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For the fifth time in the history of the United Nations, a pope climbed the dais in the General Assembly chamber at UN headquarters in New York to address the world’s leaders.  This time, Pope Francis had a strong focus within an overall appeal for peace and love:  The earth’s environment must also receive the same care we give each other.

            Pope Francis was the inaugural speaker at the ceremony on September 25, 2015, when the UN General Assembly endorsed its new agenda for human development and environmental care.  The agenda, known as the Sustainable Development Goals, evolved from the Millennium Development Goals that operated from 200 to 2015.  The new agenda of 17 will govern the world’s philanthropy through 2030.

            Pope Frances was a compelling choice to introduce the new program.  As the world’s foremost spokesperson for ethics and morality, the pope’s messages carry extraordinary weight with not only the world’s Catholics, but for all people.  Moreover, Pope Francis has chosen to highlight the needs for conservation and environmental sustainability as no pope before him.  A native of Argentina, the pope chose Francis as his papal name because St. Francis of Assisi is his moral guide and inspiration. As Pope Francis stated, Francis of Assisi “is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians.  He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast.”

            Pope Francis made his commitment to conservation clear earlier in 2015, when he issued his Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si,’ subtitled On Care for Our Common Home.  The 144-page book is a comprehensive assessment of the state of the earth and a call for us to change our ways of living to embrace sustainability and care of the poor—as he calls them, “the excluded.”  He stated explicitly that he was writing to all humans, not just Catholics, by noting that “we need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

            Pope Francis’ address to the UN asserted that a “right of the environment” exists for two specific reasons.

“First, because we human beings are part of the environment, we live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human activity must acknowledge and respect….Second, because every creature, particularly a living creature, has an intrinsic value, in its existence, its life, its beauty and its interdependence with other creatures.  We Christians, together with the other monotheistic religions, believe that the universe is the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator, who permits man respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the Creator; he is not authorized to abuse it, much less to destroy it.  In all religions, the environment is a fundamental good.”

In both this address to the UN and his encyclical letter, Pope Francis went on to draw a fundamental relationship between caring for the environment and caring for the poor and downtrodden humans of the world.

“The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment.”

The pope is particularly concerned about climate change and those who deny it. 

“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climactic system….most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides, and others) released mainly as a result of human activity…. Climate change…represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

References:

Pope Francis.  2015.  Pope Francis’s speech to the UN in full.  The Guardian, 25 Sep 2019.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/25/pope-franciss-speech-to-the-un-in-full.  Accessed July 1, 2019.

Pope Francis.  2015.  The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.  On Care for Our Common Home.  Paulist Press, New York.  144 pages.

Sengupta, Somini, and Jim Yardley.  2015.  Pope Francis Addresses U.N., Calling for Peace and Environmental Justice.  The New York Times, Sept. 25, 2015.  Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/world/europe/pope-francis-united-nations.html.  Accessed July 1, 2019.

Ask just about anyone to name a historical figure in forestry, and the name Gifford Pinchot is sure to pop up.  Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) is commonly called the father of American forestry—the first trained forester working in the U.S., the originator and first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and the conservation mentor of Teddy Roosevelt. 

            Pinchot came from a wealthy family.  His father was a successful wallpaper merchant in New York City who built a summer home in 1886 on the banks of the Delaware River in Milford, Pennsylvania.  He called the estate Grey Towers, and for several decades the family spent their summers roaming the 102 acres of the estate.  Summers at Grey Towers taught Gifford Pinchot to love forests and to care deeply about the need for their conservation.

            Gifford wasn’t the only Pinchot interested in conservation—family members before and after him were also conservation leaders.  So, it came as no surprise that Pinchot’s son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, donated Grey Towers and its accompanying lands to the U.S. Forest Service in 1963 to become a conservation center.

            The new center was called the Pinchot Center for  Conservation Studies (now shortened to just the Pinchot Center for Conservation).  The idea then, as now, was simple and direct, as reflected in the current mission statement:

“The mission of the Pinchot Institute is to strengthen forest conservation thought, policy, and action by developing innovative, practical, and broadly-supported solutions to conservation challenges and opportunities. We accomplish this through nonpartisan research, education, and technical assistance on key issues influencing the future of conservation and sustainable natural resource management.”

            The dedication ceremony occurred on September 24, 1963.  What should have been a sleepy little event attended by a few local politicians and conservation professionals became a national event when President John F. Kennedy agreed to deliver a commemoration address.  This was the first stop on an 11-state tour to promote conservation. At Grey Towers, an adoring crowd of more than 12,000 was on hand as Kennedy’s helicopter landed in a field a few hundred yards from the dedication site.  The president took the dais and began extolling the virtues of both Gifford Pinchot and conservation in general.

“Above all, [Pinchot] was a gifted, driving administrator, transforming a minor Federal bureau into a dynamic, purposeful agent of national policy…. In the space of a few short years, he made conservation an accepted virtue in the nation’s conscience.”

“But Pinchot’s contribution will be lost if we honor him only in memory….For our industrial economy and urbanization are pressing against the limits of our most fundaments needs:  pure water to drink, fresh air to breathe, open space to enjoy, and abundant access of energy to release man from menial toil.”

“The dispute is no longer one of principles or goals—it is now merely a question of pace and means.  And no one maintains that the obligation to use our resources efficiently and thoughtfully depends solely on the Federal Government….Conservation is the job of us all.”

            Kennedy wasn’t there long—70 minutes—and he lived only another two months.  But the Pinchot Institute has continued to prosper.  In collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, the institute provides a prominent voice for rational, science-based management of the nation’s natural resources. 

References:

Dwyer, Dan.  1963.  The Day JFK Was Here.  Port Jervis Union-Gazette, September 24, 1963.  Available at:  https://fhsarchives.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/9241963-the-pinchot-institute-dedication-ceremony-the-day-jfk-was-here/.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

Kennedy, John F.  1963.  Remarks of the President at Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies, Milford, Pennsylvania, September 24, 1963.  Available at:  https://www.pinchot.org/about_pic/history.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

Pinchot Institute for Conservation.  History.  Available at:  https://www.pinchot.org/about_pic/history.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

It took an act of Congress and a Proclamation by President Ronald Reagan—but, on September 23, 1986, the United States got a national flower: the rose.  

            Actually, the country got a “national floral emblem,” but let’s agree that a rose by whatever bureaucratic name we choose is still the national flower.  It wasn’t easy, apparently.  Over decades, many legislators had argued hot and heavy for their favorite plant—dogwood, corn tassel, mountain laurel, columbine and more.  Senator Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, was a loyal promoter of the marigold.  The marigold, said Dirksen in 1967, epitomizes America, “Its robustness reflects the hardihood and character of the generations who pioneered and built this land into a great nation.”

            Alas, all pretenders to the crown (of thorns, yuk, yuk) were defeated in 1986 when the entire Congress rallied behind the rose.  Not the red rose—which is an official symbol of England—but all roses.  President Reagan waxed eloquently about the virtues of the rose in his Proclamation No. 5574:

“The study of fossils reveals that the rose has existed in America for age upon age. We have always cultivated roses in our gardens. Our first President, George Washington, bred roses, and a variety he named after his mother is still grown today. The White House itself boasts a beautiful Rose Garden. We grow roses in all our fifty States. We find roses throughout our art, music, and literature. We decorate our celebrations and parades with roses. Most of all, we present roses to those we love, and we lavish them on our altars, our civil shrines, and the final resting places of our honored dead.”

            You might think the United States has a long list of national natural symbols, but that isn’t the case.  The Bald Eagle was selected as the national animal (not bird) in 1782, when it appeared on the Great Seal of the United States, but nothing new showed up until the rose in 1986.  And only two more have joined the list since then.  The oak—all species, just like the rose—was selected as the national tree in 2004, and the bison was named national mammal in 2016 (had to be the national mammal, because we already had a national animal).  But that is it.  Just four natural symbols of the United States.

            The individual states, however, have abandoned any sense of restraint.  States have official amphibians, bats, birds, butterflies, cacti, crustaceans, dinosaurs (!), dogs, fish, flowers, grasses, horses, insects, mammals, microbes, mushrooms, pets, plants, reptiles, seashells, and trees.  My home state of North Carolina has 5 official plants, including the Venus flytrap (native to the state), and 13 official animals.  I’m sure other states are even more profligate in offering prizes to their favorite species.

            Other countries are much like the U.S, however. in having a short list.  Canada named the beaver as their national animal in 1975, and the maple tree is their official “arboreal emblem”—big surprise there, eh?  They added an official horse in 2002, a Canadian breed “known for its great strength and endurance, resilience, intelligence and good temper (sounds like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to me). Mexico apparently hasn’t gotten to this task yet.  Australia has only the kangaroo as its official animal and the golden wattle (an acacia shrub) as official plant.  England’s official animal is the lion—interesting because it isn’t native to the country!  It also lists the red rose as an official flower and the oak as the official tree (copying the colonies, apparently).  They also have named fish’n’chips as their official meal, so perhaps we could redefine that as an official fish (cod) and official plant (potato).

References:

Government of Canada.  Official symbols of Canada.  Available at:  https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-symbols-canada.html#a7.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

National Rose Garden.  The National Flower.  Available at: http://nationalrosegarden.com/the-national-flower/.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

New York Times.  1986.  A National Flower:  Rose is Victor.  New York Times, Sept. 24, 1986.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/24/us/a-national-flower-rose-is-victor.html.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

State Symbols USA.  The Mighty Oak Tree, National (U.S.) Tree.  Available at:  https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-or-officially-designated-item/state-tree/mighty-oak-tree.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

One of the triumphs at the beginning of the modern environmental movement was the establishment of Assateague Island National Seashore.  The barriers islands of which Assateague is a part are so significant that in 1979 the United Nations designated the Assateague region as a World Biosphere Reserve (the Virginia Coast reserve).  However, it took a long time to get there.

            Assateague wasn’t even its own island until 1933.  Before then—at least in recent times—the stretch of land was part of a longer island that ran to the north all the way to Delaware.  But a major storm in 1933 cut a channel between the sound and the ocean. In order to make the sound accessible near Ocean City, the channel was widened, deepened and stabilized.  Assateague Island was born, and so far, we are doing what is necessary to keep it alive.

            The island itself is 37 miles long, the northern two-thirds in Maryland and the southern one-third in Virginia.  It is between 0.5 and 2.5 miles wide, and ocean water regularly washes over the island during storms and high seas.  Consequently, the island is moving slowly westward, retreating from the ocean and moving toward the mainland.  The island is also losing area at the northern end from erosion and gaining area at the southern end by accretion.  These barrier islands roam around a lot.

            That roaming tendency is what saved the Assateague area from the development that has swallowed up most of the Atlantic coastline.  The barrier beaches of the region have been used for centuries for fishing and hunting, but permanent communities were small and few.  The northern end of Assateague Island held several life-saving stations that eventually became part of the U.S. Coast Guard.  Various plans for developing Assateague Island into private tourist and residential areas have been attempted for at least a century, all of them ending in destruction by storms, waves and tides.

            Along with interest in development has come interest in preservation.  As soon as the island was formed, both federal and state agencies began considering it for public recreation and wildlife habitat.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge at the southern end in 1943 and Maryland created a state park at the northern end in 1956.  For decades the National Park Service sought to make the island an undeveloped natural ara, but was rebuffed by those interested in more intrusive tourist development.  Eventually, a coalition formed which allowed the National Park Service to acquire the entire island, but allow Maryland to keep its state park and the Fish and Wildlife Service to keep its wildlife refuge as separately managed units.  On September 21, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that established Assateague.

            The decision was wise.  Assateague is a jewel in the national seashore crown, the largest natural area (just under 40,000 acres) between Cape May and Cape Hatteras.  It is home to more than 320 species of birds, with spectacular spring and fall waterfowl migrations stopping over at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.  The Delmarva Peninsula Fox Squirrel, an endangered species, is resident in the wildlife refuge. 

            The island is also famous for its wild horses.  The most well known are the “wild ponies” in the Chincoteague area, which are now kept in pens and excess numbers are auctioned every summer.  But the more interesting horses are those in the northern half of the island (the two populations are isolated by a fence along the Virginia-Maryland border).  These are managed by the National Park Service and allowed to roam freely.  However, the population size is kept in check by inoculating horses with a vaccine that reduces successful pregnancies.

            The seashore is extremely popular with tourists, lying close to the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas.  About 2 million people visit annually, a number reached soon after the park’s creation and staying steady for half a century. 

References:

Mackintosh, Barry.  1982.  Assateague Island National Seashore—An Administrative History.  National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/management/upload/asisadminhistory.pdf.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

New World Encyclopedia.  Assateague Island.  Available at:  https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Assateague_Island.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

OceanCity.com.  Assateague Island.  Available at:  https://www.oceancity.com/assateague/.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

U.S. National Park Service.  Assateague Island National Seashore.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/historyculture/history-and-culture.htm.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

A lobbyist once told me that all things are like pancakes—they all have two sides.  Today’s story is about a man who certainly had two sides, two very complex and very confusing sides.  The man is Grey Owl, one of Canada’s earliest conservationists, and an imposter on a grand scale.

            So, let me first tell you about Grey Owl, the conservationist.  Grey Owl—his name meant he-who-flies-by-night in the Ojibwa language (a bit of foreshadowing…), was half Native American and half Scotsman, but he chose to live as an Ojibwa Indian in northern Canada.  There he learned the ways of the wilderness, hunting and trapping to earn a living and survive, winter and summer, for decades. He met a Mohawk woman, named Anahareo, with whom he lived.  After Grey Owl had trapped a female beaver from its lodge, Anahareo convinced him to raise the two young beavers left behind.  Anahareo loved animals and hated the cruel trapping practices of the frontiersmen.

            Grey Owl was captivated by the young beavers and soon became concerned that beavers would become extinct from the heavy trapping that Canada was experiencing to feed an insatiable European market for beaver pelts.  He was consumed by the vision that the Canadian wilderness—and the Native People who lived sustainably in it—were doomed unless conservation replaced exploitation.  In his forties, Grey Owl began to write extensively about conservation, eventually publishing four books on the subject.  His writing was very popular and, in the 1930s, he was arguably Canada’s most famous author and conservationist, compared favorably to John Muir.  He lectured widely and produced conservation films.  He was especially popular in England, where one lecture tour pulled in a quarter million people. In 1936, he reflected on his work:

“Every word I write, every lecture I have given, or ever will give, were and are to be for the betterment of the Beaver people, all wild life, the Indians and halfbreeds, and for Canada, in whatever small way I may.”

            The Canadian government provided him housing and an area to raise beavers for release in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan.  Some credit him with saving the beaver—the national animal of Canada—from extirpation.

            He died suddenly of pneumonia in 1938, and then the wheels started coming off the story of Grey Owl.  Journalists investigated the details of his life—and the truth emerged:  Grey Owl was an imposter.  He was not half Native American, he had not been born in Mexico. 

            His real name was Archibald Belaney, born on September 18, 1888, in Hastings, England.  His parents—one British and one American—left him to be raised by two maiden aunts in Hastings.  From his earliest days, however, he yearned to get away from the stifling society of Hastings and head to the wilderness. He told a young friend that he was going to go to Canada.  His friend asked, “To fight the Indians?” Belaney answered, “No, to become an Indian.” At 17, he made his escape, crossing the Atlantic and then disappearing into the forests of northern Canada. 

            He lived with the Ojibwa People, learning their language and ways.  He dyed his hair black and darkened his skin with henna dye.  He roamed among various tribes, eventually meeting Anahareo and becoming the committed conservationist that captured the Canadian conscience.

            Opinions about Belaney vary, of course.  Some see him as a charlatan who stole the Native Peoples’ voice.  Others see him as a mixture of good and bad.  Clive Webb, at the University of Sussex, proposed that we “separate some of his personal shortcomings from his great work as a conservationist.”  And Don Smith, of the University of Calgary, saw him this way:

“This is 1930s Canada, it seemed to have inexhaustible forest.  His personal life was a mess but he had insight, he had vision. This man had a message. Everybody’s green now. He was green when there was nothing to it. His message was ‘you belong to nature, it does not belong to you’.”

As the lobbyist said, there are two sides to every pancake.  You decide on which side of this man—the conservationist Grey Owl or the imposter Archibald Belaney—you’d like to pour your syrup.

References:

Brower, Kenneth.  1990.  Grey Owl.  The Atlantic online, January, 1990.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/90jan/greyowl.htm.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Howes, David, and Constance Classen.  Grey Owl, White Indian.  Canadian Icon.  Available at:  http://canadianicon.org/table-of-contents/grey-owl-white-indian/.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Onyanga-Omara, Jane.  2013.  Grey Owl:  Canada’s great conservationist and imposter.  BBC News, 19 September 2013.  Available at:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-24127514.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Smith, Donald B.  2015.  Archibald Belaney, Grey Owl.  The Canadian Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/archibald-belaney-grey-owl.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

When President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he said to her, “So you are the lady who started all this.”  When Senator Abraham Ribicoff met Rachel Carson just before she gave testimony to his committee, he said the same to her.  Ribicoff was wholly correct—Rachel Carson had started what would become the modern environmental movement.

            Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, near Pittsburgh.  As a girl, she loved two things—nature and writing.  “I can remember no time,” she said, “when I wasn’t interested in the out-of-doors and the whole world of nature.” She began writing stories for magazines at an early age, and published her first paid contribution at age eleven.  She would later say that she had become a professional writer then.  It seemed inevitable, even then, that Carson would combine her two interests into one career.

            Carson’s mother taught her to be an independent thinker and observer, traits she carried throughout her life.  At college, she majored in biology, an unusual field for women at the time, and, even more unusually, went on to complete a Master’s degree in marine biology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.  She fell in love with the sea the first time she saw it and never again lived or worked far from saltwater.  Except for short intervals, she and her mother lived together in a small ranch house in Silver Spring, Maryland, and later summered in a cottage on the Maine shoreline.

            Through her teacher and mentor in graduate school, Carson landed a temporary job with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (now the Fish and Wildlife Service) writing radio scripts about fisheries.  Her work was so exceptional—combining a solid scientific approach with a lyrical style—that she was hired permanently.  She became the first professional scientist hired in the history of the agency.  Eventually, she became head of the agency’s editorial office, effectively running a small in-house publishing enterprise.  She worked there for fifteen years.

            Carson also wrote independently while she worked for the government, authoring magazine articles to supplement her meager salary.  She published her first book about the sea, Under the Sea Wind, in November, 1941.  Critics loved it, but it sold few copies—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a month later kidnapped the nation’s attention.  But, she persisted, publishing a second book about the sea, The Sea Around Us, in 1951.  This time, the book was hugely successful, landing at the top of the best-seller list for months.  A third book, The Edge of the Sea, followed in 1955, cementing Carson’s national reputation.

            As the 1950s came to a close, the U.S. was wildly prosperous, but larger worries, including the Cold War and nuclear annihilation, loomed like a storm cloud over the world.  One such worry was the effect that broadcast spraying of pesticides was having not only on the targeted insects, but also on beneficial insects, fish, birds, pets and even humans.  Carson’s influential friends tried to persuade her to take up this cause, but she wanted nothing to do with it.  Carson was a shy, private person who didn’t like the spotlight.  Even though her books were famous, she protected her privacy fiercely. 

            However, when she could find no one else to address the issue of pesticide spraying, Carson took the plunge to write “the poison book.”  She spent several years researching the topic, compiling obscure reports, corresponding with experts and connecting the threads among pesticides, wildlife mortality, and human health.  DDT was the primary target, but Carson also explored the impacts of other chemicals we now call “persistent organic pesticides.” She presented her conclusion—that large-scale aerial spraying of pesticides was poisoning the earth—in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. 

            Like her earlier books, Silent Spring was an instant success.  The public was won over by the logic and detail of her analyses—Silent Spring had more than 50 pages of references.  The book caused massive backlash from the chemical and agricultural industries, which cast Carson as a fear-monger without scientific credentials.  Moreover, they claimed, she was a childless spinster with no authority to speak about future generations.  A typical response claimed, “isn’t it just like a woman to be scared to death of a few little bugs?  As long as we have the H-bomb everything will be O.K.  She’s probably a peace-nut, too.”  And a communist.

            As we now know, Rachel Carson was largely correct in her conclusions (her assertions about human cancer were not accurate), and society rallied in support of her.  Silent Spring launched a decade of new laws and approaches to chemical use and environmental protection. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, along with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, are all examples of her impact.  Rachel Carson has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the 29^th Century, largely because of Silent Spring.  She was, indeed, the lady who started it all.

            Unfortunately, Rachel Carson didn’t live long enough to see most of these changes.  She died in early 1964, just before her 57^th birthday and only 18 months after Silent Spring appeared. Throughout her research and writing for the book, she was suffering from cancer that spread relentlessly through her body.  She dealt with her approaching death just as she had all aspects of her life—independently and observantly, logically and in a natural context.  She reflected on the life of the monarch butterfly and then on her own life:

“For the Monarch, that [life] cycle is measured in a known span of months.  For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know.  But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course, it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end.”

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

At the time it happened, the Johnstown Flood was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.  It was the biggest news story since the assassination of President Lincoln, 24 years earlier.  And it is a lesson of tragic proportion that dams, which do much good, are also tremendously dangerous.

            The spring of 1889 had been a wet one in western Pennsylvania.  Johnstown, a town of 30,000 residents a bit east of Pittsburgh, and the surrounding area had experienced unusually high amounts of rainfall. Rain had been falling for several days leading up to the disaster that occurred on May 31. The Conemaugh River, which flowed through Johnstown, ran swollen and angry. 

            Fourteen miles upstream from Johnstown, a reservoir sat on the South Fork of the Conemaugh River.  The reservoir, called Lake Conemaugh, had been impounded by the South Fork Dam, an earthen dam built in 1853.  The lake was built to provide water to feed the many canals that transported canal boats throughout Pennsylvania and New York (learn more about the Erie Canal here).  The lake covered 425 acres and was 50 feet deep at the dam. Both the dam and the reservoir were the largest in the U.S. at the time. But as the canal system was replaced for transportation by railroads, the dam and lake became obsolete and fell into poor condition.

            A group of wealthy residents of Pittsburgh, including Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, bought the lake and dam in 1879 as a private fishing and recreational resort for themselves and their families.  They made repairs to keep the dam intact, but the work was shoddy, performed by unqualified laborers.  They also modified the dam in two ways.  First, they lowered the dam by two feet to allow a wider road across the top.  Second, they fitted the spillway with screens to keep the fish they stocked into the lake from escaping.

            These changes proved catastrophic.  When the heavy rainfall raised the water far above usual levels, large amounts of debris washed from the shorelines to the dam, clogging the screened spillway.  The water built higher and began to flow over the top of the lowered dam.  Spillways exist at dams to prevent water from ever going over the top of a dam, because the downstream side will erode under the rush of water coming over the top. 

            Conditions continued to worsen throughout the day of May 31.  By mid-afternoon, warnings were being issued that the dam was in peril, but the news was slow getting downstream to Johnstown.  At 3:15 PM, the dam burst.  Twenty million tons of water blew through the dam, forming a wall of water 40 feet high, raging downstream at 40 miles per hour.

            The wall hit Johnstown about 4 PM, with virtually no warning.  The devastation was massive.  Four square miles of downtown Johnstown were completely destroyed, including 1600 homes.  At total of 2,209 people died; 99 entire families were wiped out.  A railroad bridge through town became clogged with debris that grew to a 30-acre pile; it started on fire, killing 75 people who had sought refuge there from the raging waters.

            The scale of the response matched the scale of the tragedy.  The Red Cross, which had begun during the Civil War and was led by Clara Barton, came to Johnstown and stayed for months, building shelters and caring for the injured and homeless.  This effort was the beginning of the ongoing work of the Red Cross when disasters strike across the world.  Lawsuits were filed against the wealthy dam owners for negligence, but no judgments were ever made because of the difficulty of proving fault.

            The story of the Johnstown Flood teaches several lessons.  First, dams are essential features of modern infrastructure. The U.S. has more than 87,000 dams, and the worldwide total is many times that.  Dams provide stable water supplies, prevent flooding, and generate power.

            Second, however, is that dams are dangerous.    If they are not built properly and maintained properly, they will fail. Hundreds of dam failures occur annually, although most are small and few take human life.  The cause is almost always water flowing over the top of the dam, just as was the case in the Johnstown Flood (read about the world’s biggest dam disaster here).

            And, third, although dams, particularly large dams, are not popular in the United States now (the golden era of dam building in the U.S. was from 1950 to 1980), they are very popular throughout the world.  New dams continue to be built across most of the developing world, where the needs for water and power outweigh the environmental concerns that drive American decision-making.

References:

Degen, Paula and Carl.  2013.  The Johnstown Flood of 1889.  Eastern National, 64 pages.

History.com.  The Johnstown Flood.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-johnstown-flood.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

Johnstown Flood Museum.  Statistics about the great disaster.  Available at:  https://www.jaha.org/attractions/johnstown-flood-museum/flood-history/facts-about-the-1889-flood/.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

National Park Service.  Johnstown Flood National Memorial.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/jofl/index.htm.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

Everglades National Park stands as one of North America’s great ecosystems and parks, taking its place on the podium alongside Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon.  But the Everglades lacks the grandeur of those other parks—which makes its creation and existence so much more meaningful.

            The southern end of Florida is more water than land.  Water lies just below or above the surface of the soil for hundreds of miles in all directions, originally from Orlando south.  The area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before the Spanish came and spread diseases that wiped out the original inhabitants.  Later, other Indian groups, most notably Seminoles, were forced south to live there, but never in large numbers or widely dispersed.

            In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1800s that anyone thought twice about the area we now call the Everglades.  It was a swamp, and swamps were useless, breeding sites for noxious insects, reptiles and plants.  “A swamp is a swamp,” said famous park developer Frederick Law Olmstead .  As coastal development accelerated, so did attempts to drain the edges of the swamp and divert water into canals.  Much of the swamp was transformed, becoming agricultural lands that fed the Florida economy.

            Some folks began to appreciate the huge swamp for what it was—a biodiversity miracle.  Vast quantities of wildlife lived in the swamp.  And the variety—more than 360 bird species winter there—was astounding.  The Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, led by May Mann Jennings, wife of the Florida governor, persuaded the U.S. to create the small Royal Palm National Park in 1916.  The federation managed the park until 1947.

            But things really started moving when a young landscape architect, Ernest Cole, moved to Miami in 1925.  He was an outdoor enthusiast and was immediately entranced by the nearby wetlands.  He began lobbying Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service Director, to create a big park (learn more about Mather here).  Cole’s persistence has earned him the nickname, “Father of the Everglades.” But the park wasn’t a scenic masterpiece like the popular western park.  Not until a delegation of officials took a blimp ride (yes, in the Goodyear Blimp!) over the swamp did they understand the habitat value of the area and join Cole in his advocacy for a new park.  On May 30, 1934, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed an act to create Everglades National Park, specifically for “the preservation intact of the unique flora and fauna and the essential primitive natural conditions now prevailing in this area.”  This was not a park dedicated for tourism, but for biodiversity conservation.

            Thirteen more years passed until enough land was acquired—now just over 1.5 million acres—and the park became a reality.  On December 6, 1947, President Truman dedicated the park, saying, “Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country.”

            The wisdom of those early leaders is evident today.  Everglades National Park preserves the largest subtropical wetland in North America, housing nine distinct habitats.  It is an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance—one of only three locations in the world to have all three designations.  Surprisingly, it is not one of the most visited national parks, averaging about 1 million visitors per year.  All the better, perhaps, for the preservation of this unique ecosystem.

            The Everglades has many problems, however.  For many years, it was on UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage Sites (thankfully, now off that list).  Diversion of freshwater and draining were two major issues, both because of the lack of freshwater itself and because of salt-water intrusion from the ocean margins. But recent efforts have focused on re-establishing natural water flows.  Invasive species are a constant issue, as animals and plants escaped or released from captivity find a welcome home in the swamps.  The massive increase in the population of Burmese pythons is a common news story.

            It is a huge ecosystem, however, and when the forces of nature operate on such a large scale, the insults of humans are hardly strong enough to persist.  Let’s hope so.  And let’s hope that the images so ably recorded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas continue to be the images we all experience:  “The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.”

References:

Holleran, Patrick.  Everglades National Park.  Park vision.  Available at:  http://www.shannontech.com/ParkVision/Everglades/Everglades.html.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

National Park Service.  Ernest F. Coe, Everglades National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/historyculture/cf-coe.htm.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

Public Broadcasting Service.  Everglades National Park.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/parks/everglades/.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

U.S. Department of the Interior.  2017.  10 Things You Didn’t Know About Everglades National Park.  Blog, 12/5/2017.  Available at:  https://www.doi.gov/blog/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-everglades-national-park.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

U.S. Government Printing Office.  1934.  An Act To provide for the establishment of the Everglades National Park in the State of Florida and for other purposes.  Federal Register, May 30, 1934.  Available at:  https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/73rd-congress/session-2/c73s2ch371.pdf.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

It is the machine that changed the world.  It started mass manufacturing.  It created a huge middle class.  It gave good jobs to unskilled workers, and they created labor unions.  It put average Americans on wheels.  It was the Tin Lizzie.  And after two decades of production, the last Model T—the 15^th million one—rolled off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, on May 26, 1927.

            Henry Ford had big ambitions when he started making cars.  But none was bigger than his vision for the Model T:

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.”

And he succeeded, perhaps beyond even his expectations.  He started building Model T Fords in 1908, using the technique of the assembly line that had been first introduced by Ransom Olds.  Ford’s car had fully interchangeable parts, a reliable and speedy engine could reach 45 mph), and lots of bells and whistles that could be added (unlike the myth that it was only made in black, the Model T came in several custom colors, but so dark that they all looked pretty much like black).  It was cheap to begin with, but his improvements in manufacturing processes and design kept the price going down.  Introduced in 1908 for $825, by 1925 it sold for $260.  The Model T Ford was 57% of global car production in 1925, and the 15 millionth sold made it the biggest selling car model in history from its origin to 1972 (when the VW Bug passed it).

            The Model T revolutionized American life.  Truly, anyone with a decent job, blue collar or white, could afford one, both to buy it and keep it running.  Ford introduced a minimum wage that allowed his workers to climb into the middle class, regardless of their education or skill level.  A car gave people freedom and independence; they moved to new homes and communities in the “suburbs.”  They started traveling, and a tourism industry developed to meet their needs—hotels became “motor hotels,” shortened to motels.  Vacations at national parks and monuments became part of the American dream, an attainable dream.

            Many observers have said that the Model T Ford was the most important innovation of the 20^th Century.  Others say it defined the 20^th Century.  E. B. White (Charlotte’s Web, right?) lamented the passing of the Model T when he wrote in 1936, “The last Model T was built in 1927, and the car is fading from what scholars call the American scene—which is an understatement, because to a few million people who grew up with it, the old Ford practically was the American scene.”

            And, of course, the American love of the car and the highway has become part of our national personality.  In 2017, the U.S. had 272.5 motor vehicles on its roads, about half of which (113 million) were passenger cars.  Those vehicles drove 3.2 trillion miles (yes, trillion).  That’s about 10,000 vehicle miles driven for every person—adult and child—in the U.S.  The country has 225 million licensed drivers; basically anyone who qualified for a license has one.  And we lap the rest of the world in vehicle miles traveled per person.  Only Canada is close to the U.S.—Canadians love their cars almost as much as Americans do.

            So, thanks to Henry Ford for making a car that we can all use and enjoy.  And let’s not blame him for indirectly creating a greenhouse gas problem of huge proportion.  But let’s hope that another Henry Ford is out there, working hard on a new emission-free transportation system that will relegate the “gas-guzzler” to the Museum of Things That Have Outlived Their Usefulness.

References:

Casey, R.  Model T.  ASME Landmarks Program.  Available at:  https://www.asme.org/about-asme/who-we-are/engineering-history/landmarks/233-model-t.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

Statista.  Number of motor vehicles registered in the United States.  Available at:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

Weber, Austin.  2008.  Ten Ways the Model T Changed the World.  Assembly, September 2, 2008.  Available at:  https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/85804-ten-ways-the-model-t-changed-the-world.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

White, E. B.  1936.  Farewell, My Lovely.  The New Yorker, May 8, 1939.  Available at:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1936/05/16/farewell-my-lovely.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

According to the website “On This Day,” April 30, 1864 is the date when the first fee for a hunting license was established by the State of New York.  I’ve not been able to confirm that event, and usually I wouldn’t validate such a claim with a post if I couldn’t directly verify it from several sources.

            But since nothing much else happened in conservation on any April 30, I am going to take the chance that this is a true historical event.  Why?  Because it gives me a chance to reflect on the importance of hunting and fishing licenses and fees to conservation.

            Before getting to the money, however, lets note the reality that hunters and anglers were the first folks who really spoke up for wildlife in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Those who exploited wild game and fish resources recognized that harvests were too high and populations were declining and even disappearing.  So, they started talking about it, around the U.S. and around the world, and pressing for government action.  Here’s how Teddy Roosevelt put the case:

“In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wildlife, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.”

They argued for all the conservation tools that we now take for granted:  seasons defining when people can fish and hunt; limits on the size and number of animals killed; controls on the kind of equipment that can be used; refuges where animals are free from hunting or fishing; and, perhaps most fundamental, elimination of commercial hunting in the U.S.

            Anglers and hunters have always supplied the vast majority of the money spent on fisheries and wildlife conservation, too.  Which brings us back to hunting and fishing licenses and fees.  Today, every state charges a license fee for the right to hunt and fish.  Often the schemes are quite involved, with additional fees for different weapons or rights to capture particular species.  Most of the fees are quiet low—much too low, I have always argued—less than the cost of a tank of gas to get from home to the field.  Some fees, however, are quite high.  In Montana, the fee for non-residents to hunt for a bighorn sheep is $1250.  States have collected over $20 billion in licenses and fees since they started, exceeding $1 billion in 2018 alone.

            All this money gets put to good use.  Fishing and hunting licenses pay about 75% of the budgets of most state fisheries and wildlife agencies.  Those agencies don’t just serve anglers and hunters, but all the people of their state.  They provide the base protection and management for native biodiversity of all types, whether a butterfly or a bat, and manage millions of acres of lands used by all of us for recreation of all kinds.

            One special kind of license is the federal Duck Stamp.  Anyone who hunts for migratory waterfowl—duck, geese, swans and the like—must purchase an annual Duck Stamp (it’s called a “stamp” because it looks like one).  The fee when started in 1935 was $1; today a stamp costs $25.  The funds from Duck Stamps go to purchase, improve and maintain National Wildlife Refuges.  And the program is so efficient that 98 cents of every dollar go directly to this purpose.  Since inception, the Duck Stamp program has invested more than $750 million in wildlife refuges.

            A hidden fee that hunters and anglers also pay is an excise tax on hunting and fishing equipment.  The fees are known after the federal legislators who proposed the law to establish them—Pittman-Robertson for hunting and Dingell-Johnson for fishing.  The federal government collects the money—10% of the cost of fishing equipment and 11% of the cost of hunting equipment—at the wholesale level, so you don’t see it when checking out at the sporting goods store.  That money flows back to state fisheries and wildlife agencies as “restoration funds” to help improve the health of animal populations and their habitats.

            And here’s a little trivia question that’ll stump most people, even wildlife professors.  Why is the fishing excise tax 10%, but hunting is 11%?  The answer is that the Pittman-Robertson program was created before World War II, and during the war all excise taxes (paid on lots of luxury items, like cigarettes and alcohol) were increased by 10%–so the hunting tax went to 11%.  The Dingell-Johnson program was created after the war and set at the usual round number of 10%.  Cool, eh?

            So, should you ever confront the argument that fishing and hunting is bad for wildlife, take a step back and remember who started all this and who still pays for most of it—the guy in the bass boat and the gal in the orange vest!

References:

goHunt.  How did hunting fees start?  Available at:  https://www.gohunt.com/read/how-did-hunting-fees-start#gs.4mtzs3.  Accessed April 12, 2019

Lawrence, Brent.  Hunters, anglers:  The backbone of wildlife conservation.  USFWS Pacific Region.  Available at:  http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com/post/119301140095/hunters-anglers-the-backbone-of-wildlife.  Accessed April 12, 2019.

Palmer, T. S.  1904.  Hunting Licenses:  Their History, Objects and Limitations.  US Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office.  Available at:  https://archive.org/details/hunting00tspa/page/n3.  Accessed April 120, 2019.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Hunters as Conservationists.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuges/hunting/hunters-as-conservationists/.  Accessed April 12, 2019.