Accountability

ReadIn the past calendar week, Doctor Lenny has been outside visiting habitat restoration projects with the Umpqua Basin Watershed Council, the Roseburg Bureau of Land Management and the Umpqua National Forest. The resource professionals are courteous and informative. These on-the-ground action projects provide significant habitat for salmonid fish and benefit other wildlife by producing ancillary benefits like clean air and clean water for local communities. i enjoy playing the land management game on a professional level and feel that agencies and communities benefit by my direct interaction in the decision making process.
ThisI also have attended several regulatory agency presentations and been frustrated by the lack of respect for the local indigenous populations. I use the term indigenous to mean the resident community - people who have been local for 10 years or longer and have a vested interest in community well-being. The term native is reserved for the tribes and other fellow landwalkers.
StuffCommunity representatives need to be included in the process of regulating their own communities. The regulatory agencies seem to have forgotten that knowledge resides in many forms. The disrespect for the rural lifestyle is causing a monumental friction - i am personally saddened by the performance of the Formosa Mine clean-up effort. What I viewed yesterday was about NEPA and what is in store for the Elliot State Forest is certainly forboding. We need to scrutenize the support science for the regulatory agencies - especially methodology that introduces biases via the rigid quality control system that rejects low probability data in the field.