"I have long been active in and supportive of conservation and historical preservation causes"

The statement signals a pledge of sustained engagement rather than a passing sentiment, emphasizing continuity and responsibility over the long arc of a life. “Long been” suggests habits formed and kept: volunteering, organizing, donating, showing up when decisions about land use or landmarks are on the line. “Active” implies work with one’s hands and time; “supportive” widens the lens to include advocacy, funding, and public endorsement. Together they outline a full spectrum of citizenship.

Pairing conservation with historical preservation fuses two realms often treated separately: the living systems that sustain us and the built or archival legacies that tell us who we are. Both are vulnerable to erosion, soil by rain and development, memory by neglect and demolition. Both ask for stewardship, the ethic that we hold resources in trust for people not yet born. Framing them as causes acknowledges that these are contested spaces requiring collective action, coalition-building, and sometimes resistance to short-term profit or convenience.

For a storyteller like Jack L. Chalker, that pairing also resonates with narrative craft. Conservation guards the settings, watersheds, forests, species, that nurture imagination and life itself. Historical preservation protects the record of human experiment: neighborhoods, artifacts, documents that anchor stories in place and time. World-building rests on continuity; so does community. The work is not nostalgia for a frozen past but a pragmatic commitment to resilience. Adaptive reuse saves embodied energy and keeps communities legible. Protected habitats buffer climate shocks and preserve biodiversity that underwrites human flourishing.

The tone is modest and invitational, describing commitments without grandstanding. It models a durable form of engagement: give time, give means, lend a voice, and keep doing so. Beneath it lies an argument about identity and future: we become who we are by caring for the places and histories that carry us, and by ensuring that those who follow inherit more than our footprints.