Newsletter

Winter 2000: Notes from Great Lakes

What is Bioregional Stewardship? Pioneering Course Explores a "Sense of Place"
By Dr. David Mahan

What is a bioregion or bioregionalism? How does one live in a bioregional perspective? To answer such questions, and in recognition of this emerging field, in 1999 Au Sable pioneered a course called Bioregional Models for Environmental Stewardship (Biol/Geog 457).

Bioregionalism is a melding of ecological and sociological perspectives in order that ecological and social functions can be matched within a unit of governance. As Gary Snyder has said, bioregions are 'real natural territories with real differences to which our economies and clothing must adapt'. Each bioregion has 'its own makeup, its own mix of birdcalls and plant smells…proposing a different lifestyle and economy to the humans that live there'.

A key bioregional tenet involves living and developing a sense of place. To live with a sense of place means that one truly knows and appreciates the natural world that supports them. With such knowledge of a bioregion, people are better able to develop ways of using the land that will sustain it and them over the long run.

Interestingly, one of the best examples of guiding principles in regard to living in place is found in God's instructions to the Jews when they settled the Promised Land (e.g. Deut.11). The Children of Israel recognized that their land was ultimately not theirs, but God's, and that their presence on that land was a gift from God, rooted in their covenant relationship with God. God's guidelines for living linked God's vision for them with their practical living on the land. For example, faithful obedience to God's prescriptions for Sabbath, for maintaining creation's fruitfulness and for only taking what they needed, meant that they could expect to live well on the land in communion with all the other inhabitants.

Since the course uses the Northwest Michigan Bioregion as its setting, initial field trips emphasize the distinctive ecological and cultural features of this region. Each student is given the tools to begin to understand these facets of the bioregion, with the challenge to go home after the course to understand the unique aspects of their own region.

After setting the stage for a bioregional perspective, the course exposes students to diverse agencies, organizations and individuals whose goal is sustaining the environment and human culture of northwest Lower Michigan. Examples include: public and private sustainable forestry, eco-tourism, sustainable agriculture, and public and private land management and conservation. Whether it is a private landowner who has protected their land by a conservation easement or a state land manager thoughtfully doing their job, students are inspired by the stories of these individuals.

We look forward to having more students join the course in 2001 to learn how to live well within their bioregion, the landscape setting with which they identify and which they use.

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