We in the conservation field do a lot of hand-wringing over the growing disconnect between people and nature, and there's reason to be concerned. 

America is changing: diversifying, urbanizing, gentrifying, globalizing.  And its people are increasingly de-natured and disconnected from the outdoors. 

So we worry about this disconnect and the challenges it presents.

But then something happens to remind us that while people are becoming physically disconnected with the outdoors, they are more and more fascinated with wild life. 

Lori Iverson, in charge of Education and Visitor Services at Elk National Refuge in Wyoming, took a remarkable set of photos recently that showed a confrontation between juvenile mountain lions and coyotes.

Millions of people viewed these photos on Flickr, and thousands more commented on them and shared them on Facebook.

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I am one lucky man.

I’m headed to the beautiful Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge at the south end of Washington’s Puget Sound. I’ll see herons feeding and ducks swirling while eagles watch them and me from nearby trees.

I’m meeting with representatives of two other federal agencies to review progress on one of the signature conservation initiatives in recent history.

Today I get to do two things I’ve always believed to be among the most important things any agency leader can do: get out in the field to meet the people who are implementing policy on the ground, and see how those policies are working.

And it’s Earth Day.

I am so proud – and so humbled – to be here today, representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and all the work we do and have done since that first Earth Day in 1970 and beyond.

What better way to spend this Earth Day?

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Conservation is all about restraint, choosing not to do things so that future generations may enjoy the wild things and places we do.

This is awful hard, I know, especially in a world where fast is better than slow, more is better than less, and short-term thinking is often more highly valued than taking the long view.

It is easy to think we are facing a unique cultural climate not at all conducive to conservation and get discouraged. The stakes seem so high, the consequences so enduring, long-term thinking so challenging.

That’s why it was such a pleasure to do a little reading about Sen.  Gaylord Nelson, one of the founders of Earth Day, which this year is Monday, April 22.

More than 40 years ago, in a Congressional Record from 1970, Sen. Nelson called for “the introduction of new values in our society—where bigger is not necessarily better—where slower can be faster—and where less can be more.”

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