This tells us something important about the way we should communicate with the public. When the public forms an opinion about a policy issue, they aren't likely to learn the facts, and yet I can't count the times that I have sat in meetings that discussed all the different ways we could get the "facts"' to the public. Those meetings usually wind up sooner or later with someone saying, "The public would accept what we do only if they understood the facts."
People do have opinions, so if facts aren't what they use to form those opinions, then what do they use? (Actually some people do use facts, and that is why it is important to keep putting the facts out there, to maintain our base support.) Many people form opinions on the basis of feelings, and fairness in particular. Wildavsky points out that most of the media and the activist public interest community judge issues on the basis of fairness. Therefore, most people hear about these issues in this context.
If this is true, and I suspect it is, then we need to rethink the way we communicate to make sure that we tell more than just the facts. We need to give people a sense that we are trying to be fair too, and that we care. Having said that, I realize it may be easier said than done, especially for business men and women who rely so heavily on facts to operate their businesses. It’s almost like asking them to learn another language. Yet it is something that I believe we must do. As Smith says, "We know our policies make sense; it is time to show that they also have heart.