Forging a Sustainable Southwest: The Power of Collaborative Conservation
By Stephen E. Strom
The University of Arizona Press
456 pp., September 2024
These inspiring stories of citizens and groups working together demonstrate a path for the future built day-by-day.
Nature has presented us with a gift of incalculable value: astounding diversity of plant and animal life and interwoven biological and physical systems of intricate complexity and beauty. We are faced today with an existential environmental and moral challenge: can we find common purpose in protecting and cherishing these masterpieces and in restoring a sense of shared responsibility for stewarding our endowment?
Forging a Sustainable Southwest introduces readers to four conservation efforts that provide insight into how diverse groups of citizens have worked collaboratively to develop visions for land use that harmonized sometimes conflicting ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs. Through the voices of more than seventy individuals involved in these efforts, we learn how they’ve developed plans for protecting, restoring, and stewarding lands sustainably; the management and funding tools they’ve used; and their perceptions of the challenges that remain and how to meet them.
This book details efforts to craft the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, establish Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, protect Cienega Ranch, and create the Malpai Borderlands Group. It will appeal to anyone interested in grassroots efforts to protect the vital ecosystems of the western United States.
These inspiring stories of citizens and groups working together demonstrate a path for the future built day-by-day: breaking bread at potlucks, holding informal front-porch discussions, and later finding common purpose in community-wide meetings. Might their efforts reveal a path to rebuilding our democratic systems from the ground up?
PRAISE FOR FORGING A SUSTAINABLE SOUTHWEST
This is a remarkable work that will become an essential reference source in land management issues in Arizona and throughout the West.
— Bruce Babbitt, Former Secretary of the Interior and Arizona Governor
Strom has taken a very complex series of issues and addressed them in a unique manner. Not only has he carefully explained the importance of landscape-scale efforts and how very different individuals have worked together to attempt to address these complex issues, he has also skillfully presented present-day landscapes and circumstances along with the impacts of geologic time frames. Strom shows us how the portion of the earth we inherit today has been greatly impacted by geologic events of the distant past. This is an interesting and fresh approach that takes us on a journey, making us conscious of both the importance and the urgency of landscape-scale conservation efforts and how individuals can interact to bring about important change. A must-have for your conservation library.
— D. Dean Bibles, U.S. Bureau of Land Management State Director, Arizona and Oregon/Washington
Stephen E. Strom has spent forty-five years as a research astronomer after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees in astronomy from Harvard. He began photographing in 1978, after studying the history of photography and silver and nonsilver photography at the University of Arizona. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in several permanent collections, including the Center for Creative Photography and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His photography complements poems and essays in six books published by the University of Arizona Press: Secrets from the Center of the World, Sonoita Plain, Tseyi / Deep in the Rock, Earth and Mars: A Reflection, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land, and The Greater San Rafael Swell: Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands. He has also published Death Valley: Painted Light, Tidal Rhythms, Bears Ears: Views from a Sacred Land, This Desert Hides Nothing, and Earth Forms.
