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I have written about the creation of several national parks and monuments that occurred on other days.  Most begin with a story of local residents who loved the region and mounted a movement to create a park.  But the origin of this park is much different.

The area now occupied by Canyonlands National Park is in the remote southeastern corner of Utah.  Remote is the right word—the human population is very low and the area of the park has had no human inhabitants in recent centuries.  Ten thousand years ago, the Anasazi People lived there, and they left artifacts of their occupation—abandoned villages, rock pictures and other archeological items.  But in recent times, this part of Utah was basically empty.

As the national park movement grew in the 20^th Century, however, some folks began to take notice of the area’s dramatic geological formations.  Relentless winds and rivers had carved amazing canyons into the sandstone earth.  Among the canyons stood a wealth of stone arches and pinnacles, miraculously colored at sunrise and sunset.  In the 1930s, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes first proposed making the whole region a gigantic national park, but his idea faded as the country turned to higher priorities—escaping the Great Depression and winning World War II.

The idea arose again in the early 1960s.  At that time, the National Park Service was asking park superintendents to recommend new national park sites, primarily because park popularity had soared, causing crowding and degradation at existing parks.  The superintendent of nearby Arches National Monument, Bates Wilson, offered his suggestion—make a new park in the remote region where the Colorado and Green Rivers came together, and call it Canyonlands.

Wilson was a dogged advocate for the park.  He brought politicians, community leaders and conservationists to the area for hikes, float trips and campfire dinners.  In 1961, he hosted Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall on a five-day excursion.  Like others, Udall was entranced by the region’s remote, rugged beauty.  Immediately, Udall proposed a 1-million-acre park. Wilson also garnered the support of one of Utah’s senators, Frank Moss, who introduced legislation to create Canyonlands National Park in 1961.

Moss’ bill exploded into controversy.  The other Utah Senator and the Utah governor were adamantly opposed.  Ranchers and miners, who had permits to use lands within the proposed park, cried foul, and they were joined by others who didn’t like the idea of closing off a huge area from any commercial use.  Utah politicians, and many citizens, disliked the idea of federal lands at all, believing the state should own public lands and make locally informed decisions about their use.  For three years, the controversy roiled and various compromises were floated—a smaller park, a park surrounded by a multiple-use area, continued exploitation within a park by current permit holders and others.  Fortunately, the Mormon Church sided with creating a park.

Udall, Moss and Wilson never waivered in their commitment to a great new park.  Finally, in early 1964, Congress agreed on a bill that was signed on September 12 by President Lyndon Johnson.  The bill states that Canyonlands possesses “superlative scenic, scientific, and archeologic features for the inspiration, benefit and use of the public….”  In a concession to multiple use, the law allowed current holders of grazing permits to continue grazing for the length of their permits plus one renewal.  All mining claims were also valid, but the promise of finding valuable resources—oil, minerals, uranium—has never been fulfilled.  Today, neither grazing or mining interferes with the protection afforded a national park.

So, here is a national park that was created because the U.S. government said to its knowledgeable staff members, “Hey, go find us a great place to put a park.”  Secretary Udall worked tirelessly for the park.  Senator Moss later acknowledged that being known as “father of Canyonlands” was the highlight of his career.

And they did a fine job.  Canyonlands protects about 337,000 acres of majestic scenery, which many people consider the equal of the Grand Canyon.  Visitation has grown from about 20,000 in 1965 to about 750,000 today.  And a trip to Canyonlands and its neighboring Utah national Parks is on many bucket lists.  It is on mine, and I hope it is on yours.

References:

National Park Service.  2018.  A Conversation with Bates Wilson.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/cany/learn/historyculture/bateswilson.htm.  Accessed July 20, 2018.

National Park Service.  Public Law 88-590.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/cany/learn/management/pl88-590.htm.  Accessed July 20, 2018.

Smith, Thomas G.  The Canyonlands National Park Controversy.  Utah History to Go.  Available at:  https://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/thecanyonlandsnationalparkcontroversy.html.  Accessed July 20, 2018.

Wildlife damage management is an established part of the wildlife profession.  Animals often end up in the wrong place, at least from a human perspective.  Mice in the pantry, skunks under the deck, bats in the attic.  But on September 9, 1945, getting rid of unwanted nature took on a new meaning.

On that date, Dr. Grace Hopper was part of the team of mathematicians and electrical engineers at Harvard working on the Mark II computer.  The machine was acting up, and the team couldn’t diagnose the problem.  Eventually, they discovered the issue:   a live moth was stuck in a relay, causing it to malfunction.  Hopper removed the moth from the relay and taped the critter into the day’s log at 3:45 PM, with this note:  “Relay #30.  Panel F (moth) in relay.  First actual case of bug being found.”

Bugs are part of nature, in positive and negative ways.  Bugs make up half of all known species and outweigh the human population of the earth by about 300 times.  But this bug was special.  With it, a new era and a new terminology was coined.  The term “bug” had been in use in engineering for some time, as an expression of problems in a device or process.  But when Hopper discovered an actual bug being the cause of a problem and then immediately coined her action to remove the offender as “debugging,” a new era was born.

So, the bug is the focus of today’s entry, but the star is Grace Hopper.  She became one of the world’s most influential computer scientists, working for four decades with the Navy, as both a reserve officer and an active duty member.  She joined the Navy in 1943, as a member of the WAVES—Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services—and finally retired in 1986 as a Rear Admiral, the oldest living active duty navy officer at the time.

Hopper was born in 1906 (died 1992), in New York City, and earned a BA at Vassar, in math and physics—a rarity in that time.  She taught math at Vassar while studying for her advanced degrees at Yale.  Now Dr. Hopper, she moved on to Harvard to work on early computers. Her work as a naval reserve office also focused on computers, and her military and personal careers were never far apart.

She had a creative mind, believing that “we’ve always done it that way” was no excuse for shunning innovation and experimentation.  As one observer wrote, she “appears to be all navy, but when you reach inside, you find a ‘Pirate’ dying to be released.” She rejected the idea that computers could only do arithmetic, or that programming computers had to be all Os and 1s.  She developed the first “compiler” that converted English language instructions into machine language, ushering in the age of accessible programming in languages such as COBOL.

Grace Hopper is one of the most heralded leaders in the development of early computers.  Known by her colleagues as “Amazing Grace,” she was the first person to be named “Man of the Year” in computer sciences, in 1969.  President George Bush awarded her the National Medal of Technology, just before her death in January, 1992.  In 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.  During her life, she received 40 honorary doctorates, and a naval military vessel, the USS Hooper, is named after her.

But we will always remember her as the person who literally “debugged” a computer!

References:

Engel, Kerilynn.  2013.  Admiral “Amazing Grace” Hopper, prioneering computer programmer.  Amazing Women in History.  Available at:  http://www.amazingwomeninhistory.com/amazing-grace-hopper-computer-programmer/.  Accessed September 8, 2017.

Markoff, John.  1992.  Read Adm. Grace m. Hopper Dies; Innovator in Computers Was 85.  New York Times, January 3, 1992.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/03/us/rear-adm-grace-m-hopper-dies-innovator-in-computers-was-85.html?mcubz=0.  Accessed September 8, 2017.

Yale University.  1994.  Grace Murray Hopper.  Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  Available at:  http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html.  Accessed September 8, 2017.

“Money makes the world go round,” or so says a modern aphorism.  It is as true for conservation as it is for all of us.  Conservation leaders recognized that truth in 1961, when they came together to form what we now call the WWF, or, perhaps, “you know, those panda folks.”

Conservation groups weren’t common in 1960, especially at the global level.  Two well established groups—the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Conservation Foundation—decided that although it was necessary that people care about nature and know how to help preserve it, that wasn’t sufficient.  They also needed the money to do it.  In April, 1961, those two organizations brought leading conservationists together from 11 nations at Morges, Switzerland.  They issued a joint statement, now called the Morges Manifesto, that reads in part this way:

“All over the world today vast numbers of fine and harmless wild creatures are losing their lives, or their homes, in an orgy of thoughtless and needless destruction…. Skilful and devoted men and admirable organisations are struggling to Save the World’s Wild Life.  They have the ability and the will to do it but they tragically lack the support and resources…. Hundreds of thousands of people have bought best-selling books and millions have watched films and television programmes about the world’s endangered wild life.  Many of these have felt:  ‘If only I could do something to help!’….Such a means is now being created….”

The means was the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which opened its doors in Morges, Switzerland, on September 11, 1961.  The organization committed itself to an aggressive and continuiing fundraising campaign and then quick action to distribute funds to worthy projects.  In the first year, the WWF awarded $37,500 ($310,000 in today’s money) to five projects addressing the conservation of the Bald Eagle, the Hawaiian seabirds, Guatemala’s Giant Grebe, Canada’s Tule Goose and the red wolf.

Since then, the WWF has blossomed into the largest conservation organization in the world.  Since 1985, it has invested over $1 billion through 12,000+ conservation projects of all kinds around the world.  It originated the concept of debt-for-nature, allowing developing countries to swap some national debt in exchange for protecting important wildlife habitat.  It pioneered the idea of sustainable certifications for forestry and marine fishing operations.  It has purchased millions of acres of precious and vulnerable habitats around the globe.  Working through partner organizations, businesses and governments, it leverages funds to optimize its impact.

Today, the WWF operates through 40 national affiliates and operates projects in more than 100 countries.  It boasts 25 million followers on social media and 5 million financial supporters.  In 1917 alone, it invested nearly $160 million directly into conservation projects.  WWF operates in six strategic areas: wildlife, oceans, forests, freshwater, climate and energy, and food, chosen and operated in concert with the world’s sustainable development goals.  It has identified 35 priority regions/resources, including three in the United States—the northern Great Plains, Chihuahuan Desert and its freshwater resources, and southeastern rivers and streams.

At its founding, the WWF made one other extremely important decision.  They chose the giant panda as their logo.  According to their website, “Aware of the need for a strong, recognisable symbol that would overcome all language barriers, WWF’s founders agreed that the big, furry animal with her appealing, black-patched eyes would make an excellent logo.” They also wanted a logo that could be printed in black and white to reduce costs.  The logo was based on Chi-Chi, a giant panda newly sent from China to the London Zoo in 1961.  Wildlife artist Peter Scott, a WWF founder, drew the logo for the new organization.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

References:

Warta, Tamara.  World Wildlife Fund History.  Lovetoknow.  Available at:  https://charity.lovetoknow.com/World_Wildlife_Fund_History.  Accessed July 19, 2018.

World Wildlife Fund.  History.  Available at:  https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/history.  Accessed July 19, 2018.

World Wildlife Fund.  2017.  WWF Annual Report, 2016.  Available at:  http://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/wwf_int_annual_review2016_lowres__1___1_.pdf.  Accessed July 19, 2018.

World Wildlife Fund Global.  50 years of environmental conservation.  Available at:  http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/history/.  Accessed July 19, 2018.

At the turn of the 20^th Century, forestry was a one-way business: Cut-out and get-out.  Loggers removed all the trees from a forest, left the land to an unknown future, and headed to the next virgin forest.  It happened first in the northeastern quadrant of the U.S., and the south was next on the menu.  One man, Henry Hardtner, decided that wasn’t the way to manage Louisiana’s forests—and became the “Father of Southern Forestry.”

Henry Hardtner was born in central Louisiana on September 10, 1870 (died 1935).  After a youth spent roaming the woods, he joined his father’s fledging logging business in the small community of Olla, Louisiana.  They named their land and company Urania, after the Greek muse of astronomy.  In 1906, Hardtner became the majority owner and leader of the company.  He had no training in forestry (no one had in the U.S. at that time), but had an innate feel for the forest:

“I was born in the forests and have had close association with them since childhood.  What I know of them cannot be learned in schools or colleges.  To me they are as humans and I know the trees as I try to know men.”

            Knowing the trees gave Hardtner a different perspective on the forestry business.  He recognized that cutting trees and then abandoning the land was wasting the future.  He believed that a crop of trees could be regrown in a reasonable number of years—about 40, say—because young trees would grow faster than the original and old longleaf pine that the industry was harvesting.  So, he began three practices on his land that today we recognize as sustainable forestry but were then unheard of.  First, he protected the forest from arson (which was common in Louisiana) by hiring fire wardens to patrol the woods.  Second, he demanded that all trees reaching his mills had to be above a certain diameter, protecting the smaller trees in the woods.  Third, he required loggers to leave several mature trees per acre to re-seed the harvested land.

All of his ideas were revolutionary at the time, and no data existed to support him.  So, Hardtner set up what became essentially a forestry experiment station on his Urania property.  He monitored the regeneration on his lands, measuring the density and growth of his “baby pines” in relation to harvesting practices.

His peers thought him a “foolish visionary” who would soon be out of business.  But Hardtner was as shrewd a businessman as he was a conservationist.  He cut his virgin woodlands at a slow, steady pace, providing the resources to keep his experiments in regeneration going.  And as new forests began to grow and mature on his lands, others began to take notice.  Over the years, Urania became a destination for foresters from across the nation and world.  Yale sent their forestry students to Louisiana to see what Hardtner was accomplishing.  He ran demonstrations for visitors to his forests, soon earning the title of “Moses of Forestry.”  The foolish visionary turned into the leader of modern forestry in Louisiana and throughout the south.

At the same time, Hardtner worked vigorously for regulation of forest harvesting, investments in forest management, and the development of forestry research.  In 1904, he used his political connections to help pass Louisiana’s first forestry law, with provisions that matched his own forestry practices.  When Louisiana created a Commission for the Conservation of Natural Resources in 1908 (after the governor returned from Teddy Roosevelt’s Governors Conference on Conservation) (learn more about the conference here), Hardtner was appointed its first chair.  Eventually, he convinced the commission to appoint a state forester and create an independent forestry agency.  He worked to establish the idea of “reforestation contracts,” which provided tax benefits if landowners agreed to re-forest their land and let the trees grow for 40 years.  Hardtner signed the first contract issued by the state in 1913, covering more than 25,000 acres of his own land.

Hardtner wrote extensively about forestry and led many forestry organizations.  He co-founded the Louisiana Forestry Association and the Southern Forestry Congress, serving as presidents of both groups.  In 1999, the Southern Group of State Foresters established the Henry Hardtner Award to recognize sustainable forestry and conservation on non-industrial private forest lands.  The great respect that Hardtner earned during his life and since his death is exemplified by the words of a representative of the U.S. Forest Service at the dedication of a memorial to him in 1939:

“Just as occasionally a tree springs in an opening in the forest and establishes its roots in deep fertile soil beside a stream and grows to tower above all its associated, so it happens occasionally with men.  Today we pay homage and are here to dedicate a memorial to the life and achievement of such a man—Henry Ernest Hardtner.”

References:

Barnett, Jim.  2017.  Making Southern forests great again.  Louisiana Forestry Association, 3/27/2017.  Available at:  https://laforestry.com/News/tabid/112/ArticleID/57/Making-Southern-forests-great-again.aspx.  Accessed July 18, 2018.

Burns, Anna C.  1978.  Henry E. Hardtner, Louisiana’s First Conservationist.  Journal of Forest History 22(2):78-85.  Available at:  https://www-jstor-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/stable/pdf/3983330.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4bb66f294651b782094b5e38f8904747.  Accessed July 18, 2018.

Fickleis, James E.  2001.  Early Forestry in the South and in Mississippi.  Forest History Today, Spring/Fall 2001:11-18.  Available at:  https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/fickle_early-forestry-in-south-and-mississippi.pdf.  Accessed July 18, 2018.

Mattoon, Wilbur R.  1939.  Dedication Address to Henry E. Hardtner.  Journal of Forestry 37(10):761-762.  Available at:  https://academic.oup.com/jof/article-abstract/37/10/761/4721285?redirectedFrom=PDF.  Accessed July 18, 2018.

The foraminifera are microscopic single-celled marine animals that secrete tiny shells.  Under a microscope, they look like miniature mollusks.  It took a dedicated and observant French scientist, Alcide d’Orbigny, to figure out what these little creatures were all about.

Alcide d’Orbigny was born in the village of Couëron, France, on the banks of the Loire River not far from the coast, on September 6, 1802 (died 1857).  His father, a doctor and naturalist, often took his son to the shore to collect shells, insects, plants and fossils.  By age 11, d’Orbigny was hooked—he wanted to become a naturalist.  His educational background and early occupation are fuzzy, but he was obviously an astute observer of nature, a talented illustrator and an original thinker.

In 1825, he published a paper on the classification of cephalopods, into which he placed the tiny shelled foraminifera (later, he and others realized the mistaken classification and created a separate phylum for these organisms).  He drew exquisite illustrations of many species of foraminifera, and later sculpted plaster models for students to study.  That taxonomic work earned him a reputation as a gifted biological scientist.

His reputation landed him an opportunity to explore South America, so he put his work on foraminifera aside for a time.  From 1826 to 1834, he participated in an expedition to study the natural history of the continent.  He visited Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, collecting, describing and naming more than 1,000 species.  He drew beautiful renditions of the specimens he collected.  Along the way, he drew the first complete map of South America.  Charles Darwin, who didn’t get to South America until 1832, was envious of d’Orbigny, saying that he had probably collected “the cream of all the good things.”

While exploring the Parana River that makes the border between Argentina and Uruguay, d’Orbigny discovered rich beds of fossils in the exposed cliffs along the river.  He recognized that these fossils, including pollen grains, mollusks and his beloved foraminifera, were distributed in distinct layers.  He reasoned that by aging the fossils, the layers could be dated—an original concept.  He continued his work on tiny fossils when he returned to France, and became an expert on the taxonomy of micro-fossils, naming more than 2,800 fossil species.  His work on micro-fossils later became a major tool in oil exploration, using the fossils in cores to assess the likelihood that oil lay below.

His fossil work earned him a position as the first professor of paleontology at the Paris Museum of Natural History and recognition as the “father of micropaleontology.”  His descriptions of the relationships between fossils and mineral layers in the soil led to the development of the field of biostratigraphy.  His major work on the fossils of France, thousands of pages of descriptions and drawings, was never completed; he died an unexpected early death at age 54. Dozens of species and genera are named in his honor.

D’Orbigny achieved a feat that is coveted in today’s scientists, but rarely achieved.  He was a “T-shaped” scientist.  He was a generalist, working across biological and geological disciplines, developing the breadth associated with the horizontal stroke of the “T.”  But he was also a recognized expert on the foraminifera, both extant and fossilized, providing the depth of expertise associated with the vertical stroke of the “T.”

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  2018.  Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alcide-Dessalines-d-Orbigny.  Accessed July 17, 2018.

Letters From Gondwana. 2015.  Alcide D’Orbigny and the Beginning of Foraminiferal Studies.  Available at:  https://paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/alcide-dorbigny-and-the-beginning-of-foraminiferal-studies/.  Accessed July 17, 2018.

Lys, Maurice.  1958.  Alcide d’Orbigny (1802-1857).  Micropaleontology (1958) 4(1):115.  Available at:  https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/micropress/micropal/article-abstract/4/1/115/84967/alcide-d-orbigny-1802-1857?redirectedFrom=fulltext.  Accessed July 17, 2018.

Scott, Michon.  2018.  Alcide d’Orbigny.  Strange Science.  Available at:  https://www.strangescience.net/dorbigny.htm.  Accessed July 17, 2018.

On September 2, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood at the podium on the border of Tennessee and addressed a crowd of ten thousand standing below him in the state of North Carolina.  The occasion was the dedication of Great Smoky National Park, the 500,000-acre forest that straddles the two states.

Great Smoky became the second eastern national park (after Acadia, in Maine) when it was authorized on June 15, 1934.  For decades, park enthusiasts had lobbied for an eastern park that could join the beloved parks of the West—Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and others.  Willis and Ann Davis, wealthy and prominent members of Knoxville, Tennessee, society, first broached the idea after a western tour of national parks in 1923.  Creation of an eastern park was complicated.  Whereas western parks were carved out of federal lands, land in the East needed to be purchased from private owners.  And much of the East was already in use for other purposes.  Loggers, for example, fought Great Smoky because the forests would be off limits to cutting.

Nonetheless, the idea took hold. The North Carolina and Tennessee legislatures appropriate some funds, as did the U.S. government.  When these appropriations were clearly insufficient, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. stepped in.  He donated $5 million to the cause, equaling the appropriations of state and federal governments.  Eventually, $12 million was spent to acquire the park’s original 300,000 acres.

The significance of Great Smoky is hard to overstate.  It is one of the largest contiguous stands of deciduous forest in the world, earning it classifications as an International Biosphere Reserve (1976) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1983).  The mountains of Great Smoky are among the world’s oldest.  The park contains most of the highest mountains in the eastern U.S., among them Mt. Davis, named for park advocate Willis Davis.  The area escaped the last glaciation, and therefore is a meeting place of northern and southern forested ecosystems.  Consequently, plant diversity is high.  More than 1600 plant species live there, including more than 100 species of deciduous trees, more than exist on the entire European continent.  Almost all of the park is forested, about a quarter of which is old-growth forest.

The park is also the most visited national park.  More than 11.3 million people visited the park in 2017, double the visitation of the second most popular national park.  The park is within one day’s drive of most of the population of the eastern United States.  The crowds that visit the park today resemble the crowd that gathered on this day in 1940 when President Roosevelt dedicated the park.  The ceremony at Newfound Gap straddled the state lines of Tennessee and North Carolina.  Reports listed the crowd that day over 10,000, perhaps as high as 20,000.  Roosevelt said then what most of us still believe about our national parks:

“There are trees here that stood before our forefathers ever came to this continent; there are brooks that still run as clear as on the day the first pioneer cupped his hand and drank from them. In this Park, we shall conserve these trees, the pine, the red-bud, the dogwood, the azalea, the rhododendron, the trout and the thrush for the happiness of the American people.

We used up or destroyed much of our natural heritage just because that heritage was so bountiful. We slashed our forests, we used our soils, we encouraged floods, we overconcentrated our wealth, we disregarded our unemployed—all of this so greatly that we were brought rather suddenly to face the fact that unless we gave thought to the lives of our children and grandchildren, they would no longer be able to live and to improve upon our American way of life.

In these later years we have tried sincerely and honestly to look ahead to the future years. We are at last definitely engaged in the task of conserving the bounties of nature, thinking in the terms of the whole of nature.”

References:

Gsmp.com.  History.  Available at:  http://www.gsmnp.com/great-smoky-mountains-national-park/history/.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

McKown, Harry.  2007.  September 1940:  Dedication of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  North Carolina Miscellany.  Available at:  http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/index.php/2007/09/01/this_month_sept_1940/.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

National Geographic Travel.  Great Smoky Mountains.  Available at:  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/great-smoky-mountains-national-park/.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

OhRanger.com.  Great Smoky Mountains National Park, History of Great Smoky.  Available at:  http://www.ohranger.com/smoky-mountains/history-great-smoky.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.  1940.  Address at Dedication of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  September 2, 1940.  Available at:  http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16002.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

Waters, t. Wayne.  2011.  The First Family of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Smoky Mountain Living, June 1, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.smliv.com/features/the-first-family-of-the-great-smoky-mountains-national-park/.  Accessed September 1, 2017

UNESCO is one of those darned acronyms that we all have heard of, but perhaps can’t quite explain.  As we often say, it’s complicated.  But UNESCO is a fundamentally important cog in the machine of global conservation, for both nature and culture.

UNESCO stands for United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  It is one of the many independent United Nations’ groups (others include FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, also an important conservation group) .  It was created almost immediately after the end of the World War II, as the world’s countries gathered together to repair the war’s devastation.  UNESCO was formed in November, 1945, with the initial goals of restoring educational opportunities and scientific research for the pursuit of peace and all humanity.  These are still core goals of the organization.  UNESCO operates from headquarters in Paris, France(learn more about the UN here).

A generation later, UNESCO began to fret about the loss of cultural resources and, even later, natural resources.  With impetus from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the 1972 UN meeting on environment in Stockholm, and the U.S. government, UNESCO decided to develop a conservation program for natural and cultural resources.  The official resolution states that

 “…in a society where living conditions are changing at an accelerated pace, it is essential for man’s equilibrium and development to preserve for him a fitting setting in which to live, where he will remain in contact with nature and the evidences of civilization bequeathed by past generations, and that, to this end, it is appropriate to give the cultural and natural heritage an active function in community life and to integrate into an overall policy the achievements of our time, the values of the past and the beauty of nature,…”

The chosen strategy was to create a list of the places around the world most deserving of preservation.  Those places were to be called “World Heritage Sites.”  Member nations would recommend sites and commit to preserving them.  Over the next six years, UNESCO worked to define the details of how the program would work.

The first set of World Heritage Sites, therefore, had to wait until a meeting held from September 5-8, 1978, in Washington, DC.  At that meeting, the 12 original UNESCO World Heritage Sites were chosen:

• L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Park, Canada
• Nahanni National Park, Canada
• Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
• City of Quito, Ecuador
• Simien National Park, Ethiopia
• Rock Hewn Churches, Lalibela, Ethiopia
• Aachen Cathedral, Germany
• Cracow’s Historic Centre, Poland
• Wieliczka – salt mine, Poland
• Island of Goree, Senegal
• Mesa Verde National Park, United States
• Yellowstone National Park, United States

From that initial dozen, the list of World Heritage properties has grown in every year except one (no sites were added in 2002).  The list now contains 1121 properties.  The majority of the properties are cultural (869, or 77%); 213 are natural, and 39 are both natural and cultural.  World Heritage properties exist in 167 countries, and 39 extend over international boundaries.  Some properties are individual parks or historic/cultural sites (like Yellowstone National Park) (learn more about the park here), but others are much larger regions that often include public and private property.  Only 2 properties have been delisted (Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany and Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman), but 53 are considered in danger for a variety of reasons (armed conflict or war, natural disasters, uncontrolled development, excessive tourism, pollution and poaching).

Most of the world’s nations (193) are parties to the World Heritage program, which carries the legal status of a treaty.  Being a party allows a nation to submit properties for inclusion on the World Heritage List.  Having a property on the list obligates a nation to protect and preserve the property, using its own laws, agencies and finances; UNESCO provides only minimal funding for the study of potential new properties.

UNESCO is another example of how the post-World-War-II commitment to international collaboration has made our world safer, more humane, and, in this case, more sustainable, beautiful, and culturally rich.

References:

UNESCO.  1978.  Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Final Report.  Available at:  http://whc.unesco.org/archive/1978/cc-78-conf010-10rev_e.pdf.  Accessed July 16, 2018.

UNESCO.  Introducing UNESCO: what we are.  Available at:  http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/who-we-are/introducing-unesco/.  Accessed July 16, 2018.

UNESCO.  1972.  Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage.  16 November 1972.  Available at:  http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13087&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.  Accessed July 16, 2018.

UNESCO.  The World Heritage Convention.  Available at:  https://whc.unesco.org/en/convention/.  Accessed July 16, 2018.

UNESCO.  World Heritage List.  Available at:  https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/.  Accessed July 16, 2018.

Martha, the last surviving Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914.  Martha had been born in a zoo (Probably Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo) and later was relocated to the Cincinnati Zoo, where she lived until her death.  With her death, a species that had once been the single most abundant bird in North America—and probably the world—went extinct.

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was most closely related to the Mourning Dove, but almost twice as large.  It measured 16 inches long, its large body able to propel it on long flights over vast areas.  Flocks of Passenger Pigeons roamed from Canada to the Gulf Coast and from the Atlantic to the western edge of the Midwestern forest landscape.  They were communal birds, nesting in large groups with sometimes hundreds of nests in a single tree, so heavy that limbs broke under their weight.            What most distinguished Passenger Pigeons, however, were their huge flocks flying around the eastern half of North America.  Flocks were often over a mile wide, stretching as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon.  John Audubon observed a flock a he traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1813:

“The air was literally filled with Pigeons.  The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of the wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.”

When he reached Louisville, the flock was still overhead—and continued passing for another full day.  A flock that passed through Ontario in 1860 was estimated to contain more than 3 billion birds, and a nesting colony in Wisconsin included 136 million breeding birds over an 850-square-mile swath of forest. One estimate suggests that as many as 40% of all birds in North America were Passenger Pigeons.

The habit of the birds to fly in such huge flocks made them vulnerable to uncontrolled exploitation.  They were shot and trapped for food—the birds were meaty and delicious—both by individuals and by commercial hunters.  As their natural forest habitats were converted to farmlands, they were shot because they fed on crops.  That a species so abundant could be overharvested was unimaginable, but by the late 1800s, only isolated colonies existed.  By 1890, the Passenger Pigeon had all but disappeared from the wild.  Three captive populations at the Chicago, Milwaukee and Cincinnati Zoos gradually died out.

Martha, named after the nation’s first First Lady, lived to the ripe old age of 29 in her comfortable zoo environment. A $1,000 reward was offered to anyone who could find a male to breed with Martha—but no mate was ever found. She grew weaker over the years, to the point that zookeepers lowered her perch to just a few inches off the ground so she could hop up rather than fly.  When she died on September 1, 1914, her body was immediately packed in a huge block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution for mounting.

One century of unbridled exploitation and massive habitat changes had doomed the world’s most abundant bird to extinction—a sobering reminder of the need for conservation.

References:

Harvey, Chelsea and Elizabeth Newbern.  2014.  13 Memories of Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon.  Audubon, August 29, 2014.  Available at:  http://www.audubon.org/news/13-memories-martha-last-passenger-pigeon.  Accessed August 31, 2017.

Smithsonian.  “Martha,” The Last Passenger Pigeon.  Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Explore Our Collections.  Available at:  https://naturalhistory.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/martha2.html.  Accessed August 31, 2017.

Smithsonian.  The Passenger Pigeon.  Encyclopedia Smithsonian.  Available at:  https://www.si.edu/encyclopedia_si/nmnh/passpig.htm.  Accessed August 31, 2017.

Souder, William  2014.  100 Years After He Death, Marth, the Last Passenger Pigeon, Still Resonates.  Smithsonian Magazine, September 2014.  Available at:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/100-years-after-death-martha-last-passenger-pigeon-still-resonates-180952445/.  Accessed August 31, 2017.

You might not expect the establishment of a military base to receive attention on a conservation history calendar.  For two reasons, however, one specific and one general, Fort Bragg serves as a great reminder of the importance of military lands to conservation.

Fort Bragg was established on September 4, 1918, as an ideal training and testing location for artillery warfare.  Located in rural southeastern North Carolina, the army base covered a huge area—160,000 acres—but had good railroad access.  Camp Bragg, as it was known then, came on line a little late to help in World War I, but it has proved its value since then as a premier training site.  It is one of the largest military facilities in the world, with a $1.2 billion budget, 250,000 people living on or near the base and a local economic impact of about $10 billion annually.

Fort Bragg is also a unique environmental site—the first reason why it deserves conservation attention.  The longleaf pine ecosystem once covered most of the southeastern U.S. coastal plain, but the majority has been replaced by farming, commercial pine plantations and development.  But not Fort Bragg.  The base contains one of the largest contiguous longleaf pine regions left in the country, just about half of the base’s total area.  The park-like environment, with widely spaced tall, old trees and a richly diverse covering of ground vegetation, is maintained naturally by fire.  Whereas fire has been controlled in surrounding areas for a century, small fires have always burned on Fort Bragg—shooting artillery around can make that happen!

Consequently, Fort Bragg has remained an ideal longleaf pine ecosystem.  And one particular species really likes it there—the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (with the nickname “RCW”).  As longleaf pine declined, so did populations of RCWs, that require large old longleaf pine trees as sites for their nesting cavities.  The RCW was listed as an endangered species in 1968.

In 1990, a showdown occurred between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for rebuilding RCW populations, and the U.S. Army, responsible for maintaining military readiness, when the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “jeopardy opinion” challenging Fort Bragg’s activities.  Could RCWs and training Fort Bragg co-exist, or did one need to be sacrificed for the other?  Fortunately, the two federal branches came together for the benefit of both.

Since then, a major recovery project has occurred, with great success.  The North Carolina Sandhills Conservation Partnership was created in 2000, including both agencies and local conservation groups.  As wildlife biologist Pete Campbell said, “Before the partnership began, the relationship between the military and environmental advocates was strained, especially in regard to the red-cockaded woodpecker.”  After the partnership, an intensive monitoring and education program began, active nest sites were protected from training activities, artificial nesting boxes were installed and habitat management expanded.

The results have been nothing short of miraculous.  Within a few years—and five years faster than anyone dared to dream—RCWs expanded from 200 breeding pairs to over 500.  The species has now been declared “biologically recovered” on the base and in the surrounding area.  Training restrictions were relaxed as wildlife specialists and military planners began to understand how soldiers and equipment in the woods could co-exist the birds.  One Fort Bragg official said, “We’re no longer adversaries.  It’s really just about managing the training lands properly.  If Fort Bragg does that, the woodpecker is going to be fine.”

Which brings us to the second reason for discussing military lands and conservation.  Military lands in general are havens for wildlife.  Think about it.  Most military bases have large land holdings, only a small fraction of which is actively used and developed.  The rest is undeveloped, left alone to buffer military activities from the surrounding community, reducing noise, disruption and the prying eyes of nosy neighbors.  In total, the Department of Defense controls about 30 million acres of land with this strategy.

What could be better for biodiversity?  Nothing, apparently.  Department of Defense lands (along with US Forest Service lands) hold the highest number of federally protected species—more than Fish and Wildlife Service lands or National Park Service lands.  Even more importantly, the density of protected species (species per unit area) on military lands is about six times higher than on other federal lands.  Army lands, like Fort Bragg, turn out to be the most valuable, probably because the average Army base is larger than those of other services.

Next time you pass a military base, think of it in two ways.  First, of course, it is part of the great system of national defense that protects the U.S.  But, second, think that you are passing by a great biodiversity preserve.  And if it happens to be Fort Bragg, look up.  You might see some paratroopers and a happy RCW flying by!

References:

Benton, Nancy et al.  2008.  Conserving Biodiversity on Military Lands:  A Guide for Natural Resources Managers, 2008 edition.  NatureServe.  Available at:  http://www.dodbiodiversity.org/Full_Publication_Conserving_Biodiversity_on_Military_Lands.pdf.  Accessed July 123, 2018.

Brooks, Drew.  2014.  Fort Bragg and red-cockaded woodpecker co=exist comfortably after shift in conservation attitudes.  The Fayetteville Observer, Aug 19, 2014.  Available at:  http://www.fayobserver.com/0c570329-0049-5543-a074-f8ec55604454.html.  Accessed July 13, 2018.

Shaeffer, Matthew.  Fort Bragg.  North Carolina History.  Available at:  http://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/fort-bragg/.  Accessed July 13, 2018.

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  Red-cockaded Woodpecker Recovery:  From Conflict to Collaboration.  USFWS Endangered Species Program.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/endangered/map/ESA_success_stories/NC/NC_story1/.  Accessed July 13, 2018.

Lord Walsingham was known as a crack shot.  He had to have been to shoot more than one thousand game birds on a single day.  His total—1,070—remains a world record, and it is unlikely that it will ever be exceeded.

Thomas de Grey, also known as the 6^th Lord Walsingham, lived in Blubberhouse Moor, a small village in the Yorkshire region of northeastern England.  Living from 1861 to 1919, he was a well-respected member of the British gentry, serving in a variety of civic roles and renowned as a cricketer.  He was also an accomplished naturalist, especially a student of Micro-Lepidoptera, the taxa of tiny moths and butterflies.  He amassed a significant collection over his life, donating more than 250,000 specimens to the Natural History Museum in London.  He wrote books and papers about insects and birds from various parts of the world.

But, it seems, he loved shooting birds above anything else.  The moorlands of his home are the ideal habitat for the Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus), which eats heather and shelters in the evergreen plants all year long.  Hunting these birds became popular in the mid-1800s, when an expanding railway system allowed hunters easier access to northern moorlands and shotguns became breech-loading, allowing easier loading and re-loading (note the similarity to the increased harvest of American bison in the Great Plains of the U.S.).  Hunting is usually conducted by beaters who walk through the moors (on “drives”), flushing birds towards shooters (called “guns”) stationed in blinds.

That was the technique Lord Walsingham used on August 30, 1888, when he established his record.  The first drive of the day occurred at 5:12 AM, the last at 6:45 PM.  He hunted with a series of shotguns, being constantly re-loaded and handed to him by assistants.  In all, Walsingham’s beaters completed 20 drives, and he shot 1,057 of the birds they drove his way.  He completed his day by shooting 13 birds as he walked home, to reach the total of 1,070 Red Grouse shot by one person on one day.  According to one report, he shot one bird every 13 seconds over the 12+ hours of his hunt.

He was a crack shot, of course, but he was also after a very accommodating prey. Red Grouse were obviously very abundant at the time and remain so today.  Current densities just before the opening of the hunting season are about 1 bird for every 4 acres; densities in 1888 were probably much higher, especially on Walsingham’s estate.  The habit of grouse to remain hidden and motionless until a beater is almost on top of them means the quarry never scatters as hunting continues.

Red Grouse were a favorite of Lord Walsingham, and most British would agree.  Their meat quality is famous for taste and nutritional value (the species is known as the “King of Gamebirds”).   The species (or perhaps a sub-species of the Willow Ptarmigan) lives only in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.  It is the official gamebird of Scotland.  Hunting in Great Britain begins traditionally on August 12, known as “Glorious Twelfth,” and continues until late November or early December.  And the Red Grouse is a big money-maker for the economy of northern England and Scotland.  Hunting them employs about 2500 people and generates about $200 million dollars annually.

One difference between U.S. and British hunting laws is that wild birds can still be sold in regular markets.  Lord Walsingham defended the large harvest of birds on his property in 1888, saying, “out of 2,000 grouse bagged … on my 2,200 acres, 500 were given away to friends, and 1500 were sent to market.” Bagging a meal of Red Grouse in a fancy restaurant on the Glorious Twelfth is still on many English bucket lists.

Red Grouse depend on intact moors for their continued existence.  The upland moor habitat has been shrinking over the last century, due to conversion to pastureland and climate change.  Moorlands are rarer today than tropical rainforest, and 75% of all remaining area (about 3million acres) is in the British Isles.  Consequently, moorland conservation is the principal means for ensuring sustainable populations (and harvests) of Red Grouse.

Let’s hope that Lord Walsingham’s record is never challenged again.  The records we should be seeking today are not how many birds we can harvest, but how much habitat we can preserve.

References:

British Association for Shooting & Conservation.  Grouse shooting and management in the United Kingdom:  its value and role in the provision of ecosystem services.  Available at:  https://basc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2015/03/Research-White-Paper-Grouse-shooting-and-management.pdf.  Accessed July 12, 2018.

Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.  Red Grouse.  Available at:  https://www.gwct.org.uk/research/species/birds/red-grouse/.  Accessed July 12, 2018.

Godfrey, Rupert.  Lord Walsingham’s Grouse.  Fieldsports Magazine.  Available at:  https://www.fieldsportsmagazine.com/Shooting-Grouse/lord-walsingham-s-grouse.html.  Accessed July 12, 2018.

The Telegraph.  2017.  Grouse shooting:  12 facts about The Glorious 12^th.  The Telegraph, 7 August 2017.  Available at:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/grouse-shooting-12-facts-about-the-glorious-12th/.  Accessed July 12, 2018.