Rather, they knew what questions to ask and looked to people living and working in Delaware for the answers. Over the course of a year, they gathered information from fish and wildlife biologists, environmental scientists, resource managers, planners, conservationists, agricultural experts and transportation policy makers. In all, well over a hundred local experts were interviewed for the project. The very comprehensive report was published last fall. According to Wilkinson, the states are far better positioned than the federal government to protect and restore the nation's plants, animals and ecosystems.
Many citizens look primarily to the U.S. government to confront the biodiversity crisis.
Yet to a significant degree, the federal government does little to protect species from reaching critical status. In many ways the states, where key land use regulations are made and implemented, are uniquely appropriate places for developing comprehensive initiates for protecting and restoring biodiversity. They care about what they know, and what they know are places they experience through hunting, fishing, walking, photographing their surroundings, and answering the countless questions their children ask about the natural world around them. The sense of place provides a basis for energizing political constituencies to make policy decisions, such as voting for bond issues that fund open space acquisition, and taking private voluntary actions. What ELI's 150-page report offers is a blueprint for biodiversity conservation and management in Delaware.