Table of Contents

Left aside whether the chosen level would indeed be the most appropriate, Agenda 21 calls on national authorities to establish national councils for sustainable development for the realization of participation by social groups. This chapter 38 initiative has had widespread following and has led to the establishment of national, regional and global fora for these national councils.

This paper aims at evaluating their effectiveness in terms of input and output: which groups are involved in what way (input) and what do they contribute in terms of participatory Praxis and effects (output).

The evaluation is based on the analysis - through effective interviewing and field research - of the Belgian, the Swedish and the Finnish national councils. Depending on the participatory tradition of the different countries we see very different outcomes, which leads to the conclusion that CSD's are not as such effective in promoting participation. They have to be seen as part of a participatory institutional context to which they can contribute.

The traditional approach in theoretical works on participation tends to be on the input of social groups (stake holders) during agenda setting and/or early stages of actual policy making. The emphasis is thus on providing stakeholders with 'a say' in the (early) planning stages of policymaking. This approach is congruent with the overwhelming majority of the observed praxis in most countries in Europe.

This paper suggests that:

1. This approach and praxis ignores the history of public participation which has been based on 'legitimacy through action' first and then 'having a say in negotiation' later which has been observed during the 20th century when groups found their way to policy making processes (unions, health groups, early environmental movements, peace movements, etc.)

2. This reductionist approach limits the possibilities for much broader input in policy processes during implementation and feedback stages.

3. The approach tends to formalize participation to the extent that only recognized; official and 'sanctioned' participation becomes visible in analysis.

Using Local Agenda 21 in Western European countries as an example this paper demonstrates the importance of broader, more action oriented participatory processes to strengthen local policy making by engaging more local capacity.

This paper describes and analyses how public and individual action has been modeled in UK sustainable development policy and environmental management. The extent to which these deliberative approaches have made the decision-making process more open and transparent, have had learned lessons from North America about consensus building will be critically appraised.

A range of official bodies with responsibility for encouraging and delivering environmental sustainability (through such policy domains as environmental planning, regulation, nature conservation, rural recreation), now have a duty to 'consult' with the general public and to maximize their input into decision-making and policy implementation on the environment. A range of techniques have developed that have attempted to move away from a solely economic appraisal of the environment, towards a more qualitative, human-centered and deliberative involvement. These techniques have been criticized, on the one hand, as subjective and producing ill-defined results for environmental managers to use. On the other hand, they are also regarded as poor models of inclusion and not properly engaging a full range of concerned publics. Using a series of UK and examples, this paper will

discuss whether deliberative participatory practices use the public as 'tools' to deliver environmental objectives, or whether they are a reconfiguration towards a more open and democratic forum of environmental management

Analysts seem to be coming to consensus that environmental politics has entered a "second generation." In the first, politics followed a centralized pluralist model: interest groups formed about specific issues, transferred their work to Washington, D.C., and fought for the passage of environmental protections. Environmental leadership in this first generation came from a collection of Washington-based organizations known by insiders as the "Group of Ten." This Group of Ten still commands Washington environmental politics, however, in the past decade their influence on the policy process has waned as a second generation of more local and ostensibly more participatory processes has come into prominence. These second-generation policy making efforts are united by an attempt to formulate policy closer to its point of implementation and through the participation of individuals from an array of backgrounds and interest. Predictably, in the rare instances when the organizational members of the Group of Ten have reacted to this policy making trend, the reaction has been negative. This paper will assess this reaction to participatory localism by these prominent environmental groups.

While tourism and agri/aquaculture are vital components of many economies, the two sectors are not always characterized by particularly harmonious relations. Many commentators argue that economic linkages between these sectors require further strengthening. Others point to the conflicts that arise over differing uses of scarce terrestrial and marine resources. In this paper we review past attempts to understand and improve the relationships between tourism and agri/aquaculture. We then move on to outline how innovative information technology applications can assist in creating a closer alliance between these two important sectors and in improving prospects for community economic development.

Considerable fiscal and other resources have been allocated to Maryland's rural protection programs; employing various public policy justifications: traditional notions of the public good in both planning policy and ecological protection, and the less traditional notion of protecting cultural resources in landscape and history. We question whether these programs efficiently achieve any of their goals. Using ethnographical fieldwork in fishing and farming communities, and policy analysis of the programs themselves, we collected sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that presently rural protection in Maryland is more a form of neighborhood and class protection for recent and new migrants from city and suburban neighborhoods, most of whom are middle and upper class, than it is protection for "authentic" rural people, their livelihoods, and traditions. We conclude that adoption of Maryland's programs across the United States and in other countries should not take place without careful policy consideration of their goals and socio-economic effects.

In Eastern and Central Africa there occur some of the most remarkable ecosystems, unique natural phenomenon and concentrated wildlife populations on the planet. Concomitantly, this region is characterized by political and economic instability, rapid population growth, and some of the lowest per capita annual incomes in the world. Across these increasingly threatened and often fragile environments, the challenge to identify new ways to conserve biodiversity and meet evolving human needs is both immediate and critical among conservation and development organizations alike. The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has developed two new and innovative programs to improve wildlife conservation, natural resource management and rural livelihoods in the region. Firstly, the African Heartlands Program (AH) works to link protected areas with public and private lands to improve biodiversity conservation and maintain ecological processes across a large landscape. The AH aims to bring together diverse landholders, resource users and resource managers to develop and implement long-term "landscape conservation" plans for areas that encompass national parks and reserves, as well as the community and private lands that border them. Examples of existing African Heartlands include Amboseli-Longido, Tarangire-Manyara and Greater Virungas. Secondly, the Conservation Services Centers (CSC) Program works with government and non-government organizations, the private sector and communities to develop and diversify nature-based enterprises and other tourism-related businesses. The CSC also works to develop local ("community level") capacity to manage and sustain these enterprises, increasing the equitable distribution of the benefits within communities, and expand the role of local organizations and communities in conservation decision-making. This paper will review the AH and CSC programs' goals, activities and successes on the ground, and the challenges they currently face in Easter and Central Africa.

The designation of some portions of rural America as "wilderness" presents residents of such regions with a number of problems. These are political, economic, cultural, and broadly ideological. Politically, regional land-use control associated with designated wilderness consolidates state control over local land use in ways which are inconsistent with doctrines of local control and personal property rights operating in society broadly. Rural residents, then, find their landscape and development decisions pre-empted by appointed officials and state bureaucracies in ways which may lack political legitimacy. With relatively small populations, rural regions cannot utilize the political process for balancing the interests of their residents against state-mandated agendas.

Without the ability to shape land use, local communities cannot make the decisions which may enhance their economies. To the extent that wilderness designation and regional land-use regulation promotes the decline of traditional occupations, it removes the material basis for historic patterns of community culture and identity. Regional zoning, by appointed officials, to protect wilderness areas requires ideological justification, including assumptions about the clearer moral vision and technical competence of state bureaucracies. In the system of wilderness area designation and safeguarding presently in place in the United States, the environmental movement acts as the guardian of this moral vision. Lacking land-use controls to promote economic vitality, rural residents may develop a political culture characterized by resentment and protest rather than efforts at collective community-based self-definition.

This paper seeks to provide what is lacking in the literature on wilderness preservation: a model of rural land use which is both environmentally sensitive and which empowers local residents and communities as active participants shaping their own rural ways of life.

The Gray Wolf, Canis lupus, historically occupied most of North America. Official extermination of large predators began in the Western United States in 1914. 1944 marked the last documented wild wolf killed in Yellowstone. Yellowstone, established in 1972 as the first National Park of the U.S., is an extremely symbolic location comprised of multiple dynamics. The passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), and the subsequent listing of the original wolf of Yellowstone, Canis lupus irremotus, as endangered opened a door to reintroduction efforts. The ESA created a mandate that the U.S. government must attempt by all means possible to recover the populations of species listed as endangered. This analysis will review the procedures taken to reintroduce endangered gray wolves into the Greater Yellowstone Area and Yellowstone National Park. The process to implement policy into action took over twenty years in this case. This analysis reveals lessons that may be learned from the successes and setbacks of the wolf reintroduction process.

In the course of history, humans have conducted several long-term "agricultural experiments" in terms of different types of agricultural systems. An improved knowledge on the environmental impact of these agricultural systems could form an important basis for decisions on agricultural management strategies and for the shaping of an ecologically sustainable agriculture. For instance, palaeoecological reconstruction of environmental conditions in pre-industrial southern Sweden suggested that the expansion of an agrarian economy during the Iron Age resulted in an enhanced transport of nutrients from soils to surface waters. This resulted in, e.g., an increase in pH in acid sensitive lakes 96 a situation that prevailed until the 19th century, when acidification started due to acid deposition and probably altered land use. A similar situation has also been interpreted from a study of the environmental impact of Medieval mountain pastures in northern Sweden. Such early agricultural impacts probably made these ecosystems more sensitive to modern airborne pollution. The pre-industrial environmental development, which is often referred to as natural, is more dynamic than usually recognized. The study raises the questions about what is an "acceptable" agricultural impact, and what "restoration" means in environmental management. These are not merely scientific questions with experimentally confirmed answers, but questions of values and valuation.

An aging society presents many potential challenges to preserving and enhancing the environment and thus represents both as an opportunity and a challenge in the next century. Changes in resource demand due to population aging may be as significant as changes due to population increase. Conversely, an aging society may also point the way to effective strategies of environmental protection and sustainable communities. This presentation will focus on the environmental and economic impact of retirement "hot spots" using the microcosm of southwestern Utah as a geographic case study example. The phrase "hot spot" conveys the dynamic of rapid demographic and economic growth associated with older age groups is a specific geographic area that is characterized by an abundance of natural environmental resources. A significant number of older adults relocate in their retirement years and migrate to gateway communities (In Search of Arcadia) that offer amenities associated with landscapes that offer scenic beauty and recreational opportunities. However, these "hot spots" often lead to rapid development and sprawl, thus altering the "quality of life" in the area and creating challenges of land use planning. Implications of aging society for human ecology are discussed.

This presentation shows the result of the prediction of the environment load by human behaviors. This prediction was done using a change in the population structure, environment preservation behaviors that differ from the generations, and "Eco-points" which show the environment load for each behavior.

According to my former research, it was clear that elderly generations are more environmental-friendly than younger generations in Japan. People those who have experiences in suffering from the storage of supplies during and after the World War II tended to hate wasting. However, baby-boomer generation, which was born postwar, is expected to be the center of upcoming aging society in Japan. The first generation introduced lifestyles consuming large quantities. IN my prediction, the environmental load will decrease in 20 years, supposing that the boomers continue today fs their lifestyles in the future, because the volume of the older generations than boomers will have less influences on the environmental loads.

The paper offers an argument justifying biography of ecosystems as a useful methodology in Human Ecology. It describes traditional biography in literary practice and outlines the objectives of the biographical method in social science. Following this outline of biography’s place in a methodological continuum, the paper locates biography as method within the parallel ideological continuum of the ecological academic disciplines.

Biography, then, is a method of epistemological and ideological significance in ecological inquiry justified most effectively via philosophical discussion of method offered by Feyerabend and some of his critics. The paper offers several literary examples of ecosystemic biography. Finally, it concludes with implications for research and practice.

INCLUDE (Integrated-science and Community-based values in Land Use Decisionmaking), an activity of the USGS Center for Science Policy, engages decision-makers, community stakeholders, and various discipline experts in a collaborative process to make decisions about land use and environmental policy. An important, and perhaps unique, element of an INCLUDE project is the use of science synthesizers, individuals who have an appreciation for and understanding of a wide range of natural and social science disciplines and the humanities, as translators of complex information.

The INCLUDE process is the foundation of a project that addresses land use and environmental policy issues in a small urbanized watershed in northern California. Thousands of communities in small watersheds across the nation are or will be facing issues of flooding, habitat restoration, aging dams, and stream impairment by sediment and pollutants from non-point sources. There is an immediate need to develop a participatory decision support system based on sound science that incorporates economic information and community values that will help inform decisions on these issues. These issues are vexing decisionmakers in San Francisquito Watershed, California. Here municipal governments, regional and state regulatory boards and resource agencies are partnering with USGS to develop an integrated decision support system. Diverse values need to be considered by environmental managers as they develop a plan that accommodates both the ecological needs of the watershed and the sometimes conflicting land use desires of the community. The Creek Project engages citizens in an adaptive planning and management process

Social and government institutions tend to reflect the culture of their times. Thus, the current shift in the role of government institutions reflects the change in societal concerns over the last several decades. The shift from issues of resource use to the consequences of that use has given rise to an increasing concern over environmental issues and the recognition that there are limits to our ability to exploit our planet. Acknowledgment of these limits requires that we make choices, and the public is asserting itself in the debate over choices. The Smart Growth caucus is one manifestation of the growing public concern over the consequences of unchecked growth.

In the decision-making process in the public arena, the choices involve conflicting values, which are beyond the traditional scope of government science agencies such as the USGS. The humanities component of the USGS INCLUDE (Integrated-science and Community-based values in Land-Use Decision making) is an effort to define and articulate the community values that are beyond the scientific and economic aspects of the concern but figure prominently in land-use decisions. The INCLUDE approach is to engage stakeholders directly in the definition of land-use issues to ensure that the science we do truly reflects the needs of the citizenry. The humanities component of INCLUDE addresses the "values" issues, which, although intangible and often resistant to quantification, may override other considerations (scientific and economic) in the decision-making process.

Traditional land management has produced many serious problems in the United States, such as land fragmentation resulting from suburban expansion; this can undermine conservation efforts and community development by reducing connectivity and communication. However, new land management strategies are involving more landowners in voluntary partnerships that can promote conservation while still allowing development. These strategies focus on crossing social, political, and ecological boundaries.

A case study of seventy-six landowners in Brooks Township in western Michigan was employed to assess the effectiveness of community participation in developing a uniquely proactive Land Use Vision. Although no statistically significant relationships were found, two important conclusions can be drawn from the study. Through partnerships between citizens, government, and conservation organizations, a diverse mixture of proactive planning, education, and new leadership roles can prevent, or control, a number of negative externalities resulting form suburban expansion. However, creating the right incentives for voluntary participation represents a significant challenge for further conservation and community development.

For the past century and a half the Yellowstone River and Paradise Valley, its waters, floodplains, and riparian areas have provided battlegrounds over use, abuse, and preservation. Disputes sometimes led to violence. But, over time U.S. federal, state, and private democratic institutions have evolved to provide an alternative to a "showdown at the OK Corral."

Over the millennia, the Yellowstone River had eroded a narrow opening through limestone formations at Allenspur Gap. Here the river leaves the Paradise Valley as it flows toward Livingston, Montana. Beginning in 1902, some Livingston, Montana citizens proposed constructing a dam in this canyon, financed by St. Louis capitalists. During subsequent years various private and public studies and schemes proposed to harness the water and power of the Yellowstone at the gap, which would have inundated the valley with a thirty-one mile lake.

Government agencies, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and Federal Power Commission, committees like the North Central Power Study Coordinating Committee, and politicians including the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, Senator Thomas J. Walsh and Congressman James F. O’Conner of Montana expressed designs and opinions on the fate of the Yellowstone. At the state level Governor Dixon, the Montana Fish and Game Commission, Montana Legislature, Montana Environmental Quality Council, and Yellowstone County (Montana) Commissioners also expressed their varied desires. The Livingston Chamber of Commerce, Livingston Special Dam Committee, Livingston Enterprise, local and national environmental organizations represented private citizens’ concerns in this struggle.

This paper examines the long battle among these various democratic institutions to determine which visions for the use of Yellowstone River ecosystems would take precedence and serve as the core for sustainability.

Natural resource management is becoming more complex as the number of participants in the decision making process continues to increase. Land managers are now required to cooperate with a variety of public and private interest groups when making resource management decisions. These stakeholders have conflicting values, objectives, and preferences about resource management. Institutional factors will determine the roles and levels of power each stakeholder has for influencing the policy outcome. For successful collaborative planning, managers must understand the opinions and values of the involved stakeholders as well as the complex institutional constraints and opportunities that influence the decision-making process. One such case is the planning process for the Jackson bison and elk management plan. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has initiated a planning process to manage bison and elk herds that winter primarily on the National Elk Refuge (NER) in Jackson, Wyoming and surrounding public lands. USFWS and NER, together with the National Park Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department have acknowledged the need for a comprehensive management plan for these "Jackson Herds." The intent of this research is to aid the Jackson Elk and Bison Management Planning decision making process by providing meaningful information about stakeholders' preferences and their ability to influence the decision making process. A form of decision analysis will be applied to this problem, using the "Legal Institutional Analysis Mode" to aid in accomplishing this application.

The Human Ecology Theme House (HETH) officially began in April 1999, an innovative experiment in combining Human Ecology teaching and research with a University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) residence. IT is a charming three-bedroom house on the edge of the campus. The house heeds renovation and the goal of the first phase of the partnership has been an environmentally friendly renovation.

The integrative effect of this experiment is proving instructive. It is also "fraught with educational opportunities 1) for the U of A campus, 2) for the academic sphere of the university 3) for the larger community:

1) Daily management of the university is usually a quite separate backdrop to the academic activities that take place on campus. The role of the HETH in cross-cutting the usually separate jurisdictions of Housing and Food Services, Facilities Management, and Academic programs has given rise to unusual and unexpected challenges that point to the importance of the house as a catalyst for greening the university.

2) The green management and renovation of a household on campus has not been recognized as research within the academic sphere of the university. Nevertheless, it is only in the process of renovating and managing the house that the principles of sustainability may be realized. The logocentric bias of the university/academe is shown to be an impediment to realizing important change towards sustainability.

3) The profile of the house within the community allows it to fill a leadership role. It thereby also becomes contested terrain on which different institution within the community wish to lay claim. The political management of community relations is a significant component of the process of sustainability.

This paper will outline the challenges experienced with respect to this house, the potential of the HETH experiment, and the successes to date.

Since the 1970's, environmental issues have become more prominent in the design world, which has affected relationships between industry, consumers and culture. A sustainable design model employs a complex methodology requiring an understanding of materials, production processes, people and cultures in an attempt to design holistically for humanity.

This presentation will outline the ways in which principles of sustainable design can be applied practically to a set of design problems. The Human Ecology Theme House (HETH) is a three-bedroom, University of Alberta residence built in 1926. In collaboration between professionals and academia, the kitchen is the first phase of a two-year plan for sustainable refurbishment of HETH. The kitchen plans will be discussed as an example of ecodesign in progress. A sustainable model, as applied to HETH, demonstrates how theory can be applied to the design of a domestic interior and with what environmental and ecological consequences.

The Human Ecology Theme House is a University of Alberta residence designated for Human Ecology students and programs. Our project focuses on converting this 1926 home to one that is environmentally sustainable, comfortable, healthy and energy-efficient. One of the main components, based on the findings of the federal Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, is to develop and energy plan of the house. Consumption of energy in Canada is not sustainable, and dwellings constitute a large portion of this use. Our goal then is to develop a strategy for bringing the energy use of the house in line with targets determined by the Kyoto Protocol, perhaps even surpassing them. The energy plan and its associated decision-making processes will be made available to the public in a variety of ways, such as workshops, a webs site and publications. In this way it is hoped that the house can serve as a valuable resource and model for the community at large, assisting in a more general effort to live sustainability.

The aim of this ongoing project* is to develop effective methods of increasing households 92 capacity for ecologically informed decisions related to food management in everyday life. An action research approach is used.

The project is a joint endeavor between the Department of Home Economics, Goteborg University and the Environmental Strategic Research Group. The latter is a joint undertaking between the Swedish Defense Research Establishment (FOA) and the Department of System Ecology, Stockholm University.

In a healthy environment all life thrives, recovery from perturbations occurs, and there is long-term ecological integrity. The components of a healthy environment form a web of complex interdependent relationships whether the study subject is a cell, an individual organism, an ocean, planet Earth, or a city. The environment of Keene, New Hampshire, is the subject of this study. Ten indicator categories: air, water, land use, waste, energy, transportation, business and industry, occupational health, community health, and city government re the foundation of this healthy environment assessment. Data are presented on selected indicators in each category from city, state, and federal reports and from interviews with government and organizational representatives. A healthy environment in Keene is indicated by a number of positive findings: general compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards; abundant supply of clean water; a significant percentage of open and protected land; a recently upgraded solid waste/recycling facility; energy conservation awareness including participation in the Rebuild America program; traffic redesign in process with development of multi-use trail system for alternative transportation use; light manufacturing and some industry pollution prevention initiatives; few hazardous jobs and good health and safety compliance; a community health council committed to improving human health;; and a city government committed to maintaining a healthy environment and economic vitality. Findings indicating that a healthy environment in Keene may be at risk include: seasonal high levels of ground-level ozone and particulate matter; seasonally high drinking water levels of trihalomethanes; open space lost to development of industry and commerce; household hazardous waste generation and high poundage per day per capita of solid waste; primary reliance on nonrenewable energy sources; minimal public transportation; potential hazardous material transportation incidents; business and industry hazardous waster generation; workplace chemical exposures; and potential compromise of Master Plans. The environmental indicator model used in this study has potential for measuring and tracking Keene's environment and for acting as a tool for policy development aimed at improving and preventing decline of the city's healthy environment. Communities beyond Keene may find this healthy environment model useful.

The National Trails System of the United States is today comprised of 20 national scenic and historic trails/trail corridors recognized by the Congress. This paper describes activities over the past four years to determine interest in one of the twenty--the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, a corridor between the Chesapeake Bay and the Allegheny Highlands (upper Ohio River Basin of western Pennsylvania)--and efforts to develop a concept for use of the designation by local jurisdictions and a set of federal administrative roles based on significant participation and responsibilities assumed by NGOs. The experience provides an opportunity to discuss topics associated with the conference theme: public participation and community-based conservation; regional planning; and sustainability.

While a number of researchers have examined environmental degradation as an outcome of social processes, there is a dearth of research linking environmental degradation and well-being outcomes using a cross-national, quantitative approach. We develop a macro-level theoretical framework that builds on prior research in the sociology of health and the environment, and which draws on a number of intellectual traditions, including human ecology, demographic, institutional, modernization and world system theories. We adduce a number of hypotheses that address the direct effects of macro-social causes of infant mortality, as well as the indirect effects of those causes as they are mediated by resource depletion. We use national data collected from a number or sources, including the World Bank and World Resources Institute. Analysis of the data largely supports the hypotheses. Particularly noteworthy are the interaction effects of world system position with domestic variables such as urbanization and welfare spending. These effects on infant mortality operate directly and indirectly, as m3

Using Cuba, the Republic of South Africa and Mexico as examples, I show that globalization actually inverse the logic of Garret Hardin's analysis of the 'Tragedy of the Commons' when social goods are allocated at macroeconomic levels. Drawing on Heilbronner and others I show that classic capitalist development used privatization of commons to cause precisely the phenomena usually ascribed to common ownership of commons. I then argue that socialist solutions to commons problems - when based in community locales instead of state regimes - have succeeded in resolving key tensions in sustainability democratic development. I then argue that these models provide a framework for better understanding of the tensions in sustainability and democratic development. I then argue that these models provide a framework for better understanding of the tensions between local and global processes of development, democratization, sustainability and ecological deterioration - and specific strategies for practical action in "developing countries".

Development and demography are key to understanding the linkages between environmental degradation and poverty. Considerable debate surrounds the question of whether affluence or poverty is more to blame for degradation. In effect, both contribute to environmental degradation but in different ways (Mink: 1992: 1). Essentially, degradation is rooted in an unsustainable development process, while poverty is an outcome of such development: moreover, the poor suffer the effects of degradation, which such development engenders. Consequently, it is possible to visualize how poverty induced degradation, if and when it dos occur, tends to reflect inevasible responses, rather than deliberate and voluntary acts.

The objective of this paper is to provide analytical perspectives of Technology Transfer in the Global Warming Regime and its broader systemic impacts on the relations among environment, trade, economy, and development.

Technology Transfer (TT) is not everything but something you can find in most of multilateral negotiations for not only environment but also trade and development. I would like to proclaim, however, that TT would the first and the best thing to go with for fulfilling our goal of making the better system of living when we strategically bring past and current values into account, I.E. environment, trade, economy and development. And this case should have been given a significant attention by developing countries for their capacity building and sustainable development, or Clean Development Mechanism.

Since the 1992 Earth Summit non-governmental organizations, learned societies, secondary policymaking bodies, and national governments have been taking an active interest in sustainable consumption. For instance, the UN Commission for Sustainable Development and the OECD launched work programs to explore the issue. The councils of the Royal Society of London and the United States National Academy of Sciences released a joint statement in 1997 entitled "Towards Sustainable Consumption" calling for a "better understanding of human consumption and related behaviors and technologies." Sustainable consumption has also become central to the research and advocacy agendas of groups such as the International Organization of Consumer Unions. Despite the apparent emergence of sustainable consumption as a novel policy domain it has been very difficult to overcome a legacy of exclusively resourcist thinking with respect to the impacts of consumption on the environment.

At the same time, several branches of the social sciences have begun to develop an understanding of the social and cultural significance of consumption as a central feature of modernity. In a world of growing complexity material goods are important for reproducing social meaning and solidarity. In this sense, consumption is also a vehicle that gives people flexibility to define themselves, express who they are, and modify how others perceive them.

This paper seeks to link this body of social science research with environmental concerns about resource constraints and growing volumes of waste in an increasingly globalized economy. Such a synthesis promises to provide a more theoretically sound and empirically rigorous basis for environmental policies that will be part of any possible path toward more sustainable consumption.

As parents, we all have hopes and goals for our children’s future. Public education is a collective resource meant to prepare children for successful futures. In today’s multicultural societies, we see an increasingly complex mix of parent’s expectations and assumptions about educational programs. In light of current educational budgets, disagreement amongst parents on what those futures may be can result in a failure to work cooperatively in efforts to support and enhance school programming. Differences amongst parents related to culturally based norms, communication and decision-making styles can further exacerbate this situation.

This presentation will focus on this issue as experienced in a northern Canadian community made up of both aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups. Differing perceptions on the human ecology of education in the context of culture and locally situated knowledge are striking. Many aboriginal parents are concerned that without offering a locally relevant education that enhances the transmission of a culturally based identity children will not succeed. Non-aboriginal parents tend to see their children’s futures as based in the context of southern Canada and are concerned with meeting southern educational standards. The impact of these issues as being explored in current research will be discussed. Potential contribution to understanding the phenomena of cooperation in resource sharing in cross-cultural contexts will be presented.

Do teachers have a working hypothesis about learning in relation to time? From four interviews with teachers and professors, I contrasted their etic views of time in school with their emic views of learning time. Time in school in its etic form is the schedule with its testable variances of, summer and winter, morning and afternoon, blocks of 45 or 90-minute classes, total instruction time, and quality of engagement over time. These times in school are graded in standardized international tests that suggest American schools need to reevaluate time in school. The interviewees emic views of learning time in school differs from scheduled time for learning in school suggesting that the reevaluation of time in school be such that the differences in student's learning styles be recognized in the proposals of new schools schedules. This inquiry seems to verify that teachers understood learning times differed from time in school. The participants volunteered ways to improve the time in school and suggested that further research into year round schools is needed.

Data from the NLSY 97 was used to examine factors that improved the adolescent girl's adjustment. Using an ecological framework, the factors assessed on the Microsystem level were the mother-daughter attachment and the teacher-student attachment. On the mesosystem level were family-school involvement and family-peer involvement. It was found that all of these factors had a significant relationship to the adolescent girl's adjustment and that the combination of these factors were particularly efficacious

VEEN - The Virtual Environmental Educators Network is an initiative of the Children Trust, Bangladesh. VEEN seeks to promote networking among environmental educators across countries and regions. VEEN tries to network teachers to promote exchange of information and ideas, and foster mutually beneficial relationships amongst individuals and institutions involved in EE. VEEN is intimately linked to Trust's initiatives in Environmental Education for schools including the National Environmental Education Program in Schools (NEEPS) and the school eco-clubs program.

Grandparents comprise a unique group of skipped generation parents. Recent statistics indicate that well over three million children currently live with their grandparents in a home where no biological parent is present. Parental alcohol and other substance abuse, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, the death of one or both parents, divorce, child abuse and neglect, and other conditions are contemporary problems contributing to this expanding family typology. Many grandparent caregivers find their personal resources stretched to the limit. Issues of health, financial stability, and parenting are prominent. Grandchildren in the care of grandparents often exhibit multiple needs. A partnership was formed in Kent County, Michigan, in 1999 between Western Michigan University, the County Head Start Program, a rural public school district, and Spectrum Health, a new amalgam of several large hospitals under a single delivery system. The partnership’s goal was the development and implementation of a pilot project aimed at servicing custodial grandparents, their preschool aged grandchildren, and early childhood personnel. The pilot project was launched in December 1999. All three populations participated in pre- and post test assessments to determine the effectiveness of the services provided. Grandparents from both rural and urban sites were invited to participate in an eight week program focused on educational and support service provision. A second component of the program was to provide programs for the grandparented children, and the third programmatic component was focused on educating early childhood personnel about the unique strengths and challenges associated with grandparent-headed families. This presentation describes the program and measures its success.

Managerial ecology and democratic politics are embedded within a complex set of historical relationships. The institutions and processes of resource and environmental management have traditionally been the means by which a select few (managers) have side stepped democratic politics in favor of top-down administration. By assuming an unlimited human capacity to eliminate indeterminism and achieve certainty through technology and science, resource management has proven itself to be extremely undemocratic and unsustainable with respect to human and natural communities. Recent developments within human ecology have challenged resource management by shifting attention away from certainty, command, and control while emphasizing uncertainty, complexity, and coping. This shift within managerial ecology from "control" to "coping" strategies highlights the importance of the political that is the need to make decisions in the presence of conflict and in the absence of universal Truth. When knowledge is certain and control feasible, there is little perceived need for democratic politics, and administration often takes central stage. However, when irreducible uncertainty, partial knowledge, and the need for democratic consent are recognized the foundations upon which top-down management has been legitimized are disturbed and opened to democratic challenge. Adaptive planning and management emerges from this context as a broad number of citizens demand to be included in environmental decision making, while the knowledge of ecological science used to legitimate managerial interventions in the past is increasingly understood as being contingent and unable to provide certainty beyond narrow limits. This paper examines the shift within resource management from projects of "control" to projects of "coping." The need for democratic consent in the context of coping is emphasized by discussing the irreducible complexity and uncertainty that forms the context for most contemporary environmental issues. The paper’s central thesis is that resource and environmental management involves an unresolvable paradox between projects of "control" and "coping." Drawing on complex systems theory, postmodern philosophy, and radical democracy the paper will situate trends toward adaptive planning and management within "management-as-coping," while advocating the need for a strong democratic program to evolve beyond "management-as-control."

A fundamental condition for democracy is information not only about the condition of a community but also about eh choices it faces and the consequences of those choices. But understanding choices and consequences has traditionally been dependent on the expensive and limited personal service of experts. Recent developments are increasing the ability of managers and stakeholders to explore and project current conditions and alternative futures using place-based decision support systems. This presentation will outline a framework for PBDSS that incorporates both objective science and human values, and discuss recent activities promoting future development.

This presentation is devoted to the problem of eco-diagnostics. Eco-diagnostics is the study of ecological components of human consciousness, which influence ecological behaviour (i.e. behaviour regarding natural objects) and decisions concerning nature (e.g. burial of radioactive waste near settlements or dumping municipal waste in the forest). According to V. Yasvin and S. Deryabo, ecological consciousness has the following structure: patterns of ecological behaviour, values, and moral judgments about natural objects and interdictions. The other important component of ecological consciousness is cognitive complexity of personality, which can be investigated with psychosemantic tests such as Semantic Differential Techniques and Repertory Grids Test. The author will describe an empirical study based on such an approach, dealing with the social differences in the urban perception and estimation.

The 21st century will doubtless bring many challenges to the management of global commons. The paper deals with this problem, from local to global levels, and examines the evolution of political systems throughout the phases of the ecological history of humankind (Stephen Boyden's biohistorical model). There are intrinsic difficulties in the management of collective property systems and the implications for the development and improvement of democratic societal arrangements will also be discussed.

We are particularly interested in: 1) the behavioural/social traits and constraints of the original H. Sapiens ecological role as hunter/gatherer; 2) the organization and management of commons by traditional peasants and livestock raisers in the agricultural phase, such as those we have studied in Spain and abroad; 3) the current transition from the industrial/urban high energy phase to the very controversial globalized/high information society.

There is evidence showing the incompatibility between the omnipotent Market forces and the desirable advancement towards a sustainable society. The proclaimed freedom of the economic agents results in unsustainable lifestyles which are jeopardizing the prospects of survival and development of our complex humanized ecosystems. At present is hard to imagine how those lifestyles are going to be limited or controlled under the market rules in liberal democracies. Globalization and ecological sustainability will have to be based on different types of societal arrangements.

Medicinal plants reveal very important linkages of people and natural resources. This study, using quantitative ecological methods, show differences of gender and age in the knowledge of medicinal plants of the Atlantic Forest coast, Brazil. It focuses on medicinal plants as the main category of plants collected or cultivated by the caiçaras, the native inhabitants of the southeast Brazilian Atlantic Forest coast. We search for: i) general patterns of plant resource uses observed among caiçara communities, and cultural variations within the caiçara communities, such as based on gender and age; ii) specific patterns of uses, such as based on the category of medicinal plants (native, introduced or weed); iii) information that might contribute for the conservation of the Atlantic Forest. Data were collected through 458 interviews at 12 caiçara communities located at the coast of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo States. Plant specimens were collected for identification. The plants most frequently quoted are plants introduced or weeds, and are especially used to treat pains, fever, respiratory, and gastrointestinal disorders. We show the importance of gender and age in the knowledge on medicinal plants and its implication for the conservation of the system Caiçaras-Atlantic Forest.

Over the past decade in the former Soviet Union, radical political reforms have been accompanied by fast-paced social and economic changes. Much of the Russian economic establishment has been privatized, as the centrally planned system was transformed, with a redistribution of economic power from the federal center to regions and the entrepreneurs in them. These political and economic reforms have had drastic implications for social policy, the former welfare system and income distribution. Largely as a function of these social and political changes, there have been tremendous changes in environmental and health outcomes. Using newly available data for the eighty-nine regions of the former Soviet Union, we examine several of these environmental and health outcomes in the post-Perestroika era. We then develop multivariate statistical models relating these outcomes to a number of indicators of social transition. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that rapid social changes are accompanied by hypotheses; we find that rapid social changes are accompanied by dramatic changes in the environment and human wee-being. We conclude with a discussion of the human ecological implications of our findings.

At an increasing rate, the public is expressing its concern over the relationship between the ecosystems they are part of and their personal lives. Although this concern has historically been centered on the impact that humans have on ecosystems. More recently, this concern has shifted to the ecosystem's effect on human characteristics such as health-related issues and cathartic responses. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the connection between ecosystem health and quality of life issues such as human health. For example, in what ways does a damaged or dysfunctional ecosystem provide vectors that serve to impair human health and other quality of life indicators? In another example, does a lack of wildlands and wilderness areas provide a serious defacement of the human condition? Using the converse, how does direct involvement with a "healthy" natural environment enhance, both human health and perceptions of quality of life. This presentation concludes with a discussion on the "importance" of human health and other quality of life issues within the broader context of ecosystem management and policy making. That is, any policy-making on ecosystem management must include the effects those actions will have on human-health and quality of life issues or risk being considered ill conceived and unworkable by many of the stakeholders.

Like any natural resource, wildlife are the focus of differing values and interests in our society. The ability to deal with problems of wildlife, such as disease, requires processes that mediate potential conflicts between groups, legal jurisdictions, and ideologies. This poster describes initial steps to create a program for chronic wasting disease (CWD). CWD is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that affects both free ranging and captive elk and other cervids in the United States. A framework is offered for examining the roles of public and private organizations in finding partial solutions to complex disease situations.

In this paper, a survey of research work conducted on the spread of Malaria in the North Eastern States of India is presented regarding modelling, monitoring and prediction. It is noted that in these areas malaria is spread by lethal parasite called Plasmodium Falciparum. The role of reservoir population, who carries gametocytes in their blood, infecting biting mosquitoes, on the spread of Malaria will also be discussed. Further, the importance of immigration from neighboring countries influencing the spread of this disease will also be presented in the form of a case study.

In this paper, a non-linear model to study the spread of a carrier dependent infectious disease such as Measles, Cholera, T. B. etc. is proposed an analyzed by considering the effects of human ecology and demography. The logistic growth of carrier population caused by ecological and environmental factors in this habitat is taken into account in the model. Two types of demographics, namely, constant immigration and the logistic growth of human population are considered. The model is analyzed by using qualitative theory of different equations and simulation.

It is shown that as the density of the carrier population, caused by ecological and environmental factors, increases the infectious disease spreads faster and it becomes endemic. The growth of human population due to demographic changes further enhances the spread of infectious disease. The study suggests that to control the spread of infectious diseases, various ecological, environmental factors as well as human population should be controlled.

There are many governmental and non-governmental institutions in Russia whose declared main focus ins water quality monitoring and watershed protection. Currently, governmental and academic institutions are struggling because of the Russian economic and financial crisis. Many of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in protecting watersheds focus their efforts mainly on educating youth. As part of their educational programs they often develop water-monitoring programs, but their data is never used by scientists and decision makers. There have been some cooperative efforts for watershed protection between governmental and non-governmental institutions; however, there is currently no substantial cooperative program that includes citizen stakeholders in the data collection and policy development making process.

At this time the overall level of involvement of the Russian Public in environmental protection activities is very low. The authorities and business sector are either unwilling or unable to initiate and promote public participation. At the same time, several surveys have demonstrated that citizen awareness of environmental problems is very high. This suggests that the energy, concern and abilities of the citizenry could be mobilized on behalf of the environment if appropriate mechanisms could be identified. Under these circumstances, Russian NGOs might be able to play a crucial role in fostering public participation in environmental decision-making.

The paper evaluates what catalyzes and what blocks the effectiveness of citizens' participation in environmental decision making in Russia.

British Columbia and the United States have both struggled with complex forest management issues, and in response have begun to develop and implement adaptive management programs. A central recommendation of the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team report (FEMAT) called for creation of a system of 10 Adaptive Management Areas (AMAs) across California, Oregon, and Washington. The Model Forest program is a parallel effort to conduct adaptive management in selected forests in Canada. British Columbia's resource managers face similar controversies and concerns, as forest management undergoes changes in response to a number of different regulations and initiatives related to environmental protection, sustainable harvest, and biodiversity.

While adaptive management efforts are taking place in a number of areas in North America, formal evaluation of those efforts has not been reported in the literature. The efforts in British Columbia and Washington State provide an excellent setting for investigating differences in how institutions respond to complex resource management issues and organize themselves in order to implement adaptive management. This study explores and compares experiences in attempting to implement adaptive management in a forestry context. The comparisons in this study focus on whether organizational structure affects decision-making and implementation, what barriers prohibit or stalemate planning projects, and how if "learning" takes place and in what context.

Bioregionalism and watershed planning reflect a new frontier and a new hope for natural resource conflicts. Reflecting new systems thinking including chaos theory, cross cultural education, and cyber-sociology these new citizen forums have begun to demonstrative effective ways to bring together former enemies to manage complex natural resource conflicts.

Collaborative community based planning is widespread and yet little understood in the West. Slogans of "win win solutions" and new coalitions grossly underestimate the fundamental changes that are possible with new approaches. Twenty years of research on natural resource conflicts and collaboration in the West will be reviewed to demonstrative that significant, fundamental shifts are taking place through western watersheds in ways little understood by professional managers. Case studies taken from conflicts arising through growth management, spotted owl, water distribution, and salmon restoration are analyzed and demonstrate that a new form of local citizenship and governance is developing. This paper will discuss the lessons of twenty years of watershed planning and natural resource management and identify some key management options and skills used in successful projects. It will also discuss the trend from site specific performance negotiations to a more wide spread bioregional movement focusing on sustainable and livable communities.

In "The Land Ethic," Aldo Leopold argues that genuine solutions to environmental problems will require us to adopt an ethic that arises out of a felt awareness that we are "plain members of the biotic community." Fifty years later, not only are we far from recognizing our community membership, but our experiential distance from non-humans has increased. Our relations with the land are often mediated by technology. Most people in developed countries remain blissfully unaware of the specific ways in which they depend on nature. Moreover, we have such technological power that it seems naive to claim that our membership in ecosystems is on par with other species.

We argue that Leopold's community metaphor, and the ethic that it grounds, can be salvaged only if it is radically reinterpreted. After outlining several objections to basing an ethic on lour shared membership in the land, we use metaphors such as baseball's player/manager to show how our notion of community membership can accord without distance from nature and our inordinate power over it. We show how this type of community membership can ground obligations to others, and we sketch the form which some of these obligations take.

Science presents an exemplary case of the role of knowledge in society. More than any other figure in culture today, the scientist functions as the arbiter of truth-even though the sight of competing experts lined up on opposing sides of an issues has become a familiar occurrence.

This presentation will discuss the distinctive ethical responsibilities of publicly funded scientists. It has been a point of honor within the scientific community that the work of the scientist must remain objective and value- free, preserving the integrity of science, and thereby allowing science to serve as an impartial contributor to societal debates. Today, however, the very stance of principled distance from societal debates has opened the scientist to charges of irrelevance. But neither is it acceptable for government scientists to slip into a stance of advocacy in which they use their position to advocate some personal views on a subject. How, then, does the scientist, and especially the public scientist, avoid the twin dangers of irrelevance and bias?

I will argue that the means for overcoming this predicament turns on examining the notion of selfhood that underlies the current debate over the role of the scientist in society.

The beings and things of nature have a word to speak to us as we encounter them in the myriad relations that make up our everyday lives. The truth of this assertion is born out in personal experience and corroborated in scripture, myth, poetry, and philosophical reflection. In their self-speaking address, our fellow creatures call us forth, invite us to engage them in dialogue, and place us in a position of responsibility. Their eloquent speech sponsors and nurtures our concern for them and empowers us to respond to their claims in an ethically decisive manner. I suggest that our dialogical encounters with our fellow creatures furnish the experiential ground of ethical action with respect to them. Unfortunately, this ground is seldom realized or recognized in our society: our capacity for ethical action remains unmoored from its animating sources. Preoccupied with our own subjecthood and agency, we have, for a variety of reasons, become very poor listeners. Yet despite our habitual inattentiveness, Nature's creatures may still grace us with their presence in dialogue. Over time, these seemingly episodic occurrences take on an enduring quality, and we find our lives directed along a path of dialogue. This path is characterized by the spiraling interplay of immersion and commitment, which together provide our lives with a sense of vocational integrity and inform our actions with a decisiveness born of 'responsibility in depth.'

The first institutional feeding of elk in North America was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where several thousand elk are fed most winters at the National Elk Refuge. Winter feeding of elk is employed on an annual basis by state agencies in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Over the past 5 years, an average 31,000 elk were fed in those 5 states at a cost of $1.6 million. Most feeding programs originated due to conflicts between elk and agricultural uses of historic elk winter range. Wildlife managers generally resorted to feeding to reduce damage by elk to crops, and to provide economic benefits of maintaining more elk than diminished winter habitat could sustain. Several negative consequences result from feeding elk. These include 1) the monetary costs of feeding, which divert dollars from other resource programs, 2) excessive herbivory that alters plant community structure and consequently affects the value of habitats near elk feedgrounds to other wildlife species, 3) changes in elk behavior that are both spatial and philosophical significance, 4) diseases, which are more readily transmitted among densely concentrated animals, threaten the welfare of elk and other species, and shape resource management, and 5)public perceptions that may lead to the devaluing of habitat. Finally, I suggest proactive alternatives to winter feeding, which may avert conflict situations that precipitate public and political pressures to feed elk.

Jackson Hole lies within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and is blessed with a unique array of some of the most charismatic wildlife species this continent has to offer. Combine this with the spectacular mountain landscapes of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and it becomes a highly desirable place to live. Jackson has attracted an environmentally aware, and active, public from around the world. The social values of this area are often in sharp contrast to the rest of the state. This makes wildlife management in the area both challenging and enlightening.

As a state agency, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is generally not bound by the public involvement requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). However, they do have policy governing their public involvement requirements. We will discuss these requirements and how public involvement is actually done for hunting seasons in Wyoming. We will also review public involvement on a recent hunting season proposal for mountain lions in the Jackson Region.

Moderators: Sando, Rodney, Idaho Department of Fish and Game; Dietz, Thomas, George Mason University, Virginia; Straus, Donald B., College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine; and Borden, Richard J., College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine

Each day of SHE XI concludes with a round-table discussion. The goal of these sessions is to integrate ideas and insights from the day's presentations. These roundtables are intended to continue the exchange at SHE X in Montreal, which led to our overall conference theme of "Democracy and Sustainability." We face many unprecedented challenges, and in parallel with them, we are engaged in many exciting experiments in new forms of democracy. However, what are the new strategies that we need? What is working? What isn't working? How can we increase collaboration and the quality of decision making? What can improve citizen participation and lead to more dynamic ways in governing? What is the role of computers in democracy and the management of complexity? All conference participants were invited to join.

Sustainable ecological management requires the use of complex, specialist, knowledge and expert judgment. But because ecological management inevitably involves human systems, a simple technocratic approach is both ethically unacceptable and functionally ineffective hence the particular urgency of finding effective means for public participation. Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Ecosystem-based management has been adopted by a growing number of resource management agencies in the United States and Canada.  The shift toward ecosystem-based management has been characterized by an increased focus on adaptive management tools that are nested within decision-making processes that actively promote greater public participation.  In Canada, democratic and sustainability goals have been incorporated into the activities of diverse resource management and planning agencies in complex and interesting ways.  Our paper reports on a detailed survey of the Canadian literature surrounding fifteen ecosystem-based management cases including: fisheries, forestry, land-use planning, coastal zone planning, parks and protected areas, watershed planning, Great Lakes management, Nunavit, and urban waterfront renewal.  We explore some of the complexities surrounding sustainability and democracy in Canada by examining ecosystem-based management activities.  Our paper focuses on the importance of: 1) How boundaries are defined within ecosystem-based management projects. 2) How understanding is (co)created in ecosystem-based management processes. 3) How procedural and substantive goals are incorporated into the adaptive planning and management frameworks that are associated with ecosystem-based management.  Our paper concludes by discussing the positive lessons learned, and areas which need improvement, if Canada is to create more sustainable and democratically accountable ecosystem-based management initiatives.

Adaptive management has the potential to make forest management more democratic. Adaptive management, however, is associated with a learning model that may not be appropriate in all contexts nor for all stakeholders. Making scientific experiments of management interventions - with claims to precision, control, and neutrality - raises at least two problems. First, it can constrain other ways of learning from forest management experiences. Second, it can place some stakeholders, typically those outside government bureaucracies and research institutions, at a disadvantage in influencing management decisions. We draw on literature from social learning theory and indigenous technical knowledge, as well as case study material associated with CIFOR's Adaptive Collaborative Management Program, to suggest how to accommodate different ways of learning among diverse forest stakeholders. We discuss the potential for developing a pluralistic approach to what constitutes good evidence in evaluating management problems and the kinds of institutional arrangements - such as multiple and redundant fora for learning, rotating leadership, downward accountability for decision-making - that encourage such pluralism.

There is a new recreational activity occurring in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and it is wolf watching. Since the wolves were reintroduced in 1995, thousands of people have been arranging their vacations and lives around the possibility of getting a glimpse of a wild, elusive wolf in YNP. Yellowstone National Park not only provides visitors with a good opportunity to see wolves in natural surroundings, it also affords the opportunity to explore the nature of recreational experiences individuals seek with respect to wolves. This thought examines how the visitors try to experience wolves. What do the wolf watchers want to see? Does just a glimpse of a wolf mean the same as observing behavior? Do observations of particular wolf behaviors affect the experience?

Through the analysis of in-depth interviews with wolf watchers, this study explores questions such as these. What emerges from the interviews is that although people may have different preferences as to what they want to see there are some reoccurring themes. A common theme connecting many of the wolf watchers is their desire to see some interaction between wolves and other species. There is a great draw to being able to see wolves interacting with other species, be it bison, elk, or bears because there are such few places to see that interaction. This discussion hints at the larger discourse of what wolf watchers desire. The interaction valued is one of the lived experience; that seeing wolves in YNP allows visitors the ability to see wolves 'in their world', to be participants, not merely observers of a television show. However, although wolf watchers have in mind what they would like to see, the truth of the matter is that wolf watchers would settle for much less than the perfect scenario. While seeing a wolf would be the "icing on the cake, the cherry on top" there seems to be an underlying sentiment of just knowing that the wolves are there is satisfying enough.