Extinction is a big word

I give a lot of thought to what I do and how I give back to this world.

I recently watched a wonderful documentary about water and southern Louisiana, how the two are inseparable and all the unthoughtful damage man does to ecosystems in his pursuits; whether it is gas, or oil, or timber, or industry, or development, or natural resources, or whatever man fancies.

Much of the documentary's premise was that greed (or even better mammonism) fuels all decisions with absolutely no thought toward the future or sustainability, only to maximize profit here and now. It is much like all of our woes around the Chesapeake. We are inseparable from the estuary we surround. Yet we pollute it and pilfer it. As I write this, sewage is leaking from some pipe, or sediment is running off the land into some stream, that runs to a river and into the bay, or some greedy, unlawful waterman is poaching oysters, or striped bass. These are all of our problems and all of our fault.

That is why I give a lot of thought to what I do and how I give back to this world.

I sat through a wonderful presentation at the MAEOE conference on using bio indicators as ecosystem health markers. In other words, is the ecosystem around you healthy and balanced enough to support the living creatures that should be living there, from big to small to micro. If not what, are the changes that can be made to improve the ecosystem?

The presenter had taught at a high school in Virginia for 38 years. The school, when he started, was surrounded by forest, some of it older growth, streams and small farms. By the time he retired 90% and been developed and covered with impervious surface.

Yet there was still a strip of land that buffered a stream, harbored 100+ year old trees, and was a relatively healthy, balanced ecosystem. His thought was, “I can’t save the rain forest, I can’t save the bay, I can’t save the Potomac river, but I can save this tract of land and creek - I can save it for me, my students, and all the creatures that live and migrate through here, and for the future.

He and his students made it theirs. Their trees, their salamanders, their butterflies, their bees, their frogs, their owls, their fox, their creek, their clean water, their fish, and their healthy, balanced ecosystem.

And that is one thing I want to do at GSB. Our challenges are no different than the presenters and creating stewards and sustainability and a healthier ecosystem around the school is our responsibility.

The documentary is on Snagfilms and the title is - Sola: Louisiana water stories