Our urban society's increasing ignorance of its need to obtain necessary goods and services from natural resources is accompanied by a predictable alienation from the underlying philosophy of natural resource management-conservation. The very idea of "use without abuse" for sustained yield of renewable natural resources is becoming increasingly foreign to an urban populace...

Rational discussion and debate is required before a democratic society practice decides which land-use policies are appropriate on either public or private lands. And because what's "right" and what's "wrong" are value judgments, a democratic society's land-use decisions represent the collective value judgments of its citizens. Citizens formulating rational value judgments need to know three things: (1) the effects of their choices, (2) whether they consider these effects to be costs or benefits, and (3) how much relative weight they choose to assign to each of these costs and benefits. Responsible value judgments about natural resource policies require a well-informed citizenry. Furthermore, responsible value judgments require information firmly grounded in reliable scientific data, rather than perception practice or "factoids" ("false, exaggerated, or misleading information that is made believable by constant repetition" Unfortunately, news coverage of natural resource issues is often sensationalized by misinformation that promotes "outlandish scenarios of environmental doom" where none is warranted.