Vision Statement
We created the Peradam Foundation in 1993 in order to honor and provide financial support to small, grassroots conservation groups with a local focus and an activist agenda. The groups we had in mind had different strategies, but all shared a common goal: the protection and restoration of native plants and wildlife, particularly on public lands in the western states and Alaska.
A conservation group is an abstract entity until one gets to know the men and women who stand behind it and begins to see the land they are protecting through their eyes. After going out into the field, driving around and hiking with a staff member or volunteer, and getting introduced to the landscape and local ecosystem, we always returned home filled with admiration for the grit and dedication of the men and women we met. Initially we expected that activists would be cut from a certain mold, but we found that all ages and social types were represented. There were hikers, bird watchers, fly fishers, and college kids, of course, but there were also retired school teachers, local businessmen, and people with day jobs at the state Fish and Game Department or the mini-mall. Many had moved out into the country, but a surprising number were natives with strong local roots. What everyone had in common was a passion for the land and a visceral understanding of the forces that threaten it.
Most of the groups we support operate on a miniscule budget, relying on underpaid staff and volunteers. They arrange service trips to restore a landscape scarred by ORV’s and draped with rusty barbed wire. They teach school children about wildlife and lead hiking trips to share their delight in the big outdoors. That’s the fun part. But they also spend long hours pouring over mind-numbing government documents and waiting their turn to address boards, commissions, and political sideshows. They write letters-to-the-editor and letters to Congress. It’s tedious work, dry and impersonal. But when one has to confront a stonewalling bureaucrat day in and day out or travel half way across the state to put in an appearance before a hostile audience things do become personal. The cumulative emotional toll can wear down and embitter even the most dedicated activist. And of course there are the curses and threats, the anonymous letters and phone calls, the broken windows and slashed tires.
Given all this, we find it truly astonishing that so many activists hang in there year after year, patiently struggling to safeguard a piece of forest land, a mountainside, a seasonal creek, or a stretch of desert. A famous quote from the great conservationist Aldo Leopold may offer a partial explanation:
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen.”
True, to be sure. Still, there’s great consolation in knowing that there are others who also see the damage and are equally committed to its repair. One can go out into Nature and feel a little less lonely.
-- Robert Spertus, 2006