While grassroots organizing has long been the standard of the conservation movement, some problems require the experience of professionals. The National Audubon Society's campaign staff takes on those problems across the country. We asked them about their hopes and plans for the coming century.
 

Population and Habitat
The Audubon Population and Habitat Campaign has doubled its roster of supporters to 20,000 in the past year. In the next year this network will lobby the U.S. government to meet its funding commitment to the Programme of Action, the United Nations' population-growth agreement. The agreement aims to slow population growth by providing affordable reproductive-health services to women worldwide. "If women only had the number of children they wanted to have, we would begin to see population growth go down," says campaign director Pat Waak. Because in the year 2000, 1 billion of the world's 6 billion residents will reach reproductive age, the campaign also organizes discussions for young people. "The program's success could mean a population of 7.3 billion versus a population of 10 billion by 2050," says Waak. "We have 50 years to really shape the future of this planet, and all the wildlife and birds we care about will be dependent on the decisions we make."

 Living Oceans
What humans are doing in the oceans is the last buffalo hunt," says Carl Safina, director of the Living Oceans Program. Started in 1993, the campaign has focused on raising the visibility of ocean wildlife among conservationists and lobbying for reform of fisheries regulations. It recently launched a program of consumer education. The campaign's biggest success so far was the 1996 overhaul of federal fisheries law. "We have had a number of spectacular recoveries, such as striped bass," says Safina. "But unless things change we will see some spectacular losses in the future. Salmon, for instance, will disappear from the coast between British Columbia and California." To try to stop such losses, the campaign ultimately aims to overhaul fishing regulations in coastal waters and on the international high seas. "I hope to see a restoration of abundance that is equal to the depletion we have caused in the past 30 years," says Safina. "Eventually I'd like us to be on a footing of sustainable use where we aren't driving down the overall population anymore."

 Forests
The biggest tragedy would be to lose the forests we haven't ever cut-virgin, old- growth, and roadless forests-which is a very real possibility," says Mike Leahy, director of the Forest Campaign. Forests are home to one-third of the nation's endangered species. One of the campaign's main goals is to reform the federal Forest Service's policy toward one of stewardship of those species. It hopes also to promote conservation-minded management of private lands, which hold 70 percent of the nation's total forests. "In 50 years," says Leahy, "I would hope to see a system of connected forest reserves managed exclusively for the benefit of wildlife species or for a specific type of ecosystem." 

Wetlands
Eighty percent of the nation's endangered or threatened birds depend on wetlands, and vast numbers of migrating birds use them as stopovers. But about 100,000 acres of wetlands in the United States are destroyed each year. The Wetlands Campaign, launched in 1996, combats this loss by coordinating a wide variety of local, state, and Audubon center wetlands campaigns. Its staff also works on national issues. The campaign aims to restore 1 million acres of wetlands by 2005. Ultimately, Naki Stevens, director of the campaign, would like to see the restoration of 10 million acres, about 10 percent of the total that has been lost since European settlement. "Wetlands are where the birds are," she points out. "And Auduboners know it." 

Wildlife Refuges
National wildlife refuges receive the least federal funding per acre of any of the federal lands systems," says Evan Hirsche, director of the Wildlife Refuge Campaign. "We have to recognize the importance of those places where wildlife comes first." The campaign, begun in 1996 to educate the public, is set to end in 2003; by then Hirsche hopes to have established groups that support their local refuges. "The most important threats to refuges in the future are adjacent development and water quality and quantity. We really need people to get involved in land-use planning on a local level." 

 Everglades
There's only one Everglades," says Vernita Nelson, public affairs associate at the Audubon Everglades Restoration Campaign. "There's no other ecosystem like this in the world." The Everglades campaign, which began in 1992, has focused its attention on the giant water-management and restoration plan the Army Corps of Engineers sent to Congress this year. The plan will return much of the water now diverted out to sea for flood control back to the Everglades. In the next few years the campaign will turn its energies to getting the Corps plan signed into law. "If the plan passes," says Nelson, "we expect to see major improvements in the amount and quality of the water flowing through the Everglades in the next 10 years. In the next 50 years we hope that leads to an increase in wading-bird population, as opposed to a 90 percent decrease over the past 50."