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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Part 2 - Parts of the system as it might have been…
Chapter 18. Ranging
Dreaming: Doors and walls, doors and walls…the kitchen system must be linked to the dining system…to the bedroom system…to the bathroom system…connections make…few, many…systems, systems, systems…but what is that must pass between and among them…what is link, connection, or relation…between and among, between or among…and to the basement and the surround?…Just dreaming….
| Descriptive of all forms of rural recreation and tourism, "ranging" required Rural System. But ranging could be a group within Rural System. The concept and what is behind the word and how it evolved (hypothetically, just dreaming). |
People now familiar with the personal computer are well aware of "folders" and "files" and the difference. These are like the storage compartments in classical filing systems. In Rural System work, the problems of classification arose just like those of what topics should be included within what academic departments and colleges and where to file certain topics in any office system. I tried to open a "folders" category in the Rural System concept in which too many people still worked as if each could be contained within a single file. In natural resource and rural work the needs are for interrelated systems, where "watersheds" is a file title felt to be as important for foresters as for those in fisheries, where "kingfisher" is a problem for filing among topics of birdwatchers, predation, avian food management, and nests influenced by streamside-zone forest management.
"Ranging" created a problem of "fit" and the proper file or folder for its concepts. I drew the system "context" box for it one way on one day, another way on the next. I saw ranging as a concept that might replace tourism or ecotourism. I defined it as a new form of soundly-based, diverse, regional tourism, eco-tourism, and sightseeing, combined with most forms of extensive outdoor recreation (hunting, fishing, archery, boating, swimming, hiking, biking, camping, climbing, triathlons, birding); and outdoor projects, events, memberships, shows, contests, and games.
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Ranging is a word for all dispersed outdoor recreation and related activities. Tourism is for outsiders; ranging is for local folks as well as visitors (the usual targets of tourism marketing). It is developed for the county, planning district, or region as a program of Rural System. Tourism or ecotourism which is poorly and diversely defined includes nature study, birding, ecological studies and research participation, rain forest visits, whale watching, etc. In some places these work and can be profitable. It depends upon scenic beauty and thus efforts to manage "scenes."
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For ranging to be desirable, lasting and widely accepted, it requires a superior environment and it must be extremely well managed. Just having a long list of existing activities will produce no profits. I had realized that tourism, as promoted, tends to be narrow in scope, seasonal, costly, provides few financial gains for the county, often produces dissatisfactions, and produces few desired jobs. Even new tourism produces few desirable additional ornew jobs, only displacements. Its byproducts, trespassing and disrespectful visitors, bother local people.
One aspect of tourism, has become notable. A 2004 survey by the U.S. Forest Service showed that 92.7 percent of those who visited national forests over a three-year period were white, even though the country's ethnic and racial makeup includes growing numbers of Latinos, Asians and blacks. Overall, the number of people visiting public lands is dwindling. The National Park Service found in 2006 it had nearly a million fewer visitors than the year before, and 14.5 million fewer than in 1999. There are many reasons for the decline (e.g., high gas prices, shorter vacations, slipping maintenance of sites, no tradition, fear, racial bias, and lack of parental guidance for youths).
I had to remind doubtful people that ranging was for private lands as well as public lands, and that these shocking declines can be addressed by internal programs in marketing the outdoors to urbanites. I also reminded them that, slowing or reversing these trends was not the objective of ranging but that it was needed to retain voters' support for managing public wildlands (where we would work with permission). Rejecting the dominance of notable failures, ranging was an activity for economic development. It capitalized on displaying superior land management in and around a county or named region, and shows how such activity could improve economic conditions for businesses and citizens. It was the economic developer's "new industry" providing novel dimensions of culture and lifestyle for residents as well as visitors. In attracting visitors and sight seers to areas and guiding them while there, ranging added value to the land and the resources present. For me on one day ranging was a single enterprise, on another, in dialog, it required, the entire Rural System. On the same day, it was the name for the collection of activities. Many activities require a superior environment and for these to exist and to be lasting, there must be modern sophisticated management. Such management can be supplied by Rural System. Ranging needed an enterprise like Rural System. Rural System needed a regional policy of shared interest in ranging as the banner for its regional success.
Ranging, certainly more than diverse tourism, slowly becomes a means for the region to become recognized as
My confusion over means and ends for ranging was because of my uncertainty about whether I was: (1) promoting Rural System as a means for regional improvement (and along with it ranging), or (2) suggesting the advantages of ranging for regional improvement (with Rural System as the major and perhaps only means to that end) or (3) pointing to the advantages of a comprehensive citizen and natural resource program to enhance and maintain rural beauty. From one perspective, it was a dominant activity or enterprise within the larger conglomerate with Rural System groups providing services. Also within the mix of possibilities was that it could become an alternative paradigm, a new way to re-think and re-organize the literature and knowledge of outdoor recreation…but that possibility seemed grandiose.
It took time, but ranging became for me an umbrella word under which the concepts and essential associated activities of managed tourism, ecotourism, and engaging in dispersed outdoor recreation can be well and properly studied, developed, managed, and improved. It became the collector where theories can be developed, analyses made, models created, evaluations made and monitoring done, predictions made, and programs administered.
Perhaps it is too big, but current divisions are ineffectively small with wasteful duplications and few useful connections.
Ranging became for me both the means and one of the major motivations for restoring and sustaining a beautiful, clean, satisfying rural environment. There are probably other reasons, but a few will suffice, leading to rural conditions improving and then staying that way. Rural landscape scenes are not likely to be perfect except within a few places, so it takes work and support for that work. The logical slope along which I have moved is that if such a desirable environment for people is to be created (at high cost) and if it is to be sustained (at least to assure the payoff of the investment), then there must be modern sophisticated management. That (in short supply) also has costs. Such management can be supplied cost effectively by Rural System. Ranging within Rural System was turning environmentalism around from being a late-coming, begging, whining activity to the basis for articulating and acting out what a region needs to be and to look like to be able to make money, lots of it, over the long run. It claimed that the required work was good and important and that the county or region has to be right (and stay right) for it to continue to prosper for all of its employees and those whom it serves. Perhaps that implies "sustainable," (Chapter 8) at least efforts to achieve approximate sustainability. The diverse outdoor recreation and tourism theme can only be powerful and successful if the environment is compatible with it. The environment has to support the enterprise. The conditions for success are evident and dullards can see. They do not have to be begged to clean up, stop dumping, littering, etc. They know that they are part of the home place of an enterprise that may mean their very survival, their place in the community, their job and that for their family and colleagues, friends or not. Successful ranging requires that the conditions be adequate, compatible, consistent, and supportive. People do not go on visits to see beautiful things within ugly settings. They do not want to hear about environmentally-sound operations and hear on the evening local news reports of evidently poor practices.
Tourism has its difficulties. Along with modifying it to become ranging has costs, one of the most fundamental ones was that of forming and internalizing a regional policy that the people of rural areas hold ranging in trust for all citizens. In doing so they offer untold benefits of variable amounts and quality from which they experience economic activity, personal pleasures, extra land values, and recreational benefits for themselves. That regional policy would be slowly growing. There are too many uncoordinated agencies groups and enterprises, each too small, all stressed by doubts about their existence. Some are in bankruptcy, but some are large and independent but noticing major changes in society. Cooperation now is only for direct short-term group gains, not the collective whole over time. Such holistic work is likely to be more beneficial, with greater cost effectiveness, and with greater group gains over time than current independence. Regional benefits will increase with the speed of the growth of the policy.
It seemed to me that tourism for each small community largely connotes sales of food, lodging, transportation and souvenirs. There are many glowing reports of the tourism industry in Virginia, of the visitors, and especially the gains. The source, assumptions, extrapolations, and accuracy of the included figures need to be questioned, but especially the very concept that tourism is good for a county. The good that it does is listed in categories of camps, guides, charter boats, transportation, lodging, food, retailers, clothing and equipment suppliers, and others. Perhaps questions (beyond those already present) are needed about the proportion of "extra" monies brought to a community, the stresses and frustrations, the seasonal instabilities, low salaries and wages, and the unequal impacts and costs to communities paid from common taxes.
The goodness of ranging must be expressed in expected net positive gains over a period of 150 years. The costs of erosion, lost agricultural lands to parking areas, increased crime, reduced safety (e.g., water sports, hunting, contagious disease), loss of family connections and lost ease of visiting, uncontrolled signage, and prospects for bad public relations must be estimated. What is the value of cheapening a county? Tourism is not for profits for the few at the expense of the many. The emphasis must be on regional financial and quality of life gains, not tourists or car counts.
Tourism tends toward cultural sites, state and national public areas, and theme parks. Casagrande and Rinaldt (2002) believed that it is "… difficult, if not impossible, to formulate policies that guarantee that tourism can be maintained for a long time without severely impacting on the environment. It can be sustained "… provided agents are prudent about reinvesting their profits and are willing to protect the environment." They warned, though, "…unforeseen shocks can easily trigger a switch from a profitable and compatible behavior to an unprofitable or incompatible one."
"Ecotourism" has emerged and within a few years it has become as diverse as the people writing about it. There are lame definitions such as: Diverse tourism that includes a major part of interest, activities, and successes related to ecological topics, environmental awareness and education, and experiencing the outdoor nature of places to which people travel. It includes the services and structures that support these activities. It includes the impacts, positive and negative, of such activities on the environment and human communities. (Hector Ceballos-Lascurain, Mexico, is said to have coined the word in 1983.)
Ranging is tourism and ecotourism (and some others such as nature tourism, adventure tourism, etc.) with the poorly-hidden objective of achieving and sustaining a high quality outdoor, rural, and wildland environment. It includes, for example, hunting and fishing, neither of which is usually listed with tourism or even ecotourism activities and appeals. I think that for many hunters, hunting is seasonal tourism. I see no reason to separate "tourists" from sightseers, local berry pickers, or hunters. There are ways that residents as well as active people that travel from afar or just between counties may likely spend money in rural areas.
Very closely linked to that objective for the environment is a premise that confounds the definition. It is that ranging is for profits for rural people, part of which is used in restoring, enhancing, and maintaining a superior environment. This clarification does not bring out of the shadows other objectives of ranging which include communicating pride, teaching history, and maintaining rural communities. They remain in the background for they are dependent first and foremost on profits for financially stable, strong, lasting communities of people with a love of their region. "A profit" is the key phrase, and it must not be missed within the complexity.
Proponents of tourism need to clarify "money spent" by tourists. They need to clarify who are these tourists and with whom they are spending such money. Are they public representatives of the people of the county or of distant investors and owners of major local facilities like restaurants, motels, campgrounds, etc.? Are they representatives of international industries selling major tourist vehicles and equipment or clothing? There's a difference in their objectives and the flow of money that results from tourism programs.
Different groups need fairly constant or gradually increasing expenditures and, depending on whether or how they confess having a public or private interest, they want positive net gains for the easily-seen costs and income. There are other costs and risks that are rarely accounted and that is likely to continue. There is great difficulty in clear accounting for tourism and high likelihood of over weighting income and gains and under-weighting costs, losses, and risks. Volunteers subsidizing an effort cannot be viewed as stable "income," even if judged "sustainable." Difficulty must not stop the work. At least fairly conventional present-discounted expected costs must be included in the computations. Tourism has to be profitable -- measured in long-term present-discounted expected net value of the total system. Merely attracting increasing amounts of money to be spent in a county will not suffice. It can be hurtful to a community.
I've read, attended conferences, and thought about outdoor recreation for 30 years. There are exorbitant claims, perhaps prayers, that tourism is the financial hope of many depressed areas. I've discussed ecotourism with leaders in India, and Nigeria and studied the potentials for southwestern Virginia within its coalfield. I had discussions throughout Senegal, Africa in the early 1990s about ecotourism and the hope of bringing tourists from around the world to experience the wildlife of the country, especially that of the World Park, Nikolokoba. It was a good idea, but the costs far exceeded the gains, the conditions were limited, the experiences were not diverse, the travel was difficult, and one hotel owner frankly said, "Do not send us any Americans," quickly explaining that his hotel conditions were far below the patrons' expectations and usual accommodations. They request services and facilities that cannot be met and then spread undesirable reports about his place and their experience. Word-of-mouth advertising by disappointed guests was not what he wanted.
Ranging was emerging as type of tourism system that can be a living system, thus financially viable. "Sustained" is excessively difficult to describe (but my understanding is in Chapter 8). Something may be sustainable, have all of the characteristics, but due to management or almost random events, not actually be sustained - at least not by a set of criteria for that condition in current use.
Ranging with local touches, can clarify how each region as unique. It capitalizes on superior land management in and around the county. The Ranging Group within Rural System improves economic conditions for businesses and citizens. It busies itself with:
It works through Rural System enterprises of the Nature Folks group with units of Owls, Coyote, Covey, Raccoon, Turkey, Deer, Bobcats and Bear. It sponsors and conducts writers' camps, photography and writing contests, builds hiking and biking trails, provides guide services, sells products and equipment as well as their services, conducts local, regional, national, and international tours, and provides software services and educational products (e.g., computer maps and land management advice).
In this area, now Rural System is the means to assist in implementing ranging. Ranging requires this dynamic enterprise working to promote the concept, develop the ecological and environmental conditions and services for lasting profitability of such activities, and to make the rewards of success notable. It is devoted to describing and eventually implementing a modern system of management that that is internationally known and copied. The company itself provides employment and an operational center for much innovative outdoor recreation and related activities for citizens as well as for visitors to the county and the region. It practices modern sophisticated computer-enhanced resource management on private lands and that allows ranging to be profitable over the long run. The region is co-dependent upon stable resources and ranging.
When I visited Senegal and took a hot, difficult drive to see Nikolokoba Park, I realized how many places there were along the way at which I wanted to stop and to see and to study structures, plantations, and ceremonies. The stops could have been both healthful as well as interesting in the long drive. There appeared to me to be a need for, at least an opportunity for rich and varied experiences… in addition to that at the destination. There were few tourists, thus the first-force questions had to be answered about adequate markets before investment or risky borrowing to develop first the "the markets." Even single-minded and destination-specific travelers can find interesting sights and experiences among stop along the way to some destination or along a circular route.
I perceived that the only solution to the problems and adversities of tourism was to re-think the entire activity, renaming it in order to escape the force-fields of past thought, programs, agencies, and even built structures (e.g., parking lots and trails and lecture podiums). That thought started and is continuing with the objective of profit followed by the desire for:
Then came mapping the fuzzy boundary, the region of primary work and advertising, naming (and surely having to debate) the long planning horizon of 150 years, then naming the interactive parts of the system. These became:
The relations are fairly evident and the following list of functions suggests elements of a model on which staff have worked with continual feedback:
Not surprising, Casagrande and Rinaldt (2002) found many others "confirm the impression that human short-sightedness and greed can make sustainability an unattainable goal." There had to be some way to achieve a proportion of the revenues generated by ranging to be invested (as suggested above) in improving the region. Ranging action in a place needs to be managed (as a product life cycle or a pattern of ecological succession) or it will go though a series of stages, ending in stagnation and failure (when net gains are sparse). Any failure in the above can cause a system to be judged to have failed, thus to be un-sustained. Whether it was unsustainable (by design or by initial condition) needs further analysis. If unsustainability can be determined before start-up, then failures (and their high human and financial losses) can be avoided.
In one part of Virginia there is a long sector of the Appalachian Trail, a national trail that goes from Maine to Georgia. About 200,000 hikers use that sector of the Trail each year. Of course the forested trail must be maintained and the campsites for backpackers kept in good repair, but the spectacular seasonal beauty of the Trail, at least throughout most of Virginia, is due to the vast green pastures and colorful trees below the trail. The trail is largely on public land; the pastures are private lowlands. If the trail is to bring users and their involvement in the enterprise, the pastures must be maintained. To do that requires alternate, perhaps new, strategies. The county must be "right" if hiking and all of its financial dimensions are to be exploited. The pasture owners cannot be asked to subsidize hiking. (Oh, they can be, and some have been, but they have refused for good reason, and baseless strife has resulted… and persists.) We have to fit the contributors with the benefactors. That was underway.
Lasting profitable ranging systems seem to require:
Unlike current public recreation, ranging now includes active management of those people participating. It actively shapes and molds preferences, knowledge, and behaviors and adjusts local plans, zones, and education to be responsive to the people being changed. It is continually seeking new markets, reducing costs, and altering pricing. By forming memberships and making Internet sites available, it is continually educating, advertising, providing feedback to participants, and collecting information on attitudes, experiences, problem areas, and successes.
Membership is made visible (cards, emblems, flags, clothing, and published material with symbols for advanced stages or "wins") to meet some participant needs. Global in view, ranging empowers each staff member to make changes that are appropriate to improve the clients' satisfaction. Staff is always trying to gain more client satisfaction, reduce the number of complaints, have a generally clean and orderly appearance, display a locally relevant and photogenic "look," and maintain high employee morale. Rural System's staff takes complaints and reports of uncertainty and uses them to pry ideas and results of studies out into corrective responses. Complaints (or reasons for not participating) seem to be common ones, and many are not ranging-specific, thus limiting the need for truly innovate work. Typical complaints of participants are:
Group administrators worked from a checklist as they observed behaviors, discussed experiences, and played the visitor's role to evaluate conditions and decide on priorities for taking action among:
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| Impacts (I) increase with use, then reach a high level that causes decreased participation, then they decrease (but have continuing impact). Suppressing impacts to some small level (before it occurs in the absence of users and their effects, perhaps by reducing use or raising costs (but increasing the quality of the experiences … thus the R score) can allow a working system to be stabilized. The work is very difficult and costly and financial analyses are needed, at least as much as environmental impact analyses in unified models. |
Well aware of the debates about the meaning of quality and whether it can be well measured or evaluated, we work with approximate, first-reaction numerical expressions of users, typically a scale of 0 to 10. We ask a dozen questions (often couched as acceptability) about:
Asking about more factors than a few of these takes excessive time and yields highly diverse results. Each quality expression factor is evaluated by computer (shown graphically) as:
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| The acceptability or desirability of conditions and factors are influenced by crowding and thus suggest aminimum condition for managerial responses. |
Staff knows that each Rural System tract has its own story. Many Rural System Tracts have parcels with their own story. Staff perceive each parcel as potentially seen from many perspectives, and thus with a view open to others to the extent of their ability to communicate it. The same parcel, the same tree, the same gully is a different story on each day before a different listener, school group, or visitor from India. Rarely are the stories told. Not only are there mountains of technical details about each, there are states of mind to be worked and used: opportunity, adventure, freedom, pride, and wonder…and humor. All require sensitivity to the times, to culture, socioeconomic class, race, national origin, and gender. "Sensitivity" can suppress essential education as it has done in Cooperative Extension service work for so long. "Put lime on a pasture to enhance food for cattle as well as to grow dense plants to reduce soil washing into the lakes behind your government-built dam" sounds like an improved-land-use message. It will be just such a message until seemingly-discourteous members of the audience raise the political dimensions of fertilizer programs for aiding farmers, beef quality and nutritional needs, farm subsidy issues, local interstate transportation of livestock, and hydropower. Public agency speakers soon resort to uncontroversial how to identify flowers, build a bird house, or fillet a fish. Rural System is not public.
For most programs in ranging, we have required learning the rules before memberships can be bought. Instruction influences the insurance rates. Insurance is an important part of membership. Each candidate passed through a TV presentation about the rules with examples of violations, consequences of not following the rules, and incentives for following them. An Internet quiz enabled evaluation of minimum knowledge for a sample of participants. Passage allowed them to carry an arm band, emblem, or membership card. Guests of members do not have to be members. Refresher-rules appeared, singly, at various places on the grounds and in presentations. Assuming that people know the rules of the outdoors, outdoors etiquette, and reasonable group behavior is no longer appropriate for land managers. Participants in ranging are now urban, without outdoor experiences, and members must be taught … and whether they know the rules needs to be evaluated. This protects the landowner, the hikers and bikers, and the land. Simple rules are not known such as for stopping and standing at a spot while smoking a cigarette, then shredding the final part. Preventing wildfire, even in the age of over-inflated needs for prescribed burns, is still a good idea on Rural System Tracts.
Next is Chapter 19 on dynamic planning systems, potentially useful within ranging and in many other ways.
See http://www.insidevtknowledgeworks.com/2009/04/green-computing.html
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