We all have our own reasons, right?

Mushroomers delighted in 2016, when the woods were carpeted with all types of fungi. Surfers take to the inland seas for sport and adventure. Artists find abundant subject matter, from character-rich faces of elders to subtle color shifts in summer wetlands. Wildlife viewers treasure the annual migrations of birds and water fowl, the chance to see sturgeon in the lower Menominee river, or spot a moose along the Peshekee.

All these subjects, and more, circling around the theme of spirit of place, will be highlighted at the ninth annual Celebrate the UP! sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition this upcoming week in Marquette.

Events will come to a head on Saturday, March 25, with a keynote address by naturalist and writer John Bates, 12 presentations and a panel on successful conservation projects.

Saturday’s events will take place at the Federated Women’s Clubhouse, the Landmark Inn and Peter White Public Library and are free and open to the public. Details can be found at upenvironment. org.

But there is a larger reason for a celebration in 2017.

That is the consolidation and energizing of the environmental movement behind a clearer vision of what needs to be done and how to do it. UPEC and Save the Wild U.P. merged at the end of 2016: The former stressed public education, strategic grant giving and long term cultural changes; the latter watchdogging government and industry to contest environmental threats to land and people.

Now, the two approaches — the softer power of persuasion and the harder power of truth-speaking — will be combined in one organization.

But what is the rationale for all this organizing activity? Simply put, it is protecting nature in the U.P., its waters, coasts, wetlands and forests, so that it will never again be the devastated landscape it was in 1920.

Some critics suspect that activists want to turn the U.P. into one big wilderness park. Truthfully, no one knew how much protected land would be necessary to mitigate the ongoing loss of many species of local plants and animals, and the subsequent shredding of the natural systems that support all life. Ten percent, 20 percent?

Thanks to the work and writings of biologist Edward O. Wilson, we now have a better handle on the numbers and the end game. In his recent book, “Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life” (2016), Wilson uses island biogeography theory to estimate that about 85 percent of plant and animal species would survive if half of the planet’s surface were dedicated to the lives of species other than our own.

On our present trajectory, the estimate is that more than 50 percent of current species will go extinct through habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, population growth, and overhunting.

Half-Earth. Sounds radical, but the good news in the U.P. is that we are not far from that goal: almost 47 percent of the U.P. is to some degree already protected and cannot be subdivided or converted into settlements and farms.

That protected area, mostly public lands, is being selectively enhanced through the private efforts of conservancies. What is required is to hold the line against any net loss of public lands, and counter industrial-scale threats that would degrade them.

The U.P. is not only a landscape to enjoy for recreation or to use for extractive logging and mining. It is a wounded land in the process of healing itself, sometimes with human help.

Eagles, moose, and wolves have returned, and we can add to those success stories by building sustainable natural and human communities throughout the region.

Our large protected area and small population open up that chance to us. It is a vision worth celebrating and fighting for.

Editor’s note: Jon Saari is a retired historian and long-time activist and Board member of UPEC and SWUP (now the Mining Action Group within UPEC). He will be one of the presenters at a book discussion of Wilson’s Half-Earth at the Celebration.