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Sitka, Alaska, lies in the resource-rich archipelago of islands that make up the tail of the state alongside the north Pacific coast.  The history of Alaska and that of Sitka intertwine in a complex story of cultures and natural resources.  To commemorate that history, Sitka National Historical Park was created.

Sitka sits on the shore of Baranof Island, an island slightly larger than the state of Delaware.  The Tlingit people have lived there for at least 10,000 years, establishing a rich culture based around the abundant natural resources of the region.  The ocean is rich in fish and shellfish, the forest grows massive Sitka spruce and other trees, suppling wood for homes, canoes and other needs.  The forest is rich in wildlife, providing another source of food and hides for clothing and shelter.  Because of the stable and beneficent resources, the Tlingit people established strong families and communities, with traditional music, dance and art.

The abundant resources also attracted European settlers beginning in the late 1700s.  Russians in search of fur pelts dominated the region for much of the 18th Century, establishing the city of Archangel (later Sitka) as their primary trading and administrative hub.  The Tlingits fought back against this colonization, notably in two battles, in 1802 and 1804, that the national park commemorates.  Although the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, the Russia heritage of the region continued—and Sitka now contains two of only four Russian-built structures in the Western hemisphere, one in the national park.

The combination of rich Tlingit, Russian and American heritage led early Alaskan leaders to create a local historic park dedicated both to the individual cultures and their fusion.  As early as 1890, President Benjamin Harrison enacted the rudiments of a park, making it the oldest federally designated park in Alaska.  However, little notice was taken of the action beyond the local community.  The park suffered from vandalism and neglect until a group of leading Sitka residents convinced President Taft to designate the park as a national monument, on March 23, 1910.  In 1972, the park was re-named a national historical park.

Today, Sitka National Historical Park occupies just 113 acres, but its small size belies its importance.  The park honors the Tlingit people and their culture with a series of more than 25 standing totem poles and a heritage center that not only houses an impressive collection of Tlingit artifacts (nearly 250,000), but also teaches succeeding generations of Tlingit children about their cultural traditions.  Annual visitation to the park is about 200,000.

References:

Antonson, Joan M. and William S. Hanable.  1987.  An Administrative History of Sitka National Historical Park.  National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sitk/adhi/index.htm.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

National Park Service.  Sitka National Park, Alaska.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/sitk/index.htm.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

National Park Service.  Sitka National Historical Park, Sitka, Alaska.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/cultural_diversity/Sitka_National_Historical_Park.html.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

Every year on March 22, the world celebrates the importance of freshwater through World Water Day.  The UN declared March 22 World Water Day in 1992, following the recommendation of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro earlier that year.

As we all know, water is the ultimate resource.  While many forms of alternative energy and other materials exist, nothing can replace water.  And although the earth is awash in water, only 2% is fresh and only 0.4% is available for human use (the rest is frozen in glaciers and ice sheets).  Humans can exist for a long time without food, but we can live only a few days at most without water.

The availability and use of water varies greatly around the world.  The United States is a great country for many reasons, but chief among them is the abundance of water.  Our water is used not only for consumption, bathing and waste removal in our homes, but also to produce electricity (cooling water), food (irrigation and watering of animals) and the materials we use every day.  Making a t-shirt uses 660 gallons of water, about the same amount as needed to make a typical fast-food restaurant sandwich.  The average American uses about 2000 gallons of water per day when all uses (direct and indirect) are combined.  The average African family, in contrast, uses about 5 gallons per day.  The biggest use of water worldwide is irrigation, absorbing 70% of all freshwater use (in the U.S. that number is only about 30%).  Second comes energy production (about 45% of all water use in the U.S.).

Water scarcity impacts around 3 billion people around the world.  And when water isn’t scarce, it often turns out to be a problem by being too abundant, producing floods.  Floods and related impacts account for 70% of all deaths from natural disasters.

Our ability to supply clean water to the world’s poorest people has improved greatly over the past two decades, the result of our focus on the Millennium Development Goals.  About 90% of humans now have improved supply, leaving about 700 million people worldwide still without good water. But sanitation—the removal of human and other wastes from living areas and their treatment—still lags behind other improvements.  About 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation facilities, causing almost 1000 children to die every day from diseases related to the lack of sanitation .

To draw attention to the importance of freshwater, the UN develops a theme for World Water Day every year.  In 2023, the theme is “Accelerating Change” emphasizing that the world needs to speed up its efforts to protect water resources if we are going to meet the goals set out by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These goals, agreed to by the world’s nations, include Goal 6—Clean Water and Sanitation.  The specific targets for this goal include, by 2030, the following:

• Achieve universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all
• Achieve universal access to basic sanitation for all
• Cut the amount of untreated wastewater in half
• Make the use of freshwater sustainable through efficiency improvements
• Protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including those on national boundaries.

In order to meet these goals, we need to get going!

References:

Save the Water.  250 Water Facts.  Available at:  http://savethewater.org/education-resources/water-facts/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

UN Water.  2018.  The Answer is in Nature.  Available at:  http://worldwaterday.org/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  Sustainable Development Goal 6.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/water-and-sanitation/.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

United Nations.  World Water Day, March 22.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/waterday/index.shtml.  Accessed March 20, 2018.

The United Nations has declared March 21 as the annual International Day of Forests.  The day has been celebrated since 2013.  An accompanying celebration called World Wood Day (not associated with the UN) occurs on the same day.

Forests, of course, are part of a sustainable earth.  About one-third of the earth’s land area is covered in forests (and the U.S. has about the same percentage of its land in forests).  More than 1.6 billion people—about 20% of the world’s population—rely directly on forests for their food, fuel, housing, medicine and jobs.  Included in that are 2,000 indigenous cultures.

Forests are biodiversity treasures.  About 80% of the earth’s terrestrial biodiversity lives in forests, a much higher concentration than any other terrestrial ecosystem.  Forests also serve as the lungs for the planet, breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen.  They are enormous sinks for storing the greenhouse gases that modern human life emits into the atmosphere.  Through their metabolic activities, including evapotranspiration, forests drive the global climate system, directing wind and precipitation patterns.

Nonetheless, forests continue to decline in area across much of the earth.  About 14 million net acres of forest are lost annually, converted mostly to agriculture but also to urbanization and other human-related uses.  Almost all net forest loss occurs in tropical and sub-tropical regions, while forest area is actually increasing across North America and Europe (total forest area in the U.S. hasn’t declined in about 80 years).  The good news is that the rate of deforestation has slowed greatly over the last 25 years, and continues to drop annually.  In Brazil, for example, which had been a major location for forest loss, the rate is now near zero.

To say that forests and their products are important to human civilization is almost unnecessary.  Each day, people use massive amounts of forest products, including wood, paper and other biological resources, in every aspect of life.  World Wood Day goes on to recognize the cultural importance of wood and forests as well—wood is valued as art, for musical instruments, in architecture and elsewhere.  It is an eco-friendly product and, as the World Wood Day program emphasizes, “Wood is good!”

The UN decided to celebrate the goodness of forests, trees and their many values by creating the International Day of Forests in a December, 2012, resolution.  Each year features a new theme; for 2023, the theme is “Forests and Health.”  As the official website for the day states, “Forests give us so much to our health. They purify the water, clean the air, capture carbon to fight climate change, provide food and life-saving medicines, and improve our well-being.”

So, as spring begins, so does a new year of life in forests and trees wherever they grow.  On March 21, say thanks to the forest—and go ahead, hug a tree!

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.  2016.  Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015—How are the world’s forest changing?  Second Edition.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4793e.pdf.  Accessed March 19, 2018.

United Nations.  International Day of Forests, March 21.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/forestsday/index.shtml.  Accessed February 21, 2023.

World Wood Day Foundation.  About World Wood Day.  Available at:  http://www.worldwoodday.org/about.  Accessed March 19, 2018.

The book, Our Common Future, is not one that most people would recognize.  But most people would recognize one 30-word sentence from the book, a sentence that has re-directed the world’s pathway to a sustainable future.

The book is the final report from the World Commission on Environment and Development, which ran from 1983 to 1987.  The commission was chaired by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s Minister of the Environment in the 1970s (the first woman environmental minister in the world) and later three-time prime minister of the country.  Brundtland was a medical doctor by training, working in the area of public health, when she was tapped to enter Norway’s government (learn more about Brundtland here).

The environment was getting increasing attention through the decade of the 1970s, and the United Nations had sponsored a variety of limited gathering to discuss environmental problems and recommend solutions.  But those efforts were plagued by two constraints.  First, they were each limited in scope, addressing just one aspect of pollution, population growth, soil degradation or the like.  Second, because they occurred within the UN’s political structure, their recommendations were always hobbled by the individual agendas of the participating countries.

So, the UN Secretary-General opted for a new strategy:  Create an independent commission outside the UN itself.  That had worked well for an earlier Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, created to address the problem of nuclear proliferation.  This commission would deal broadly and comprehensively with environmental and development issues.  He called on Brundtland to lead this new organization, giving her complete freedom to organize the membership, conduct the work and issue a report.

Brundtland, between terms as prime minister, agreed to lead the group and began work in December, 1983.  She did things differently than other commissions.  She put together a team that equally represented developed and developing countries.  She held meeting not in a glitzy European capital, but throughout the world, including site visits and public hearings in places with dire economic and environmental conditions.  With the commission’s executive director, Jim MacNeill, she determined to produce a report that integrated the ideas of environmental quality and economic development.  And they conspired to make the report the beginning, not the end, of their work.

Perhaps better than any global leader, Brundtland understood the connections between health, prosperity and environmental quality.  Rather than seeing the environment as something to be cleaned up after economic activity produced pollution, habitat change and public health issues, she saw the three as being inescapably connected.  The commission termed the connection “sustainability,” thus defining a word that has now become the universal standard for more appropriate public policy and private actions.

And on page 8 of Our Common Future, Brundtland coined the definition of sustainability that has also become the universal standard:

“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

With those 30 words, the commission set the world on a course that has produced a continuing series of global meeting and agreements on environmental improvement, from Rio to Copenhagen and, most recently, to Paris (learn more about the Paris agreement here) . The original commission is now known popularly as the Brundtland Commission, and those 30 words as the Brundtland definition of sustainability.

References:

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

Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development:  Our Common Future.  Available at:  http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm.  Accessed March 19, 2018.

The event is locked into modern culture.  “When the swallows come back to Capistrano” go the lyrics of a song written in the 1930s that became a popular hit of the time, recorded by the hit group, The Ink Spots, in 1940.  The annual return of the swallows is used as metaphor for a reliable, regularly occurring event—like tax day!

The bird at the center of this phenomenon is the Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), one species of the group of small, graceful birds that swoop over the landscape catching insects.  They are about five inches long, dark brown except for a white forehead and orange-red cheeks.  Their head and neck appear iridescent in good lighting.  They are common, nesting throughout the United States and wintering in South and Central America.

They make mud nests, stuck against a cliff or wall, usually in colonies.  The farther west the birds live, the larger their colonies seem to be, sometimes up to a thousand in one group.  They gather small pellets of mud from nearby shorelines, building gourd-shaped nests that contain many hundreds of such pellets.

Although Cliff Swallows are common, one particular nesting colony has gained an international reputation.  In the southern California town of San Juan Capistrano, the birds have colonized a Spanish mission for hundreds of years.  The mission was built in 1776, one of a chain of missions extending down the California coast.  An earthquake in 1812 reduced most of the mission to ruins.

Ruined or not, Cliff Swallows have long considered the mission their home.  Every year, thousands of the birds have made their way from wintering grounds in Goya, Argentina, to this region for nesting—a 6,000-mile one-way journey.  In pioneer days, shopkeepers drove birds away from their porches, so the birds moved to the mission.  There they found an idea place for nesting.  It lies near the confluence of two local rivers, providing an ample supply of mud.  The broken down walls provide myriads of nesting sites, with relatively little disturbance by people.

The birds arrive in mid-March, and the city has declared March 19, also known as St. Joseph’s Day, the Day of the Return of the Swallows.  The annual festival has become a major tourist event, drawing visitors from across the globe.

Unfortunately, recent years have not been good for the Cliff Swallows of San Juan Capistrano.  When work began in the 1990s to restore the mission, the accumulated nests were removed.  Returning birds spread out, looking for other sites—and they found them in the growing development in the area, including the arches of shopping malls and the eaves of nearby homes. For a decades at least, no Cliff Swallows returned to nest in the old mission.

The community has tried several strategies to bring the birds back.  A temporary wall outfitted with artificial nests was installed, with the hope that it would attract birds to the pre-fabricated homes just like humans moving into a new suburban neighborhood.  Recordings of nesting birds are played as another tactic to attract their fellows.  The grounds have even been seeded with ladybugs and other insects to provide an attractive food source.

And it may be working.  Cliff Swallows are more frequently seen these days flying in the vicinity of the mission.  And in 2017, two nests were built in the mission.  The executive director of the mission said, “We feel like new mothers.  It’s ridiculous we’re so excited.”  She described the nests as “a miracle to us.”

In a sense, the whole thing is a miracle.  Tiny birds fly thousands of miles between their winter and summer homes.  They find an ideal place to build a nest and raise the next generation.  It is a miracle that nature reprises in the life histories of millions of species across the lands and waters of our beautiful blue and green earth.  And let’s hope that Capistrano’s miracle keeps on happening.

References:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Cliff Swallow.  Available at:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cliff_Swallow/lifehistory#nesting.  Accessed March 18, 2018.

Cuniff, Meghann M.  2017.  Swallows at San Juan Capistrano were driven away by development.  But the birds are slowly coming back.  Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2017.  Available at:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-swallow-capistrano-20170602-htmlstory.html.  Accessed March 18, 2018.

Opar, Alisa and Troy Harvey.  2016.  A Homecoming for the Legendary Swallows of Mission San Juan Capistrano?  Audubon, July 7, 2016.  Available at:  http://www.audubon.org/news/a-homecoming-legendary-swallows-mission-san-juan-capistrano.  Accessed March 18, 2018.

Slatta, Richard W.  2001.  The Mythical West:  An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture.  ABCj-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=iczSBcAUC5oC&pg=PA334#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed March 18, 2018.

The entry for just a few days ago—March 14—marks the date that the first National Wildlife Refuge was created, in 1903 (see more here).  But 33 years earlier, on March 18, 1870, the nation’s first wildlife refuge was created.  What’s the difference?  This one was enacted by the State of California, not by the federal government.

The first wildlife refuge is Lake Merritt, in the middle of downtown Oakland, California.  The Lake Merritt refuge includes a 155-acre lake and the surrounding parkland.  California declared on March 18, 1870, that “it shall be unlawful for any person to take, kill or destroy, in any manner whatever, the grouse, any species of wild duck, crane, heron, swan, pelican, snip, or any wild animal or game, of any kind of species whatever, upon, in or around Lake Merritt…and within one hundred rods from high water mark….”  Hence, a wildlife refuge!

Lake Merritt started out as a tidal lagoon, known as Laguna Peralta, that was fed by the adjacent Oakland estuary.  Seven small streams emptied into the wetland from upstream.  It was an important resting point for migratory waterfowl traveling the Pacific flyway.

In 1869, the mayor of Oakland, Samuel Merritt, donated the lake and surrounding area to the city for a wildlife preserve.  He was interested in encouraging the development of the adjacent lands and so wanted to stop hunting that he thought discouraged investment.  He also donated funds for construction of a dam across the tidal inlet, with culverts that could control how much water flowed in and out of the lagoon.  Henceforth, the lagoon became a saltwater lake—the largest of its kind in an urban area in the country.

With ongoing urban development, the lake required additional management.  Today the lake is surrounded by retaining walls along the entire 3+ miles of its perimeter.  An island for waterfowl nesting was built in 1925 and four others followed in the 1950s.  The largest have freshwater ponds. These islands are cordoned off from people during nesting times. Water flow was carefully managed to keep the lake surface at a level compatible with the surrounding urban uses.

Historic photographs show huge flocks of waterfowl.  For several decades the birds were fed twice daily, no doubt artificially increasing the carrying capacity of the habitat.  With decreased tidal flushing, the lake slowly became filled with silt and has required dredging on occasion.  High nutrient inputs have also led to eutrophication.

In 2002, the City of Oakland passed a $198 million bond issue, with $115 million allocated for the restoration of Lake Merritt.  A series of 50 projects were performed to restore the estuarine connections more directly by removing the old culverts and allowing natural tidal movements.  Other projects sought to improve water quality in the lake, restore incoming streams and marshes, and provide for more pedestrian and bicycle use while reducing vehicle traffic.

Lake Merritt is the epitome of an urban park.  The lake and adjacent lands have been developed extensively for outdoor recreation, both associated with nature (a nature center is located on the property) and with cultural and fitness activities.  Whether the park has fulfilled its goal as a wildlife refuge is probably debatable, but its value as a nature-based asset to the local community is outstanding.

References:

City of Oakland.  Lake Merritt, The Jewel of Oakland.  Available at:  http://www2.oaklandnet.com/government/o/opr/s/LakeMerritt/index.htm.  Accessed March 16, 2018.

Lakemerritt.org.  Welcome.  Available at:  https://www.lakemerritt.org/.  Accessed March 16, 2018.

Miller, Amy.  2010.  Polishing Oakland’s Crown Jewl:  Lake Merritt Reborn.  KQED Science, August 20, 2010.  Available at:  https://www.kqed.org/quest/7406/polishing-oaklands-crown-jewel-lake-merritt-reborn.  Accessed March 16, 2018.

Schell, Adrienne.  2016.  Lake Merritt’s Feathered Friends.  Oaklandmomma.com  Available at: http://www.oaklandmomma.com/2016/10/07/lake-merritts-feathered-friends/.  Accessed March 16, 2018

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, time to drink green beer and revive the story that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.  While green beer is real, that story about snakes isn’t.

St. Patrick is the principal patron saint of Ireland.  Living in the late 1400s, he is considered the founder of Christianity in Ireland.  While on a 40-day fast on the top of a hill, he was purportedly attacked by snakes, so he drove them all off a cliff and into the sea.

With apologies to my Irish friends, that’s just not true.  Ireland has never had any snakes, at least not in modern times.  No fossil evidence exists that snakes ever existed on the island, and certainly none have been there during the period of human habitation.

During the last ice age, the environment of the entire northern European continent was too cold for any reptiles.  When the glaciers melted, both England and Ireland were connected to Europe by a land bridge, which allowed many species to re-colonize the islands.  Species like bears, wild boars and lynx made it back to both islands, and three snake species even made it to England.

But the land bridge between England and Ireland went underwater relatively quickly, ending any continued easy invasion of Ireland by land animals.  One reptile, the common lizard, did make it to Ireland, but no others ever did.  Including no snakes.  Ever.

Well, at least nature never managed to get any snakes to Ireland.  Humans, however, are another story.  During the surge in the Irish economy during the end of the last century, wealthy Irish folks began to import exotic snakes as a symbol of their wealth.  When the economy tanked more recently, many of those pets were abandoned. One good Irish mother took her unemployed son back into her home.  “Of course I’ll take you back home,” she said, “but I’m not taking your boa constructor.”

Today, on occasion, a slithering remnant of better times shows up in the usual places—in abandoned houses, along the roadside, in a trash bin.  Ireland has no regulations requiring the registry of exotic pets like reptiles, so no one knows for sure how many or what kind of reptiles exist in the country.

One non-native lizard species, the slow worm, has established itself.  It was probably introduced purposely in western Ireland in the 1960s and lives in one location in County Clare.  It is legless and is sometimes mistaken for a snake.  But it isn’t.

Although the story of invasive snakes isn’t as serious in Ireland as it is in southern Florida, for example, this is another story of how humans can bring about the invasion of non-native species, some of which can wreak havoc on native biodiversity.

St. Patrick spawned a couple of other myths that relate to nature.  He is supposedly responsible for making the shamrock a symbol of the country by using it as a metaphor for the idea of the Christian god existing as a triune god—three in one, just like the three leaflets of the common shamrock.  St. Patrick used an ash walking stick, which he stuck in the ground while he spoke with a group of listeners.  He was known for long sermons, and once, it is said, he spoke so long that his walking stick grew roots and sprouted branches, becoming a living tree.

References:

Chozick, Amy.  2013.  Boom Over, St. Patrick’s Isle Is Slithering Again.  New York Times, Marcy 15, 2013.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/europe/boom-over-st-patricks-isle-is-slithering-again.html.  Accessed March 15, 2018.

Fecht, Sarah.  2015.  Why Doesn’t Ireland Have Snakes?  Popular Science, March 17, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.popsci.com/why-doesnt-ireland-have-snakes.  Accessed March 15, 2018.

Ireland Calling.  Top myths and legends about St Patrick.  Available at:  http://ireland-calling.com/st-patrick-myths-and-legends/.  Accessed March 15, 2018.

Owen, James.  2008.  Snakeless in Ireland:  Blame Ice Age, Not St. Patrick.  National Georgraphic News, March 13, 2008.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-snakes-ireland.html.  Accessed March 15, 2018.

On March16, 1978, an oil tanker—the Amoco Cadiz—broke apart in heavy seas just offshore of Brittany, France.  The event captured the world’s attention and quickly became, and remains, one of the most famous oil spills in modern history.

The Amoco Cadiz was a new ship, only three years old.  It was large, measuring over one thousand feet long and carrying 67 million gallons of oil.  It was owned by an American company, but registered in Liberia.  On this day, the Amoco Cadiz was enroute from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

It entered the English Channel on the morning of March 16.  Sea conditions were dreadful, a force-10 gale blowing up heavy seas.  A large wave hit the ship and the steering mechanism failed.  Now floating without control, the ship was blown closer to the French shore.  The crew sent for help, and tug boats arrived to pull the ship to safety.  However, several tow lines from the tug to the ship snapped in the heavy seas.  By late that evening, a tow line was secured, but the ship had drifted dangerously close to shore by that time.  It hit rocks in shallow water, and the engine room flooded.  Soon, it hit the rocks again, tearing the ship into pieces.

By early the next morning, the tanker’s cargo of 67 million gallons of light crude oil had emptied into the ocean, along with thousands of gallons of the ship’s own fuel supply.  Heavy seas continued for several days, continuing the destruction of the ship.  It was declared a total loss and later the French navy destroyed the remnants of the ship with explosives.

The accident happened a few miles off the French coast, and the high seas prevented efforts to contain the 12-mile oil slick that developed.  Scientists estimated that about one-third of the oil eventually reached shore, coating approximately 45 miles of the French coastline. A force of 7000 French soldiers spent months combing the shoreline removing the oil, mostly by hand.

Scientists concluded that the Amoco Cadiz spill had produced the largest biological kill of any spill in history.  Twenty thousand dead birds were recovered (more than twice as many as were recovered from the Deepwater Horizon spill), mostly marine diving birds.  Millions of marine invertebrates—mollusks, sea urchins and others—continued to wash ashore for weeks.  Oyster farms in the area had to destroy 9,000 tons of oysters because of contamination.  The fishing and tourism industries, of course, were negatively affected.

Clean-up activities themselves caused considerable damage.  Trampling of vegetation and soft sediments by workers disrupted biological processes in wetlands.  Salt marshes took many years to recover.

The Amoco Cadiz spill was studied extensively, the first such spill to receive such attention, and protocols for future recovery efforts were based on the results of those studies.  The owner of the ship eventually paid more than $100 million to the French government in penalties.  Although the size of this spill has been surpassed since then (it is the fifth largest oil-tanker spill in history), it remains the poster-image for the consequences of marine transportation of oil.

References:

Gillis, Carly.  2011.  Amoco Cadiz:  A Brief History.  Counterspill, April 10, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.counterspill.org/article/amoco-cadiz-brief-history.  Accessed March 14, 2018.

ITOPF.  Amoco Cadiz, France, 1978.  Available at:  http://www.itopf.com/in-action/case-studies/case-study/amoco-cadiz-france-1978/.  Accessed March 14, 2018.

Mehnazd.  2016.  The Gruesome Amoco Cadiz Oil Spill Incident.  Marine Insight, July 18, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.marineinsight.com/case-studies/the-gruesome-amoco-cadiz-oil-spill-incident/.  Accessed March 14, 2018.

Shpiwreck Log.  Amoco Cadiz.  Available at:  https://www.shipwrecklog.com/log/history/amoco-cadiz/.  Accessed March 14, 2018.

The longest serving Secretary of the Interior in our nation’s history was Harold LeClaire Ickes, born on March 15, 1874 (died 1952).  He served throughout the presidential tenure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from 1933 to 1946, one of only two cabinet secretaries who lasted as long in office as Roosevelt himself.

Ickes was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, but moved as a teenager to Chicago with his family.  With undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Chicago, he practiced law and entered the political scene in his adopted hometown.  He was a liberal Republican, with strong commitment to civil rights and social justice, often taking such cases without pay.  He was the president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP and fought throughout his life for equality of African Americans.

Ickes was an avid outdoorsman. A horse-back trip to Glacier National Park in 1916 solidified his commitment to the natural environment. He told a radio audience in 1934, “I love nature.  I love it in practically every form—flowers, birds, wild animals, running streams, gem-like lakes and towering, snow-clad mountains.”

Roosevelt chose him as Interior Secretary in 1933, wanting to add a Republican—but a liberal one—to his cabinet.  Ickes immediately transformed the Interior Department from a corrupt and ineffective agency, rife with scandal and bribery, into the modern agency we know today.   He was so conscientious about avoiding waste and graft that he became known as “Honest Harold.”

He sought preservation of national treasures by expanding the national park system, but also recognized the necessity of using natural resources by building dams on great rivers, including Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia.  During the Dust Bowl, he led the formation of the Soil Conservation Service and the Grazing Service, both designed to restore the ecosystems of the Great Plains (learn more about the Soil Conservation Service here) .

Sensing Ickes’ capabilities, Roosevelt also put him in charge of the Public Works Administration, the New Deal agency created to pry America out of the Great Depression by providing millions of jobs to carry out civic projects.  Under Ickes leadership, the PWA completed tens of thousands of projects across the country, including building roads, cabins, visitors centers and camp grounds in more than 800 parks.  During his tenure leading the PWA, he oversaw $5 billion in spending, with never a hint of waste or scandal.

His personal life, however, was not as lily-white as his public life.  He was purportedly unfaithful to his wife and harsh, perhaps abusive, to his children.  He suffered from chronic insomnia, making him irritable in both private and public settings.  He took no prisoners in political or policy debates.  His willingness to engage in controversy earned him the nickname as Roosevelt’s “liberal lightning rod.”

References:

Biles, Roger.  1996.  Review of Roosevelt’s Warrior:  Harold L. Ickes and the New Deal.  Humanities and Social Sciences online.  Available at:   http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=506.  Accessed March 12, 2018.

Eleanor Roosevelt Paper Project.  Harold LeClaire Ickes (1874-1952).  George Washington University.  Available at:  https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/ickes-harold.cfm.  Accessed March 12, 2018.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  2018.  Harold L. Ickes.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harold-L-Ickes.  Accessed March 12, 2018.

ExplorePAhistory.com.  Harold L. Ickes [Environment] Historical Marker.  Available at:  http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-342.  Accessed March 12, 2018.

Outside Magazine.  2013.  A History of the Department of the Interior.  Available at:  https://www.outsideonline.com/1859351/history-department-interior.  Accessed March 12, 2018

On March 14, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt created the nation’s first federal wildlife refuge by signing an executive order designating the Pelican Island, Florida, Bird Preservation Area.  During his presidency, Roosevelt created more than 50 such reserves, the forerunners of the National Wildlife Refuge System that today includes more than 550 protected areas covering 150 million acres.

Pelican Island is a small mangrove island in the Indian River waterway of east-central Florida, about 50 miles south of Cape Canaveral.  Although only 5.5 acres when designated as a reserve, the island had long captured the attention of bird watchers—and bird hunters.  Early visitors noted that the trees seemed covered with snow, which was really the profusion of downy chicks of pelicans and other birds and the white plumage of egrets and spoonbills.

Victorian fashions emphasized feathers and other bird parts for hats, broaches, and other decorations.  Because birds had no protection at the time, hunters slaughtered waterfowl in great numbers as the birds gathered for nesting or roosting.  Bird numbers were dropping across the southeast, including a noted drop among the species at Pelican Island.  Outrage over this wasteful harvest led to several laws protecting migratory waterfowl in the early decades of the 20^th Century.

But those laws still needed to be enforced, and the federal government was not inclined to pay.  Consequently, the Florida Audubon Society gained permission from the government to employ game wardens to enforce the laws at Pelican Island and elsewhere.  It was dangerous work, however, and two early wardens were murdered while on the job.

That changed when Paul Kroegel took the job.  Kroegel, a German immigrant and local boat builder and pilot, was devoted to the island and its birds.  He came prepared to enforce the laws, armed and ready to do what was needed.  He remained on the job for more than 20 years, creating an atmosphere that favored conservation over exploitation.

Pelican Island was a good place for conservation.  Sources suggest that it has the most diverse bird fauna in the United States and that it lies within one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots in the Indian River waterway.  The island itself began to shrink due to both natural forces and excessive wave action by passing boats, and by 2000 was only half its original size.  A massive effort to surround the island with an oyster-shell reef and to plant both seagrass and mangroves has been successful in reversing the loss of area.

The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge has also grown from the original island.  It now encompasses more than 4000 acres of similarly important mangrove islands and other wetlands.  The area is also designated as wilderness and as a National Historic Landmark because of its significance as the first federal wildlife preserve.

References:

The Conservation Fund.  Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.  Available at:  http://www.conservationfund.org/projects/pelican-island-national-wildlife-refuge.  Accessed March 13, 2017.

Indian River County Main Library.  Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.  Available at:  http://www.irclibrary.org/pdf/pelicanislandrefuge.pdf.  Accessed March 13, 2017.

Pelican Island Preservation Society.  The Refuge.  Available at:  http://www.firstrefuge.org/the-refuge/.  Accessed March 13, 2017.

Reffalt, William.  2003.  Pelican Island.  USFWS informal document.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuges/centennial/pdf2/pelicanIsland_reffalt.pdf.  Accessed March 13, 2017.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  History of Pelican Island.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuge/pelican_island/about/history.html.  Accessed March 13, 2017.