I'm very glad to be here with you.

I especially wanted to learn from you. I've done some of that already. I also wanted to become re-acquainted with Dr. Beattie. Relations are often strained and stressed during the terminal stages of a Ph.D. program. We are regaining something lost.

We need to talk about those relations because they are critical to my presentation this evening. An arrow in an ecosystem diagram could show that relation.It is smudged; we need to redraw it. We need to draw other ecosystem arrows tonight, perhaps some between you and me.

The first relationship you and I need to discuss is what is happening to you and me in this Cuckoo nest. I feel we are Zimbardo's people, jailed and jailer becoming indistinguishable. I use the wrong metaphor, but it is very close. We all experience at one time or another in our education (only a few seem to escape) a most peculiar phenomenon. It is most conspicuous among Ph.D. ' s. You know of appendectomies and thyroidectomies -- I propose there is spinalectomy. It is an operation of incredible duration usually mangling pain, but with such anaesthesia and analgesias that the pain is experienced only after the operation. The operation, performed in the university, results in the neo-invertebrate, a spineless wonder, as beautiful as any insect under a scope in an aquatic entomology course. Beautiful but spineless.

The secondary results is the formation of a crusty exoskeleton - a life spent play acting some role read in a book - or if not an exoskeleton, perhaps interrupted metamorphosis occurs. In this case the result is merely a soft con descending nymph. Whichever --- spineless!

I sense you understand the figure of speech. But I have no time this evening for polite misunderstandings. I suggest that our universities may be performing unauthorized spinalectomies on students, and have for years, and that the resulting backbone less creatures are at the root of wildlife management and ecological problems.

One of my admonitions for this evening is that faculty be on guard, lest you he found operating in your sleep, and the other is that students be on guard, lest you loose your --- spine.

But maybe you already have! It may be too late. Perhaps not, and even so, if there is time, perhaps we may try a tissue transplant. I am accused of being too negative or pessimistic by some of my Virginia colleagues in the wildlife profession. As a wood carver I get through to solid wood as quickly as possible; as a home builder I'd never build on the ground surface. I think it is necessary to get to a foundation as part of a creative activity building process, and I view that is entirely positive and constructive.

I do not use spinelessness in an insulting way. It's a condition - a hell of a condition - and I think it's a condition and problem about which something can be done. We need to work on it together. We are all victims together.

There are some of you who think I'm just being negative. Let me try to convince you. Consider the spinelessness of:

1. A profession that will let an acid rain problem that will easily withdraw more than a 1000 times more habitat production than you will ever actively produce
2. Forest management systems highly timber-oriented over millions of acres legally dedicated to multiple use
3. A Wildlife Society unable to fund its own meetings or to generate a public dialogue
4. Half of the state wildlife agencies virtually ignoring the wildlife resource to cater to the game subject
5. Agricultural systems developed and already discarded without any significant modifications to accommodate the agricultural wildlife resource
6. Accelerating wildlife-caused crop and forest injury, leaving a vulnerable side to an already embattled wildlife management system
7. About half - of the coastal states (including Va.) not doing coastal zone planning with all of its potentials for wildlife and wetland management
8. No national analysis of the impact of fossil energy shortages on hunting behavior and income to wildlife agencies
9. Project after project, season after season, area after area being lost across the country with their associated wildlife potentials - with barely a whimper from the wildlife community
10. Over 3.5 million acres of wildlife land lost a year in the U.S. One-million of that is prime agricultural land. Even if it had no meaning to human food production, at least it ought to have meaning to wildlife production.

I perceive that there have been a few spinalectomies - starting with: "don't ask questions; just get a good grade;" "don't rile the faculty, graduation is close at hand;" "don't bother with the agency, it may endanger a job;" "don't rile the my fantasy boss;" "don't speak out, it may threaten tenure," "don't write about that agency; it may reduce the chance for a grant."
Cut-cut-cut.
Results: The Neo-invertebrate.

Now that we see our state of being, we may be able to do something about it before it is too late. First walk out of here saying, "I'm no invertebrate!"

Then, having rehearsed, start convincing yourself and others. With that first step, you are on the path to becoming the next ecologist. [At least when your boyfriend or girlfriend calls you "you worm!" you'll have something to fall back to: No dear; I'm a neo-invertebrate. We don't want to get too serious. Serious is a relative concept. Dr. Beattie asked when I arrived, "How was my wife?" - --All I could think of was "As compared to what?"Then "as compared to whom?" and by then with my fantasies I had forgotten the question.]

We need to get serious not just to get back to the "real lecture" but that is a major problem.

The first topic of the lecture was spine, now it is seriousness.

In preparation and time here, I've spent 5 days on this trip. I only have 24 more years that I can expect to live. You're being allocated between 0.06% and 100% of the rest of my life. I'm generally dedicated to spending it well; no matter what it is worth. The worth of a day, unlike gold, or dollars, gets more valuable to me each day. The allocation problems become more critical each day. For those of you of the "younger persuasion" you may find such a time calculus irrelevant.

Once you integrate such thinking along with a concept of ecological time - at least post-Pleistocene - then you will be on the way to becoming the next ecologist. What percent of post Pleistocene time is an average human life span (U.S.)? ... 0.06%!

An example of such seriousness is a denial of a classical notion in the research community. It on the surface is: "I am doing research. It is basic. It has no immediate application. It may have some use in the future." The key words here are immediate and future. These are the time elements in that calculus and my perspective is that there is not much chance for a future research environment like the past; there is an assumption in that research premise that there will be hundreds of years - of researchers - of science as presently known - of energy - of advances. My concern, my seriousness, is for the energy future as I see it, of the population future, of the technological future, of the political-ecological future - they are all very, very serious and grim. I despair of a future like the past; I will not let that hedonistic research to satisfy my curiosity, will serve human kind well. My concerns are for a very conscientious regard for the present and near future and carefully planned research for the long-run.

We do not have time or resources to do otherwise. I know the young see only a long and glorious future. I therefore, knowing you reject (or will not internalize) these time concepts of my seriousness argument, propose you will get serious about energy. Energy and time are interactive ... synergistic seriousness!

I drove a car 40 miles to the Roanoke airport. It cost 400 million kilocalories to produce that car. I used 160,000 kilocalories of its life potential on the trip, 160,000 kilocalories in fuel, drank an 8000 kilocalories cup of coffee, flew 800 miles in a jet that flamed out 1.5 million kilocalories. This is a 3.6 million kilocalories trip! It's a 2.3 deer trip or a 0.3 acre habitat trip.

We are running out of healthful fossil fuel. For many reasons the future will be energy short. The future will belong to those who can fix energy, have stored energy and the kinetic energy of working tools, and who can allocate it in sophisticated ways. I'm bound to think energy; we must get very serious about energy. We need to work hard together this evening so you'll get your kilocalories worth. Time and energy may be the wrong categories for some of you to deal with my plea for seriousness. Then consider:

1. The massive impacts of a cool economy on our ecosystem, on agencies, and social instability
2. The effects of CO² on wildlife habitat changes
3. Phosphate shortages that will require immense land use conflict in the US and imports of this vital substance
4. Wood import-export quotas that influence more wildlife habitat per year than any of you will see or touch in a lifetime
5. Ground water depletion problems of enormous proportion
6. New agribusiness operations and concepts.

How strange it must seem for people to build bird houses when thousands of acres of cavity trees are cut each day. How strange it is to plant half-acre game bird food strips when a million acres of prime farm land each year are covered by asphalt and roofed over.

There is a lynx eating at our guts and we persist in our fascination in measuring the length of its tail.

When you think time, energy, and about these things, then you are on the way to becoming or comprehending the next ecologist.

Stick with me:we've dealt with spine and seriousness. Now we must talk about sensitivity. A computer oriented person will often do what is called a sensitivity analysis. He may test a model with several values for a variable to see how sensitive certain performance measures are to those changes. Not only the numbers but the variables themselves may be tested in various ways such as holding them constant or eliminating them all together.

I contend we are wildlife managers, ecologists at the helm of a ship out of control and we desperately need to discover the controls. We need to find which button to push, of course, but not just which one does something but which does the most quickly. There is no time, there is no energy, there are few people with openness something must be done - and the search must be pressed for the sensitive factor. I call this the concept of the megafactor. I'm seeking systems control. In the sense of a multiple regression analysis when I use a step-wise procedure, I want to know what that first variable is that comes into the equation. I want the variable that will give me greatest control over the system, greatest explanation and predictor power, greatest confidence that if I manipulate it managerially I'll get the greatest possible desired change.

We have to work to discover the sensitive factors, there is not time or resources to discover everything. Everything is related; everything is hitched to everything. There is never going to be complete knowledge. The quest is for knowledge of important things and I define those as variables to which a systems performance index is most sensitive. They can be learned by models, by simulations, by diligent scholarly and theoretical work. My perception is that for wildlife one megafactor is energy. If I had to start again, I'd delve into C / N ratios. In the habitat arena the two megafactors are clearly insolation and soil bulk density. In the human area, the megafactors appear to me to be values or utility indices and risk levels.

You see I view the wildlife manager as a steersperson in the sense of cybernetics. The task is to guide the resource ship to human objectives and to provide people an environment in which they can discover their humanity. But that job, that knowledge is too precious, to restrict it solely to the wildlife resource. That is a job of the total ecologist the concept of a person able to provide knowledge of the route, clarity for the destination, and skillful hands on the controls.

I give the future ecologist no dominion over the goals of society. Such people may participate as they will. Each is as important as another. The goals or destination are a public and corporate decision. The future ecologist is the serious vertebrate at the controls of the guidance system that can keep a resource system under control, with reasonable stability, apply corrective adjustments when appropriate, and assure the life quality that comes ,in part, from knowing the ship is on course and there is a competent helmsperson.

I'll not waste any time describing the present ecologists and all of their failings. Clearly all is not failure. I'll simply talk about the future and imply by the next ecologist that I'm not talking about the long term future, but about the person needed today and tomorrow.

Besides spine, seriousness, and sensitivity, he or she needs synergism.

This latter is the concept of positive potentiating interaction, planned events that have extra results, systems operated to provide results greater than their expected sum. In the same way 2 pesticides in combination may be far more toxic than either alone, we need to develop a concept of planning and systems creation that provide special, extra, and even surprise benefits.

"Externalities" is a bad word, usually implying undesirable side effects of industry or programs - the "impacts" I propose we begin working to achieve positive "extenalities," these extra benefits that may be secured secretly or openly - or secured nevertheless.

What might I mean by this?

What if studies of tax rates simulated for a country showed significant change in land uses - e.g., conversion of forests to pasture; shortened forest rotations - and these were producing desire habitats and thus desired animal populations, wouldn't it be realistic to take steps to promote these taxation changes? Perhaps we could get game as well as watershed and fisheries benefits.

Is tax-change within an ecologists purview? I contend that it is if done with an a priori goal statement. Do not deny me unless you require only firemen to do prescribed burns, and only farmers to apply fertilizers!

What else may I mean by synergism? Planned projects that when unified produce synergistic effects. B. Fuller described how 1+1+1:4. He put 3 triangles together and got the 4th. I have a notion of how 3 projects planned, when unified will produce - automatically the results for a 4th. Large computer-based information systems produce synergistic results daily.

Imagine 2-3 agencies working independently, secretly, on planned jobs but with the knowledge that when their successes coalesced there would be profound resource impact and control! I've tried hard this evening to suggest some needs for the future and some means to meet these needs. I want you to try to remember and think about 4 things

• spine
• seriousness
• sensitivity
• synergism