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Remember the adage that “if we see farther, it is because of the giants on whose shoulders we stand?”  Today’s entry is about a man for whom that saying could have been written, at least for the broad fields of agriculture, conservation and natural resources.

            Henry Agard Wallace was born on October 7, 1888 (died 1965) on a farm in Orient, Iowa.  Iowa is the birthplace of several great conservationists, but more about that later.  The Wallace family was an agricultural dynasty.  Both his father and grandfather played large roles in the development of modern agriculture, through crop breeding, publishing, and public service.  The young Wallace did the same.  He learned about crop breeding from George Washington Carver, the African-American innovator of peanut crops and products, who lived with the Wallace family.  Wallace went to Iowa State, where his father taught agriculture, and both father and son helped establish several new agricultural science programs over the years.  When his father went to Washington as President Coolidge’s Secretary of Agriculture, the younger Wallace took over editing the family’s farm journal, Wallace’s Farmer.

            Wallace was an even better crop breeder than his father.  He developed the first commercial hybrid corn variety to be marketed widely in the U.S., a product that laid the foundation for his company, Pioneer Hi-Bred, once the largest seed-corn producer in the world Later, he had similar success with hybrid egg-laying chickens (you might have eaten an egg from one of his company’s chickens this morning at breakfast).

            Wallace grew up a Republican, but he became disillusioned with Republican farm policies during the Great Depression.  He became a Democrat and served as an agricultural advisor to presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt.  When Roosevelt was first elected in 1933, he brought Wallace to Washington as his Secretary of Agriculture.  Wallace kept that job for eight years, before becoming Roosevelt’s vice-president in 1941.

            Most biographies focus on Wallace’s years as vice-president (a checkered outcome), but his role as Secretary of Agriculture is our interest.  Wallace believed that the world of commerce, agricultural and beyond, needed to be regulated by government so that it did not destroy the very basis on which it depended—that is, natural resources.  He expressed his viewpoint in 1936:  “Probably the most damaging indictment that can be made of the capitalistic system is the way in which its emphasis on unfettered individualism results in exploitation of natural resources in a manner to destroy the physical foundations of national longevity.”

            That philosophy made him a friend of two of Iowa’s most prominent conservationists, Ding Darling and Aldo Leopold.  When it became clear to Wallace that the Bureau of the Biological Survey (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) was in desperate need of reorganization, he convinced President Roosevelt to bring in Darling and Leopold (and one other person) to do the work.  A short time later, he talked the president into giving Ding Darling the task of implementing the recommendations as Chief of the Survey.  In less than two years, Darling reformed the agency, expanding its infant National Wildlife Refuge System into the essential habitat protection agency that we know today.

            Aldo Leopold never went to Washington, but returned to his job as the first professor of wildlife science in the U.S., at the University of Wisconsin.  Leopold is known widely as the father of wildlife management and even more widely as author of modern conservation’s ethos in his book, Sand County Almanac.   

            Wallace also believed that the future of the world depended not just on U.S. success, but on improving the condition of all people throughout the globe.  He spoke about the “common man,” meaning not just the average American, but also the poor and needy around the world (so moving were Wallace’s exhortations to work for all that he inspired Aaron Copeland to compose his famous piece, Fanfare for the Common Man).

            Part of Wallace’s vision included breeding crops that could relieve famine across throughout the tropics.  His message inspired another crop breeder (and, I would argue, great environmentalist) from Iowa, Norman Borlaug.  Borlaug went to Mexico where he bred hybrid wheat and other crops, leading what has become known as the Green Revolution.  As the techniques of the Green Revolution spread from one country and region to others, Borlaug was credited with saving 1 billion human lives. 

            Henry Wallace came in for much criticism during his public service career.  He was idealistic, often given to causes (for example, communism and spiritual mysticism) that he later regretted.  Equipped with integrity and a strong moral compass, he made a poor politician and deal-maker.  He spoke strongly in favor of re-distributing wealth and power, even as an exploding economy seemed to be “lifting all boats.” 

            But what he lacked in charisma and popularity he made up for in other ways.  Most importantly for conservation, he understood that money wasn’t everything.  The human condition and the condition of our natural resources were more important.  And let some great people stand on his shoulders.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies:  8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, 255 pages.

Ross, Alex.  2013.  Uncommon Man; The strange life of Henry Wallace, the New Deal visionary.  The New Yorker, October 7, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/14/uncommon-man.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

United States Senate.  Henry Agard Wallace, 33^rd Vice President (1941-1945).  Available at:  https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Henry_Wallace.htm.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

Wallace Global Fund.  Henry A. Wallace.  Available at:  http://wgf.org/henry-wallace/.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

Absolutely nothing happened in conservation and the environment on October 6.  At least I can’t find anything.  Happily, however, October 6 is Mad Hatter’s Day, so designated because Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter character has a sign in his hat that reads “In this style 10/6.”  The 10/6 refers to the cost of the hat in Victorian England—10 shillings and a sixpence—but that didn’t matter to a group of computer techs in Boulder.  In 1986, they interpreted the 10/6 as a date and declared October 6 to be forever known as Mad Hatter’s Day, a day of universal silliness.

            So, what could be better than to observe some really silly “hats” in nature on this date.  I’ve combed the annals of natural history to find what I consider some of the weirdest sets of head-gear that nature has produced.

            In the realm of mammals, let’s head to Ireland and visit the extinct Irish elk (Megaloceros).  Alas, it was neither an elk (rather the largest deer that ever lived) nor Irish (not just Irish, that is, as it lived in Europe, Asia and Africa).  It was huge, about 6.5 feet tall at the shoulders.  But its antlers are the real story.  They grew up to 12 feet wide and weighed hundreds of pounds.  One can imagine this behemoth moving across the landscape, its rack of antlers looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s uplifted and flexed biceps.  There are many ideas about the antlers being the elk’s terminator—it couldn’t lift its head up; it couldn’t move through thick forests—but no one knows.

            For reptiles, I give the nod to the Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus).  This freshwater turtle lives in the Mary River (duh) along the coast of Queensland, Australia.  It’s a pretty ordinary looking turtle—until it starts sporting a growth of algae on its head, making it look like a startled chia pet!  Its head-gear is what attracted me, but biologists are more amazed at one other feature of its morphology.  Seems it breathes through its cloaca; that is, it breathes through its rear end.  Enough said.

            The bird realm, however, is where weird hats reach their full expression.  Long, elaborate feathers on the bird’s head are the general mode of decoration.  The African Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), for example, sprouts long feathers out the back of the head, presumably reminding early British ornithologists of the quill pens that 19^th Century male secretaries carried behind their ears.  The South American Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) has similar head plumes, but the feathers are just one distinctive feature.  It has other names, like the “stink bird,” because it eat—and digests—buds and small leaves like a cow, and its excretions are so foul that its body odor is repugnant.  The Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius), from New Guinea and Australia, takes the living-fossil award, sporting a large flat crest (called a casque) that resembles the dinosaur Diplophosaurus.

            But my crowning favorite is the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise (Pteridophora alberti), also from New Guinea.  It looks a bit like an over-sized Grosbeak (about 9 inches long), but with one very big difference—males grow two long (and I mean long) feathers from their heads.  These two feathers can be twice as long as the bird itself, up to 20 inches long!  Usually letting the feathers trail beneath it, the male can raise those feathers straight up in the air.  So outrageous is this plumage that when specimens were first brought back to Europe, they were disputed as fakes. .

            You are free to choose your own number one among nature’s maddest hatters.  If you are having trouble choosing a favorite, I recommend you stick with a sure winner—Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat!

References:

Australian Museum.  Mary River Turtle.  Available at:  https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/reptiles/mary-river-turtle/.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

Beauty of Birds.  King of Saxony Birds of Paradise.  Available at:  https://www.beautyofbirds.com/kingofsaxonybirdofparadise.html.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Hoatzin Opisthocomus hoazin.  Available at:  https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/hoatzi1/overview.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

San Diego Zoo.  Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius).  Available at:  https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/secretary-bird.  Accessed August 19, 1019.

University of California, Berkeley.  The Case of the Irish Elk.  Available at:  https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/artio/irishelk.html.  Accessed August 19, 2019.

I just couldn’t resist making October 5 about Catherine Cooper Hopley, although her name is, as they say, hardly a household word.  In the late 1880s, however, it was—for one particular reason.  She wrote the first popular book in the English language about snakes!

            Catherine Cooper Hopley was born in a small town near Canterbury, England, on October 5, 1817 (died 1911).  Few details exist about her childhood, but she had three brothers, one of whom, John Hopley, moved to Ohio and became a well-known entomologist.  She visited her brother’s family in Cleveland in the 1850s, staying for several years and working as a teacher and artist.  She visited Virginia in 1860 and became trapped there when the Civil War began.  Although she prevented from leaving Confederate territory, she wrote articles and made sketches of life in the south for London newspapers.  She met Confederate leaders and became a tutor for the children of the Florida governor.  She was allowed to go back to England in 1863, the Confederates glad to be rid of someone they thought was a British spy working for the Yankees.  Back in England, she wrote several books about life in the American South, illustrated with her own drawings. 

            But then Hopoley found a new interest—snakes!  She was an unlikely candidate to become a herpetologist—a woman in Victorian England—but she was a quick study, equipped with great powers of observation and an artistic eye.  She wrote scientific articles about the natural history of snakes, and other stories about the relationship between snakes and people.  In 1882, she published the first popular book about snakes in the English language, Snakes:  Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life.  A reviewer wrote that “her book is careful, thorough, and almost exhaustive…. Miss Hopley has the art of interweaving her own experiences—incident, anecdote, and reminiscence—in the pleasantest fashion with severer scientific matter.” 

            Getting the book published was no easy task, she told an interviewer in 1893:  “I had the greatest difficulty in getting any publisher to touch my work.  My poor snakes were regarded as loathsome, venomous, and slimy creatures, subjects enough to give one the nightmare.”  Hopley continued to work on the natural history of snakes and wrote another volume on the subject in 1888, British Reptiles and Batrachians.  She died in 1911, known as a “renaissance woman” for the range of her capabilities as scientist, teacher, author, artist and linguist.

            I think her knack of combining science and literature (ala Rachel Carson) makes her the perfect example of a great teacher.  Another of her contemporary reviewers noted that “the general reader will find the book a fascinating one, while the more scientific student will rise from its perusal with the consciousness that … he has learned something new about snakes themselves.” 

            How appropriate that Hopley was born on October 5, now known as World Teachers’ Day.  World Teachers’ Day was adopted in 1994 by UNESCO to recognize the rights and responsibilities of teachers around the world.  And as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals note, education is of fundamental importance in creating and maintaining a sustainable world.

References:

Haverstock, Mary Sayre, et al.  2000.  Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900, A Biographical Dictionary, pages 425-426.  Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=ZdICm_W8xKwC&pg=PA425&lpg=PA425&dq=catherine+hopley+bio&source=bl&ots=s7kGObILbk&sig=ACfU3U3LEnuMtYFGcFYAuAcXyMO9RnxcyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiatMrmjYPkAhUCEqwKHRcfBz0Q6AEwB3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=catherine%20hopley%20bio&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

Ohio Memory.  Catherine Cooper Hopley, Renaissance Woman.  Available at:  https://ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/1849.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The American Naturalist. 1884.  Hopley’s Snakes, Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life.  The American Naturalist 18(4):402-403.  Available at:  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/273644.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The British Quarterly Review.  1883.  Snakes:  Curiosties and Wonders of Serpent Life.  The British Quarterly Review 77:476-477.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=W3pHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA476#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The Sketch.  1893.  Snakes! A Chat With Miss Catherine C. Hopley.  The Sketch 3:415-416.  Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=tDBIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA415#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

UNESCO.  World Teachers’ Day.  Available at:  https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldteachersday.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

No one knows exactly when St. Francis was born, so we need to celebrate his role as patron saint of ecology on the next best thing—his feast day, October 4, which commemorates his death in 1226 (actually, he died near midnight on October 3, but the Catholic Church has chosen the next day to honor him).

            The man who would become St. Francis was born as Giovanni di Bernardone in 1181 or 1882 in Assisi, Italy.  When his father returned from a business trip to France to find he had a son, he re-named him Francesco, or Francis as he was known then and since. The son of a wealthy merchant, he entered adulthood in the lap of luxury.  He loved the good life, known for his high spirit and devotion to parties.  He also sought adventure and fame as a soldier and was once a prisoner of war.  He also loved the outdoors and nature.

            Still as a young man, Francis received several visions that made him abandon his hedonistic ways and become a devout Christian.  When asked if he would marry, he replied “Yes, I am about to take a wife of surpassing fairness.”  He meant poverty, a commitment he continued throughout his life, forsaking his inheritance and living always in the most humble manner.  He often slept outdoors or in caves, and his clothing was a simple tunic tied around the waist by a rope.  Once when robbed by road criminals and left with no resources, he declared himself happy and free to follow a life of poverty and spiritualism.

            His role as a spiritual leader expanded as he pursued his mission.  He founded three Catholic orders, including the Franciscan Order named after him.  He gathered followers as he rebuilt churches, helped the poor and declared the sanctity of all life.  The principle of sanctity for all of god’s creations, whether human, animate or inanimate, is the source of his reputation as a lover of nature.  He believed that since god had created all, then all were kin.  His meaning was clear in his “Canticle for the Sun” (or Canticle for the Creatures, as it is also known):, which reads in part:

“Praised be you, my Lord, with all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

who is the day and through whom You give us light,

and he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor;

and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised by You, My Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

In heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,

and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather

through whom You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Sister Water,

who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night,

and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised by You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,

who sustains and governs us,

and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.

            He was considered then (and now) as the most conscientious follower of the principles of Jesus of Nazareth to leave behind worldly goods and follow the spirit.  He was beatified as St. Francis in 1226, only two years after his death. 

            He loved nature, and many stories relate to how he could commune with birds (he called them “little brethren the birds”) and other animals.  And so has grown the image of St. Francis of Assisi as the symbol of a loving relationship with nature.  So strong is his example that in 1979, Pope John Paul II formally named St. Francis as the “Patron Saint of Ecology.” 

            Long before this, however, the broader world took note of St. Francis’ meaning to the protection of the earth and biodiversity.  In 1931, the International Animal Protection Congress in Florence (just a short distance from Assisi) adopted October 4 as World Animal Day, choosing the date because it was the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi.

            World Animal Day has been celebrated ever since.  The mission of World Animal Day is “to raise the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe.”  The celebration covers all animals, wild and domestic.  In recent years, more than 1000 events have been held in more than 100 countries annually. 

            So, whether you prefer to recognize October 4 as World Animal Day or the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, keep the ideals of both in your heart and hands.

References:

Custodia Terrae Sanctae.  Franciscan Texts.  Available at:  https://www.custodia.org/en/franciscan-texts.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

Franciscans for Ecology.  Papal Declaration of Francis as Patron of Ecology.  Available at:  https://francis35.org/english/papal-declaration-francis-patron-ecology/.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

New Advent.  St. Francis of Assisi.  Available at:  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

World Animal Day.  About World Animal Day.  Available at:  https://www.worldanimalday.org.uk/about_us.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

Ask anyone to name a famous veterinarian, and they are likely to name James Herriot, author of the best-selling book, All Creatures Great and Small.  Herriot was a veterinarian in northern England from 1930 through the 1980s.  He tended to farm animals and pets during his career.  I know this isn’t a website about domestic animals, so let me explain why I’m covering him today.

            First of all, October 3, 1916, is his birthday (died 1995).  Second, nothing else directly connected to conservation seems to have happened on any October 3 in history.  Third, if you love animals, domestic or wild, how can you not write about this guy?

            Of course, James Herriot wasn’t even his real name.  He was born James Alfred Wight, in County Durham in northeast England.  He became a veterinarian in 1940, opening a small rural practice in the town of Thirsk (now a thriving tourist town because of Herriot’s fame).  He loved his work, and he regularly entertained his family and others with the cases, animals and people he came across in his practice.  He thought he might write down his stories, but tending to the area’s animals took all his time.

            When he was 53, his wife challenged him to write a book about his experiences.  He bought a typewriter and began writing, often while his wife and children watched television in the same room.  Because veterinarians were not allowed to advertise at the time, he needed a pseudonym for his books.  He was writing one evening while his family was watching a televised soccer match in which the goalkeeper, Jim Herriot, played exceptionally well.  Perfect, he thought, and the author James Herriot was born.

            His books quickly gained popularity, first in the United Kingdom and soon after in the U.S..  His editor said that “James’ unique blend of warmth and joy and skill as a writer made him perhaps the most personally beloved storyteller of his time.”  His 18 books, including several about his veterinary experience and several more children’s stories about animals, have sold more than 60 million copies.  In other words, he put veterinary practice on the literary map.  As youngsters read his books, thousands were inspired to take up the profession. 

            And along with that growth has come a similar interest in and recognition of wildlife veterinary practice (aha, the link to conservation).  Wildlife veterinarians come in two basic varieties.  First are those who practice clinical medicine on individual animals, perhaps in zoos or animal rehabilitation centers.  They treat animals for injuries and the problems of old age and confinement. 

            Second are those who practice on free-ranging wildlife populations. These veterinarians focus on keeping large groups of animals healthy, perhaps in national parks or just on undeveloped lands.  They focus more on diseases and other conditions that are communicable and can spread rapidly across groups of animals. 

            In conservation, we need to pay much more attention to the health of free-ranging wildlife.  Each year, the Working Group on Wildlife of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) tracks the spread of wildlife diseases.  In 2017, they reported several major issues:  in Mongolia, more than half of all Saiga antelopes died from disease, along with many ibex, gazelles and other ruminants; avian influenza attacked wild (and domestic) birds throughout East and South Asia; anthrax outbreaks affected hippos, elephants, zebras and wildebeest in East Central Africa; a parasite attacked white-tailed deer in North American; and chronic wasting diseases continued to affect animals across the world.

            Monitoring wildlife disease, treating affected animals and eliminating disease organisms is all part of our commitment to conservation and sustainability, primarily because human changes to the environment, including contacts with diseased domesticated animals, have made wildlife populations increasingly susceptible to disease.  As James Herriot said, “I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.”  Herriot’s commitment to all creatures, great and small, mirrors our need to care for all the biodiversity of our earth, whether a lion or an ant-lion.

References:

Biblio.com.  James Herriot.  Available at:  https://www.biblio.com/james-herriot/author/379  Accessed August 9, 2019.

Tabor, Mary B. W.  1995.  James Herriot, 78, Writer, Dies; Animal Stories Charmed People.  The New York Times, Feb 24, 1995.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/24/obituaries/james-herriot-78-writer-dies-animal-stories-charmed-people.html.  Accessed August 9, 2019.

World Organization for Animal Health.  2018.  Highlight from the Working Group on Wildlife.  OIE Bulletin.  Available at:  https://oiebulletin.com/?officiel=highlights-from-the-working-group-on-wildlife.  Accessed August 9, 2019.

The greatest zoo in the world—the San Diego Zoo—was founded on this date in 1916.  Why?  Because a medical doctor heard a lion roar and decided his city needed to hear that roar forever.

            San Diego’s Balboa Park was the site for the 1915-16 Panama California Exposition.  The two-year event celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and specifically San Diego as the first port of call for westbound ships using the canal. The exposition featured a row of cages with living wild animals, mostly from the Americas but also including an African lion.  Toward the end of the event’s run, no one knew what to do with the animals.

            But Dr. Harry Wegeforth had an idea.  As he and his brother were driving by the exposition site, they heard the lion roar.  Wegeforth said to his brother, “Wouldn’t it be splendid if San Diego had a zoo?  You know ….I think I’ll start one.” So, he called a meeting with his brother and three other leading citizens on October 2, 1916, and formed the San Diego Zoological Society.  Within a few months, they were incorporated and took possession of the row of cages and their inhabitants.  True to Wegeforth’s vision, San Diego now had a zoo!

            It wasn’t much at first, just an unfenced row of cages along a Balboa Park pathway.  Harry Wegeforth’s determination to make it a success was about all it had going for it.  He waged an unrelenting campaign to secure land from the city and funding from anyone who would contribute.  The zoo scraped by on private gifts (Ellen Scripps, patron of many San Diego institutions, was a regular donor), leftover food from stores and restaurants, and animals brought to the city by sailors returning from their voyages.  One of their first big animals was a Kodiak brown bear that had been a ship’s pet but outgrew its welcome.  When presented the bear at the dock, Wegeforth needed a plan to get it to the zoo.  With no alternatives, he put the bear on a leash, sat it in the front seat of his car and drove it to the zoo, to the amazement of all he passed (he later rode an Asian elephant from the train to the zoo, again startling San Diego’s citizens).  The same year saw the birth of three lion cubs

            Within a year, the local newspaper called the zoo “the largest and finest collection of animals on the Pacific Coast.”  It was gaining popularity and visitation, and the city gave the zoo about a hundred acres as a permanent home in the park.  Wegeforth hired a new administrative manager for the zoo in 1925, Belle Benchley.  She quickly rose in his esteem and was soon made the zoo’s executive director so Wegeforth could go back to practicing medicine.  She kept the job for 26 years .  Benchley was an organizational whiz, but also had an instinctive connection to the animals. “She described herself as housekeeper, dietitian, consulting physician, and homemaker to an adopted family of animals.”

            Under Benchley’s leadership the zoo blossomed.  She gave hundreds of public presentations each year.  She used buses to bring school children to the zoo, the start of its educational mission.  She finally pressured the city to enact a law giving the zoo 2 cents of every $100 of assessed real estate, creating a reliable funding base for the zoo.  During World War II, when male staff went off to fight, she hired women to replace them, mentoring a whole generation of female zoo professionals.  By  1951, more than one million visitors came to the zoo.

            Benchley’s tenure as the zoo’s leader was the foundation for a continuing set of innovations that have made the San Diego Zoo the finest in the world.  The zoo pioneered larger, more natural enclosures for animals, bounded by moats rather than fences.  Today those exhibits are gathered into “bioclimatic zones” that emphasize ecosystems rather than individual species. They began breeding programs for rare and endangered animals, including tree kangaroos, clouded leopards, meerkats, and Przewalski’s horses.  The zoo remains the most successful home for breeding giant pandas outside China.

            In the 1960s, the zoo pioneered the idea of much larger natural habitats, ones in which the animals roamed free and the visitors were contained.  They established the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is an 1800-acre expanse about 30 miles northeast of the original park.  The large park allows behavioral research and more extensive breeding programs, most notably for the California condor.  The zoo also houses a collection of tissue and genetic materials from 1000 species, kept frozen for future use in research and breeding (the “Frozen Zoo,” they call it).  The grounds of both facilities house similarly diverse specimens of plants from around the world, with nearly 30,000 species represented.

            The mission of the San Diego Zoo Gobal, as it is now known, is as a “conservation organization committed to saving species around the world.”  To accomplish that mission, the zoo has 5 international field stations and runs programs in 45 countries working on the conservation of 130 species.  It has introduced 44 species back into the wild, using animals born through its conservation breeding program (including 180 rhinoceros). More than 5 million people visited the zoo’s facilities in 2017, ranking it the best zoo in the world.

            From the roar of a lion and the vision and dedication of first one man and one woman and then thousands, the San Diego Zoo Global is making our world more sustainable.  Stop by sometime.

References:

Encyclopedia.com.  Benchley, Belle (1882-1973).  Women in World History:  A Biographical Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/benchley-belle-1882-1973.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  San Diego Zoo.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/place/San-Diego-Zoo.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

K., Karie.  2019.  Dr. Harry Wegeforth, Two Stubborn Elephants, and One Fiesty Diablo.  Available at:  https://zoohistories.com/tag/harry-wegeforth/.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Matteson, Sarah.  2016.  The San Diego Zoo After 100 Years.  San Diego History Center Quarterly 62:2.   Available at:  https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/2016/april/san-diego-zoo-100-years/.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

San Diego Zoo.  Our Mission.  Available at:  https://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/our-mission.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Wilkens, John.  2016.  How San Diego Zoo evolved into a powerhouse.  The Sand Diego Union-Tribune, May 9, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/zoo/sdut-zoo-timeline-anniversary-san-diego-animals-2016may09-story.html.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

John Muir, the father of American conservation, loved the Yosemite Valley like no other place on earth.  He wrote, “How vividly my own first journey to Yosemite comes to mind.  It was bloom-time of the year over all the lowlands and ranges of the coast; the landscape was fairly drenched with sunshine, the larks were singing, and the hills so covered with flowers that they seemed to be painted….”  Those of us lucky enough to have visited Yosemite feel much like Muir.  And we owe the existence of Yosemite National Park largely to John Muir’s efforts.

            Yosemite was well known to California tourists by the time Muir arrived in 1868.  In fact, part of the area was already a park.  The lands belonged to the federal government, and in 1864, President Lincoln had signed a law that transferred Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees to the state of California for a park.  This law required that “the premises shall be held for public use, report, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time.”  Although Yellowstone is officially the nation’s first “national park” (created in 1872), many people consider this action to be the inspirational spark for the national park idea.

            The park was created, but California did little to manage its use.  Quickly the Yosemite Valley became overrun with shabby hotels and other buildings, sheep grazing denuded the meadows, and timber harvest carried away the forest. 

            John Muir was not about to accept this travesty.  Muir formed a partnership with magazine publisher Robert Underwood Johnson with the goal of preserving the larger ecosystem surrounding the valley.  Protecting the whole was important, Muir argued, because “the branching canons and valleys of the basins of the streams that pour into Yosemite are as closely related to it as are the fingers to the palm of the hand—as the branches, foliage and flowers of a tree to the trunk.”  Muir wrote articles for Johnson’s magazine; Johnson lobbied his influential friends for political support.  They were almost immediately successful.  On October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the law that created Yosemite National Park

            There was still a problem, however.  California still controlled the Yosemite Valley, a geographic hole in the doughnut of the national park.  And that hole was an ecological disaster.  Mounting the same sort of campaign that he had done before, Muir was once again successful.  In 1906, Yosemite Valley was returned to federal ownership by California and became part of Yosemite National Park.  Today, the park stands as a unified ecosystem covering about 1200 square miles and is surrounded by national forests and other protected lands that help keep the magnificence of Yosemite intact.

            And people still love it.  Record visitation occurred in 2016, the National Park Service’s centennial year, when just over 5 million people went to Yosemite.  Yosemite ranks sixth in visitation among all national parks.

            Yosemite does have one sad chapter.  After an earthquake and fire destroyed most of San Francisco in 1906, the city proposed that a valley within Yosemite be dammed to make a reservoir to create a large and reliable water source.  John Muir again came to the park’s defense:  “Dam Hetch Hetchy!  As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”  Eventually Muir lost his argument, and the Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed and flooded—and remains so to this day.

References:

Gisel, Bonnie.  A Short History of Yosemite National Park.  Sierra Club.  Available at:  https://content.sierraclub.org/grassrootsnetwork/sites/content.sierraclub.org.activistnetwork/files/teams/documents/A%20Brief%20History%20of%20Yosemite%20National%20Park%20by%20Bonnie%20Gisel.pdf.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

National Park Service.  Yosemite.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies—Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, 255 pages.

OhRanger.com  History of Yosemite.  Available at:             http://www.ohranger.com/yosemite/history-yosemite.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

Turns out that September 30 is a pretty dam important day!  Two major dam-related events occurred on this date, both relating to the availability of water and water-based energy.

            The first event, on September 30, 1882, didn’t make much of a splash then and is remembered even less today.  Dams had always been used for power, by building up a head of water behind the dam and directing water that fell over the top of the dam into a water wheel.  The water turned the wheel, which then turned grinding stones and other devices.  As time passed, these water mills got more complicated, with the wheel’s shaft attached to long axles that could power many tools, like saws and conveyor belts.

            But on this date in 1882, something special happened.  In Appleton, Wisconsin, the owner of a paper mill, H. J. Rogers, attached a dynamo (that’s a generator for electricity) to his water wheel and began producing electricity.  His small dam on the Fox River generated enough electricity to power his paper mill and the lights in his house.  Within a few years, similar electric generators were in use on small dams across the United States and soon throughout the world.  Most of these were short dams, only a few feet high, with a low capacity to generate electricity. 

            As the inventions of the industrial revolution began to allow bigger machines and structures to be built, dams got in on the action.  Dams got taller and longer; they were built with concrete and steel rather than dirt and wood; they contained large turbines that could generate massive amounts of electricity.  The U.S. government got into this business in a big way in 1902, when the Reclamation Act created the Bureau of Reclamation and authorized work across the American West to create dams, canals and other structures for irrigation, flood control, and hydro-electricity.

            The U.S. built many large dams during the first half of the 20^th Century, but the crowning masterpiece was Hoover Dam, dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt on—you guessed it—September 30, in the year 1935.  Hoover Dam was then and is still now considered a monumentt to the ingenuity, hard work and undaunted optimism of the American spirit.

            Hoover Dam impounds the Colorado River along the Nevada-Arizona border, a few miles southeast of Las Vegas.  Enterprising businessmen had tried to tame the Colorado River many times, primarily to supply irrigation water to southern California’s sprawling farmlands.  Their attempts to build earthen dams, levees and canals always ended in disaster as the powerful and unpredictable Colorado River triumphed over their amateurish engineering.  Taming the Colorado River would require the full force of the U.S. government and much bigger thinking than had been used before.

            So, in 1928, Congress authorized funding for the Boulder Canyon Project, the largest dam ever built up to that time.  A site was found in Black Canyon on the Colorado, where nearly vertical rock walls rose over 800 feet from the river.  Construction began in 1931 on the gargantuan project.  First, massive tunnels were blasted into the canyon walls so the Colorado River could be re-directed around the dam site during construction.  The four tunnels were 56 feet in diameter, running in total more than three miles through the hard rock.  The rock from inside the tunnels was then used to make a temporary dam (called a coffer dam) on the river high enough that all the water could be diverted through the tunnels, leaving a dry river bottom.

            Then workers at the dam site began to remove loose materials from the shear canyon walls.  Suspended from ropes, the workers—many of whom were Native Americans—picked, drilled and blasted their way down the canyon walls.  Only then, two years into the project, could the actual dam construction begin.  Massive amounts of concrete were transported in huge buckets from the cliff tops to the river bottom.  Slowly—very slowly, so the concrete could cool without cracking—the dam took shape, rising to the huge arched shape we so proudly recognize today as Hoover Dam.

            The story of building the dam could fill a book (actually, it has filled many books), but let’s end with a few facts about the project.  About 21,000 workers labored on the dam, and nearly 100 of them lost their lives in the process.  The amount of concrete used could have paved a road from San Francisco to New York City.  The dam, which was the largest in the world when it was completed in the summer of 1935, is 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long.  It provides irrigation water for about 2 million acres of California’s agricultural lands.  The dam runs 17 turbines that provide electricity for 1.3 million homes.  It impounds Lake Mead, one of the world’s largest reservoirs.

            Ten thousand people crowded around the dam on September 30, 1935, in 102-degree temperatures, to listen as President Roosevelt dedicated the dam. 

            “This morning,” he said, “I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind. …We know that, as an unregulated river, the Colorado added little of value to the region this dam serves.  When in flood the river was a threatening torrent.  In the dry months of the year it shrank to a trickling stream….That is why I have the right once more to congratulate you who have built Boulder Dam and on behalf of the Nation to say to you, ‘Well done.’”

            Opinions about dams in the U.S. have changed a great deal since then, but the triumph of human capabilities and the positive values that come from the effective management of water can hardly be questioned.  Let’s just  hope that those capabilities become even more effective when we acknowledge that rivers, even if not tamed by humans, have enormous value to the regions through which they flow.

References:

Bureau of Reclamation.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/index.html.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hoover-Dam.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

History.com.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/hoover-dam.  Accessed July 16, 2019. 

National Park Service.  Reading 3:  Excerpts from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Speech at the Dedication of Boulder Dam, Sept. 30, 1935.  Available at:   https://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/140HooverDam/140facts3.htm.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

National Park Service.  5.  The Origins of Hydroelectric Power.  Available at: https://www.nps.gov/articles/5-the-origins-of-hydroelectric-power.htm.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

I’m cheating a bit with today’s entry.  Technically, in 2019, National Public Lands Day will be celebrated on September 28.   However, it doesn’t always fall on this date.  National Public Lands Day occurs on the fourth Saturday in September.  That is the 28^th in 2019.

            The date moves around in order to accomplish the purpose of National Public Lands Day (NPLD).  Volunteers from around the United States pitch in on the fourth Saturday (when most people aren’t working or in school) to maintain and improve our great public lands.  It’s a fine strategy—for the September 22 version in 2018, more than 113,000 volunteers spent nearly half a million hours at 1,176 sites doing $11 million of work! 

            NPLD began in 1994, as a project of the National Environmental Education Foundation.  That foundation was chartered by the U.S. Congress to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “make the environment more accessible, relatable, relevant, and connected to the daily lives of all Americans.  The organization has many programs, but National Public Lands Day is one of their most successful.  NPLD has become the single largest day of volunteer activity in America’s public parks in the year.

            NPLD has a number of sponsoring groups, including the primary land-management agencies of the U.S. government and many state and local park programs.  The Bureau of Land Management is the most active, with 172 events in 2018, followed by the National Park Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers.  For two decades, the Toyota Corporation has been the lead private partner for the day’s activities.  Over that time, more than 50,000 Toyota volunteers have worked at more than 600 sites, contributing 193,000 hours.

            The participants in NPLD are many and varied.  In 2018, the most frequent kinds of participants were university students, public school groups, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and corporate groups.  The work is also varied—removing invasive plants, collecting trash, restoring degraded lands and waters, planting trees, building and repairing facilities, and maintaining trails.  NPLD activities also often include related outdoor recreation and environmental education events—you know, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down!

            And here’s a little bonus for all of us:  Admission to all National Park Service parks, monuments and other sites is free on National Public Lands Day.  And if you do chose to join as a volunteer for NPLD, don’t worry about missing out—you’ll get a coupon good for a fee-free day of your choice.  So, grab your work gloves and get to a park!

References:

National Park Service.  National Public Lands Day.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/npscelebrates/public-lands-day.htm.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

NEEF.  About NEEF.  Available at:  https://www.neefusa.org/about-neef.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

NEEF.  2018.  Final Report—25^th Annual National Public Lands Day.  Available at:  https://www.neefusa.org/sites/default/files/assets/npld/2018/NPLD2018-FinalReport.pdf.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

So you don’t believe in Paul Bunyan or Sasquatch, here’s one you can believe in:  Johnny Appleseed was a real man who roamed around planting apple trees.  And many consider him one of our earliest and most ardent conservationists. But, there is a bit more to the story than just that.

            John Chapman, who would become known during his life and for all time as Johnny Appleseed, was born on September 26, 1774, near Boston, Massachusetts (died 1845).  When he was 18, he left home to venture into the wilderness—which, at the time, was Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.  He never took up a homestead, rather sleeping outdoors or in the barns of friendly farmers he met along his journeys.  He eventually began working as an orchardist, learning the trade that we would today call horticulture.

            The myth suggests that Chapman wandered haphazardly, planting applet trees at random, rather like a distracted flower girl dropping petals at a wedding.  In fact, he worked from an ingenious strategy.  In the early 1800s, the federal government was beginning to give grants of land to settlers who would tame the forests of the upper Midwest into cultivated land.  In order to gain title to the land, however, settlers had to prove their intention to remain there by planting 50 apple trees in three years—a sign of investment in the future.

            Chapman recognized that meeting this requirement would depend on a source of trees.  So, he set out ahead of the wave of settlers and planted apple-tree nurseries at what he thought were likely spots for settlement.  A few years later, when settlers arrived, he sold them the trees they needed from his orchard.  He did this over and over, mostly in Ohio and then Indiana, enjoying a steady stream of income that made him a wealthy man.  When he died, he purportedly owned 1200 acres of apple orchards across the region.

            He didn’t need all that money, however, because he was a devout Christian who purposely lived a life of poverty.  He never had a home, wore no shoes and the simplest of clothes (his favorite garment was an old seeds sack with holes cut for his head and arms), and ate no meat or animal products. When a farmer couldn’t afford to buy his trees, he gave them away with a promise from the farmer to pay him in the future.  He also served as a missionary, teaching his brand of religion to everyone he met.

            Chapman, apparently for religious reasons, also believed that trees should be grown from seeds, not grafting.  So, he gathered apple seeds from cider mills in Pennsylvania and hauled them westward to create his orchards.  Unfortunately, apple trees grown this way produce nasty little sour apples, inedible as raw fruit.  But, they made great cider—hard cider—that settlers used as their household drink because the available water was usually unhealthy.  So, Johnny Appleseed supplied not big juicy eating apples, but the raw materials for making alcohol.  Good old Johnny.

            So, where does the conservation come in?  According to the journal American Forests, “Chapman was a successful businessman, but he was also a conservationist and a true outdoorsman.”  National Geographic called him “an icon of the conservation movement” and another source named him an early ecologist.  Primarily, that praise comes from his planting of trees.  Planting trees is a true conservation activity, given that trees do so much for us, from providing apples, even sour ones, to absorbing greenhouse gases. 

            But his biggest claim as a conservationist, I think, comes from his dedication to preserving biodiversity.  He believed in the fundamental value of all living things, no matter if they were obviously useful or not.  He loved insects and, as they say, wouldn’t hurt a fly.  In fact, one night while watching insects become attracted to his fire and dying in the flames, he doused the fire and slept in the cold to avoid harming any more.  Once bitten by a rattlesnake, he reacted violently and killed the snake; for the rest of his life, he despaired of his intemperate action:  “Poor fellow, he only just touched me, when I, in the heat of my ungodly passion, put the heel of my scythe in him and went away.”  When he saw domestic animals, especially horses, being mistreated, he bought the animals and then paid a local agent to nourish them back to health.  He understood the values of many wild plants, a trait that earned him respect among Native American tribes he visited.

            And for your next trivia contest, here’s one for you.  Yes, Johnny Appleseed did wear a tin pot for a hat.  He didn’t see any reason to own two things—a pot and a hat—when one could do both jobs just fine. 

References:

American Forests.  2014.  From businessman to folk legend:  Johnny Appleseed.  Loose Leaf, September 26, 2014.  Available at:  https://www.americanforests.org/blog/from-businessman-to-folk-legend-johnny-appleseed/.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

Birkhimer, Lily.  2012.  Johnny Appleseed:  Folk Hero.  Ohio Memory, September 28, 2012.  Available at:  https://ohiohistoryhost.org/ohiomemory/archives/849.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

Kettler, Sara.  2015.  7 Facts on Johnny Appleseed.  Biography, Mar 10, 2105.  Available at:  https://www.biography.com/news/johnny-appleseed-story-facts.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

National Geographic.  Sep 26, 1774 CE:  Happy Birthday, Johnny Appleseed.  National Geographic Resource Library.  Available at:  https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/sep26/happy-birthday-johnny-appleseed/.  Accessed July 6, 2019.