This is Paul Her of Arizona State University with Jen Sweeney, also of
Arizona State University interviewing Lawrence David Garrett uh at his
home in Olaf Colorado on August 9th, 2018,
Dave. Why don't you start by telling us uh a little bit about your career
in natural resources management and how it eventually led you to
involvement in the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program and the
Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center. OK. So I'll try to show the
connectivity between the activities that uh we put together directed and
my past, which was so it's a long chronicle, but I'll make it sure. So my
interest in resource management goes to my junior year in high school
where my brother and I took a course in wildlife management out of outdoor
life, which proved to be, of course futile. It had not added nothing to
nothing but it did sparked my interest in resource management. So I went
on to do uh uh fisheries and forestry bachelors and then a management um
uh uh street management masters, but with natural resources as a minor,
where was that? And that was at Southern Illinois University. For the
Bachelor's and Michigan State for the master.
And then uh uh worked for the Forest Service a while and then thought I
needed a doctor because I questioned a lot of management strategies. And
so it caused me to go back and take a, a doctorate action in a different
direction. So it was operations research which now is referred to as
systems analysis and um and economics. I took a major in economics and a
minor in operations research. And then uh spent uh it 12 different loca 11
different locations across this country. East west south in north um time
with the US forces first with private industry, actually uh with a couple
of private industry companies and then with the forest service because I,
I like the forest service past image in conservation man practices. So uh
I, I did that for 20 some odd years and then decided that I needed uh a
change and I went into consulting for a while. Um but didn't like that
aspect of it at that time during that era. So then I decided to go um into
the academic side of programming. When was that 20 year period that you
were working? That would have been, that would have been from uh around 65
to 84
time of significant change. Time of significant change, I became to
question everything and, and I directed research facilities all over the
country and uh and I didn't like where, where I did not like where we were
not going with forest service research in the West. I guess that's the
best way. So I looked around at universities, I looked first at Colorado
State and they have a good program up there in uh in forestry and natural
resource management. And uh I, I got, I made it on the first draw and they
changed provost while, while the faculty was considered bringing me in, I
won the, won the pole in other words, and then lost it. And uh because
that new Provost wanted to run it back out, I encouraged the existing, the
uh director of Natural Resources program, throw his hat and ring and he
got it and I came in second on the second one. So it's interesting
lifestyle. So, but then uh Northern Arizona University wanted me because
the president wanted to change there. And I, and he agreed to what I
wanted to do and what I wanted to do was to take a program that was a
traditional forestry program and turn it into an ecologically based um
program that looked at both biophysical and socio-economic issues related
to natural resource management.
He agreed gave me free reign. And so I spent 11 years there building and
doing that program and you might know Covington, Wally, Wally, Covington,
Covington, I brought in uh a diverse uh set of faculty, female and male
and a Native American start Native American for forestry. Program. But all
of those programs had to have a basic twist to it. Everything in forestry
, resource management, natural resources, fish Walla had to be um adaptive
management base.
All not theoretical, not all, all of the courses had to be team talk. No
courses could be not, could be single disc one taught. All had to have
both economics, social issues, biological issues, physical issues in the,
in the classroom at one time. So we used teams of three. So the entire
program and so that was the 19 eighties. That was, that went all the way,
I think uh to 9495.
So I went from about 84 to 95. And I uh I, the president allowing me free
range, like I said, I had a lot of, I mean, I was strongly connected to,
to many political leaders in the southwest and uh from the county
government side and uh who had many diverse ecological uh economic social
issues. So I was, I also was connected to both the environmental community
and the industrial community and the Graziers, timber producers, um river
rafters, Sierra Club, well, society and work with everybody. So um they
love my program and we had a good program and uh I, I left there, I was
gonna retire and uh OK, I decided I, I lasted six months now, I decided I
was gonna open a consulting firm that consulting firm was
interdisciplinary science and management. And So, uh it's called M Three
Research. It was originally multi resource management uh research. Uh but
then I just call it M three. And so, um that's when I connected with uh
the secretary. I've been very good friends with him when I was a dean
because he wanted uh some, he wanted to look at these diverse social,
economic and biophysical um dysfunctional program and he thought there was
a lot of problems And as you know, he ran for president uh when he was
governor there. And uh so then uh when there was administration change and
he went to Washington, he called me up and wanted me to come and interview
for a position with him. Uh and, and he stabbed in his direct staff at the
time, I didn't really, I knew he wanted to try to do something with a
biological survey with uh science and interior. He wanted to change the
direction of science and interior. I don't know at that time, uh science
and interior was vested into individual management groups, but it was
directed all by management officials rather than science directors. So uh
they were, they were moving that direction. He wanted an entirely new
concept. He wanted to take all the science out of every area of Management
Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service BLM and put it under one
science entity called the National Biological Survey. Now, if you recall
through history, there was a National Biological Survey way back when, but
it didn't have the context that he wanted to entirely new. He wanted a
science program that really was driven out of adapting management concepts.
And uh so when I was with the Forest Service, I uh CS Holly and I became
good friends and uh and that work that.