What is Environmental Stewardship?

The earth is one organism, “most like…a single cell,” in the words of physician and author Lewis Thomas. This interconnectedness is at the heart of the environmental stewardship initiatives at the Fullerton Arboretum. Webster’s Dictionary defines a steward as “one who acts as a supervisor or administrator, as of finances and property, for another or others.”

Under this definition, everyone is a steward of the environment around us. We do not own the environment—no one can. We are simply caretakers of the resources that we use in our daily lives, and it is our responsibility to administer those resources to the best of our abilities so they are available for the use and enjoyment of others, including future generations. Stewardship is what we do. As good administrators we need to establish goals for ourselves as to how we manage those resources. Among the goals:

• We need to manage our resources in a manner that is fiscally responsible.
• We need to manage our resources in a manner that is compliant with the rules and regulations established by society.
• We need to manage our resources in a manner that provides the facilities to perform our mission of education and research in order to better society.
• We need to manage our resources in a manner that is as sustainable as possible to help ensure they are available for future generations.

As stewards, it is our job to balance all these goals in order to be the best administrators of the resources; no one goal can have priority. Perhaps at a particular time one goal seems to take precedence due to prevailing conditions, but in the end they all need to balance or the system would collapse. We cannot be 100% sustainable if it means failing to be fiscally sound, out of compliance, or not meeting the mission of the Fullerton Arboretum. On the other hand, we cannot achieve our goals if we are not aware of the limited resource pool available to us.

Simply put, stewardship is the concept of responsibly managing all of our resources for the benefit of present and future generations of people, plants, and animals.

Why is this stewardship initiative important to the Fullerton Arboretum?

We have an obligation to be responsible. Organizations like the Fullerton Arboretum exist to serve people and society for the better. And as an educational institution, we are uniquely positioned to lead by example.

We can achieve benefits both in terms of cost and resource reduction at the Fullerton Arboretum. Many Fullerton Arboretum stewardship programs are cost-effective and actually save money, in comparison to traditional environmental management approaches.