Pondering a Conservation Ethic
Honoring All Nature. Honoring All People.
Editor’s Note: Since my early days in the Vermont conservation world, I have admired David Marvin for his wisdom and humility in understanding and working within the natural world. David gave an introductory address at the October 2024 Sowing Seeds gathering of conservation practitioners in Vermont. The following essay, a transcript of his inspiring remarks, weaves together the values of wild nature and managed forests. - Liz Thompson
At Sowing Seeds, the recent gathering of conservation practitioners hosted by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, I was asked to begin the day with a few personal remarks about my connection to conservation. I could easily speak about my life as a sugar maker, starting out on a nearly run out hill farm and, developing from that, a maple sugaring enterprise now employing nearly 150 people and supplied by hundreds of other farms. After more than 50 years doing that, I’ve learned a good deal.
Photo © Liz Thompson
I could also speak about more than 50 years serving environmental and conservation organizations starting in the mid-1970s as board member and chair of Vermont Natural Resources Council, to today when I serve on the boards of Preservation Trust of Vermont, Shelburne Farms, and Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB). I choose to serve these organizations and others as a way to pay back my good fortune to live here in a place I hold dear. In reality, I’ve gained more than I’ve given, from the knowledge, experience and wisdom of the board members and staff I’ve worked with over the years. And I’m grateful for the people and opportunities I continue to learn from. I could talk about that history as well.
Photo © Liz Thompson
But instead I want to speak more personally about what I believe about conservation. I hope what I ponder is useful to you.
First, I believe we must inculcate in all people a true conservation ethic. For me, a conservation ethic represents respect and honor for the life-giving of all of our ecosystems. It is recognition of the inherent value and essential purpose of all biota and their life support systems. A conservation ethic recognizes that humans are not dominant or all-knowing, but are only part of an intricate web of life, death, evolution, growth, and struggle that has yet to be fully understood.
“Our greatest inhumanity, though, is in human relationships.”
I believe we need—and can achieve—productive, restorative agriculture and forestry that are in harmony with the living systems that share our place. However, the output from our land must be meted out only as needed to further the human condition without exhausting the source of our sustenance. Our human needs, aspirations, survival, and spirit require economic activity and community support of individual and societal values, but these cannot exist independent of the world around us—earth, air, water and life that give us sustenance and ultimate worth.
Photo © Liz Thompson
Further, I believe stewardship is a powerful lens through which to view conservation. Ownership is temporal, but stewardship done right is everlasting. It provides a much more enduring legacy than ownership. When we are gone, our families, our communities—human and biotic—and the land will still be here, and richer for what we have stewarded to pass on if we have done our job well. Stewardship extends as well to art, and cultural and historic resources that connect our human and spiritual past to an unknown future. There simply are certain resources, certain objects, certain places, and certain elements of life that we may possess for a time, but not with any right to destroy or degrade them. Our ownership really has more responsibilities than rights. Earth, air, and water have such elemental value to all. They must be stewarded and not depleted. These, and our great cultural resources, support and frame our humanity. While it is right to use what we must to sustain ourselves, we must be ever thoughtful, so as not to diminish the rights of those who follow us.
“A conservation ethic recognizes that humans are not dominant or all-knowing, but are only part of an intricate web of life, death, evolution, growth, and struggle that has yet to be fully understood.”
I also believe we cannot succeed in conservation, looking for harmony with nature, when we accept so much disharmony among humans as we do. We have, over all human time, increasingly successfully and shamefully laid waste to vital landscapes—polluting earth, water, and sky. And we have demonstrated inhumanity to animals, wild and domestic. Our greatest inhumanity, though, is in human relationships. At their worst, our transgressions and tragic behavior have resulted in enslavement, constant fighting (most often about land), and wanton killing. More commonly and closer to home, we all see inequity, injustice, and incivility, manifested by people in our communities being unhoused, going hungry, lacking health care, and being disrespected if they are in any way different.
Photo © Liz Thompson
We must abate—or, better yet, cease—our inhumane way of being human if all people are to understand and support why conservation matters. If we don’t treat each other with respect and seek to be at peace with one another, how can we expect others to be at peace with other organisms and that which sustains us all? To achieve a decent social ethic is daunting, and has eluded us since our beginning. Nonetheless, we have to strive for what we can accomplish. That is why at a personal level I find the dual goals of VHCB, and the mission of Shelburne Farms, for two examples, so powerful.
“Ownership is temporal, but stewardship done right is everlasting.”
Most of what I know—my own experience—is connected to working and living on the Vermont landscape and in our rural community. I have learned that the decent treatment of land and people reaps rewards. I have learned that true wealth is not how much you have but how little you need. I have learned that sufficiency is different for each of us depending on life experience. But also, I have learned that once one has enough, it isn’t necessary to consume more to find happiness, that conservation doesn’t mean sacrifice. I have learned that there can be real abundance without taking, and that:
Beauty is ours if we open our senses to it.
Spirit is ours if we have the soul for it.
Community is ours if we have the heart for it.
And, all of this can be found wherever is our place.
If this sounds like preaching, I apologize. Perhaps if I close with a verse I wrote a few years ago that might excuse me.
Photo © Liz Thompson
To the Woods
For a time I went to the woods to count maples or board feet – something Thoreau would surely admonish.
Now, I visit the woods for peace, and quiet too, but mostly for peace.
It is there I can work both body and soul, where I usher myself to a place close to heaven.
For a time the woods were my workplace, now they are my church.
David Marvin is a sugarmaker and forester. He is founder of Butternut Mountain Farm, a family enterprise focused on production, processing, and marketing maple products from its own farm and hundreds of others. The 150-employee business provides diverse maple products to all market sectors of the food industry. In addition, forestry consulting services are provided to several hundred clients with combined ownership of over 100,000 acres. David currently serves as a board member of Shelburne Farms, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and the Vermont Economic Development Authority. David and his wife, Lucy, reside in Hyde Park nearby to their two grown children, Emma and Ira, who are engaged in the family business.