The Owl and the Library

Covered most of North Prospect today. For those of you who received my literature, but whom I did not get a chance to speak with, please feel free to e-mail me or give me a call.

Many of you might remember the whole spotted owl fight that took place in the Pacific Northwest during the mid-90s. I remember it quite clearly because one of my environmental law professors at Vermont Law School was directly involved in the litigation and fight to protect the owl. For those of you that do not remember or who were focused on other things here it is in a nutshell. The Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protects certain threatened or endangered species that are classified as such. The obvious prophylactic devices are put into place (like no hunting or eating the endangered species). Less obvious measures are taken as well. For example if an listed species lives in a particular niche habitat, then the habitat will receive certain levels of protection, because if the habitat is extinguished, the species that survives in that habitat will be extinguished as well. Simply put, species (with perhaps the exception of humans) cannot evolve or adapt rapidly enough to survive when the sole habitat that they exist in is suddenly eliminated. The Spotted Owl just happens to live in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. While the owl as an individual species is in and of itself quite important, what it represents is the health of the ecosystem that it inhabits. Less Spotted Owls was translating in to less Old Growth Forest. In order to save the owls the groups that brought the litigation knew that they needed to save the forest as well and vica versa. Thus, when the battle was fought the end result was that not only were the owls saved, buy the Old Growth Forests and all hundreds of other unique species were saved as well. The owl was at its core a symbol and "indicator species" of the overall health of the old growth forest.

How many of you receive annual solicitations from the "Friends of the Library" asking for donations to help improve the library infrastructure? OK what is wrong with this picture? Does the police department ask for donations in this manner? Does public works? How about the Burlington Electric? Not that I am aware of (and I am not aware of everything). Yet the library needs to engage in this course of action in order to sustain itself. What is wrong here?

The other agencies are undoubtedly very important and necessary to sustain life in the modern age. After all how many of us would survive very long in a lawless, road less, dark community. Life would indeed be nasty, cruel, brutish and short. All of these things while necessary to sustain life, are not what life itself is all about. Life is about Mount Mansfield on a winter morning, the band you want to see on a hazy summer Thursday night in Battery Park and all of those millions of other things that do not just sustain life, but make it worth living. The library and what it represents is one of those very things. The library is our Spotted Owl, our indicator species. We cannot allow the library to be partially funded, just like we cannot the mechanisms that make our City tick to be partially funded.

Think about it.

Best
Ed