Archive for the ‘Interview-Guest’ Category

This week, I am writing a guest column over the Great Lakes Town Hall, an online community for conservationists along America’s northern coast. Today’s post riffs on a survey about global warming that J.D. tipped me off to!

Click here to visit the Great Lakes Town Hall.

“Would you be willing to post our brochure on the blog and get some feedback?,” wrote Heather from the Upper Neuse River Basin Association in an email last week. But of course!

The brochure is called “Keeping Our Waters Clean” and it’s intended to introduce landowners to the concept that they can restore streams and wetlands on their property — and that financial assistance is available to help them do so. For the most part, this is a piece of work you should strive to emulate. Heather has done a terrific job incorporating many words that work in the draft and the image selection is absolutely spot on.

But I will highlight an issue for readers to weigh in on — the prominent use of the term “watershed.”

So here are three questions to kick this off:

• Do you believe that providing a definition of the term “watershed” increase the likelihood that a landowner will look into restoring a stream or wetland on their property?
• If so, why?
• If not, what would be a better use of the extremely limited space in this brochure?

Click here to download a draft version of “Keeping Our Waters Clean.”

Here’s a story that a reader shared with me a couple ofmonths ago. I finally figured out what I want to do with it. The reader sees it as a story about everyday citizens’ ignorance. But I think it reveals how we overestimate the importance of education and underestimate the power of peer pressure. Here’s the story:

I was walking through my subdivision in northeastern Illinois. It was a trash/recycling day, and noticed that a homeowner had placed several 4-foot fluorescent tubes (T12F40’s) in his recycling container on the curb (we utilize the least-common-denominator method: single-stream/commingle).Just then, the garbage/recycling truck turned the corner, so I decided to linger and confirm that the garbageman would reject the tubes.To my surprise, he threw them in the hopper with all of the other recyclables – glass, newspapers, and plastic. I approached him and asked, “You threw fluorescent bulbs into your recycling hopper??”He laughed and said, “Yeah, we do it all the time. We recycle everything!”

I asked the reader what they thought this story revealed, and they replied:

…it points to both carelessness and a broad lack of education – among consumers and haulers – in the recycling arena.

I disagree. Social and scientific research is most conclusive that educating individuals about environmental problems simply does not move many to participate in the solutions.

Doug McKenzie Mohr, dean of the “social marketing” movement, writes:

“While education and advertising can be effective in creating public awareness and in changing attitudes, numerous studies show that behavior change rarely occurs as a result of simply providing information.”

Social or community context appears to be one of the key factors that can motivate people to take pro-environment actions, writes the Roper Starch research firm in their 2005 report Understanding Environmental Literacy in America. One of the most important determinants of behavior change is not information/education, but people’s beliefs about the pro-environmental behavior of others.

Spitfire Strategies, in their study, Discovering the Activation Point, concurs, but puts it more succinctly, writing it is more comfortable for most people to try something they have already seen someone else doing.

If we apply the insights from these studies to the situation at hand, what would seem to be a better solution to increase the rate at which the refuse workers properly handle  flourescent bulbs?

• Schedule a workshop to explain to workers (one more time!) about the dangers of mercury in the bulbs and how to identify which ones are recyclable and which aren’t
• Create a public display in the refuse workers’ office that shows how most of the workers are properly sorting the bulbs out of the recycling — signaling to those who don’t that they are in a minority

Farmers are an important but challenging audience for nature protection and pollution control people. Making up just 2% of the U.S. population, they have outsized influence on waters across the country and far out into the Gulf of Mexico. And nobody knows how to sweet talk a farmer into participating responsible conservation efforts better than Lena Beth Carmichael, coordinator for the Pond Creek Watershed Project in Athens, TN.

Lena Beth knows that putting people at ease is key to getting their cooperation. She applies her deft touch with farmers along Pond Creek and with audiences for her presentation “Top 9 Forms of Communication with a Farmer.”

Eric: You tell a number of funny stories in your presentation. For the benefit of Water Words readers who haven’t seen it, what are your big laugh lines?

Lena Beth: “First I admit that I’m a redneck farmer, myself… then I add I was married to their king for over 20 years.

I also have some funny photos of trees growing up through the bed of a pick up truck and say that “Change comes slowly”

I have a picture of a barn, and ”King Jesus Is Coming Soon” is painted on it. I tell people that when he gets here, he’s going to be really disappointed with how they took care of his place.

Eric: A lot of conservation professionals have a hard time understanding where farmers are coming from. What’s your secret for building trust?

Lena Beth: I only live 20 miles away.  I’m not just flitting in and leaving. I have my own reputation and my good name that I intend to keep. I think they take me more seriously because of that.

I also have a good sense of when it’s time to shut up, drop it, or leave. (I hope.)

Eric:Do you talk to farmers the same way you talk to your professional peers?

Lena Beth: No. I’ll admit that I have used conversations discussing “what it looks like from the road” because that’s what the community can see.  One farm in particular, will do things for social standing.  But they are not actually seen by the community as “SomeBody”.  Their social standing is all in their head. Doesn’t matter to me.  I can still use that, too.

One meeting, I called a particular farmer about 30 minutes before the meeting, and said “you’re coming, aren’t you?” of course he said,” is that today?” and I said, “Yes, and I’ve forgotten an extension cord to run my projector for my presentation. Can you bring me one?” He did.

Of course, I had an extension cord all along.

Yep, I’m manipulative. I’m a mother.

Eric: What kinds of things can you talk a farmer into doing with this approach?

Lena Beth: On one farm, my project built a fence to make a “sacrifice lot” at the top of the hill, near the parlor (creek is at the bottom of the hill maybe 200 yards).  We installed two 6-hole waterers in the lot.  The hillside was seeded down toward the creek.  The farmer was to buy and install the gates, which he was slow to do, and often does not close them now.

It is amazing how the cows choose to stay on top of the hill, in the level sacrifice lot, and drink the clean water provided for them.  I have pictures of them staying there, even with the gates wide open.  The hillside stays grassed.  The cows will go to the bottom in the heat of summer, to get shade, but they have not demolished the vegetation. It has worked really well.

It’s also right beside the road, so that’s good for the neighbors to see.