Review Comments1
Leonard A. Newell2
I had a number of remarks prepared as of yesterday
on the technical aspects of this symposium, and
then something came up which made me throw those
out and take a different tack for my summary today.
I think that we all have been enriched by the
international flavor of this meeting. We have
all felt, in watching the presentations by people
from other countries, that while we are dealing
with different species, and in some cases
different problems entirely, we find a great many
areas where our interests converge.
This international communication is a very
valuable thing. The proof is the fact that every
three or four years we find it necessary to have
one of these symposia. There is, however, a
need to communicate on a more frequent basis, and
I think a lot of us feel that there are too few
mechanisms for doing so.
One of the keynote speakers of this symposium
suggested a Mediterranean Ecosystems Institute
as a possible way of helping this international
communication. Dr. Oechel thought a great deal
about this idea, and came to me yesterday to
suggest that we have a discussion on the
International Institute idea with the international
visitors. The occasion would be the dinner that
was given by San Diego State University for the
international guests last night.
International matters are something we can not
just charge into; there are a lot of things that
ought to be prepared for, and we hadn't much
time. I'm afraid we didn't prepare as well as we
wanted to; for instance, we didn't have
interpreters or advance announcement of the
meeting. Perhaps some of the guests felt like
throwing us out of the room at times last night
because we let them have a very nice dinner, get
relaxed and then sprung this heavy discussion on
them. Yet we thought that the International
Institute was really an idea worth following, to
see what the attitudes of the visitors were
concerning this proposal.
1
Presented at the Symposium on Dynamics and
Management of Mediterranean-type Ecosystems,
June 22-26, 1981, San Diego, California
2
Manager, Vegetation Management Program,
California Dep. Forestry, the Resources Agency,
Sacramento, California
Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-58. Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Forest and Range
Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; 1982.
The things that came out are very interesting,
and I would like to report them to you. First
we examined the question: is there a need for
such a thing? There were several needs that
were identified and that we generally agreed on.
One of the strongest areas of agreement was in
the area of student exchange: students from one
part of the world going to another part of the
world to study, under auspices and with the
support of such an institute. We do not seem to
have much of that interchange taking place now.
A second item that occurred very notably in the
discussion was the fact that we do not have a good
way of translating things from one language to
another. A translation service could serve the
international community very well by taking
papers from one language and distributing them to
people who can read them in another. The general
idea of dissemination of information seemed to
receive a good deal of support.
A third area that came up from several of the
people who commented was the need for a journal
or a newsletter on what is happening in the field
of mediterranean ecosystems. Abstracts could be
published. At present, it is possible that someone could publish a paper that another interested
person in another part of the world would not
find for five years or so. Such an institute
could get this paper much more quickly into the
hands of the people who are in need of it.
A final area of discussion as to what we need was
the idea of more frequent face-to-face communication. Is there a way, with tele-conferencing
and other kinds of methods, that small groups of
people can get together, without spending days
on airplanes and thousands of dollars on motels
and other expenses, to exchange ideas from various
parts of the world? These things are now
possible with communication satellites. The
information could keep flowing.
The other major topics discussed last night were
the things that should be done before charging
into setting up an institute. We heard that
people from the European Countries in particular
were very skeptical about new institutes; they
have seen a great many efforts get underway,
including IUFRO, MAB and other programs of the
United Nations. These existing programs and
institutes have been organized to deal with some
of the needs we have. The cautions that we heard
last night were: don't rebuild the wheel; have
a look at these existing organizations: can they
accommodate our needs, and if not, can they be
adjusted to accommodate these needs?
A second suggestion was to establish a small
permanent committee or board of directors (one
person used the term "secretariat") to investigate the need for an institute. Publishing a
simple newsletter, it was suggested, might be
enough at this stage to let people chew on these
ideas and see what comes back from them. This
was brought up particularly in connection with
571
the 1984 Symposium in Perth, Australia, which
Dr. Specht mentioned earlier, as a way of
helping people organize these international
meetings. A newsletter would aid in getting
the information passed around and in achieving
good attendance at that symposium.
Finally, it was someone's very astute observation
that we have to explore the aspect of international funding, both private and public, because of
course we're not going to be committed to
anything that we don't ourselves support. Thus,
if it were funded solely out of California, the
international community would not have a very
strong sense of ownership in it. This is
another area that has to be investigated.
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To conclude, the information that we received
last night will be assembled in written form.
Walt Oechel and Gene Conrad are going to write
a letter which appears to represent the sense of
last night's discussion, and it will be
circulated. We will continue the dialogue on
the idea of an International Institute on
Mediterranean Ecosystems, to see if there are
some needs that could be met in such a way, or
perhaps in some other way.
Perhaps as a result of such efforts, the next
meetings that we have will be even more successful than this one. On behalf of Doctors Conrad
and 0echel, I thank all of you who took part
in the discussions and contributed your valuable
thoughts.