Conversation as an Education Medium for the Age of Distraction - the Art of Range' Podcast

摘要

Range folk are a colorful social group. They represent the entire spectrum of political persuasion, socioeconomic classes, geographic identity, and demographic characteristics, yet this passionate group of people is united by love of land. GerardManley Hopkins's famous poem "Pied Beauty" speaks of this love of land and people of the land:Glory be to God for dappled things,For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim, Fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls, finches' wings,Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow, and plough, And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.While rangeland ecologists may prefer land not "plotted and pieced", they delight in the whole of nature. Not just the fish or the cow, but all real living and non-living things in relationship to one another that make up whole ecosystems. Range professionals and practitioners seek to maintain natural ecosystem processes in settings where human dependency on natural resources is part of the landscape. They see this connection—the one between humans and whole landscapes—as unique within agriculture, valuable to society, and worthy of careful scientific inquiry. Inquiry happens most effectively in a context of rich human-to-human interaction. The Art of Range podcast exists to model and provoke this human-to-human interaction, to inspire a land ethic,to promote education and conservation through conversation.