OUR VISION - FSE
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Biodiversity on our planet is fundamentally essential to our existence. The essence and mutual existence of all the inhabitants of our planet earth depends upon a robust biodiversity and the ecology of species interdependence which sustains it. This interdependence includes us, as the human beings that reign at the top of the food chain. Without this biodiversity of species, life for humans could be as precarious an existence as it is today for creatures that live and depend upon an area of forest that has been cut down and turned into a cultivated field or a pasture for grazing cattle. When compared to the wealth of genetic variety that exists in the wild reserves of the earth, our own domesticated food sources are limited in their variety of genetic reserves for mutual defense against natural biologic threats. For example, we have already begun to see how viruses more readily spread and mutate upon the crowded plants and animals we have domesticated for our food sources. |
If we do nothing, we face an ever increasing dependence upon genetically engineered plants and chemical pesticides to fight against blights of insects and infectious epidemics attacking our food sources, as these infestations mutate to defend themselves against those same chemicals and genetically engineered plants that we develop. Truly, the biodiversity of the wilderness is our most precious resource, and infinitely more so than any of our other economic resources. As we look for these biologic riches in desperate need of our protection we find them in proportionately greater abundance near our streams and wetlands. This water is the key to our work as a foundation, for every drop of water that exists in the watersheds of our planet is either a vehicle of destructive erosion and chemical pesticide residue, or is the pure and sustaining support of life. As scientific evidence identifies those human activities that damage the biodiversity of the natural environment on land and sea, Foundation for Support of the Environment seeks to support the conservation of these biologic riches by promoting the integrity and purity of the watersheds, streams, rivers, wetlands and near shore ocean waters. To do this we involve the lay and the scientific communities to work together at the local level, believing that the most effective methods of intervention should involve sustainable and cost-effective local solutions to global environmental problems. It is both our dream and our goal that our conservation projects will serve as models for duplication into regional networks and international cooperation for the common good of all the inhabitants of our planet. For all of us, our choices each day edge us either closer to peril or closer to a future as responsible custodians of our own nests and therefore of our own existence.
Dr. Steve Gross, President, Foundation for Support of the Environment
