Origami — even in its crudest form - has always defeated me. That's why I was the last kid in the third grade to cover his textbooks with paper sacks from the A&P.

But that's also why I clearly remember the picture on the back cover of the social studies book: children picking out oranges at an open-air market in South America. The front cover had an image of a farmer - near Dublin I always imagined -pulling a team of horses as he put up hay. In the hazy skyline behind him loomed a factory with no less than six smokestacks.

The title of that book was People Use the Earth, an inconceivable title in our era of political correctness. But this was 1969, when the Silver Burdett textbook company didn't see a simple, truthful statement as an impediment to winning approval from a school board's textbook purchasing committee.

Sometime after my third grade education, the thinking on environmental education changed. Up through my teen and college years, I got the impression that those who deeply cared about the environment really cared only about certain environments, mostly wilderness areas where I was singularly unequipped to go. They didn't seem interested in (or maybe they somehow disapproved of) the urban and suburban ecosystems I knew. Even public green spaces, given over as they often were to walking paths, golf courses or ball diamonds, didn't much count. Their book might have been named People Should Leave the Earth Alone — never mind that humans have been unable to resist impacting their surroundings since before the day that that first enterprising hominid scratched images of cattle onto a cave wall.

You can understand my trepidation about editing an environmental issue of the magazine. But working on this issue of IP&R has brought me many reliefs and revelations. The articles in these pages deal with such varied topics as water detention, butterfly houses, green design, goose control and dealing with the destruction caused by gypsy moths. One of the underlying principles behind all these stories is the tacit understanding that people have and always will bend their environments to their own wants and needs. The question now is: How can we solve our environmental control and conservation problems humanely and responsibly?

I think you'll find the contributors to this issue answer that question very well. I, for one, am proud to have their numbers in my Rolodex and very happy to know that these thoughtful professionals and many like them work hard to allow others to — yes — use the earth. Carefully.

RODD WHELPLEY
Editor

4 Illinois Parks and Recreation www.ILipra.org