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Once Darwinian evolution reached the status of a fact rather than a theory, scientists everywhere became committed to the idea that competition was the primary force causing species to evolve and radiate into new species.  But in the late 1960s, a young scientist, un-phased by what everyone else thought, suggested that collaboration—symbiosis—was equally important in evolution.  That scientist was Lynn Margulis.

            Lynn Margulis was born in Chicago on March 5, 1938 (died 2011).  She was a child prodigy, entering the University of Chicago at age 14.  She graduated five years later and married Carl Sagan, who would become the world’s most famous astronomer.  The marriage lasted only a few years, during which Margulis bore two sons and pursued advanced degrees at the Universities of Wisconsin and California.  She completed her doctorate in 1965 and began a scientific career first at Boston University and later at the University of Massachusetts.

            She “led a life devoted to science.”  Her paradigm-changing contribution came in her development of the theory of “serial endosymbiosis” during the late 1960s. Based on similarities between bacteria and the cell organelle mitochondrium, she surmised that mitochondria were first independent animals that eventually became incorporated into other single-celled organisms.  She saw other common attributes of cell organelles and independent organisms as other examples of the same idea. By joining forces, the new organism was better able to exploit its environment and succeed.  Just like competition, symbiosis led to new forms of life.

            For a decade her idea was considered nonsense.  She was called a radical, her ideas judged with doubt and ridicule.  Her first paper describing endosymbiosis was rejected by 15 journals before being published in 1967 by the Journal of Theoretical Biology.  As more evidence accumulated, her theory went from radical to accepted and she went from contrarian to a leader of evolutionary thought.  Today, endosymbiosis is taught alongside competition from middle school to graduate school.

            She was also a proponent of the “Gaia Hypothesis,” originally devised by James Lovelock.  The Gaia idea is that not only does the environment affect organisms, but that organisms also affect the environment.  These mutual interactions work together to create and modify the biosphere to maintain life, forming a gigantic self-regulating system.  The idea is named for Gaia, in Greek mythology the mother of all life.  By adding a feedback loop from organism to environment, the Gaia concept imagines the organisms as not just the recipient of evolutionary forces, but also the driver of environmental change.

            Margulis became one of the most honored biologists of her time.  She wrote many books on a wide range of topics, most with her eldest son, Dorion, as co-author.  She was as committed to public understanding of science as she was to advancing scientific research.  An English newspaper described her as “a charismatic lecturer to audiences at all levels,” known for “enthusiastically and generously developing experiments that schoolchildren could carry out….”  Her books included popular coverage of topics such as climate change, sex and natural design.

            Regardless of the criticisms, the Gaia hypothesis and Margulis’s other interpretations of the living earth have provided a “big picture” for framing our relationship with the earth and our co-inhabitants.  She believed that collaboration, rather than competition and dominance, were essential to survival.  That is one reason Science magazine called her “science’s unruly Earth mother.”   To me, it sounds like another definition of sustainability.  And so I say, three cheers for motherhood!

References:

Glorfeld, Jeff.  2018.  Science history:  Lynn Margulis, contrarian to the end.  Cosmos, The Science of Everything, 23 November 2018.  Available at:  https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/science-history-lynn-margulis-contrarian-to-the-end.  Accessed March 1, 2019.

Rose, Stephen.  2011.  Lynn Margulia obituary.  The Guardian, 11 Dec 2011.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/dec/11/lynn-margulis-obtiuary.  Accessed March 1, 2019.

Tao, Amy.  2019.  Lynn Margulis, American Biologist.  Encyclopedia Britannica.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lynn-Margulis.  Accessed March 1, 2019.

Hot Springs National Park, established on March 4, 1921, can claim a number of records.  It is the smallest national park, covering only about 5,500 acres.  It is the only national park located within a city—in fact, it comprises a good deal of the historical area of the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas.  But here’s the biggee:  It is the oldest national park in the country—predating Yellowstone, which is universally declared the world’s first national park, by 40 years!

            That last assertion begs for explanation.  What is now Arkansas became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  Soon after, President Jefferson sent an expedition to explore the southern reaches of the purchase.  In Arkansas, the expedition found springs flowing out of a mountain and stayed for the Christmas season of 1804. The 47 springs were—and are—producing 700,000 gallons per day at the uniform temperature of 143 degrees F. 

            Native Americans had lived in the area for thousands of years, but the population had declined greatly.  And as settlers came from the East, the U.S. government signed a treaty in 1818 that made the entire area federal property.  New residents realized that the springs might have medicinal qualities that could be exploited commercially and began making claims of ownership against the government.  To protect the land, the Arkansas Territorial government asked that the U.S. make the springs a national reserve.  They got their way on April 20, 1832, when President Andrew Jackson, who knew and loved the area, signed the park into law, reserving the area “for the future disposal of the United States (which) shall not be entered, located, or appropriated, for any other purpose whatsoever.” The park moved through several agencies and was enlarged as the decades passed.  Eventually, after the National Park Service was created in 1916, the reserve was re-christened as Hot Spring National Park on March 4, 1921.

            It is a strange little park.  It now includes Hot Springs Mountain, the source of the hot waters and the springs themselves.  The springs were once uncontrolled, spilling hot water into muddy ponds and ditches, but now all are capped and piped to prevent pollution and over-use.  Although the park is habitat for a few unique plants, the fundamental natural resource it protects is water, hot water.  Geologists have established that the hot water reaching the surface has undergone a 4,000-year journey from rainfall on the nearby mountain to groundwater seeping through the heavily fractured bedrock and finally to superheated water arising from deep fissures.  The park now includes a wilderness area, but the real reason for its existence is simple:  hot water!

            Along with the protection has always come use of the hot springs.  From the beginning, the park issued licenses to private owners to build public baths that used the water and maintained “freebaths” for use by local indigents. Under design standards created by the government, the bath-houses evolved from early shabby wooden structures to elaborate Victorian spas in the early 1900s.  As the therapeutic value of the hot waters grew, so did visitation.  Hot Springs became a major tourism city, attracting the good—five major league baseball teams held spring training there—and the bad—the town became the nation’s biggest center of illegal gambling.  The popularity of thermal bathing began to decline in the 1950s, and most bathhouses were closed and abandoned.

            A restoration effort began in the 1970s when Bathhouse Row was entered into the National Register of Historic Places.  Several old spas have been renovated and re-opened for either their original purpose or as other tourist-related businesses.  The most palatial of the spas, the Fordyce Bathhouse, is now the park’s museum and visitors’ center.  From peak popularity during the 1960s of up to 2 million annual visits, the park has received 1.5 million visitors in recent years.

References:

National Park Service.  Hot Springs National Park, History & Culture.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/historyculture/index.htm.  Accessed March 1, 2109.

Shugart, Sharon.  2003.  Hot Springs National Park, a Brief History of the Park. National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/historyculture/index.htm.  Accessed March 1, 2019.

Shugart, Sharon.  2018.  Hot Springs National Park.  The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.  Available at:  http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2547,  Accessed March 1, 2019.

            The United Nations General Assembly in 2013 designated March 3 as World Wildlife Day.  The designation reaffirms “the intrinsic value of wildlife and its various contributions, including its ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic contributions to sustainable development and human well-being….”

            March 3 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the day—March 3, 1973—when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora was established.  Since 2013, World Wildlife Day has been celebrated around the world, focused on a theme to highlight a particular aspect of protecting wildlife.  The 2023 theme is “Partnerships for Wildlife Conservation.”

            The creation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) marked a turning point in the fight to protect wild creatures.  Wild animals and plants are traded throughout the world, but unregulated trade had become a serious threat to the survival of many species.  Consequently, representatives of 80 countries gathered in Washington, DC, in 1973, to establish CITES as the international treaty to regulate trade.  Today, 181 countries have ratified the treaty.

            CITES regulates trade in about 35,000 species of wild animals and plants.  The treaty lists species on one of three “appendices” that provide different levels of protection.  Appendix I represents species that are in immediate danger of extinction.  Therefore, no regular international commercial trade is allowed in those species, or any of their parts (e.g., skins, eggs, teeth, internal organs).  As of 2019, there were 1082 species are on Appendix I, including sea turtles, gorillas, giant pandas and lady slipper orchids.

            Appendix II lists species that are not in immediate danger of extinction but which could become vulnerable if unregulated trade were allowed.  As of 2019, 37,420 species are listed here, by far the biggest list.  Appendix II species can be traded, but the trade is limited and must be fully reported and monitored to assure the condition of the species does not continue to decline.  Included are lions, paddlefish, mahogany and many species of corals.

            Appendix III lists species that one or more countries have requested to be regulated because the country believes they are locally vulnerable.  As of 2019, 211 species are listed on Appendix III.  Canada has requested that the walrus be put on Appendix III.

            CITES regulates international trade, but not trade that occurs within individual countries.  Visitors, therefore, are often fooled into thinking that because they can buy a souvenir at a local market—a sea-turtle shell, perhaps—that they can bring it home.  But that is not true if the species is listed by CITES, resulting in confiscation upon arriving at customs.

References:

CITES.  The CITES species.  Available at:  https://www.cites.org/eng/disc/species.php.

United Nations General Assembly.  2013.  Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 2013, 68/205, World Wildlife Day.  Available at:  http://www.wildlifeday.org/sites/default/files/PDF/UNGA_res_68.205_world_wildlife_day.pdf.

United States Fish and Wildlife Service.  How CITES Works.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/international/cites/how-cites-works.html.

            March 2 belongs to Dr. Seuss.  Theodore Geisel, who became famous as the author Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904 (died 1991).  He became the world’s most famous children’s author, writing and usually illustrating more than 60 books that have sold more than 600 million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages.

            Ted Geisel adopted the name Seuss as a college student, to allow him to continue drawing cartoons for his college’s humor magazine after university administrators kicked him off the staff.  Seuss is his mother’s maiden name and his middle name.  He later added Dr. to his pseudonym to give it more of an authoritative air. 

            Before he became a writer of children’s book, Dr. Seuss was a cartoonist.  In the 1930s, he drew advertising cartoons.  Most notable was a series for the insecticide Flit, a product of Standard Oil.  The ads always included the line, “Quick, Henry, the Flit!”  The line became a common idiom for seeking help in an emergency.  When Geisel began to write books, he turned to children’s books, he said, because it was the only writing that his contract with Standard Oil would allow.

            The world has benefitted from that clause in his contract.  Geisel’s simple rhymes, repetitive themes, and fantastic drawings are as familiar as they are strange.  But often hidden within those simple books are profound messages.  The Sneetches taught tolerance for those who are different.  Yertle the Turtle warned against tyranny.  Horton Hears a Who teaches us to stand up for the weak.

            For conservation, we have no better textbook than The Lorax.  Geisel published The Lorax in 1971, at the height of American’s emerging concern for the environment.  The Lorax tells the story of the Once-ler, who exploited the magnificent Truffula Tree and other resources at the far edge of town.  The Lorax warned the Once-ler to be careful, not to overdo his harvests.  But, pushed by greed and the insatiable markets for Thneed made from Truffula Trees, the Once-ler ignored the warnings. Gradually, the trees and all the resources depending on them—like Bar-ba-loots and Humming-Fish—disappeared.  The Lorax departs, too, leaving a forlorn Once-ler to live alone in a gray and hopeless world (more about the book here).

            The message of the book is clearly conservationist, not preservationist.  But some people did not see it that way.  In the logging communities of the Pacific Northwest, the book was banned from public libraries.  The lumber industry put out a pro-logging response in its own children’s book, The Truax.  Notably, however, neither the Lorax nor Geisel was against using trees or forests, just against over-using them.  As Geisel said, “The Lorax doesn’t say lumbering is immoral.  I live in a house made of wood and write books printed on paper.  It’s a book about going easy on what we’ve got.  It’s anti-pollution and anti-greed.”

            The Lorax may speak literally for the trees, but it speaks figuratively for our need to sustain the wonderful natural resources on which we depend.

References:

Ayers, Kyle.  2012.  The Environmental Message Behind “The Lorax.”  Available at:  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/04/09/the-environmental-message-behind-the-lorax/.

EarlyMoments.com.  The Life and Times of Dr. Seuss.  Available at:  https://www.earlymoments.com/dr-seuss/The-Life-and-Times-of-Dr-Seuss/.

Nel, Philip.  Biography of Dr. Seuss.  Available at:  http://www.seussville.com/#/author.

            The world’s first national park, Yellowstone, was established on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses Grant added his signature to the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act.  The creation of Yellowstone was a revolutionary event.  During a time of western colonization, the practice of the federal government was to give land away, or sell it, so that it could be used for productive processes—mining, farming, lumbering, cattle grazing and the like.  To set aside a piece of land this size required the location to be extraordinarily special.

            And it was—and remains so today.  The park covers a huge land area, totaling nearly 3500 square miles, bigger than both Rhode Island and Delaware—combined.  The vast majority lies in Wyoming, with slivers running into Montana and Idaho.  Because of its immense size and long period of protection, Yellowstone is considered the northern hemisphere’s best preserved natural ecosystem.  Management today recognizes that value, and natural processes—including fire and wildlife population fluctuations—are allowed to occur without restraint as fully as possible.

            But what makes Yellowstone unique are its thermal features.  The park contains the world’s largest active volcanic caldera, measuring 30 by 45 miles.  It has more than 10,000 geothermal surface features, about half of all found in the world.  Geysers—of which Old Faithful is the most famous, and not particularly faithful—number more than 500, again more than half of the world’s total.  The park experiences as many as 3,000 earthquakes every year, obviously most not large enough to be felt by visitors.

            The wildlife of Yellowstone is also spectacular.  The mammal diversity is high, with 67 native species, and 285 bird species live in the wide range of environments in the park.  The park contains the only continuously free-ranging American bison population still in existence, attracting visitors to the Hayden Valley where the largest herds graze.

Two species are symbolic for the park, as well as controversial.  Grizzly bears are a favorite species.  Before 1975, the bears were treated much like pets, as visitors fed them from their cars and campgrounds and used the bears as photographic props.  Since 1975, when grizzly bears were added to the Endangered Species list, they have been managed as natural residents of the park.  Feeding and other casual contact have been outlawed, and people have been removed from prime bear habitat.  As a consequence, grizzly bears have increased in abundance.  Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes the bears should be removed from the Endangered Species list, a federal judge has ruled that they remain imperiled and will remain on the list, as of September, 2018.

            Similar trends have occurred for Yellowstone’s other symbol—the gray wolf.  Wolves had been eliminated from the park in the early 1900s, but after being added to the Endangered Species list in the 1970s, a restoration process began.  The first strategy was stocking wolves from Canadian packs.  The successful restoration efforts have led to the total recovery of wolf populations, with more than a dozen packs now occupying the park.  They are no longer on the Endangered Species list.  Some people object to the restoration of wolves, citing their predation on cattle and elk outside the park. 

            Most people, however, love what has happened to restore and preserve Yellowstone.  Annual visitation now tops 4 million people, making Yellowstone one of the top five destinations for national park enthusiasts.  Expect big crowds in July, though, as more than 30,000 people each day descend onto the park’s roads and picnic grounds. 

            We take for granted today the level of care and management that Yellowstone receives, but the park didn’t start that way.  The park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, was unpaid and had neither a budget nor staff to help him.  Eventually Congress balked at the government’s inability to manage the park, and they turned it over to the U.S. Army in 1886.  Army troops patrolled the park on horseback, guarding the major attractions and expelling poachers.  Not until the National Park Service was created in 1916 did the job of managing the park revert to a civilian workforce(learn more about the NPS here) .  Today that workforce includes more than 300 permanent and 400 seasonal employees, dedicated to preserving one of the world’s great natural treasures.

References:

National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park.  Birth of a National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/yellowstoneestablishment.htm.

National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park.  Park Facts.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkfacts.htm.

UNESCO.  World Heritage list:  Yellowstone National Park.  Available at:  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/28.

Yellowstone National Park.  Grizzly Bears & the Endangered Species Act.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/bearesa.htm.

Apparently everyone related to conservation took the day off on December 20.  Throughout history,there were no conservation-related births, events, tragedies, new laws—nothing.  I guess they needed a day to get ready for the holidays.  Now that might be what an average researcher might conclude, but not me. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find out that one of America’s greatest films was released on this date—It’s A Wonderful Life!

            The film came out on December 20, 1946.  It was directed by Frank Capra and starred Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a small-town banker, and Donna Reed as his wife, Mary.  After some money goes missing and the bank is on the cusp of default, George is so distraught that he contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve.  An angel (played by Henry Travers) appears to George and shows him all the wonderful deeds George has done over the years, improving the lives of countless of his neighbors.  George draws back from the bridge railing,the money is found, and all is well for Christmas. 

While the film was originally a flop at the box office, the years have been kind.  It’s A Wonderful Life is now considered a classic of American films, rating among the top of the American Film Institutes’s listings, and it is shown more or less continuously on cable television from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.

            The movie reminds me of why I am an optimist—an optimist in general and an environmental optimist specifically.  We might despair over some environmental loss in the news—an oil spill, reversal of pollution regulations, the listing of a new endangered species—just like George Bailey.  But, also like George Bailey, if we look a little deeper and broader, we can see an amazing and wonderful world behind the headlines.

            Go back a century to the environmental conditions around the world at the height of the industrial revolution.  In big cities,the air was deadly, filled with smoke, dust, soot and pathogens.  The water was putrid, choked with household and industrial waste.  Infectious diseases ran rampant, fueled by lack of sanitation.  Wildlife species were hunted to extinction or near extinction. 

            Then a new idea began to emerge:  a healthy life requires a healthy environment.  The world started passing laws to protect the air, water and nature.  Infrastructure got built to supply clean water and wash away wastes, to filter particulates out of the air, to regulate the taking of fish and wildlife.  People like John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ding Darling, Rachel Carson—the George Baileys of the conservation movement—picked up the mantle for protecting our resources.

            In 1981, I wrote a paper for the American Biology Teacher called “The Case for Environmental Moderation (or why people who live in recycled bottles shouldn’t throw stones).”  In that paper, I argued the following:

“A friend once told me that where the environment was concerned, one could either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Nonsense. No one is totally devoted to preserving the environment.To paraphrase Descartes, ‘I am, therefore I pollute.’ The alternative to polluting the environment is to stop living; and then, as every Agatha Christie fan knows, someone still must dispose of the corpse. In practice, we all compromise environmental quality for the benefit of other desires—for wealth and convenience usually, but for other reasons as well, including the relief of human misery.”

Now, 41 years later, I am even more convinced that I am correct.  We could site many instances where things continue to improve, and in the references I list several.  The giant panda was recently upgraded by IUCN from endangered to vulnerable status, because of the conservation actions of the Chinese people.  The world continues to add more lands to protected status, especially today in marine environments.  We continue to improve the nutrition of the world’s poor, adequately feeding two billion more people every day than we did two decades ago. 

            Others also seem to be taking another look at our environment, replacing the characteristic pessimism with a more useful optimism. Technical improvements in almost every exploitative activity—please understand that exploitation of nature is necessary for human survival—is getting more efficient and effective, from agriculture to transportation to energy production and use. 

            Along with technical improvements comes recognition that the earth is today a combination of natural and human-based processes.  Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow wrote in 2015 that the ecological tenet “everything is connected to everything else” is usually thought of as pessimistic—mess with one part of the environment and the other parts go sour as well.  But she noted that there is another interpretation, once you get past the idea that anything human is inherently evil:

“But the corollary is the possibility of virtuous circles. Specifically, various kinds of ‘regenerative’ agriculture can purportedly sequester carbon,  make land more resistant to both drought and flood, and render soil much more conducive to growing nutritious plants. The notion that ‘everything is connected’ becomes a source of optimism.”

Tuhus-Dubrow also quoted Laura Martin, a doctoral student at Cornell, who asks us to replace the metaphor of the ecological footprint with a new one—the ecological handprint.  “A footprint is a mark one never meant to leave. A handprint, as opposed to a footprint, is deliberate, skilled and artful. It evokes human agency and the human ability to shape the world by choosing among many possible natures.”

            I like that metaphor.  By putting our hands on the earth and shaping it with care, respect and love, we can nurture a better, fairer, more sustainable world.  As long as we keep Gro Harlem Brundtland’s definition of sustainability in mind—live today so future generations can live as they wish—my optimism stands solid. And if you’d like to read about some folks who made a very positive impact on our world and its environment, read my book, Nature’s Allies–Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World.

            George Bailey said “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  I say “It’s a Wonderful World,” on December 20 and every day.

References:

Internet Movie Database.  It’s a Wonderful Life(1946).  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Nielsen, Larry A.  1981. The Case for Environmental Moderation (or why people who live in recycled bottles shouldn’t throw stones). The American Biology Teacher 43(4):208-210, 224).  Available at: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/25808/Case.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Perrin, Sam.  The Case for Environmental Optimism.  Ecology for the Masses, May 28, 2018.  Available at:  https://ecologyforthemasses.com/2018/05/28/the-case-for-environmental-optimism/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Skorton, David J.  2017. The Argument for Environmental Optimism: Opinion by Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton.  Smithsonian Insider, April 2017.  Available at: https://insider.si.edu/2017/04/argument-environmental-optimism-opinion-smithsonian-secretary-david-j-skorton/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Tuhus-Dubrow, Rebecca.  2015.  The Eco-Optimists.  Dissent Magazine, Winter 2015.  Available at: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-eco-optimists.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

“In the world of science, Richard Leakey is as close to royalty by birth as one gets.”  So wrote Richard Schiffman in 2016.  And with good cause.  Leakey’s parents—Louis and Mary Leakey—are the world’s most famous paleo-anthropologists, having discovered the earliest human fossils at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, proving that humans evolved not in Asia, but in Africa. Their son Richard took his heritage seriously, but moved far beyond the realm of fossils.           

Richard Leakey was born on December 19, 1944, in Nairobi, Kenya (died 2022).  He grew up on his parents’ field sites, finding his first fossil when he was just six years old.  Fossil-hunting didn’t attract this Leakey, however—animal hunting was more his speed. He quit school when he was 16, instead learning to fly, collecting skeletons (of non-extinct species) to sell to museums, and leading wildlife photographic expeditions.

            While flying on one such safari, he spotted an exposed set of cliffs that seemed like a promising fossil site. Not ignoring his heritage, he followed up on the site. Up every day at 4:30 AM, he and his “Hominid Gang” of diggers excavated an amazing trove of humanoid fossils in what would become one of the world’s richest finds. Just 25, Leakey was now a famous paleontologist in his own right, even though it was not his primary desire. The Kenyan president made him Director of the Kenya National Museum, a position he held from 1968 to 1989.  During those three decades, he built the museum into international prominence while also promoting wildlife conservation and habitat protection for the nation.

            His true calling took hold again in 1989, when he left the museum to become director of Kenya’s wildlife and parks agency (now called the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS).  The agency was corrupt from top to bottom, and both elephants and rhinoceros were being poached at alarming rates.  Leakey, with his direct and forceful approach to all problems (“I’m not much into reflection, I like to get things done”), armed his wildlife officers and told them to shoot poachers to kill.

            But he knew that not just Kenya, but the world needed to change.  “We also had to somehow impact the market.  My idea was to destroy confiscated ivory by bonfire.   That generated massive publicity around the fact that elephants were being killed for their teeth, which led to CITES putting an international ban on ivory sales.”

            He lasted five years as Director of KWS, but by then his enemies—those who profited from the corruption he was battling—regained control. He crashed his plane in 1993, resulting in the amputation of both legs below the knees.  The cause of the crash has never been proven, but Leakey and others believe the plane had been sabotaged.  At a political rally in 1995, he was whipped by his opponents.

            Leakey entered politics directly in 1995, forming a new party called Safina (which means “Noah’s Ark” in Swahili).  He won a seat in parliament, and eventually became the Secretary of the Cabinet, the most important political appointment in Kenya. He retired from government service in 2001.  Although some have accused him of both arrogance and greed in seeking high office, it seems more likely that Leakey was just following his birth-right mission. He said that “public service is different from government service.  I was raised to believe that in public service you remain absolutely neutral politically.”

           In recent years, elephant poaching skyrocketed, so the country turned again to its wildlife conservation hero.  Leakey rejoined the KWS in 2015 as chair of the agency’s board.  He held another ivory bonfire, this time burning $100 million of ivory.  Leakey believed that any market for ivory—even the legal selling of confiscated tusks—leads inevitably to illegal markets because consumers don’t know the reality:  “My feeling is that many people who are buying this ivory in China and elsewhere simply don’t know what it is doing to elephants.” Quickly, Kenya’s rate of poaching again declined under Leakey’s leadership.

            But Leakey was more than a protector of wildlife.  He understood that the lives of Africans are interwoven with the lives of wildlife, the essence of sustainability. “Without tackling poverty there is no security for anybody in our society, no institutional security, no national security—and definitely no security for our wild lands and wildlife.”

            And he understood what wildlife means to the human soul:

 “When I studied fossils, I was dealing with species that became extinct because of climate change, because of over-predation. Today, when I stand on the magnificent Kenyan landscape in the midst of so many of their successors, the survivors—now different species—it’s a very powerful experience. I feel I’m at home with them. I understand myself better. I sense my place within the larger continuum of life.”

References:

Academy of Achievement.  Richard E. Leakey,Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist. Available at:  http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Astill, James.  2001.  African warrior.  The Guardian, 9 October 2001.  Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,565776,00.html.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Richard Leakey.  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Leakey.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Schiffman, Richard.  2016.  Why Kenya Is Burning 100 Tons of Elephant Ivory.  Scientific American, April 27,2016.  Available at:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-kenya-is-burning-100-tons-of-elephant-ivory/.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Want to start an argument about how to produce electricity without climate change?  Bring up nuclear energy (and at this moment in 2022, that argument just got more interesting with news that a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been achieved).  Want to start an argument about the history of nuclear energy among a bunch of nuclear dudes?  Just ask which was the first nuclear energy plant!

But for our purposes today, we’re going with the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in western Pennsylvania (don’t look for it on a map, because it is gone).  Several candidates for the title of “first” exist, depending on the qualifiers used, but it appears that Shippingport may have been the first “full-scale” commercial plant built solely to produce electricity.  It was fired up on December 2 and started sending electricity through the power grid on December 18, 1957.

Shippingport only got there by accident.  When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War 2, the public was deadly scared of what the world’s capacity to harness atomic energy might mean; the arms race and the cold war resulted.  But U.S. President David Eisenhower had a different idea—to use the power of atoms to create energy.  He called his idea “Atoms for Peace,” and directed U.S. federal agencies to get cracking on ways to use atoms in other ways.

Consequently, a new atomic age began.  The U.S. started building atom-fueled navy ships, especially aircraft carriers.  While the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) developing a nuclear reactor for a new aircraft carrier, Congress decided it was too expensive and took away the funding.  With a partially built nuclear reactor, the AEC quickly changed strategies—let’s turn it into a commercial nuclear energy plant, producing electricity for the country.  President Eisenhower agreed and he assigned Admiral Rickover to manage the process (Rickover is known as the “Father of the Atomic Navy”).  The AEC chose Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on the Ohio River west of Pittsburgh, as the location, and Rickover got it built, pronto.  His biographer noted:

“Commercial nuclear power was now a reality, just four and a half years after the task was assigned to Admiral Rickover. Three years later, commercial plants based on this design began to spring up across the country, and shortly after that, around the whole world.”

Indeed, nuclear energy has expanded around the country and world.  Today, 99 nuclear reactors produce electricity in 30 U.S. states, supplying 20% of the nation’s electricity.  The U.S. has more nuclear reactors and capacity than any other country in the world (surprised by that, aren’t you?).  France is next with 58, then Japan (42), China (39) and Russia (37).  But nuclear energy provides a much higher proportion of all electricity in other countries than in the U.S.—France gets 72% from nuclear, Belgium gets 50%, and Sweden gets 40%.  The UK is about tied with the U.S. at 19%.  Worldwide, about 450 nuclear reactors produce about 11% of all electricity.

After the spectacular nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, several countries declared a divorce from nuclear energy.  Japan itself has lowered its reliance on nuclear from 30% of all electricity to just 4% today.  Germany is supposedly phasing out all its nuclear energy capacity, needing to find a replacement source for the 12% of electricity that nuclear provides.  The U.S. has only opened one new nuclear facility since 1996, with two more under construction now.  But this won’t increase capacity, as older plants are taken off-line.

Other parts of the world, however, are developing nuclear capacity as an alternative to air-polluting fossil-fuel facilities (the major fuel being displaced is coal).  In early 2018, 58 nuclear reactors were under construction.  Twenty of those were in China alone, followed by 6 each in India and Russia.  Many European countries are building new reactors to replace aging or retired reactors.

“Retirement” was the fate of the Shippingport plant.  After the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster—also in Pennsylvania—public opinion turned against nuclear energy.  In 1982, the plant quit producing electricity, and by 1989 the entire facility was totally gone.  Both the accident-free operation of the plant for 25 years and its decommissioning are used as examples of how well nuclear energy can work.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), nuclear energy has a target on its back.  Nuclear energy is the safest of all methods of producing electricity (deaths per kilowatt hour generated), and nuclear plants operate more reliably and much closer to full capacity than fossil-fuel plants.  And depending on how you do the math, nuclear energy doesn’t generate greenhouse gases (when the fossil-fuel energy consumed by mining of materials and construction of reactors is included, there is a net contribution of greenhouse gases—just like all power plants).  But spectacular accidents like Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island drive policymakers and the public against nuclear energy.  And the safety of long-term storage of radioactive wastes is a chronic worry that can’t be explained away.

But here is the question that we all must consider:  From what source do you wish to get your electricity?  It is not an easy question, and, regardless of individual answers, it is clear that nuclear power plants will be part of our global energy future for a long, long time.

References:

Craddock, Jack III.  2016.  The Shippingport Atomic Power Station.  Standford University.  Available at:  http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/craddock1/.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Energy Information Administration.  Nuclear Explaned—U.S. Nuclear Industry.  Available at: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=nuclear_use.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Statista.  2018.  Number of under construction nuclear reactors worldwide as of February, 2018.  Available at:   https://www.statista.com/statistics/513671/number-of-under-construction-nuclear-reactors-worldwide/.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

World Nuclear Organization.  2018.  Nuclear Power in the World Today.  Available at:  http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Many children revolt in the shadow of a famous and demanding father.  Alexander Agassiz, however, the son of world renowned scientist Louis Agassiz, did quite the opposite.  He followed in his father’s large footsteps, complementing his father’s scientific creativity with a dogged determination and organizational ability.

Alexander Agassiz was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on December 17, 1835 (died 1910).  He lived there with his famous father and artistic mother, enjoying the natural environment and the intellectual stimulation. His father was “bigger than life,” as the saying goes, both in physical stature and presence—he commanded every room he entered.  Alexander, in contrast, was slight of build and quiet, more given to the detail of his work than its promotion.  For example, he became skilled at dissection, preparing detailed and tidy specimens for scientific observation.  Nonetheless, Alexander grew to become a man of strength, courage and determination.

When his mother died at an early age, Alexander began a life of revolving stays with relatives in the Freiburg region of Germany.  There he gained the idea that he would become a natural scientist. He often disappeared for days at a time, sleeping in barns or on haystacks, saying, “Almost anybody would give such a tiny traveler a piece of bread or a bit of cheese.”

He moved to the U.S. in 1849 to stay with his father who had taken a job at Harvard.  Alexander, who was fluent in French and German, quickly learned English—his grammar was meticulous and his writing clear, but he sometimes spoke haltingly.  Regardless, he earned several degrees from Harvard.  He worked side-by-side with his father, helping him establish and grow Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (which also covered botany, geology and anthropology).  He learned that his father could raise money well, but could spend it even better, always leaving the museum—and the family—cash-strapped.

Consequently, Alexander accepted a role with a Houghton, Michigan, copper mine with which his family was connected.  He quickly learned that the mine itself was a great resource, but was being squandered by the company’s poor management. Within a three-year stay, from 1866 to 1869, he developed the mine into a highly profitable enterprise equipped with the newest technology, along with innovative mine safety and worker and community welfare programs.  The mine became the world’s largest copper producer. He remained president of the mining company until his death, but with his family’s money problems solved, he happily returned full-time to Harvard and science.

Soon thereafter, two sorrows tainted his life—both his beloved father and his beloved wife died within a few weeks in 1873.  He devoted his life and career to their memories.  He never remarried, but remained with Harvard University for the rest of his life, helping to organize, administer and expand the museum.

He also devoted himself to his scientific work, especially his interest in oceanography.  Until his death in 1910, he conducted numerous large-scale expeditions among all the world’s oceans.  Characteristically, his voyages were carefully planned and plotted to survey the largest possible regions efficiently.  He invented new equipment (marine dredges), collected thousands of species and mapped huge areas of the ocean floor.  He focused his biological studies on echinoderms, producing a major revision of their taxonomy.  His bibliography occupies 8 pages.  At the time of his death, a colleague said that all current knowledge of “the great ocean basins and their general outlines” owed itself to Agassiz, either directly or through his inspiration of other researchers.

His father was a founder of the National Academy of Sciences, and Alexander revered the institution, serving as president from 1901 to 1907.  An extensive tribute to him, published by the academy, begins this way:

“An exhaustive memoir of Alexander Agassiz should consider his achievements in three distinct fields, namely, mining engineering and administration, oceanographic research, and zoological investigation. His power of mental concentration and his economy of time enabled him to accomplish results which might fairly be regarded as full measure of activity for three men.”

References:

Goodale, George Lincoln.  1912.  Alexander Agassiz, 1835-1910.  National Academy of Sciences, September 1912.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/agassiz-alexander.pdf.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Smithsonian Institution Archives.  Alexander Agassiz (photograph and accompanying text).  Available at:  https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_11390.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Snow, Richard F.  1983.  Alexander Agassiz:  A Reluctant Millionaire.  American Heritage, Volume 34, Issue 3.  Available at:  https://www.americanheritage.com/content/alexander-agassiz-reluctant-millionaire.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Perhaps this is the best thing that can be said of an environmental leader:  “…Browner was an in-your-face, if you will, environmental activist, and she could cut right through the fluff of any discussions and want to get to the core of what could be done for the environment.”  Sweet!

That in-your-face conservationist is Carol Browner.  She was born on December 16, 1955, on the edge of the Everglades.  Her parents, both college professors, gave her a love of nature.  She would often ride her bike to the swamp and hike there—she and nature were linked at the hip.  But unlike many nature lovers, she wasn’t educated in biology or ecology, rather taking degrees in political science and law from the University of Miami.

Browner entered politics soon after leaving college, serving as general counsel to a Florida legislative committee.  She moved on to DC, working for Citizen Action on grassroots efforts that often included environmental issues; a special interest was the effect of pollution on children.  She became the chief environmental aide for a Florida senator and then for Tennessee Senator Al Goe (learn more about him here).

Browner returned to Florida to become Secretary of Environmental Regulation (1991-1993).  There she initiated the ongoing restoration of the Florida Everglades—the largest environmental restoration project in U.S. history—including the dismantling of extensive drainage systems that had interrupted crucial flows of freshwater into the swamplands.  She said of her approach in Florida, “We started looking broadly at ecosystem protection, which helped us get beyond some of the kinds of problems we’re seeing all over the country in a lot of the applications of environmental regulation.”

She seemed able to broker deals that moved environmental sustainability along while at the same time allowing economic development.  For example, she convinced the state of Florida and the Walt Disney Corporation to allow Disney to develop 400 acres of wetlands the company owned in exchange for protecting nearly 8000 acres of other wetlands as a wildlife refuge—a form of mitigation that is commonplace today.  A Disney executive said that “Browner was a ‘visionary with integrity,’ who could…reach accommodations without compromising Florida’s environmental review process.”

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1993, his vice-president, Al Gore, convinced Clinton to name Browner as EPA Administrator.  At 37 years of age, she became the 8^th—and youngest—EPA leader.  She remained in office for the full two terms of Clinton’s presidential tenure, leaving in 2001 as the longest serving EPA Administrator in history.

At EPA, Browner found both favor and disfavor with both the environmental and business communities (perhaps a reason for her longevity).  She championed strengthening air and water quality standards, raising requirements to the most stringent thus far in the country’s history.  At the same time, she recognized that the regulatory apparatus was too complex and re-organized EPA to make it more efficient and user-friendly.  She believed in common sense as a touchstone for environmental protection.

At the end of her EPA appointment, she returned to the private sector.  But President Barack Obama called her back to the White House to be his energy and climate-change “czar.”  She served for two years.  During that time, she was the principal face of the White House during the BP oil spill in April, 2000, earning kudos for her calm, professional and determined approach.

She is reminiscent of another great conservationist, Gro Harlem Brundtland (learn more about her here), the former Norwegian Prime Minister who coined the definition of sustainability universally used today.  Both leaders were practical, but principled.  Both made decisions based on logic rather than politics, sometimes angering business but sometimes also angering the environmental community.  Both believe that we can have a sound economy along with a high-quality environment; in fact, they believe, both are necessary to achieve either.  At her swearing-in ceremony in January, 1993, she said:

“I want my son to be able to grow up and enjoy the natural wonders of the United States in the same way that I have.  I believe that we will now be able to make the investment in our economy that we so desperately need, yet preserve the air, land, and water.”

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Carol Browner, American Attorney and Politician.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carol-Browner.  Accessed December 2, 2018.

Environmental Protection Agency.  1999.  Carol M. Browner.  EPA History.  Available at:  https://web.archive.org/web/20081219170524/http://www.epa.gov:80/history/admin/agency/browner.htm.  Accessed December 2, 2018.

Van Oss, Alex.  1993.  New EPA Chief.  Living on Earth, PRI’s Environmental News Magazine, January 8, 1993.  Available at:  http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=93-P13-00002&segmentID=1.  Accessed December 2, 2018.