My wild view of Nebraska
Watchable Wildlife Inc. will hold our 2010 conference in Kearney, Neb., on Oct. 5–7. This conference will bring wildlife and tourism professionals together to look at the best ways to develop wildlife/nature tourism programs for communities in the state.
Since selecting Kearney for our conference several years ago, I have been spending a fair amount of time in the state. As president of Watchable Wildlife Inc., a nonprofit, I have the opportunity to work with communities across North America. The mission of our organization is simple: to help communities and wildlife prosper. We approach this mission in three ways: (1) publications, (2) our national conference and (3) on-the-ground projects. Our on-the-ground projects include Wildlife/Nature Tourism Workshops. It was a series of three of these workshops that opened my eyes to the natural beauty and unrealized economic potential that exists in Nebraska. I’m sure that many of you who grew up in this region of the country know this, and it is most likely why you have chosen to live and raise your families here. However, for me it was an unexpected and surprising discovery. For the first 27 years of my career, my interest in Nebraska was corn: I traded it as a commodity, sold it as a feed and milled it into hundreds of products from snack foods to industrial binders. So when I drove across I-80, all I saw were “fields of waving grain.”
This started to change while planning for the conference, and the change was permanently imprinted in June of this year. Through a partnership with the Nebraska South Central Economic Development District, Inc. and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, we agreed to conduct Wildlife/Nature Tourism Workshops in Red Cloud, Ord and Ogallala. While driving the less-traveled roads and looking at the countryside through the eyes of a wildlife tourist, I really learned to appreciate all this great state has to offer.
I was not involved in the selection of the communities for these workshops, but whoever did make the choices hit it out of the park. I could not have asked for towns that better reflect what we look for in attempting to identify opportunities for building an economic base and natural conservation model for our programs. These ideas were molded by wildlife and tourism professionals over the past 25 years and are based on some basic economic and demographic facts.
I don’t consider myself to be pessimistic and, at the same time, I think I understand that as a nation we face some very challenging environmental problems. Yet when I hear others who work in the environmental and natural resources field criticize the efforts of our state and federal wildlife and natural resource agencies, I have to question to whom they are comparing the U.S.
No country in the world spends more money on protecting and managing their wildlife and wild places than the United States. No one has more parks, wild and scenic rivers and protected wilderness areas. Our national parks, national wildlife refuges, national forests and other federally protected lands are a model for the rest of the world. Add to this our state and local parks, trails and wildlife recreation areas, and you have an incredible and greatly underutilized resource.
Most of our natural resource professionals believe that the biggest threat facing us is not invasive species or global warming, it’s funding. Even before this latest economic downturn, our state and federal wildlife agencies were being hit with major budget cuts. Now with the current economic conditions, financing for these irreplaceable treasures is under enormous pressure.
I mentioned that I don’t consider myself to be pessimistic, but on this point I don’t see a great deal changing. The issues facing our political and administrative leaders seem to be growing faster than our ability to pay for them. We will have another Katrina, another threat to world peace and economic ups and downturns. Add to this the need to find an affordable means to address health care, social security and other national and local concerns, and you can understand why wildlife and natural resource conservation keeps getting pushed down the list of funding priorities. I think it’s safe to say that the way we funded wildlife conservation in the past 100 years is not how we will fund it the next 100 years.
So what‘s this have to do with workshops held in three Nebraska towns this past June? Simple: all three of these communities have a number of things in common with each other. As a matter of fact, they have a number of things in common with many rural communities across North America. Traditional, well-paying jobs in manufacturing and agricultural support services have been on the decline for some time. The downtown districts are under pressure and in several cases, the empty storefronts are pushing to outnumber successful businesses. Young people go away to college and cannot return to their hometown due to a lack of employment opportunities.
It seems that every politician, environmentalist and city planner tosses out the term “sustainability.” It has become the catchphrase of our time. Well, there is no sustainability without jobs. For communities to protect the quality of life that attracted residents to an area in the first place, they need to be able to support a population that can afford to pay for that quality of life.
So is wildlife/nature tourism the magic wand that, when waved over a community, can instantly reverse years of decline? Absolutely not. However, this time as I drove down I-80 and onto the back roads connecting these three towns, I experienced a part of Nebraska I missed on all my other trips. It was not only the countless birding and wildlife viewing opportunities, kayaking and hiking trails and panoramic vistas, but it was also a part of the region that most of the residents take for granted, something that has come to be known as Heartland.
After conducting these workshops across the U.S., and in Canada, Mexico, China and Russia, I have noted one other common denominator. Most residents are very unfamiliar with where they live. This is especially true when it comes to wildlife viewing and nature tourism. Of course folks who live in and around Kearney, Neb., know about the sandhill crane migration that takes place every spring. But if you ask how many of your neighbors have actually sat in a blind and experienced the flight at sunrise, or watched the seemingly never-ending wave after wave of these birds returning to the river in the late afternoon, you might be surprised to learn how few have. For that matter, have you?
I mention this Nebraska wildlife viewing opportunity since, for a number of years now, Dr. Jane Goodall has traveled from the other side of the world to witness this event. In several cases Dr. Goodall has brought friends from other countries to share in this experience.
Now I don’t know this for a fact, but I would be willing to bet that Dr. Goodall would be welcomed almost anywhere in the world to view wildlife. Yet for several years she chooses to come to Kearney, Neb. Do you think that some of your friends and family members from Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and other parts of the country might find this of interest? I can state for a fact that for my wife and me, watching the cranes from a blind, with someone who could help us understand what we were looking at, will be a lifelong memory.
This is only one aspect of wild Nebraska that has drawn me to your state. Prairie chickens, prairie dogs and prairies in general are fascinating places to get lost in for an afternoon. In recent years I have become hooked on digital photography. When I look at the magnificent wildlife shots taken by Nebraska’s own Mike Forsberg, I am humbled. Yet with today’s technology, you and I can make up with quantity what Mike and other pros have learned to do with talent and experience.
Don’t even get me started on hawks. I can’t remember driving across any region of the country with better photo opportunities for hawks. It’s not just the abundance of these raptors I’m referring to, it’s the settings. You probably drive past these structures every day and never give them a second look. However, those of us from urban locations or areas where most of these building have disappeared are fascinated by old, abandoned barns. If you don’t think that the remaining barns scattered across the state aren’t a tourism attraction, you never heard about the “Bridges of Madison County.”
The Nebraska Highway Patrol knows about my strong desire to capture these photos. On two separate occasions I was warned not to pull over on an interstate unless it is an emergency—both times by the same state trooper. Evidently, an outstanding photo opportunity is not categorized as an emergency.
Tourism for digital photography is another fast-growing segment of nature tourism. But prospective visitors need to know where to go, when to be there and what they can see. Now, just how do we expect to attract these visitors if we don’t know this information ourselves? Identifying sites and what they have to offer is called site assessment and is a key part of developing a wildlife/nature tourism plan.
As I conducted the workshops last June, it was interesting for me to watch the attendees, many of whom grew up within a few miles, react to my observations. During breaks, several people talked with me about their farms and areas near where they lived and what they have seen. But the most rewarding aspect of these workshops is hearing back from some of the attendees and realizing that they have started to look at their surroundings through the eyes of a tourist.
Sessions at this year’s conference will be presented by local, state and national experts in the field of wildlife/nature tourism. But for me, the best part will be to once again visit and share with my wife and board members some of the wildlife and wild areas I have discovered in Nebraska. Thank you for sharing your state with me.
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