Introduction Text:

for many reasons we as artists and strangers began a consideration of the Yuba River watershed

the learning curve was steep

we talked to a number of  very concerned people

I said “Thinking like a watershed is tough work” Aldo Leopold knew this well
but he did not make very clear how to go about this kind of thinking part-by-part

that is from the perspective of organizing the human community’s response to changes on the ground and through time

many of those problems in the now seem intractable

for instance, a watershed consists of many rivers and streams co-joining into a single river which may flow yet into another river

this means thinking like a river system in order to know how to share a river system with its watershed without destroying ecological or structural integrity

and there are many types of earth in a watershed and nothing is more important to terrestrial life than the earth from which it springs

so we must think about sharing the earth with the watershed for its benefit

in the Yuba, like so many watersheds, there are different forest types thinking like the forests or rather, how to share and use the forests to their advantage as well as to our own would be wise

in the watershed there are shrub lands meadows and wetlands and we must learn how to share them to their benefit

all are part of a system communities nested within communities

then there is the chain of predation with the raptor, the wolf and the bear among others

which maintain systems integrity

how can a human community act as both top predator and nurturer to these many other communities?

the object in all this thinking in part is to find limits to growth and establish carrying capacity, system by system

so we began following the work of a group called SYRCL

people in the Yuba watershed who are mappers and researchers who over many years have set out to think as a watershed