an early article explicating bioregionalism

What Is Bioregionalism?

By Frank Traina

[Below are excerpts from the introductory chapter of the volume Perspectives in Bioregional Education, edited by Frank Traina and Susan Darley-Hill and published by the North American Association for Environmental Education in 1995. It includes an examination of the origins of bioregional thinking and a brief review of its history as a socio-ecological movement. The impact of bioregional thinking on complementary movements such as Deep Ecology and the political Green parties is also discussed. Finally, its viability as an instrument of social change and force for ecosystem restoration is considered. This article will be appearing in the forthcoming (Fall 2023) issue of Green Horizon Magazine.]

The word “bioregion” has been around since 1973, but the ideas and values of the bioregional movement are among the most ancient in human experience. Because the movement has its roots more in the alternative lifestyle of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1950s and ’60s than in the academic establishment of mainstream American culture, the word “bioregion” has not been commonly used in the field of environmental education and in the scientific community. But the process of cultural diffusion has slowly spread the term from its alternative-culture homebase into wider usage in mainstream media and society.

Bioregionalism has been introduced to the general public through the writings of many authors. Each offers a definition of what bioregionalism is, but each also admits that the idea is still evolving. In order to understand the ideas of bioregionalism, a brief review of the history of its intellectual development is of value.

DEFINITIONS OF BIOREGION

A bioregion is an area without hard boundaries but which can be distinguished by its many natural features including the flora, fauna, soil, climate, geology, and drainage area. From a social-change perspective, a critical component of each bioregion is the human culture which has developed within and is integral to that area. This essential human element is what distinguishes the concept of bioregion from similar ecological entities which traditionally treat humans and their cultures as interlopers rather than as integral components of a natural community. Altogether, the bioregions of the Earth form a vast patchwork extending over the planet.

Political boundaries have little meaning in classical ecological thinking. However, any type of partition, including that of bioregion, is somewhat arbitrary and artificial. “Ecoregion” is a similar term first introduced by J.M. Crowley. The concept was developed for governmental use to catalog natural resources and assist in their management on a regional level. Early maps relied heavily on soil, climate, and potential natural vegetation parameters for defining distinct ecoregions (Bailey 1980). The delineation process was further refined to more clearly reflect the aquatic component and land use in each region (Omemik 1987).

Ecoregion and bioregion are alike in that the partitioning of both is based on physiographic and biotic features. However, the cultural aspects of bioregionalism sets it apart from the more objective purpose of ecoregion definition. The collaboration of Peter Berg, a central founder of the bioregional movement, and biogeographer Raymond Dasmann in the mid-1970s resulted in the original formulation of the concept.

Determining the appropriate size for a bioregion is still a conundrum for bioregionalist thinkers. In some attempts to resolve this, the experience of Native Americans is drawn upon since they lived in a close relationship with nature. Berg and Dasmann were interested in developing a concept which included both culture and nature, so they explored the size of area which Native peoples tended to regard as a home territory. In 1976 they published an article in Edward Goldsmith’s The Ecologist magazine in which they defined bioregion as a term which “refers both to geographic terrain and a terrain of consciousness — to a place and the human ideas that have developed about how to live in that place.”

Berg and Dasmann argued that the initial determination of a bioregion can be made by examining the climate, the physical features, the animal and plant geography, natural history, and other descriptive natural characteristics. But the final boundaries are determined by the feelings of the people living there “in-place,” that is, who are living there enduringly as “natives” — as people consciously living in such a way “that will enrich the life of that place, restore its life-supporting systems, and establish an ecologically and socially sustainable pattern of existence within it.” (Berg and Dasmann 1990: 35)

A HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT AND THE MOVEMENT

So the bioregional idea fuses two components: humans and nature. As Elan Shapiro puts it, “What bioregionalism means is that in order to survive on this planet, in order to be whole, we need to realize how important it is that we’re part of the immediate place in which we live. We need to know this place in detail; we need to love it in the detail.” (1993: 17) Aberley sees the task of bioregionalism as bringing together dynamic human populations with distinct physical territories defined by continuities of land and life. He adds, “The promise is that these bioregions will be inhabited in a manner that respects ecological carrying capacity, engenders social justice, uses appropriate technology creatively, and allows for a rich interconnection between regionalized cultures.” (1993: 3)

Some credit Helen and Scott Nearing as being the spokespersons for those Americans who, during the middle of the last century, started abandoning city life for the joys and hardships of returning to the land. The Nearings became well-known through their books. During the counterculture movement of the 1960s and early ’70s many thousands of people tried to return to a more simple rural life. In their attempts to “get back to nature” they forged the foundation of the bioregional movement.

Peter Berg recalls formative times during the 1960s: “A lot of us who were Diggers (in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco) went and lived at Black Bear Ranch for a while … It might have been the most radical commune of the Sixties. Developing a sense of place started happening at Black Bear. Maybe a quarter of what we ate was wild food … We were a radical wilderness community.” (Proceedings of North American Bioregional Congress III, 1989: 50–51)

Berg first heard of the term “bioregion” in 1973 from Allen Van Newkirk, a Canadian poet and amateur biogeographer. Van Newkirk discussed bioregional strategy and described bioregional research as the study of culturally-induced changes in the distribution of wild plants and animals, and how the different natural regions of the Earth have been successively inhabited and at times deformed by various cultures. Van Newkirk introduced Peter Berg to the work of Raymond Dasmann.

In 1973 Berg, Judy Goldhaft, and others created the Planet Drum Foundation, which over the years would act as a strong advocate for bioregional ideas and organizing. The group published collections of maps, poems, essays and other materials as “bundles.” The early bundles began “laying out the intellectual territory of bioregionalism without even using the word.” (Proceedings NABC III, 1989: 52) Others seemed to sense this growing feeling of a “bioregional reality.” In 1975 Ernest Callenbach published Ecotopia, a fictional work about a future secession of northern California, Oregon, and Washington from a less ecologically-minded United States. By 1976 the term “bioregion” was incorporated in Berg’s writing. He recalls, “We knew that northern California was a bioregion … So we formed the Frisco Bay Mussel Group, the first self-consciously bioregional group in the country.”

It should be noted that even in the early period of bioregional development there was a generalized spiritual undertone. Berg says: “Ecology became the ‘religion’ of the non-Eastern-oriented people in the movement. Earth orientation became the spiritual basis for people who weren’t involved in the transcendental cosmological stuff. And I’ll confess that about myself: ecology is a spiritual pursuit for me.” (Proceedings NABC III, 1989: 50)

The term “bioregion” seems to have slowly spread among those adopting a countercultural lifestyle because it was a word which expressed what they felt: political boundaries are not as important as natural boundaries; ecology is more important than the interests of the nation-state governments or those of the corporations. In their words, “Nature bats last.”

The experience of David Haenke, a central figure in the growth of the bioregional movement, illustrates this very well. Living in the Ozarks in an experimental homestead community, Haenke wrote: “A lot of us back-to-the-land people with a nose to the wind and an eye on the newspaper saw the Ozarks being trashed and polluted just like everywhere else.” In 1976, while working on a strategy to oppose ecologically destructive practices, an idea occurred to him: “Ozark Free State popped into my mind … create an unofficial, undeclared, parallel, ecological Ozark nation!” (Proceedings NABC II, 1987: 38)

Two years after that revelation, Haenke heard about Berg’s Planet Drum and Callenbach’s Ecotopia. He began speaking to people throughout the Ozarks about bioregionalism. As a result, 150 people attended the first gathering of the Ozark Area Community Congress in 1980. Peter Berg met Haenke at the second meeting of OACC in 1981, where they broached the idea of having a continental bioregional congress. From that discussion emerged the first North American Bioregional Congress in 1984. It was held in Missouri with 217 people in attendance. Participants divided into committees: Agriculture/Permaculture, Bioregional Education, Bioregional Movement, Communications, Culture and the Arts, Deep Ecology, Eco-Defense, Eco-Feminism, Economics, Forests, Green Politics, Intentional Communities, Media, Native Peoples, Social Justice, Spirituality, and Water. Each committee met several times and developed resolutions which were presented to the entire plenary council and, with perhaps some modifications, voted on. The adopted resolutions can be referenced in Proceedings NABC I, 1984.

THE IDEA OF REINHABITATION

What Peter Berg calls the “terrain of consciousness” is linked to his ideas involving “reinhabitation.” It is the moral dimension of living-in-place since it involves living in such a way as not to diminish the ecological well-being of that place, but rather to help enrich it. Berg and Dasmann state, “Reinhabitation means learning to live-in-place and regenerate an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation.” (Berg and Dasmann 1990: 35)

Christopher Plant writes, “Reinhabitation involves becoming native to a place, learning what its unique characteristics and needs might be, and what kinds of human activities it might support if we were to fit ourselves to the land, not require the land to bend to our demands.” (Plant and Plant 1990: 104) Bioregional thinking means far more than identifying one’s bioregion. It means developing a lifestyle, a culture, a politics which opposes the diminution of the natural integrity of that place. It means following the ethic of Aldo Leopold as expressed in A Sand County Almanac: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise.” (Leopold 1949: 239)

Like the term “bioregion,” the term “reinhabitation” is a construction which describes something that has already actually been going on — that is currently being done by large numbers of people, many of whom have no particular name for what they are doing. It involves the task of building a just, humane, ecologically sustainable culture and society. Industrial modern growth society colonizes the land and destroys it. Bioregionalists and like-minded allies want to build a new culture that will reinhabit the land and sustain it.

HUMAN DIVERSITY IN THE BIOREGIONAL MOVEMENT

The movement is diverse. Its evolving set of ideas is attractive to many types of people, especially those feeling alienation toward the dominant culture and those with an affinity for the natural world. But even with this diversity there seems to be a common core set of values. Some of these values seem “traditional,” that is, rural and old fashioned. “Bioregionalism tugs at many of our traditional values: nature, rootedness, cooperation, compassion, self-reliance, participation, sustainability.” (Milbrath 1989: 214) Stephanie Mills states, “What bioregionalists want, and are willing to risk status and apparent security for, is a new way of life: simpler, freer, and more responsible; a life devoted to place.” (1991:40) This involves a feeling of community with people in the context of a larger “family” which includes all the natural beings of a region (“all my relations”).

Biologist Neil Evernden: “There appears to be a human phenomenon, similar in some ways to the experience of territoriality, that is described as aesthetic, a sense of knowing and of being a part of a particular place … It’s just what it feels like to be home.” (1978: 19) In Orion magazine Scott Russell Sanders writes that mobility has been the rule in civilized history and rootedness the exception. He argues for the importance of “staying put … every township, every field and creek, every mountain and forest on earth would benefit from the stable and enduring attention of place-committed men and women.” (1992:45)

People engaged in preservation, conservation, or restoration of the natural environment in an area eventually start thinking along bioregional lines. The idea of place which bioregionalists have is different from the “place” of mainstream American culture. For bioregionalists the idea is more subjective; it has “soft boundaries” instead of hard ones like city limits. It’s also deeper and richer because it is a product of numerous past evolutions: molecular, chemical, geological, biological and cultural. It is a place nested within places both spatially and temporally. Scott Sanders captures this feeling when he writes, “I think of my home ground as a series of nested rings, with house and family at the center, surrounded by the wider and wider hoops of neighborhood and community, the near-region within walking distance of my door, the more-distant wooded hills and karst landscape of southern Indiana, the watershed of the Ohio Valley, and so outward — and inward — to the ultimate source.” (1992:47)

The size of a bioregion needs to be large enough to be relatively self-sustaining. Author Gene Marshall explains that although local bioregions may currently, in our globalized system, be economically linked to and dependent upon distant regions, a fully evolved bioregion ought to, eventually, become largely self-sufficient. Marshall, like Sanders, describes his home place as a series of nested rings. For him, these geographical delineations are important because they chart his circles of responsibility. We can’t realistically be responsible for the entire planet. We can perhaps identify with and feel responsibility for a homestead, a neighborhood, a community, and a bioregion: “The way to save the whole planet is to save its parts.” (Zuckerman 1987: 63)

The debate within the environmental community about being locally-oriented or planet-oriented is a moot question to most bioregionalists, who agree with Scott Sanders: “On the wall beside me as I write there is a poster of the big blue marble encased in its white swirl of clouds. That is one pole of my awareness. The other pole is what I see through my window. I try to keep both in sight at once.” (1992: 46)

SPIRITUALITY AS A BIOREGIONAL VALUE

In attempting to create a humane, ecologically-attuned culture, the bioregional movement touches on all the major sociological issues found in human societies: economic, familial, educational, political, etc. Because it takes such a strong moral stance with respect to the well-being of nature and the Earth, and since it demands commitment and offers people meaning, it takes on, even unwittingly, a spiritual tone. People from many different religions and philosophies consider themselves bioregionalists. The movement has a pervasive sense of the sacred.

“Deep Ecology” is a term that was coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in the early 1970s. Like bioregionalism, it offers an ecocentric perspective which it develops in philosophical detail, and it tends to include a spiritual orientation. Bioregionalism is sometimes described as “applied deep ecology.” In his 1984 paper, “Deep Ecology and Lifestyle,” Naess describes the qualities which would be reflected by a person abiding by deep ecology principles. This individual would strive to live simply in community with nature, protecting local ecosystems and their wild inhabitants. They would focus on satisfying their vital needs rather than esoteric consumer desires, behave in a nonviolent manner, and promote an equitable standard of living for fellow humans without undue cost to other species. In its attempts to redefine the relationship between humans and nature, deep ecology has much in common with bioregionalism.

WILDNESS AS A BIOREGIONAL VALUE

The idea of wildness, that is, nature unaffected by human action, receives attention from some environmental groups and is ignored by others — but it pervades the bioregional movement. Peter Berg states that there are four different inhabitory zones within every bioregion: cities, suburbs, rural areas, and wilderness areas. The latter is “the enduring source of a bioregion’s spirit and regenerative power. It must be maintained for its own sake.”

Wildness is the nature all around us which has overwhelming ultimate power over us. Wildness is the original homeland of the human species and will be here long after we have disappeared. Thoreau said: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Gary Snyder, perhaps the best-known bioregional writer, sums up the movement quite succinctly when he writes: “We need a civilization that can live fully and creatively together with wildness.’’ (1990: 6) The bioregional movement is experimenting with creating such. One important contribution is the emphasis on the linkages between wildness and our daily actions and behavior. Our eating of hamburger may encourage the destruction of the rain forests in order to construct more cattle ranches. Our disposal of plastic may choke fish in the oceans. To respect wildness, our own culture — the daily ways we do things — must change.

Thomas Berry noted in his talks and writings that people now are “autistic to nature” … they do not hear, do not see, do not respond to the nature all around them. David Abram stresses how we must learn to listen to the flora and fauna. During the plenary sessions of the Bioregional Congresses, four persons are commissioned to represent “the other species,” listen intently to the goings-on of the meeting and determine if their interests are being threatened. If so, they speak up and temporarily stop the meeting. This attunement to the beings of the natural world and their needs is central to the spirituality of the bioregional movement.

The bioregional worldview argues for a consideration of the way Native Americans once lived on the Earth. It’s not a question of “going back” but, rather, an appreciation of how (and why) their lifeways were, overall, sustainable. Their long traditions arose out of extended living in close dependence on the Earth. There is no reason why contemporary post-modern people can’t, incrementally but steadily, change their culture to reflect a similar Earth-centeredness.

CELEBRATION AS A BIOREGIONAL VALUE

Theodore Roszak, in The Voice of the Earth, complains that the environmental movement tends to be too depressing in its efforts to motivate people to save the Earth. He asks, “Are dread and desperation the only motivations we have to play upon? What are we connecting with in people that is generous, joyous, freely given, and perhaps heroic?’’ (1992: 38) The values and practices of bioregionalism emphasize a positive loving relationship with the natural world and seek to joyfully celebrate it. In fact, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry argue that the principal role of the human in the universe may be celebration “of existence and life and consciousness. We remain genetically coded toward a mutually enhancing presence vis-à-vis the life community that surrounds us. Our own role is to enable this community to reflect on and to celebrate itself and its deepest mystery in a special mode of conscious self-awareness.” (1992: 263–264)

THE IMPACT OF THE BIOREGIONAL MOVEMENT

A goal of the movement is to create a human culture which understands and cooperates with the patterns of nature and therefore does not substantially diminish it but even attempts to enrich it. Another goal is to restore the human scale to all aspects of life.

These sentiments are growing, but the movement itself remains marginal at this point — because its decentralized vision is so radically alternative to the extant civilizational trajectories. There are several bioregional proto-institutions that are prefiguring decentralized sovereignties. The “Cascadia Department of Bioregion” comes to mind (cascadiabioregion.org). Another tangible manifestation is the establishment of ecovillage communities that could network to become the basis for an eventual bioregional reorganization of society.

Some view these initiatives as reminiscent of the monastic communities of past ages whose goal was to act as centers of light in a sea of darkness. Demonstrating to others that it is possible to live satisfying, healthy, fulfilling lives apart from consumerism, high energy use, high pollution generation, and other unsustainable practices is a valuable service which these bioregional advocates offer to the larger, mainstream culture. Some activists are making efforts to bring bioregional principles into practice in the mainstream culture. Elan Shapiro writes, “As a conscious movement in post-industrial culture, bioregionalism is an underground, grassroots movement in many places around the world. So its influence is much broader than is known through the mainstream media.” (1993: 18)

Many people are doing things advocated in the bioregional program without being aware of the bioregional label. And many may label themselves primarily as Greens, ecologists, environmentalists, theologists, conservationists, restorationists, etc. Few are “dues-paying, card-carrying” bioregionalists! Yet bioregional ideas are spreading throughout the environmental movement and in the general society. Jeremy Rifkin, in Biosphere Politics, writes, “Bioregional awareness is beginning to grow and is already having an effect on traditional domestic politics as well as geopolitics.” Rifkin maintains that shortages of fresh water are forcing locales and states to think more bioregionally, especially in the West. Air pollution and smoke pollution from wildfires are forcing a similar bioregional response nationwide.

There have been fruitful interactions between the Green politics and bioregional movements. Greens, of course, are more engaged in the political process, while bioregionalists tend to focus on cultural change. But the Earth-centered “politics” of the bioregional movement is similar to that of the Greens. It doesn’t advocate finance capitalism, corporate capitalism, state-socialism, Marxism, centrism, anarchism or libertarianism. It points out that all the old ideologies tended to be quite “developmentalist” and anthropocentric.

The politics of the bioregional movement offers a long-term vision. Jeremy Rifkin maintains, “Only when political and ecosystem boundaries are made compatible with one another will it be possible to properly regulate economic activity so as to make it sustainable and congenial with the temporal and spatial limitations of the environment human communities dwell in.” (1991: 289) At continental and local bioregional gatherings a sub-group of the participants often identify themselves as “Greens” and they will often meet together. The methods and ideas of permaculture as taught by Bill Mollison are common to bioregionalism and the Green movement.

Another important area of bioregional impact has been among churches. For example, at local bioregional congresses of the Central Ohio River Region, the list of financial supporters tends to include more religious organizations than secular ones. Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, had enormous impact in spreading the ideas of the movement. He gave many talks across the country centering on the Earth and community revitalization. He attended the First Congress in 1984 and was instrumental in introducing bioregional ideas to religious communities in America.

If our society is to start incorporating ecological considerations into its organization and praxis, then it must draw inspiration from bioregionalism.

In an age of near-despair, the bioregional movement has the potential for wide appeal because it directs us to find new hope, meaning, and commitment.

Frank Traina (1943–2014) was an educator and writer. After earning his PhD in sociology from Cornell, he moved to Kentucky to teach at Northern Kentucky University, but ended up devoting himself instead to the farm he purchased in Wilder, KY in 1978. Sunrock Farm hosted educational programs that “raised consciousness,” serving mostly Cincinnati-area children. About 25,000 people visited annually for decades. Farmer Frank also published Pollen, a journal of the North American Bioregional Congress Education Committee.

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