Dennis Anderson: 'Listening' is a good beginning

The Obama administration will host a conservation "listening session" in Minneapolis on Aug. 4, one in a series of similar town-hall gatherings nationwide intended to distill the best land and water stewardship ideas from all those currently in practice, or imagined, throughout America.

An outgrowth of the Great Outdoors Conference held in Washington in April, the listening session, like others already held in Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle, among other cities, will draw on the expertise of local and regional natural resource experts, while also allowing individual citizens to voice their conservation concerns and ideas.

The meeting will be held at the Ted Mann Concert Hall on the U campus, and a capacity crowd is expected.

In a speech to the April conference in Washington, President Obama said he, like many Americans, feels "an abiding bond with the land that is the United States of America."

"It's a recognition passed down from one generation to the next," Obama said, "that few pursuits are more satisfying to the spirit than discovering the greatness of America's outdoors."

The president directed the secretaries of Interior, Agriculture and other federal departments to host meetings around the country to gather ideas for what he called a 21st century approach to conservation to protect the nation's natural resources.

"We'll meet with everybody," the president said, "from tribal leaders to farmers, from young people to business people, from elected people to recreation and conservation groups."

The plan's goal is fourfold, Obama said.

• To build on successful conservation efforts being spearheaded outside of Washington to help develop new ways to protect American rivers, wildlife habitats, historic sites and the "great landscapes of our country."

• To help farmers, ranchers, and property owners who want to protect their land.

• To help families spend more time outdoors, "building on what [First Lady Michelle Obama] has done through the 'Let's Move' initiative to encourage young people to hike and bike and get outside more often."

• To foster a new generation of community and urban parks.

Plans have not been finalized for the Minneapolis listening session, and doubtless considerable jostling will occur by various conservation groups, as well as county, regional and state agencies, to make their voices heard during what will be a relatively short (4-7:30 p.m.) meeting in a relatively small gathering room. (Standing-room-only crowds have been the norm at the approximately 10 sessions held so far.)

That said, the listening sessions themselves represent only a small part of the government's outreach in this project. Individuals, for instance, can log onto www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/ and offer their own ideas (and/or weigh in about the value of others' ideas) about how to conserve the nation's land and water -- and in the process, see what other Americans are thinking.

A woman from Hawaii named Sarah McLane, for example, said her state's watershed partnership program (www.hawp.org) might be worth emulating. "Local, state and federal landowners sign a memorandum of understanding to protect forested lands that are the source of our water," she said.

Ryan Heinigar, director of conservation programs in Minnesota and Wisconsin for Ducks Unlimited, said Thursday his group hopes to impress upon policymakers at the Aug. 4 session the importance of the prairie pothole region to people as well as wildlife.

Portions of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana, and all of North Dakota, make up the prairie pothole region, an area in which watersheds have been dramatically altered since settlement by wetland drainage and ditching.

Long overdue, the listening project is a good idea, and is utilizing technology to reach out to conservation-minded people in ways never before possible.

The fear, of course, is that the government's ability to collect information exceeds its ability to efficiently and accurately synthesize it -- and to draw from it proper conclusions.

Even more worrisome is the cynic's view -- not entirely unfounded -- that whatever conclusions the government might draw, it can't act in a big enough way, or swiftly enough, to counteract the effects on the nation's natural resources of urbanization, rural sprawl and industrial agriculture, among other threats.

Fair enough. But some good will come of this and similar efforts, I believe.

I believe also the feds will depart the Twin Cities after the Aug. 4 meeting having heard at least a few good conservation ideas that can be used elsewhere.

The hope is they leave a few similarly worthwhile ideas behind, and that, in the process, conservationists in Minnesota and throughout the Midwest gain a renewed sense of purpose and energy, positive in itself.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com