A preacher’s daughter from East Los Angeles, botanist Mary O’Brien is a fierce, passionate, and tireless advocate. From defending the fragile biological soil crusts that hold the desert together to protecting a whole mountain of aspen, Mary is a voice for the natural world and her fellow travelers, large and small. As she prepares to hand over the reins of the Grand Canyon Trust’s Utah Forests Program at the end of 2020, she reflects on the last 17 years and shares advice for the next generation of advocates.
I was born in East Los Angeles to a mom who worked with street people on Skid Row and a dad who was a minister in a small church. The best two weeks of each year were the trip to Kings Canyon National Park where we got to stay free in a tent cabin for two weeks if Dad preached at the outdoor non-denominational church in the park two Sunday mornings. So a little East Los Angeles girl with little money and no land had a whole national park for two weeks a year. I first thought of being a social worker, became a third grade teacher, and then went back to school to get a master’s and doctorate in botany. Both involved studying some plants and their pollinators in one special habitat on the San Bernardino National Forest of southern California.
After getting my doctorate, I worked eight years for Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, working a lot on alternatives to aerial herbicide spraying of the forests but also alternatives to uses of pesticides. I co-founded and worked with Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, which is a network of public interest environmental lawyers, including those living and working in some of the poorest, most autocratic countries in the world. I taught public interest science and environmental advocacy at the University of Montana graduate Environmental Studies Program for two years and then worked 10 years with Hells Canyon Preservation Council in eastern Oregon and western Idaho; and then came to Grand Canyon Trust!
Well, that’s kind of funny, in a way. I was hired to organize a multi-organization effort to develop a comprehensive alternative for three new forest plan revisions, including Manti-La Sal National Forest, whose plan was then 17 years old. But just after we completed the alternative, the Bush administration ended the forest planning process. And now, in my last year of working with the Trust, I’m working with most of the same organizations to again develop a comprehensive alternative for the revision of Manti-La Sal National Forest’s forest plan, which is now 34 years old! Fortunately, I’ve been able to work on alternatives for a lot of other projects along the way.
It’s also interesting that just before I started conservation work, I studied native plants and their pollinators. I remember one particular native onion species that was pollinated by one small native bee species that had never been named. And here, at the end of my work with Grand Canyon Trust, I’ve started an effort to halt and prevent the placement of commercial honeybee hives on Colorado Plateau public lands because honeybees, by the millions, outcompete native bees and they transmit diseases to them. The disappearance of native bee species will be quiet, and for some species, forever.
I’m not good at thinking in those terms. I only try to take care of the environment and the processes of democracy. That’s all I focus on.
What am I most concerned about? The climate crisis. It threatens everything in our world and it threatens civilization itself.
What do I think are the most pressing conservation issues facing Utah public lands? The need to really know about and take care of other species — little alpine plants, unique species of native bees, beavers, aspen, whomever. The consequences of not acknowledging that we are only one member of the entire environment is that we’re committing collective suicide through destruction of those we don’t even think we need to know.
A line from one of W.S. Merwin’s poems: “On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree.”
I think that captures the best of conservation work in one sentence: that we are fellow travelers in this world with other species, that we always need to be working for the long-term, and that losses must not stop us from doing that.
Have courage and heart for the long haul.
Helping with any great campaigns or partners on democracy, climate, and/or ending public lands livestock grazing. And having a little more time to walk around outdoors.
Read some of Mary's recent op-eds in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Also in this issue:
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