502 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



DONALD W. INS ALL. Clear-headed analysis this is what Dr. 

 Lewis has been showing us from Wisconsin. This is exactly what 

 at home we are now trying to apply to the problem of saving our 

 British villages. First you need a knowledge of the facts, differ- 

 entiating between the good and bad, between the sheep and the 

 goats. Then for we have a saying that "Everyone's job is no one's 

 job" every task must be allocated to someone with a real inspira- 

 tion and incentive. Can we get together on this problem interna- 

 tionally, to study means and methods, and to share know-how? We 

 all have much to learn and share. The skills are short; and the 

 tasks are great, but there is so much at stake. 



FRITH JOF M. LUNDE. A program of professional mapping of the 

 remnants of the national environments remaining within the munic- 

 ipal boundaries of all major urban areas is clearly an urgent need. 



By way of illustration of the need for such map-inventories it can 

 be authoritatively stated that the Planning Commission of the City 

 of New York, the largest city in the world, does not have in its pos- 

 session, put forth by conservation or natural preservation groups 

 (or individuals), any comprehensive (or single-interest) maps or 

 descriptive data or document of any kind locating the remnants of 

 the natural environments situated within the city limits or in the 

 adjacent waters of New York City. Such areas as are host to the 

 great flotillas of wintering scaup ducks, or nesting sites of terns, or 

 are the last refuge of the spring beauty and jack-in-the-pulpit are not 

 charted, described, or evaluated and therefore available, visually, 

 quantitatively, and qualitatively to the planning and design profes- 

 sions who influence and shape city growth. Not until they become 

 the object of a last-minute last-ditch fight or are lost to a competing 

 city purpose deserving or undeserving do they become known. 



It would take very little time for any naturalist, ecologist, ornitholo- 

 gist (or society of any of them) to put down on a map what he 

 already knows in considerable detail about his home area and even 

 less to determine whether such knowledge is already crystallized and 

 available in map and/or synopsis form to his municipal adminis- 

 tration, zoning board, planning director and, last but not least, park 

 commissioner. 



It is proposed therefore that organizations such as the American 

 Ornithological Union, societies of ecologists, marine biologists, bot- 

 anists, and geologists institute a program urging their affiliated geo- 

 graphic units to immediately undertake surveys in their urban areas 



