Activating the Activist

Early in our careers, many of us in the field of natural resources have grand thoughts of sliding into our dream job. We imagine ourselves working somewhere secluded in the landscape without having to interact with anyone. Many of us aren’t people persons anyway. Hell, we often identify more closely to our work than the people with whom we choose interact. Some biologists actually start looking like their focal species after a while. I sure hope that I don’t look like a bat these days. What I can say with certainty, however, is that I would have never imagined that I would have become an activist.

Logic dictates that staying politically neutral will prevent a biased perspective. Anyway, the notion of getting involved in politics is rather unappealing for most of us scientists who are entrenched in the physical and natural world. Studying and influencing policy is an uninteresting and foreign realm for us nerdy types, perhaps downright scary. Being an introvert myself – well maybe and outgoing introvert, so I was told – I dreaded having to study policy and human dimensions in school. I just wanted to do science and not have to interact with people. I was fortunate, however, to study under some darn good professors. I learned that doing science is good but what makes a great scientist is the ability to communicate with people – the general public – and guide our policy makers.

Sound management of our country and our world involves guidance from science. For without science, we will make decisions in the absence of fact. Crafting law and the policy to carry out the law by pure want and desire is foolhardy. Economic and civil sustainability cannot happen without environmental sustainability. My argument can be viewed the other way around but science is still needed for us to prosper.

Why will I participate in the March for Science?

• ·       Promote science-based policy making
• ·       Secure the freedom of scientists to communicate their findings
• ·       Promote environmental sustainability over profit
• ·       Encourage government funding of research and the communication of its findings
• ·       Secure public access to taxpayer-funded research without filter
• ·       Protest the anti-science stance of the current administration
• ·       Protest the federal government hiring freeze
• ·       Protest the gag order placed on our government agencies

Our country has increasingly become politically polarized. Alternative facts and filters can be found on both sides of the political spectrum. The current administration, however, has clearly enacted an anti-science policy. Reversing previous science-based policies and taking this anti-science direction will erode the security, advancement, and sustainability of our country and world. Furthermore, other initiatives of the current administration have ignored consequence. For example, walls and pipelines have environmental impacts; circumventing environmental reviews of manufacturing and infrastructure jeopardize the health of people and the ecosystem; impeding civil liberties and the immigration of upstanding people will decrease the pool of available scientists and other valuable members of this country.

What would you stand up for?

Michael Antonishak is a recent graduate of Penn State University who has studied Wildlife & Fisheries Science and Forest Ecosystems. Although he is a self-described generalist, recently, he is having a love affair with Chiroptera. When he isn’t chasing bats through the swamps of Congaree National Park, he is sipping cappuccino and writing blog posts.