By Anne Pisor for The Times-Tribune
What if I told you the friendships you’ve built on the lake, river or trail could help protect Pennsylvania fisheries — would you believe me?
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), I’ve been studying how our everyday relationships — like those between fishing buddies — shape the health of our natural resources.
But research on our natural resources is on the chopping block. The One Big Beautiful Bill, moving through the U.S. Senate, proposes cutting NSF funding by over 60%.
How does science funding matter for our stewardship of our natural resources?
Imagine you like to fish at your local lake and it has a catch-and-release policy. Your buddy lives in the next town and likes to fish at a different beach on the same lake. Just having a friend you care about in the next town might make you more likely to catch and release — because if you keep when you’re not supposed to, that reduces stocks for your friend too.
In other words, your choices might be guided by just having a friend nearby, reducing impacts on natural resources — like forests or waterways — that you both share.
I’m a professor at Penn State and an expert on cooperation. I study who people call on when times get tough, from neighbors to friends to cousins, and how calling on others affects our incomes, our stewardship of natural resources, and even how we think.
If you make your living off the land or off the water, you know that times can get tough. It might sound surprising, but fishers in Tanzania — halfway around the world — face some of the same pressures as anglers right here in the Poconos or Endless Mountains. When times get tough, they call on friends in nearby towns — like for a loan to buy a new fishing boat.
For every friend a Tanzanian fisher has in a nearby town, the fisher is 15% more likely to participate in fisheries management — in activities like picking up trash, teaching new folks the rules, and reporting outsiders with destructive gear. A fisher with three friends in nearby towns is almost 50% more likely to help with caretaking of the local fishery.
Again, this was government-supported research, and it revealed cheap and even enjoyable ways we can build community to better steward our natural resources, making sure our fisheries and forests remain healthy now and in the future.
And speaking of cheap: reducing science funding won’t save money. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% since 1950, meaning for every dollar U.S. taxpayers invested, we got back between $1.50 and $3. The proposed cuts to the NSF and NIH in the One Big Beautiful Bill are expected to generate economic losses of about $10 billion annually.
Our woods, waters and way of life depend on smart stewardship — and good science. I’m asking my fellow Pennsylvanians to speak up: protect the funding that helps us protect the land and waters we love. Visit Research or Regress to learn more, and talk to your neighbors — on the water, at the diner, in the woods. It all starts with a conversation.
Anne Pisor is an assistant professor of anthropology at Penn State University. She studies how people cooperate to deal with the risks they face, and how cooperation affects how we steward natural resources like fisheries and forests. She’s the former CEO of a small company helping people get ready for the next natural disaster.