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In the mid-1800s, the American west was a distant wilderness to most people.  Americans, and the rest of the world, saw the landscape mostly through the works of artists who accompanied survey expeditions.  Their often monumental and romanticized paintings fired the imagination of an “American Eden.”  Perhaps the most famous of these artists, both at the time and still today, is Albert Bierstadt.

Albert Bierstadt was born on January 7, 1830 (died 1902), in Prussian Germany.  His parents emigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts, when Albert was just two years old.  His father built barrels for the whaling industry, providing a comfortable childhood for Albert and his two brothers.

The boy was a natural artist, constantly sketching what he saw around him in the New England landscape.  Little is known about his early life, but his skill at drawing led him to become an art teacher at age 20.  Then, in 1853, he traveled to Germany, studying with experienced artists and sketching across Germany, Switzerland, and Italy for four years.  He matured as an artist, demonstrating exceptional talent at representing the vertical landscapes of the Alps.

Once back in New Bedford, he began to exhibit his European work, gaining recognition for his luminous use of light and color that produced serene and gentle landscapes.  He traveled throughout New England, and like other artists of the Hudson River School, he painted highly evocative and idealized American landscapes.

Bierstadt, however, along with others including Thomas Moran, became enthralled by the landscape of the American West.  During 1857-1859, he took two trips, making countless sketches and experimenting with the new field of photography.  He travels convinced him that the American West “has the best material for the artist in the world.”  He took a studio in New York City and, using the sketches from his travels, began painting the large canvases for which he became famous.  He used the techniques he honed painting in the Alps to produce mystical scenes based on recognizable landscapes but modified to evoke tranquility and majesty.

For the next several decades, Bierstadt took his place as one of the nation’s most revered landscape artists.  His monumental canvases graced the U.S. capitol and the finest galleries across the nation (where they can still be seen today).  He emphasized the grandeur of the natural environment, generally minimizing the presence of the human-built world. The popularity of his work is often credited with energizing the drive to protect western landscapes as national parks.  He was also appalled by the destruction of American bison and other species.  “The continual slaughter of native species,” he said, “must be halted before all is lost.”

In his later years, he spent parts of every year in the Bahamas, where his wife had moved for medical reasons.  His paintings of tropical environments are generally considered of equal quality to those he painted of the American West.

Bierstadt’s popularity fell as the 20th Century approached, with critics dismissing his large canvases as overly sentimental.  His reputation revived in the 1960s as the environmental movement renewed Americans interest in the need for protecting our great natural resources. Today his works occupy a prominent position as symbols of the majesty of the western landscape.  As he said,“Truly all is remarkable and a wellspring of amazement and wonder.  Man is so fortunate to dwell in this American Garden of Eden.”

References:

Albertbierstadt.org.  Albert Bierstadt Biography in Details.  Available at:  https://www.albertbierstadt.org/biography.html.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

National Gallery of Art.  Albert Bierstadt.  Available at:  https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.6707.html.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

The Art Story.  Albert Bierstadt.  Available at:  https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bierstadt-albert/.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

It went by various names.  Taxonomists call it a bristlecone pine.  Local mountaineers call it Prometheus.  A particular scientist labelled  it WPN-114.  And then he cut it down.  Later, he learned that it was nearly 5,000 years old, the oldest known living non-clonal organism in the world.  Uh-oh.

Donald Currey was a geography graduate students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill studying the Little Ice Age that occurred during the last few thousand years.  He went to Nevada to age bristlecone pines, among the world’s oldest trees, that grew on glacial deposits associated with the ice age.  Bristlecone pines, like all trees growing in temperate regions, can be aged from the rings in their wood.  Currey was using a device called a Swedish increment borer to drill a narrow hole into tree trunks to extract samples for dating.  He had chosen this particular tree, WPN-114, for no particular reason than it was surely old enough to cover the desired span of years.

Now the story gets a little confusing.  Some accounts state that Currey got his increment borer stuck in the tree and, needing to retrieve it for subsequent work, he asked the U.S. Forest Service, which operated the national forest in which he was working, for permission to cut down the tree.  Other accounts state that the gnarly shape of the tree didn’t allow Currey to get good samples with his borer, so he realized he had to cut the tree down to get complete cross-sections of the trunk.  Whatever the precise reason, the Forest Service gave permission for the tree to be cut.  On August 7 (or perhaps August 6—this detail is a little sketchy as well), 1964, a crew used chain saws to cut down the tree.

Later, when Currey analyzed samples from the tree, he discovered a startling fact.  This particular tree, unbeknownst to any of the people working with it, contained more than 4,800 annual growth rings.  That made it the oldest living non-clonal tree in the world (stands of some clonal trees, like aspen, are now considered one individual and, therefore, are given ages that go back thousands of years).  Subsequent analysis discovered more rings and, given that trees growing in the harsh environment where this tree lived sometimes don’t grow at all in a year, the tree’s age is now estimated to have been well over 4,900 years when it was cut.

It was an accident, of course.  Not that the tree was cut down—that was purposeful, and done with permission.  And it wasn’t a  big deal at the time.  As one observer has stated, “But it wasn’t something that I think they struggled with at the time, because it was just a tree, and the mindset was that trees were a renewable resource and they would grow back. And it didn’t seem like it was any particularly special tree.” But the fact that it was the world’s oldest living thing was an accident.  One with mixed blessings.

On the negative side, of course, the tree was dead.  It had made it through thousands of years of storm and strife but had succumbed to the needs of science and the power of the chainsaw.  Donald Currey came in for lots of blame in subsequent years, eventually refusing to talk about it any more.  He came out okay, however, having become a highly regarded geography professor at the University of Utah.  He died in 2004.

On the positive side, the reported age of this tree made the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), which grows only in high elevations of California, Nevada And Utah, a highly regarded species.  Before this, it had been overlooked as beautiful or remarkable, considered noteworthy mainly by photographers that admired its twisted, gnarly shape.  But, the tree has remarkable adaptations to its cold, windy, rocky habitat.  The tree’s roots nourish only the portion of the tree directly above them.  Consequently, portions of the tree can die, but other portions remain healthy, often supported by a single root and a ribbon of bark only inches wide.  The dense wood resists pests, diseases and the harsh climate.  The trees grow in sparse stands just below the tree line.  And we now know that the species is one of the longest living on earth.  Bristlecone pines are now protected on all federal lands.

A second positive is that the loss of WPN-114, or Prometheus, caused a national controversy as the news of its cutting became known.  The tree lived in Humboldt National Forest, on the Utah-Nevada border where Wheeler Peak, the second-highest mountain in Nevada rises to over 13,000 feet.  Local advocates had long wanted the area to be re-classified as a national park, and they seized on the loss of Prometheus as evidence for their position.  They won, and, in 1986, Great Basin National Park was created.  The park covers over 77,000 acres, but because of the same harsh environment that grows bristlecone pines, it is one of the least visited parks.

The name Prometheus for this tree turns out to be highly ironic.  Prometheus was the ancient Greek who stole fire from the gods, effectively giving humans knowledge and civilization.  And Prometheus the tree was felled in the pursuit of knowledge, largely because our knowledge was insufficient to notice how special it was.  But as more knowledge has come, we have learned that Prometheus wasn’t really the oldest tree—other older individuals have been found since, and more, even older, trees will be discovered in the future.  

References:  

Cohen, Michael P.  2004.  Oldest Living Tree Tells All.  Terrain.org, No. 14, Winter/Spring 2004.  Available at:  https://www.terrain.org/essays/14/cohen.htm.

Eveleth, Rose.  2012.  How One Man Accidentally Killed the Oldest Tree Ever.  Smithsonian Magazine, November 15, 2o012.  Available at:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-accidentally-killed-the-oldest-tree-ever-125764872/

National Park Service.  Bristlecone Pines.  Great Basin National Park, Nevada.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/grba/planyourvisit/identifying-bristlecone-pines.htm.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the world’s leading source of comprehensive information on global climate change.  And during the years when the panel was forming its seminal analyses and conclusions, it was led by a man known to his friends worldwide simply as “Patchy.”

Rajenda Pachauri was born in Uttarakhand, India, at the base of the Himalayan mountains, on August 20, 1940 (died 2020).  The beautiful setting in northern India nurtured his love of nature and his concern for sustainability of the earth.  He studied at La Martiniere College in Uttar Pradesh and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering before coming to the United States in the 1970s to received both an M.S. and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University (in industrial engineering and economics).  He held several short-term positions at U.S. institutions before returning to India in the late 1970s.

In 1981, he co-founded The Energy Resources Institute (known globally as TERI) near New Delhi.  He led that organization for three decades, from 1981 to 2016.  Under his leadership, TERI grew to become a global force in energy research and policy analysis.  TERI’s mission is “to usher transitions to a cleaner and sustainable future through the conservation and efficient use of energy and other resources, and innovative ways of minimizing and reusing waste.

One of Patchy’s and TERI’s signature initiatives was the “Light a Billion Lives” program.  Begun in 2007, the program aims to “replace inefficient and harmful lighting and cooking methods with efficient, affordable and reliable clean energy alternatives.”  When I had the privilege to spend time with Patchy during a visit to NC State, he explained that a core element of the program was to furnish solar lanterns to homes that did not have electricity, allowing young students to study in the evening without the health danger presented by burning kerosene lamps.  In addition, the program set up locally owned businesses where the solar lanterns could be recharged during the day.  Students at NC State worked with TERI to develop more efficient solar lanterns.  According to the program’s website, more than a million homes and 5.65 million people have been impacted.  

Patchy’s most widely known accomplishment, however, was his leadership of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  From 2002 to 2015, he led the program, which involves hundreds of scientists from around the world working collaboratively to assess the scientific basis for understanding climate change.  The reports published by the IPCC have been the foundation for modern efforts to recognize, mitigate and adapt to the realities of climate change.  In 2007, the IPCC, including Patchy as its leader, received the Nobel Peace Prize (along with Al Gore), for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Pachauri wrote 25 books during his career, was awarded dozens of honorary doctorates (including one from NC State), and received among the highest civilian awards from nations around the world, including India’s second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2008.  His career was marred by an accusation of sexual harassment by a former college (a charge the he denied and remained in court at the time of his death in 2020).

The impact of Dr. Pachauri on the global progress to address climate change is undeniable.  He leadership showed the world the consequences of unfettered use of greenhouse gases, setting the world’s nations on their current agendas to make a more sustainable world.  We do well to continue to follow his warning as we engage more fully in the task to eliminate fossil fuels:  “The price of waiting is enormous.”

References:

Schwartz, Joh.  2020.  Rajendra Pachauri, 79, Dies; Led Nobel-Winning Climate Agency.  The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2020.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/science/rajendra-pachauri-dead.html.

TERI.  2020.  Dr. R K Pachauri:  A visionary for sustainable development.  Available at:  https://www.teriin.org/memoriam/bio.php.

TERI.  Mission and Goals.  TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute.  Available at:  https://www.teriin.org/mission-and-goals.

TERI.  Lighting a Billion Lives.  Available at:  http://labl.teriin.org/index.php.

“…the most honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation.”  That’s how a New Yorker writer described Rosalie Edge in a 1948 article.  And, I might add, one of the least likely people to end up with that description.  Edge came late to her commitment to conservation, but she made up for it with the passion of a true zealot.

Mabel Rosalie Barrow was born in New York City on November 3, 1877 (died 1962).  She led an idyllic childhood, favored among her siblings by her successful father, educated in the best schools, enjoying the company of New York’s cultural elite.  She travelled widely as a young woman, meeting her future husband on a visit to England.  He was later posted to Japan as an engineer, and Rosalie joined him and they were married in Yokohama.  After three years in Japan and extensive travel throughout Asia and Europe, they returned to New York.

On her travels, Edge met several leaders of the suffragist movement, which became her first passion.  Starting in 1915, she became an active member of the suffrage movement, an unrelenting advocate right through to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.  As a suffragette, she learned the basics of leading a social movement—organizing, writing pamphlets, staging protests, engaging other thought leaders.  The success of her work gave her an indomitable spirit and a bottomless well of self-confidence.  This work would be crucial to her later success as an advocate for conservation.

When her husband left her in 1916 for another woman (she never divorced him and kept his name), Edge found consolation in walks through Central Park.  She made friends with bird-watchers that she met in the park and became an avid amateur ornithologist herself (her life-list of species seen in Central Park surpassed 800).

Her life changed while staying in Paris in 1929.  The mail from home included a 16-page pamphlet, “A Crisis in Conservation.”  It was written by Willard Van Name, a marine invertebrate biologist at the American Museum of Natural History.  Among a variety of topics relating to the conservation of birds, the pamphlet described actions ascribed to the National Association of Audubon Societies (now the National Audubon Society) that Van Name thought were contrary to bird conservation.  AS Edge’s son, Peter, wrote, “It was this … charge that most aroused my mother as she read the pamphlet that afternoon in Paris, and again as she reread it, many times over, seated in her deck chair aboard the liner taking us back to New York.”

Once back in New York, Edge went to work to reverse the situation.  She formed the Emergency Conservation Committee, basically a one-woman advocacy organization (which she ran for decades).  Because Van Name had been forbidden by his employer to publish any more such pamphlets, Edge instead published what he wrote under her own name on behalf of the Emergency Conservation Committee.  She and her family raised funds, printed and distributed pamphlets to influential persons, a replication of her effort on behalf of women’s suffrage.  Over the next several years, Edge distributed more than a million pamphlets on conservation topics.

Her work had enormous and important results.  After suing Audubon for their mailing list—and winning—she sent pamphlets to the organization’s entire membership, resulting in changes in leadership and conservation policies (in later years, Edge became a supporter of the reformed group).  Again using the effective techniques that she had learned and honed, along with the access to national leaders that her social position allowed, she successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to create King’s Canyon National Park and Olympic National Park and to expand Yosemite.

Today, however, her greatest legacy—and one she made happen almost single-handedly—is the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in southeastern Pennsylvania.  In 1932, Edge learned that hunters would travel to a certain mountain to shoot birds of prey as they migrated in the spring and fall.  The mountain was situated so that air currents encouraged the migrating raptors to fly along the ridge.  Thousands of birds were shot annually.

Edge visited the property and, with the passion of purpose that pervaded her life, she bought it—1,400 acres for the price of  $2.50 per acre.  She declared it a bird sanctuary and hired Maurice and Irma Broun to serve as on-site managers in 1934.  As Peter Edge wrote in 1994, “Since the day Maurice and Irma arrived at Hawk Mountain 60 years ago, not a single hawk has been shot.”  The Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is purported to be the world’s first preserve dedicated to birds of prey.  Today it covers 2,600 acres and has 60,000 visitors each year.

I said at the beginning that Rosalie Edge was an unlikely champion of conservation.  It is a nice lead to this story, but you know and I know that it isn’t true.  Conservationists come from every background.  How we get here is much less important than we arrive.  Let us all be like Rosalie Edge, using our innate skills and capabilities to make this world a better place, whether your preferred habitat is Central Park or the middle of nowhere.  Each of us matters.

References:

Audubon Center for Birds of Prey.  Rosalie Barrow Edge – Feminist, Naturalist and Conservationist.  Available at:  https://cbop.audubon.org/news/rosalie-barrow-edge-feminist-naturalist-and-conservationist.  Accessed July 14, 2022.

Edge, Peter.  1999.  Rosalie Edge:  A Most Determined Lady (1877-1962).  Hawk Mountain Organization.  Available at:  https://www.hawkmountain.org/download/?id=5359.  Accessed July 14, 2022.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.  About Us.  Available at:  https://www.hawkmountain.org/about-hawk-mountain-sanctuary.  Accessed July 14, 2022.

Moag, Jeff.  2019.  How Socialite Rosalie Edge Became the Conscience of American Conservation.  Adventure Journal.  Available at:  https://www.adventure-journal.com/2019/11/how-rosalie-edge-became-the-firebrand-conscience-of-american-conservation/.  Accessed July 14, 2022.

Pennsylvania Center for the Book.  Rosalie Edge.  Available at:  https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Edge__Rosalie_Barrow.  Accessed July 14, 2022.

It doesn’t make the list of the most visited national parks in the country.  Heck it is hardly even in the country, closer to land in Canada than in the U.S.  But among those who know and love our national parks most dearly, they all know that Isle Royale is someplace really special.

And so did Congress and President Hoover, when they authorized the creation of Isle Royale National Park on March 3, 1931, “to conserve a prime example of North Woods Wilderness.”  Authorized is a key word here, because it took another nine years before the U.S. government could get the rudiments of park establishment finished—defining the boundaries, acquiring the land, that sort of thing.  So, many people might say that the park wasn’t actually created until April 3, 1940.  But you could go even farther, because the advent of Work War II put the park on the back-burner for several more years, until it was dedicated on August 27, 1946.

We should be very grateful that they kept at it, because Isle Royale is a real gem.  The park consists of approximately 400 islands in the northwest corner of Lake Superior, officially in Michigan, but close to Minnesota and Ontario.  The main island is Isle Royale itself, about 45 miles long and 9 miles wide at its widest.  That makes the island the 4th largest island in a lake in the world (for you trivia fans).

Almost all of the park was declared a wilderness area in 1976.  In many ways, the park doesn’t fit the definition of a wilderness area, because people—both Native Americans and later groups—have used the island for hundreds of years, for mining, logging and fishing and have left remnants of their use all around the island.  But for nearly a century now, the park has been used for recreation and ecological preservation only—and that is what makes the place truly special.  Fewer than 30,000 people visit each year, a remarkably low number for a “national park,” especially one in the eastern half of the U.S.

So, nature gets to do its thing without much interference from humans.  And one story in the park is especially interesting and special:  the moose-wolf predator-prey interaction.  Moose and gray wolves both reached Isle Royale at various times in the early 20th Century, and because the moose is the primary prey of the gray wolf on the island, the changes in population numbers for both species is  a natural, large-scale experiment that scientists have been watching since the 1950s. And the results have defied the simple models of predator-prey interactions that we all learned in introductory ecology class.

At Isle Royale National Park, nature calls the shots.  Yea for nature!

References:

Global Alliance of National Parks.  Isle Royale National Park.  Available at:  https://national-parks.org/united-states/isle-royale. Accessed March 2, 2022.

National Park Service History eLibrary.  Isle Royale National Park.  Available at:  http://npshistory.com/publications/isro/index.htm. Accessed March 2, 2022.

Rock Harbor Lodge and Marina.  Isle Royale National Park.  Available at:  https://www.rockharborlodge.com/isle-royale-national-park. Accessed March 2, 2022.

Scapino, Philip V.  Isle Royale National Park:  Balancing Human and Natural History in a Maritime Park.  Available at:  http://www.georgewright.org/282scarpino.pdf.  Accessed March 2, 2022.

One of the crowning jewels of Sand Diego is Balboa Park, a 1200-acre expanse overlooking downtown San Diego.  Once the park, as well as most of San Diego, was mostly barren.  But not today.  The beautiful botanical gardens of the park are the work of a pioneering woman, horticulturist Kate Sessions, known as the “Mother of Balboa Park.”

Katherine Olivia Sessions was born in San Francisco on November 8, 1857 (died 1940).  Like her mother, she became an avid gardener, plant collector and flower arranger.  She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1881, having studied chemistry and agriculture.  Following the usual path of educated women of her time, she became a teacher and moved to San Diego.

Her interest in plants never left her, however, and she left the schoolroom to go into the nursery and flower business with friends in 1885.  Her business flourished, as did her reputation as a botanist and landscaper.  In 1892, she formed a partnership with the City of San Diego in which she acquired rights to use a 32-acre tract within what was then called City Park as a plant nursery.  In exchange, she was required to plant 100 trees annually in City Park and supply 300 trees for other municipal lands.  That partnership lasted for a decade and began the lush landscape that the park—renamed Balboa Park in 1915—is known for.  

Sessions began to travel extensively—trips to Hawaii, Mexico and across Europe—to observe plants in their native environments and bring home seeds and specimens for introduction into the gardens of San Diego.  Many of the largest and oldest trees still surviving in Balboa Park were planted personally by Sessions (today, she gathers some criticism for having introduced non-native plants to southern California, but she also provided habitat for several rare Mexican species that might have disappeared without her intervention).

She was a founding member of the Sand Diego Floral Association and helped create the first Arbor Day in the city in 1904.  She was a prolific author, speaker and educator about plants, gardens and landscape architecture.  For decades, she taught horticulture to public school children and personally managed the landscapes around public schools in San Diego.  In her commercial nurseries, she grew test plots of species and cultivar for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  She won the Frank N. Meyer Medal of the American Genetic Association in 1939 for her work in plant introduction.

Sessions will always be most closely associated with Balboa Park.  In 1935, at the California Pacific International Exposition held in the park, she was formally crowned with the loving title of “Mother of Balboa Park.”  The park hosts nearly 5 million visitors each year, half of whom are local residents who use the park on average ten times per year—that makes over 25 million visitor days per year, generating an economic impact of $350 million annually.

I’m reminded of the sentiment by Margaret Mead, never to doubt that a few dedicated people can change the world.  Kate Sessions certainly changed hers, and ours, through the living joy of plants.

References:

Balboa Park.  Balboa Park History.  Available at:  https://www.balboapark.org/about/history.  Accessed March 2, 2022.

Carter, Nancy Carol.   About Kate..  Available at:  https://katestrees.org/about-kate/. Accessed March 2, 2022.

San Diego History Center.  Kate Sessions 1857-1940.  Available at:  https://sandiegohistory.org/archives/biographysubject/sessions/. Accessed March 2, 2022.

San Diego Natural History Museum.  Kate Sessions.  Available at:  https://www.sdnhm.org/blog/blog_details/kate-sessions-a-legendary-san-diego-icon/99/.  Accessed March 2, 2022.

Testa, Mark R., et al.  2017.  Balboa Park Benefits Study.  San Diego State University.  Available at:  http://balboaparkconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Balboa-Park-Benefits-Study-2017.pdf.  Accessed March 2, 2022.

Anglers are known to exaggerate the size of the fish they catch, but today we’re covering a fish whose size doesn’t need any help.  The whale shark is the world’s biggest fish, and August 30 is its own day.  Happy Whale Shark Day!

So, first off, let’s be clear—this animal is not a whale, but it is a shark.  That makes it a fish, not a mammal, and it is clearly the world’s biggest fish (in second place is the basking shark, barely half the size of the whale shark).  Mature whale sharks are the size of a school bus, as long as 50 feet and as heavy as 40 tons.  Big monsters, eh?

But, no, they aren’t monsters.  Whale sharks are gentle creatures—big to be sure, but docile to the extreme.  They live in tropic seas around the globe and generally inhabit shallow water and swim near the surface, frequently encountering humans.  A tourist industry has grown around seeing and swimming with whale sharks, which often enjoy a little scratch behind the, uh, gill slits.

Whale sharks are ancient creatures, based on the fossil record, but have been known as living specimens for only two centuries.  Females give birth to live young, dozens at a time.  Various descriptions state that the animals “migrate,” but it seems to me that a better description is that they swim continuously, often covering long distances.  Their lifespan mimics their physical size—up to 70 years. They filter small animals out of the water column, just like the baleen whales (and hence their name), eating as much as 50 pounds per day.  But unlike filter-feeding whales, whale sharks also can pump water actively through their gills, causing a suctioning effect to capture small fish and other organisms.

Individual whale sharks are covered with light colored markings, mostly round,  in patterns that remain constant over time and allow individuals to be identified.  A catalogue of more than 7,000 individuals has been created, but overall population size is much larger, perhaps 100,000 or more, according to IUCN. 

However, IUCN also estimates that whale sharks have decreased in abundance from pre-exploitation levels.  Populations in the Indo-Pacific are down about two-thirds, and in the Atlantic about one-quarter.  Because the species likes shallow water and does not avoid humans, overfishing and vessel strikes have caused the population decline.  Therefore the species is judged as “endangered” by IUCN and classified as an Appendix II protected species by CITES.

I’ve looked extensively to find the origin of International Whale Shark Day, but with no luck.  The day, it seems, is much like the animal it honors—silent and mysterious.  Tired of the cliched expression “the elephant in the room”?  I recommend trying “the whale shark in the aquarium!” 

References:

Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.  Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus).  Available at:  https://www.environment.gov.au/marine/marine-species/sharks/whale-shark.

Pierce, S. J. and B. Norman.  2016.  Rhincodon typus.  The IUCN Red List of Threathened Species.  Available at:  https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/19488/2365291#text-fields.

World Wildlife Fund.  Whale Shark.  Available at:  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/whale-shark.  

Tradition is important in England, and if it involves the Queen or King, then it is really important!  One aspect of royal tradition is now also important as a conservation and education tool—the annual “Swan Upping” on the Thames River.

Since the 12th Century, representatives of the British monarchy (today that’s Queen Elizabeth II) have conducted an annual census of the population of mute swans (Cygnus Olor).  The swans were valuable back then as a food resource, and, just like cattle in the American West, swans were “branded” so the owners knew which belonged to whom.   In mid-summer, the Royal Swan Marker and his crew rounded up families of swans by surrounding them with long, narrow row-boats (when they spotted a swan family, they cried “all up” and surrounded the bevy; hence the name swan “upping”).  They checked the birds for disease and injury, and they marked the young, called cygnets, with the same ownership brand as the adults.  In earlier centuries, the mark was a distinctive series of nicks cut into the birds’ bills; today it is a leg-band, just like those used throughout the world for scientific purposes.

The subject of all this effort, the mute swan, is a staple in European culture and history (for a long time, it was literally a staple on the dinner plates of hungry English families).  The birds feature in ancient cave art, and their mostly monogamous, life-long pairing has made them a symbol of love and faithfulness.  Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Ugly Duckling is about a mute swan.  

The species was introduced into North America throughout the late 1800s and 1900s as an ornamental bird for the ponds of wealthy landowners and parks.  It is now commonplace across the continent.  Despite its majestic beauty, the mute swan can be a nuisance, displacing native birds by its aggressive behavior and degrading native ecosystems by its voracious appetite.

Today, England’s annual Swan Upping occurs during the third week of July (in 2021, it started on July 20).  Although swan upping was once a widespread and economically important activity, today it occurs as a ceremonial event over several days on a 79-mile stretch of the Thames River north of London.

But it is perhaps more important today than ever.  Today Swan Upping is all about conservation and environmental education. The annual event continues to monitor the health of the mute swan population, providing an index of general environmental quality.  Associated events involve children in observing the birds and learning about their biology and the overall ecology of the Thames River, especially pollution and damage to birds from fishing lines and other litter.

But all in all, I think it’s great that we get “up” for conserving our natural resources.  Anyone ready for tea and crumpets?

References:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Mute Swan.  Available at:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mute_Swan/overview.  Accessed July 21, 2021.

House of Windsor.  Swan Upping.  Available at:  http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsor1999/upping.html. Accessed July 21, 2021.

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  Mute Swan.  Available at:  https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/mute-swan/. Accessed July 21, 2021.

The Royal Family.  Swan Upping.  Available at:  https://www.royal.uk/swans. Accessed July 21, 2021.

The Queen’s Swan Marker.  Swan Upping.  Available at:  http://www.royalswan.co.uk. Accessed July 21, 2021.