For six years, I was proud to serve on the WMC Board of Directors. That's three terms, with three hard-working and effective presidents. And three terms was enough, it was time for someone else with a different perspective to contribute. It wasn't a hard decision to make. Over the past three years, I figure I've traveled over sixty thousand miles without leaving California or getting into an airplane, so cutting down on trips to WMC Board meetings was a means to spend more time with family. But it wasn't a decision made without regret, and without reflection.

It seems to me that a lot happened over the course of those six years.

The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

The threat of global thermonuclear went way down.

Apartheid ended in South Africa.

The United States went to war in the Middle East.

The Internet became a household word.

Merely, Everything.

For you long-term WMC members, think back to the inception of the organization. Cumulative watershed effects was the topic, the need to look at landscapes across functional, administrative and political boundaries the need. We sat in a conference room in Sacramento and collectively wondered what was necessary to launch the good ship Watershed Management.

At our most recent conference. George Ice (another outgoing WMC board member-thank you George) and Gordon Grant, both commented that there was nothing really new in watershed management, that the fundamentals had been taught for as long as watershed management had been taught. And this is certainly true.

The difference, as both speakers pointed out, is that due to a "strange brew" (including FEMAT, and PACFISH, and the rest) of circumstances; (in a nutshell: too many people asking for too much from limited resources) the fundamentals of watershed management have somehow become widely known. The importance and need for watershed management is now acknowledged and accepted by not only the folks we as professionals had been trying so hard to convince for so long, but by nearly everyone. Line officers, journalists, foresters, even politicians for heaven sakes. Somehow, in just six years, it seems to me, everyone is on board.

So, maybe this goal of the WMC, "Advancing the art and science of watershed management" is a done deal. Perhaps we can save the exorbitant $12.50 per year and join a new club. Not! (a phrase which came into popular usage in prior six years). The fundamentals are widely acknowledged and understood: streams and their fauna, and floodplains and theirs, and the watershed that feeds them are like fingers on the same hand. They are parts and extensions of the same organism.

This is known. The means to maintain these as healthy organisms is another story. Especially when we want to use the hand to milk the organism for jobs in the woods, OHV and kayak use, a sustainable harvest (of fish and trees), hydroelectricity and cows, even.

Understanding the fundamentals and applying them in ways that meet social, political and resource objectives are obviously different tasks. The application of the fundamentals in ways that work is the challenge. This challenge will not be met by interagency committees and oversight teams. It is being met by the people "out there on the ground", applying their skills and enthusiasm to unique situations and coming up with applications that work.

The WMC should provide assistance to this effort. It can provide a forum and a vehicle for people interested in healthy watershed organisms to exchange information and expertise. And the WMC will be successful at this, if we (you and I) take to heart the need to participate in the exchange. The WMC is not a bureaucracy. It is us. We have done good. We need to do better.