USU wildlands expert is wildly unusual 'rebel'

LOGAN — Less than five minutes into Utah State University wildlands scientist Fred Provenza's short course on range management, it's obvious why previous audiences almost always use the word "provocative" to describe the session.

More than a few of the 40 or so land use experts on hand from around the world are looking at the syllabus and literally scratching their heads: Newtonian mechanics, quantum theory, relativity theory, nonequilibrium, mathematics, significant of mythology and the unity of all things.

What kind of home on the range can this guy possibly be talking about?

Provenza smiles wide through his thick beard and assures his audience the topics will be as difficult and probably as bewildering as they imagine. He also promises that things will definitely be more than a little out-there for people in professions as down to earth as they come.

The former Colorado sheep rancher has been through some pretty formidable terrain, literally and academically. And he's done it so well so many times that he was given the D. Wynne Thorne Career Research Award this spring — the most prestigious research accolade given by USU.

First, he herds his flock away from traditional thinking toward a new science:

• Nature is relative, not absolute.

• Change is not an exception to the rule, it is the only rule.

• Life for all animals — humans included — is composed of periods of instability, choices in the face of uncertainty and interludes of tranquillity.

• Behavior is absolute, but there can be no absolute characterization of behavior.

"In other words, nature is knowable but not predictable," he says, smiling again, fully realizing that he has just stood the foundation of all science since Newton on its ear. Behavior of individual animals, human beings or the ecosystem follows predictive laws such as the gravity that made the apple fall on Newton's head. But any system is ultimately unique and self-organizing.

That in turn means life is a series of changes caused by action and feedback from that action, and over time, that give and take irreversibly changes the animal and the environment.

"To put it another way, things never were the way they were and they never will be again."

Provenza lets the laughter die down and proceeds to show them there is a lot more truth than humor in the statement.

Provenza, who his dean calls "the most unlikely rebel you'll ever meet," says the classical Newtonian notion of cause-and-effect must be supplemented with a fact of life Provenza calls "self-organization." Life is constant transformation, or, as the philosopher said more than 2,000 years ago: The only constant in life is change.

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