Building a technical cyberinfrastructure with all appropriate bells and whistles will not save a species, educate a community or make environmental data accessible to those who need it most.  Leveraging knowledge, skills, capacities holds out the possibility of doing all of these things.  This is what creating a real cyberinfrastructure is about: building robust communities of practice using information technology of all kinds (from book to optiputer).  I adduce lessons in building such communities from the long history of the growth of environmental informatics and from recent attempts to build cyberinfrastructures.