Mom's 98 now and has pretty good long-term memory. Short-term is going fast. It's not too late for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Forest Service need to interview elderly retirees to learn about conditions in the field and agency in years past, especially during the "Great Depression" and "the dust-bowl years." These interviews are nearly essential, an immediate need for conservation of knowledge more that of animals, for the coming energy-short future will be very much like conditions they remember. I'm 75 and barely remember the stressful conditions of the depression and only a little of the rationing conditions of WW II for I was protected as a child by my parents. Maybe there are writings, filed reports, or stories about conditions and special problems that may help prepare us and "our faunal charges" and people dependent upon them for the rapidly-arriving future.
We "know" without scientific proof that there will be fewer visitors to our wild faunal lands and waters and wildland because of travel costs. There will be fewer patrons supporting legislation or stable agency budgets, more employee layoffs, more damage claims (on livestock, gardens, crops, and food storage units), more wandering and displaced people "squatters", fewer funds for dike and road repairs, more pressures for biomass harvests of all kinds, and much more poaching of all species. We will have flooded coastal areas with wonderful increases in muskrats and waterfowl ... but few people (only the very well off) to see or enjoy them in any way, and most people will be demanding our knowledge about water control and managing vegetation in saline environments. Others will not know from whom to demand ecological advice for their upland areas becoming more dry and base-flow of streams declining, and related forest site quality declining.
There will surely be state and federal programs (as the former Civilian Conservation Corps) for the otherwise unemployed. Planned and well equipped and staffed projects can produce great gains for future people.
We have to get ready for these changes now. We know they are coming and at a very fast, almost unimaginable rate (even though written about and described for over 30 years).
I continue to write about citizens and agencies and their resource personnel in the energy-short world in my The Survivalists blog.
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