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They are called “Lazarus species” because, like the biblical Lazarus, they appear to return from the dead.  On January 28, 1951, the Bermuda Petrel joined the very short list of species that have been re-discovered.

The Bermuda Petrel (Pterodroma cahow) is a rare bird today, but once was amazingly abundant in its Bermuda home.  It is known locally as the “cahow,” after its distinctive and terrifying cry.  A Spanish sea captain in 1603 wrote about the sound as many birds flocked around his ship: “At dusk, such a shrieking and din fill the air that fear seized us….These are the devils reported to be about Bermuda.  The sign of the cross at them!  We are Christians!”

The cahow nested on Bermuda and outlying islands, digging deep cavities in the ground where they laid and cared for eggs and chicks.  When chicks fledged, they flew out across the ocean, to grow and feed on the wing for up to five years before returning to the islands to breed.  They are about the size of pigeons, but with an out-sized wingspan supporting their oceanic flights.  Black or gray above, their undersides are bright white.

The species was a god-send to settlers on Bermuda and the sailors who landed there.  Rather than fearing humans, the birds were attracted to the lights of their fires and to loud sounds made to draw them in.  They would land on an outstretched arm, becoming easy prey for a club. Tasting delicious, both the birds themselves and their eggs were heavily exploited.  Just a few years after that captain’s 1603 description of their fearful cries, the birds were almost gone.  So worried were the locals that a law was passed in 1616—considered the first conservation law in the New World—that prohibited their capture.

But enforcement was lax, and harvest continued.  Introduced mammals—pigs and rats especially—destroyed their nests and ate their eggs. And then they were gone.  For three centuries, no person saw or heard a cahow, and there were no specimens in museums or private collections.  The species was extinct and unknown to science.

But in the early 1900s, reports of possible sightings of cahows began to dribble in.  In 1906, a specimen was killed on Bermuda that might have been a cahow, renewing interest in finding living birds.  In 1935, the famous biologist William Beebe was given a dead bird by a boy in Bermuda; he identified it as an immature cahow.  During World War II, an American soldier stationed on Bermuda found some dead birds on a small uninhabited island that he thought might be cahows.

The breakthrough came in early 1951.  The occasional reports of cahows encouraged the NY Museum of Natural History to go looking.  Robert Murphy, an ornithologist at the museum and Louis Mowbray, the son of the man who found the 1906 bird, set out to explore several small rocky islands, places where nesting was possible and probably unobserved.  Accompanying them was a 16-year-old local boy, David Wingate.  Wingate recounted the event:

“For days, gales prevented any visit to the offshore islands. The weather finally moderated on Jan. 28, 1951, and with a heavy sea still running, one last‐ditch attempt was made…. After several difficult landings, we finally found an islet which offered some faint but hopeful evidence of occupancy: a patch of greenish‐white excreta and a half‐obliterated footprint at the entrance of an extremely deep and curved tunnel in the cliff…. After much digging a bird was finally revealed sitting on an egg.”

They found a bird in a nesting tunnel, lassoed it and yanked it to the light.  It was a living cahow!  The long extinct Bermuda petrel had risen from the dead!  In all, they found 18 nesting pairs of cahows on the island.

That expedition changed life for David Wingate.  He dedicated his future career to saving this rare bird and the natural heritage of Bermuda.  He attended Cornell to study ornithology, but soon returned to become Bermuda’s first professional wildlife officer.  He personally directed the restoration of native vegetation on Nonsuch Island, which has regrown into a tropical forest.  The island, one of the world’s earliest examples of ecological restoration, is now part of Castle Harbor Islands Nature Reserve.

And the cahow continues to do well. From the original 18 nesting pairs in 1951, the population had grown to 98 nesting pairs and 250 individuals by 2011, and the positive trend continues.  IUCN lists the species as endangered—a far cry from 300 years considered as extinct.

References:

IUCN Red List.  Pterodroma cahow.  Available at:  http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/22698088/0.  Accessed January 30, 2018.

Mowbray, Louis.  1951.  The Cahow Rediscovered.  The Bermudian, April, 1951.  Available at:  http://www.thebermudian.com/heritage/life-in-old-bda/617-april-1951.  Accessed January 30, 2018.

Zimmerman, David R.  1973.  The cahow:  saved from hog, rat and man.  The New York Times, December 2, 1973.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/02/archives/no-longer-extinct-the-cahow-saved-from-hog-rat-and-man-cahow-david.html.  Accessed January 30, 2018.

George Adamson, who became known as “Baba ya Simba,” or Father of Lions, was born on February 3, 1906 (died 1989).  His work reintroducing lions into the wilds of Kenya was immortalized in the book, Born Free, written by his wife, Joy Adamson.  Born Free chronicles the life of Elsa, a lion cub raised by the Adamsons and then later trained to be wild.

Adamson was born in India, of English and Irish parents.  He moved to Kenya as a young man to work on his father’s coffee plantation.  But he was an adventurer, not a farmer.  He took turns as a prospector, road builder, goat trader and professional safari guide.  He eventually took a position as an assistant game warden with the Kenya Game Department—and found his calling.  Soon after, he married Joy, creating the partnership that would make both famous.

In 1953, he was forced to shoot a charging lioness with three cubs.  Two cubs were sent off to zoos, but the Adamsons kept the third, a female they named Elsa.  After raising Elsa as a pet for three years, George began the process of teaching Elsa to hunt and return to an independent life as a wild lion.  The project was successful, and the story of Elsa’s life was told in the book, Born Free, which has sold more than 5 million copies, and again in a feature motion picture and television series of the same name.

Adamson retired from the Kenya Game Department in 1961 to devote himself full-time to raising orphaned lions and returning them to the wild.  Although not a trained scientist, Adamson gained great respect for his intimate knowledge of lion behavior.  He learned that individual lions had personalities and behavior that was unique to each and not just a product of their genetics.  As he wrote, “Like people, they can look impressive, beautiful, curious, ugly or plain.  The best are adventurous, loyal and brave.”

Adamson, too, was adventurous and brave.  With a shaggy main of blond hair and a tanned and rugged complexion, he was the epitome of a real-life Tarzan.  He lived without most conveniences, and always slept in the open.  He loved Kenya for its wildness:  “Promises of solitude, of wild animals in a profusion to delight the heart of Noah, and of the spice of danger, were always honored.”

Adamson’s work, however, was sometimes unsuccessful.  A trained lion, Boy, who appeared in the movie and was then reintroduced into the wild, mauled a child and killed Adamson’s assistant.  Adamson reluctantly shot him.  After Adamson’s brother, Terrence, was mauled by another lion, the Kenya government rescinded his permission to train and release lions.  Eight years later, the government restored his program.

The Adamsons’ lives ended in personal tragedy.  The couple separated in 1977, after 33 years of marriage.  Three years later, Joy Adamson was murdered by one of her staff.  Then, in 1989, George Adamson was also murdered, presumably by Somali poachers.

References:

Father of Lions.  George Adamson:  Lion’s Best Friend.  Available at:  http://www.fatheroflions.org/GeorgeAdamson_Information.html.  Accessed February 2, 2017.

PBS.  2012.  Adamson Timeline.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/elsas-legacy-the-born-free-story-adamson-timeline/6147/. Accessed February 2, 2017.

Perlez, Jane.  1989.   George Adamson, Lions’ Protector, Is Shot Dead by Bandits in Kenya.  New York Times obituary, August 22, 1989.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/22/world/george-adamson-lions-protector-is-shot-dead-by-bandits-in-kenya.html.  Accessed February 2, 2017.

Perhaps it’s a stretch to call this a conservation event—but Groundhog Day, celebrated on February 2, makes this humble rodent one of the most famous of wildlife species.

Groundhog Day has a long history, connected to both pagan and Christian traditions.  In Christian tradition, February 2, the 40^th day after Christmas, is Candlemas.  Candlemas represents the day on which Jesus was taken to the temple to be blessed, following Judaic practice to take infant males to temple on the 40^th day of their birth.

The tradition was continued in the protestant faiths as a time to take candles to the church to be blessed for the remainder of the winter.  Judging how many candles needed to be taken for blessing became an early form of weather prediction.  The basic idea is that the remainder of the winter will have weather the opposite of what occurs on February 2.  An early English rhyme described the situation:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas bring clouds and rain,
Go winter, and come not again.

In Germany, the foretelling became associated with the hedgehog, a small, common and innocuous mammal of Europe, Asia and Africa that rolls into a ball when threatened.  Hedgehogs—all 17 species of them—carry sharp quills on their backs that provide defense, especially when a hedgehog rolls into a ball.

When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, they continued the tradition of predicting the weather on February 2.  However, with no hedgehogs around, they turned to a common North American rodent, the groundhog, as their weather forecaster.  The original, and still most famous groundhog, is Punxsutawney Phil, who lives at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  His first prediction, and the first officially recorded Groundhog Day, occurred there in 1887.

Since then, of course, many communities have their own versions of weather-predicting groundhogs.  A notable example is Shubernacadie Sam, resident at the Shubernacadie Provincial Wildlife Park on the Canadian island of Nova Scotia.  Because Nova Scotia is on Atlantic Time, Shubernacadie Sam is up and predicting an hour before Punxsutawney Phil.

Are these groundhogs reliable?  Not so much.  According to stormfax.com, Punxsutawney Phil has been correct 39% of the time.  But it would appear that the groundhog is well aware of the effects of climate change—he’s predicted a short winter in 17 of 22 years of the new century.  For the record, the folks in Punxsutawney say that Phil has always been correct, but that on occasion—61% of occasions—his handlers don’t hear him correctly and mis-report his actual pronouncements.

And just remember this:  I got you, babe!

References:

Church Year.  Candlemas (Presentation of the Lord).  Available at:  http://www.churchyear.net/candlemas.html.  Accessed February 1, 2017.

History.  This Day in History, February 02.  Available at:  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-groundhog-day.  Accessed February 1, 2017.

Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources.  Shubernacadie Provincial Wildlife Park.  Available at:  https://wildlifepark.novascotia.ca/.  Accessed February 1, 2017.

Penn Live.  What is Groundhog Day?  All you need to know about the holiday’s origins.  Available at:  http://www.pennlive.com/life/2017/02/what_is_groundhog_day_2017.html.  Accessed February 1, 2017.

Stormfax Weather Almanac.  Groundhog Day.  Available at:  http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm.  Accessed February 1, 2017.

The Afobaka Dam, in the South American country of Suriname, was closed (that is, became operational) officially on February 1, 1964.  It began filling the Brokopondo Reservoir behind it, making the 41^st largest reservoir in the world by surface area (approximately 580 square miles).  It covers about 1% of the land area of Suriname, which is South America’s smallest country.

Construction of the dam began in 1961.  The dam was built primarily to generate electricity to power the bauxite industry, the largest source of foreign trade for Suriname.  Bauxite ore is refined to make aluminum.  The dam is privately owned, by a subsidiary of Alcoa Aluminum.  About 75% of the electricity produced is used by the aluminum industry; the other 25% goes to general use in the nation’s capital and largest city, Paramaribo.

The filling of the dam is noteworthy for a wild animal rescue operation, Operation Gwamba, that occurred in the first few years after the dam was closed.  Organized and operated by the International Society for the Protection of Animals (now known as World Animal Protection), the project was led by John Walsh, a U.S. biologist with no previous experience in the tropics or in animal capture and relocation.  In all, Operation Gwamba rescued more than 10,000 animals, including more than 2000 sloths, 1000 armadillos, and nearly a thousand tortoises, tree porcupines and monkeys.  At least one individual of 43 different species was captured.

The rescue operation mainly captured animals trapped on small islands created as the water rose, isolating former hill-tops into ever-shrinking land areas.  The animals were then moved onto shoreline areas not subject to flooding.

Operation Gwamba was memorialized in the 1967 book, Time is Short and the Water Rises, co-authored by John Walsh and Robert Gannon.  Walsh wrote, “The most valuable thing from my point of view, of course, was what I learned about the jungle.  I found out that, as I had suspected, it is not something evil, dreary, and cruel….Furthermore, if you enter the jungle with plenty of food, go to a place where clean water is abundant, stay away from your fellow human beings, and don’t get lost or go out of your way to play with bushmasters, you’ll be relatively safe.”

References:

United Caribbean.  Suriname—Afobaka Dam.  Availabe at:  http://www.unitedcaribbean.com/afobakadam.html.  Accessed January 31, 2017.

Walsh, John and Robert Gannon.  1967.  Time is Short and the Water Rises.  Tower Publications, New York.  262 pages.

Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, was born on January 31, 1920 (died 2010).  Udall is considered one of the most effective leaders of the nation’s primary land management agency during the environmentally active years of the 1960s and 1970s.

Udall came from a family with long roots in Arizona politics and public service.  His grandfather served in the Arizona Territorial legislature before statehood in 1912; his father was an Arizona Supreme Court Justice; his younger brother, Morris (popularly known as “Mo”) was a congressional representative and ran for president in 1976.

Udall kept up the family traditions.  He served two years as a Mormon missionary before enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, where he served as a gunner on a B-24 bomber.  He and brother Mo formed a law firm after the war, through which they worked for desegregation in schools and other public facilities in Arizona.  He served three terms in the U.S. Congress.

His national impact began when President Kennedy appointed him as Secretary of the Interior in early 1961, a position he held for nine years, serving also under President Johnson.  Although he and President Johnson supposedly had a rocky relationship, he was a close colleague of the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, working with her on her platform to beautify America (learn more about her here) .  He was an outspoken advocate for strong federal land conservation policies, including the acquisition of lands for parks and other conservation purposes.  During his term as Secretary, he led the acquisition and reservation of nearly 4 million acres of federal lands, including 4 national parks, 9 national recreation areas, 20 historic sites, 8 national seashores and lakeshores, and more than 50 national wildlife refuges.

He also led the enactment of several new laws that facilitated the further development of federal conservation lands.  He helped win passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the law that provided formal definition of wilderness and initially designated more than 9 million acres as federally protected wilderness (learn more about the Wilderness Act here).  He similarly aided the National Wild and Scenic River Acts of 1968  that extended environmental protection to river systems, now including nearly 13,000 miles of 208 rivers in 40 states.  Perhaps most important, however, was the creation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, established by Congress in 1964.  The law provided funds for the acquisition of conservation lands, using revenue from sale of excess federal property, federal gas taxes on motor boat fuels and federal taxes on offshore oil leases, along with general appropriations.  The act funded federal actions, but also included grants to states for similar actions.  Funds available have varied substantially over time, but reached nearly $1 billion in the late 1990s-early 2000s.

Udall believed that outdoor recreation was both healthy and therapeutic.  His physical prowess was notable.  He was an all-conference guard on the University of Arizona’s basketball team.  He climbed both Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji, and he often led extended hikes, up to 50 miles, while serving as Secretary of Interior.  At age 84, he hiked from the bottom to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

He brought the issue of conservation to the nation’s conscience in 1963 with his book, The Quiet Crisis.  The book extolled the essential connection between the land and the American people, and it encouraged Americans to look past short-sighted economic exploitation of the land toward a longer-term approach that we today call sustainability.

References:

American National Biography Online.   Stewart Lee Udall.  Available at:  http://www.anb.org/articles/07/07-00863.html.  Accessed January 30, 2017.

National Park Service.  Land and Water Conservation Fund.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/index.htm.  Accessed January 30, 2017.

Schneider, Keith and Cornelia Dean.  2010.  Stewart L. Udall, Conservationist in Kennedy and Johnson Cabinets, dies at 90.  New York Times, March 20, 2010.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/nyregion/21udall.html.  Accessed January 30, 2017.

University of Arizona Library, Special Collections.  Stewart Lee Udall:  Advocate for the Planet Earth.  Available at:  http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/sludall/index.html.  Accessed January 30, 2017.

On January 30, 1820, Edward Bransfield, a British seaman, landed on the continent of Antarctica, the first known person to do so.  He claimed the continent for the British Empire.  But that isn’t how the story ends.

In truth, no one knows who was the first person to set foot on Antarctica.  Polynesian fishermen and traders had traveled south to the ice fields for centuries.  Later, European explorers took up the challenge of going ever farther south in search of whales, fish, hides—and land.  They discovered more islands closer to the pole on successive voyages.

Captain Cook himself, the most famous of Pacific explorers, is credited with being the first European to conclude that a continent existed under all that ice.  In 1773, aboard the HMS Resolution, Cook crossed over the Antarctic Circle for the first time. However, he never landed on Antarctica itself, driven back from the shore by closing ice.

That honor was left to Edward Bransfield, an Irish seaman stationed with the British fleet in Valparaiso, Chile.  Born in 1785 in the County Cork, Bransfield went to sea at 18 and immediately proved himself a worthy sailor and navigator.  He rose quickly to become a master, the non-officer with sole responsibility for a ship’s navigation.  When news came to Valparaiso in late 1819 that an English merchant ship, the Williams, had been driven far south by strong winds and discovered even more islands (the South Shetland Islands), the fleet commander assigned Bransfield to join the Williams and continue exploring.

Bransfield led his ship to a continuing string of newly discovered islands, claiming each in turn for his government.  On January 20, 1820, the ship reached what is now called Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost part of the Antarctic continent.  Bransfield and the ship’s captain went ashore, becoming the first known humans to stand on the continent.  Antarctica, they claimed, was now the property of the British Empire.

The English claim did not stand without challenge.  In the intervening century, seven countries—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom—have made claims to some of Antarctica.  In addition, the U.S. and Russia maintain a “basis for claim” that keeps their hands in the pie.

Fortunately, however, Antarctica has not been sliced up into national territories and exploited for military or commercial purposes.  And that status was secured forever on December 1, 1959.  On that date, twelve countries signed The Antarctic Treaty (Japan, South Africa, and Belgium joined those with territorial claims).  The treaty assures that the continent will be used only for peaceful purposes, that scientific study will be free and open, and that all knowledge from those studies will be exchanged and freely available to all.  Moreover, the “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” added in 1991, designates the Antarctic as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science.”  It prohibits commercial development of the continent, instead focusing on its extraordinary scientific and biodiversity value (learn more about the treaty here).

References:

Beyond Endurance Expedition.  Edward Bransfield.  Available at:  https://archive.is/20120723161803/http://www.beyondendurance.ie/history/explorer/6.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Cool Antarctica.  The UK in Antarctica, The History and Activity of the United Kingdom in Antarctica.  Available at:  https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/activity_of_UK_in_antarctica.php.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty.  The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.  Available at:    http://www.ats.aq/e/ep.htm.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

The Bald Eagle is our nation’s symbol.  But Benjamin Franklin didn’t like it.  Or so he wrote to his daughter, Sally Bache, in a letter on January 26, 1784.

Designing the national seal for the newly formed United States of America was a serious concern.  So serious that a committee to create the design was formed on July 4, 1776, on the heels of passage of the Declaration of Independence.  The committee had three members—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.  Each of them offered a design that featured a classical theme—Moses standing by the shore (Franklin), the children of Israel in the wilderness (Jefferson), and the “Judgement of Hercules” (Adams).  Despite agreeing on the Declaration of Independence, they gave up on designing the great seal.  Two later congressional committees, in 1780 and 1782, also failed to agree on what the seal should look like.

After the failure of the third committee, the Secretary of Congress, Charles Thompson, took up the challenge.  He submitted a suggestion for the design, without drawing it, that featured an “American Eagle” as the centerpiece of the front side of the Seal.  The design concept was approved in June, but only drawn and struck in September, 1782.  The eagle was drawn as a Bald Eagle, and the rest is history.  The Great Seal of the United States has not been altered since.

But that didn’t mean Benjamin Franklin had to like the idea that a Bald Eagle was to be our national symbol (read more about Franklin here).  In his letter to his daughter, Franklin first denounced the character of the Bald Eagle:

“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.”

He then goes on to nominate a better bird for the honor—the Wild Turkey:

“For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

Regardless of which bird you prefer—Bald Eagle or Wild Turkey—we can be proud of the role that conservation has played in making both abundant for us today.  Both species were nearly extinct in 1900, from overhunting and habitat loss.  We passed laws to protect all birds from commercial hunting in the early 1900s (read about theLacey Act here).  We began restoring Wild Turkey habitat in the 1930s and then reintroduced birds around the country from remnant West Virginia populations.  And in the 1970s, we passed laws that removed DDT and other pesticides that impacted Bald Eagle reproduction .  Today, the Bald Eagle is off the endangered species list, but still protected as our national symbol.  The Wild Turkey is so abundant that carefully regulated hunting seasons now occur throughout the U.S.

References:

Chandler, Adam.  2014.  A Nation of Turkeys:  Ben Franklin’s Crusade Against the Bald Eagle.  The Atlantic, January 26, 2014.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/nation-turkeys-ben-franklins-crusade-against-bald-eagle/357393/.  Accessed January 28, 2018.

GreatSeal.com. First Great Seal Committee – July-August 1776.  Available at:  http://greatseal.com/committees/firstcomm/index.html.  Accessed January 28, 2018.

Stamp, Jimmy.  2013.  American Myths:  Benjamin Franklin’s Turkey and the Presidential Seal.  Smithsonian, January 25, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/american-myths-benjamin-franklins-turkey-and-the-presidential-seal-6623414/.  Accessed January 28, 2018.

People who love the outdoors and the prospect of being close to nature often have a strained relationship with polite society and cities.  The modern patron saint of that feeling might well be Edward Abbey, a writer and anarchist who loved the desert and hated what the modern world was doing to it. He described himself this way:

“I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a ‘surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow’. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.”

 Edward Abbey was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on January 29, 1927.  He was raised to think for himself—and he took to that education fully.  “Freedom,” he said, “begins between the ears.” He left home at the age of 17, hitchhiking across the country to the desert Southwest, which would be his love and home for most of his life.  Before then, however, he was drafted into the Army and spent two years in Italy as a military policeman—an experience that turned him into an anarchist.  He returned to the U.S. and received two degrees from the University of New Mexico.

He then embarked on a 15-year career as a part-time employee in various national parks and monuments, immersing himself in the desert environment that obsessed him.  He began writing, first novels, but then, in 1968, the book that first made him famous, Desert Solitaire.  Desert Solitaire is a rambling defense of the qualities of the desert, set in what is now Arches National Park (learn more about Arches here) , and the need to let it be what it is—just desert, not developed into cities, not irrigated into farmland, but just desert.  He wrote, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

But it was another book, published in 1975, that earned him a place as a hero to some and a menace to others. His novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, described the fictional exploits of environmental extremists who used disruptive strategies to stop development—the idea of tossing a wrench into the gears.  I doubt that Abbey himself ever engaged in direct sabotage of any development—he was too focused on his own life and experiences—but the idea of guerilla warfare in support of the environment was adopted by some groups, with Edward Abbey as their spiritual guide.

Abbey was the true anti-hero.  He was married and divorced four times, a known philanderer.  He drank excessively and threw his beer cans out the truck window because the highway had already destroyed the lands through which it passed.  He took his television outside and shot it.  Trying to pin down his philosophy was as difficult as finding standing water in the desert, a purposeful complexity.  “What do I believe in?” he wrote.  “I believe in sun.  In rock.  In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock.  I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses….”

And when the end came, on March 14, 1989, he finished things the way he wanted.  As agreed earlier, friends wrapped him in a sleeping bag and drove him out into the desert, iced down for the journey.  They buried him, un-embalmed, at an unknown and unmarked site in the desert—an illegal act—completing his desire to become fertilizer for whatever the desert wished to grow from his remains.

References:

Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Edward Abbey, American Author.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Abbey.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Harden, Blaine.  2002.  A Friend, Not a Role Model; Remembering Edward Abbey, Who Loved Words, Women, Beer and the Desert.  The New York Times, April 29, 2002.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/books/friend-not-role-model-remembering-edward-abbey-who-loved-words-women-beer-desert.html.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Leonard, Brendan.  2016.  The 23 Best Ed Abbey Quotes.  Adventure Journal, November 1, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.adventure-journal.com/2016/11/23-best-ed-abbey-quotes/.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Wilderness Connect.  Edward Abbey:  Freedom Begins Between the Ears.  Available at:  http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/Abbey.  Accessed January 29, 2018.

Today millions of young boys and girls are members of scouting organizations.  It all began with the publication of the book, Scouting for Boys, by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, on January 24, 1908.

Baden-Powell was born in London on February 22, 1857.  He spent much of his early life playing in the woods around his home, learning about nature and what was then called wood-craft—how to make-do with the materials that nature provided and how to sustain life away from industrialized society. He wrote that “… in my spare time as a schoolboy I did a good lot of scouting in the woods in the way of snaring rabbits and cooking them, observing birds and tracking animals, and so on.”

Baden-Powell left school and joined the British army, serving in India and South Africa for 34 years.  His time in South Africa added to his understanding of nature and survival in the wilderness, while actually performing duties as a military scout. He became famous for his defense of his garrison and the town of Mafeking in the Second Boer War during a 217-day siege over 1899-1900.  He returned to England and retired as a Major-General in 1910, a much decorated and renowned war hero.

As his career progressed, he put his extensive knowledge of wood-craft and scouting to work in a series of books.  In 1884, he published his first book, called Reconnaissance and Scouting, intended to instruct soldiers and other adults in essential military skills. He published 32 books in all, but the one that started a worldwide phenomenon was Scouting  for Boys, that appeared on January 24, 1908.

Scouting for Boys translated Baden-Powell’s knowledge into lessons designed to give boys a taste of adventure and lots of advice for living honorable and satisfying lives.  He wrote:  “I knew that every true red-blooded boy is keen for adventure and open-air life, and so I wrote this book to show you how it could be done even in a civilized country like England.”  The book was an instant success.  It taught boys how to interact with nature:

“I have said the ‘hunting’ or ‘going after big game is one of the best things in scouting’. I did not say shooting or killing the game was the best part; for as you get to study animals you get to like them more and more, and you will soon find that you don’t want to kill them for the mere sake of killing.”

It also taught lessons for self-improvement:

“A boy who is accustomed to sleep with his window shut will probably suffer, like many a tenderfoot has done, by catching cold and rheumatism when he first tries sleeping out. The thing is always to sleep with your windows open, summer and winter, and you will never catch cold… A soft bed and too many blankets make a boy dream bad dreams, which weakens him.”

“No boy ever began smoking because he liked it but because he thought it made him look like a grown-up man. As a matter of fact it generally makes him look a little ass.”

            Baden-Powell ran an experimental adventure camp for boys in 1907, and the idea caught on.  Only two years later, in 1909, he held the first National Scout Rally drawing 11,000 boys.  Along with his sister, Agnes, he started a similar group for girls, known in England as Girl Guides.  Since then, of course, the organization has gone world-wide.  In the U.S. alone, about 2.4 million boys and 1.8 million girls participate in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, respectively.  Although participation has fallen over the past decade, scouting remains a dominant youth activity in American culture.

And why not?  As Robert Baden-Powell said, “Life without adventure would be deadly dull.”

References:

Biography online.  Lord Baden-Powell Biography.  Available at:  https://www.biographyonline.net/humanitarian/baden-powell.html.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

Rohrer, Finlo.  2007.  What would Baden-Powell do?  BBC News, 27July 2007.  Available at:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6918066.stm.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

Scouts.  Lord Baden-Powell.  Available at:  http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/heritage/lord-baden-powell/.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

The Guardian.  2013.  Baden-Powell’s introduction to Scouting for Boys.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/31/baden-powell-scouts-for-boys.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

Sweden became the first country to regulate the use of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) when it banned their use in aerosols on January 23, 1978.  Other countries followed, including the U.S., leading to the eventual worldwide ban known as the Montreal Protocol.

Like so many chemicals produced after World War II, CFCs seemed like miracle compounds.  They were cheap and easy to make, and were inert, non-toxic and non-flammable.  They were widely used as propellants in aerosol spray cans, as plastic foams sprayed for insulation, as solvents for cleaning electrical components, and as refrigerants in air conditioning units for buildings and vehicles.  Their use grew rapidly throughout the post-war era of booming prosperity.

But another outcome of post-war technology proved their undoing.  By the 1970s, scientists developed remote sensing tools that could detect chemicals in the stratosphere. Scientists discovered that various forms of CFCs were present at high altitudes and that the compound’s presence reduced ozone concentrations.  Lower ozone concentrations increased UV radiation reaching the earth, resulting in increased incidence of skin cancer and cataracts in humans.  Even more important, CFCs remained in the atmosphere for up to a century before degrading.

These worrying findings began a series of decisions by nations around the world, starting with Sweden in January, 1978.  Canada, Norway and Denmark quickly enacted their own bans. The U.S. acted to regulate “non-essential” uses of CFCs in March, 1978, to be implemented that December.  Other European nations followed suit, and in 1980, the European Economic Community (now the EU) placed limits of CFC production and use.

Ongoing studies showed that ozone losses in the stratosphere were worse than thought and that an “ozone hole” had developed over the Antarctic.  As worldwide concern over ozone depletion grew, the world agreed to a strategy for controlling what are now called ODS—ozone-depleting substances.  The Montreal Protocol, as it is known, came into force on January 1, 1989.

Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, said, “Perhaps the single most successful international environmental agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol.”  In a report in 2023, the UN estimated that 99% of ozone-depleting chemicals have been eliminated from the earth. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited in 2017 that 45 million cases of cataracts and 280 million cases of skin cancer have been avoided—and that 1.6 million American lives have been saved because of the regulation of ODS.  In total, the regulation of these chemical compounds has produced $4.2 trillion in societal health benefits in the United States.  The ozone hole is declining regularly, and EPA estimates that ozone levels in the atmosphere will return to pre-1980 levels by 2040 in most places, but it will take another 20 years for ozone to return fully to the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres..

References:

Byrd, Deborah.  2015.  This date in science:  Sweden goes first to ban aerosol sprays.  EarthSky, January 23, 2015.  Available at:  http://earthsky.org/earth/this-date-in-science-sweden-goes-first-to-ban-aerosol-sprays.  Accessed January 23, 2018.

Diaz, Jaclyn. 2023. The ozone layer is on track to recover in the coming decades, the United Nations says. NPR, Januiary 10, 2023. Available at: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/10/1147977166/ozone-layer-recovery-united-nations-report. Accessed January 10, 2023.

Morrisette, Peter M.  1989.  The Evolution of Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion.  Natural Resources Journal 29:793-820.  Available at: http://www.ciesin.org/docs/003-006/003-006.html.  Accessed January 23, 2018.

US Environmental Protection Agency.  2017.  Stratospheric Ozone Protection—30 Years of Progress and Achievements.  Available at:  https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-11/documents/mp30_report_final_12.pdf.  Accessed January 23, 2018.