Category: Uncategorized

This is a day for dams—or against dams.  In the U.S., on August 8, 1937, the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River began generating power.  The Bonneville Dam was the first on the river, part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, bringing jobs and electricity to the Pacific Northwest.  Dams generate huge benefits in terms of water availability, electricity and flood prevention.

But 38 years later, on August 8, 1975, another truth about dams proved itself in central China—dams are dangerous.  On that day, the Banqiao Reservoir Dam collapsed, devastating the people and landscape of Henan Province.

China has always been plagued by severe flooding, causing human tragedy year after year.  During the 1950s, the Chinese government began an ambitious program of dam building to control that flooding while also producing electricity and providing irrigation water for agriculture.  A principal target of dam building was the Yellow River watershed, the second longest river in China and central to the history and economy of the nation.  Hundreds of dams were built in the watershed.

Among them was the Banqiao Reservoir Dam on the Ru River, a tributary of the Yellow.  It was an earthen dam, nearly 400 feet high, impounding a large reservoir behind it.  The dam was built to withstand a 1000-year flood, one caused by half a meter of rain over a three-day period.  Over the years, the dam experienced some structural problems, but Soviet engineers reinforced the dam, calling it then an “iron dam,” incapable of failing.

But in August of 1975, Typhoon Nina settled over the area.  In three days, one meter of rain fell, twice the engineered capacity of the dam.  As the rains continued and the water rose behind the dam, workers heroically piled sand bags atop the dam.  Their efforts were unsuccessful, however, and the dam began to fail.  One worker cried, “Chu Jiaozi”—“The river dragon has come!”

Just after midnight on August 8, the dam collapsed.  A wall of water 30 feet high and 7 miles wide rushed downstream at 30 miles per hour.  An entire village, Daowencheng, below the dam was obliterated, killing nearly 9,600 residents.  In five hours, the entire reservoir drained.  Downstream dams could not contain the water and began failing.  More than 60 dams collapsed in all.

More than 25,000 people died directly from the flood, but as many as 220,000 died subsequently from contaminated water and famine associated with the dam failures.  Nearly 6 million buildings were destroyed, leaving 11 million people homeless or otherwise displaced.  The total loss of life and property makes the Banqiao Dam failure the most disastrous in history.

Dams produce great value in modern civilization, controlling floods, storing water for human use and irrigation, and producing electricity.  We can’t seem to live without them.  Although construction of large dams in the U.S. has ground to a halt, the developing world continues to build dams at a rapid rate.  China rebuilt the Banqiao Reservoir Dam soon after the tragedy, completing it in 1993.

As the largest human modifications to the landscape, however, storing massive quantities of water behind equally massive concrete or earthen walls, dams also inevitably create danger.  Dams fail regularly—one storm in North Carolina in 2016, Hurricane Matthew, produced 17 dam failures.  Eventually, as that anonymous dam worker foretold in 1975, the river dragon will come again.

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Typhoon Nina-Banqiao dam failure.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/event/Typhoon-Nina-Banqiao-dam-failure.  Accessed June 8, 2018.

Environmental Justice Atlas.  Banqiao dam failure in 1975, Henan, China.  Available at:  https://ejatlas.org/conflict/baquio-dam-failure-henan-china.  Accessed June 8, 2018.

Watkins, Thayer.  The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975.  San Jose State University, Department of Economics.  Available at:  http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm.  Accessed June 8, 2018.

ngham, William F.  Bonneville Dam.  The Oregon Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/bonneville_dam/#.WxqnUEgvxRY.  Accessed June 8, 2018.

The idea that tragedy always results when common resources are exploited became dogma in the environmental world when Garrett Hardin published his essay, Tragedy of the Commons, in 1968.  Not so fast, said Elinor Ostrom—and she proved it.

Elinor Ostrom was born in Los Angeles on August 7, 1933 (died 2012).  She was the only child in a poor family, but her family lived just outside of Beverly Hills.  As a girl, she planted Victory gardens and knitted scarves for soldiers, a foreshadowing of her interest in community. Her mother arranged to get Elinor enrolled in the Beverly Hills High School, mixing with her privileged neighbors.  She said this was fortunate, partially because she assumed, like her classmates, that she would go to college, and partially because she was able to join the debate team, learning that every argument had two sides.

She did go to college, graduating from UCLA in three years and then added a Master’s degree in 1962 and a doctorate in 1965, all in political science.  Married two years earlier, she moved with her husband (and life-long research partner, Vincent Ostrom) to the University of Indiana, where he had landed a professorship.  Ostrom took a temporary teaching position, covering 7:30 AM classes that no one else would teach.  The university soon recognized what they had and offered her a regular appointment.  She stayed at Indiana University her entire career, rising to named professorships and to be departmental chair.

She was not satisfied that Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” sufficiently described actual conditions in the world.  “Relying on metaphors as the foundation for policy advice,” she wrote, “can lead to results vastly different from those presumed to be likely.”  So she went into the field to see what was happening in resource-dependent communities, studying water use, fisheries, forestry, grazing and other resources.  Her work ranged across the globe, with studies on every continent except Antarctica.

Everywhere she looked, Ostrom found communities that had managed to exploit natural resources for generations, sometimes centuries, without destroying the resources and suffering the resultant hardships.  She found that these small communities developed sensible ways to share resources, without resorting to private ownership or top-down governmental control.  She described her understanding in her now-classic book, Governing the Commons, in 1990.  The key is communication within the community, so individuals can gather to discuss their personal and group interests and develop a strategy that works for them.  Decisions get made locally, group after group, which she called “polycentrism.” What works in one place might not work in another, and pretending that a simple theory—based on attractive but perhaps misleading parables of grazing on a commons—explained human behavior was an error.  “No panaceas,” she often said.

She built her research around the same sense of community.  With her husband, Ostrom developed the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University.  The name suited their style, to bring people from different backgrounds—disciplines, resources, nations—together to consult and learn.  The group met with their genial hosts and mentors in a cottage-like facility, informal and unregulated, mirroring the findings of their research.  They used empirical research to inform their ideas and tested those ideas with more field work.  The approach was essential, she wrote,

“If the research that one wants to pursue can all be done sitting in a library carrel somewhere in one’s home institution, then one does not need to develop the equivalent of a Workshop. However, if one is trying to understand and test theory in the field and in the experimental lab and to really pursue in-depth studies of diverse institutional arrangements around the world, then working with colleagues located in diverse settings at various stages of their careers is crucial for making scientific progress.”

            Both her research and approach caught on.  Including the human component into the understanding of natural resource management has become known as “social-ecological systems.”  Over the years, Ostrom grew to be an international leader in this emerging discipline, with more than 25 major awards and 12 honorary doctorates.  She was president of the American Political Science Association during 1996-1997, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Her crowning accomplishment, of course, was her recognition as the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences in 2009 (co-awarded to Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson).  She was the first woman to win the Nobel, but more interestingly, the first non-economist to do so.  At the conclusion of her Nobel lecture, Ostrom summed up her vision:

“The most important lesson for public policy analysis derived from the intellectual journey I have outlined here is that humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory. Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for governments to accomplish for much of the past half century. Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”

References:

McCay, Bonnie J. and Joan Bennett.  2014.  Elinor Ostrom, 1933-2012.  National Academies of Science.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/ostrom-elinor.pdf.  Accessed June 7, 2018.

Nolen, Jeannette L.  Elinor Ostrom, American political scientist.  Encyclopedia Britannica.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elinor-Ostrom.  Accessed June 7, 2018.

Ostrom, Elinor.  2009.  Beyond markets and states:  Polycentric governance of complex economic systems.  Nobel Prize Lecture, December 9, 2009.  Available at:  https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf.  Accessed June 7, 2018.

Ostrom , Elinor.  2009.  Elinor Ostrom – Biographical.  Nobel Prize Organization.  Available at:  https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom-bio.html.  Accessed June 7, 2018.

The Economist.  2012.  Elinor Ostrom.  The Economist, Jun 30^th 2012.  Available at:  https://www.economist.com/node/21557717.  Accessed June 7, 2018.

The Avari River, in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, had not flowed for 60 years.  When a young doctor arrived to help local communities, they told him what they needed wasn’t doctoring, but water.  Rajendra Singh listened, and today the Avari River flows again, thanks to the “Waterman of India.”

Rajendra Singh was born on August 6, 1959, in the Uttar Pradesh region of India, just east of Rajastan.  He was a fortunate child, born into a landowning class and also a class that had responsibility for the community around him.  As a student, he learned “how to respect communities, democratic values, the poorest of the poor.”

Those lessons stuck with him when, as a 28-year-old, he gave up a comfortable government job to work for the benefit of the poor.  “You have only one heart and one mind,” he said, “When you work in government service, you use neither.”  He traveled to a small village in Rajastan, called a “dark zone” by the Indian government because of its lack of water.

Singh learned about the ancient practice of building small dams, called johads, on rivers to store water during the rainy season.  He began to build johads on the Avari River, starting at the upper end of the river.  “It was hard work,” he said, “We labored for 10-14 hours a day.  When the rains came, our water bodies filled up.”  With community support, he kept building more dams, supplying needed water to village after village.  When they had built 375 johads, the river began to flow again.  By 1995, the Avari River became perennial again, flowing with water all year long.

Over the next 20 years, Singh and his colleagues kept working.  They have built more than 8600 johads and brought water back to 1000 villages throughout Rajastan.  As a result, forests have begun to re-generate and wildlife is returning.

The real success, Singh insists, is that they “managed to involve the community.  Alone, we can do nothing.”  He has developed community-based practices for making decisions and getting work done.  A River Parliament, composed of elders elected by riverside villages, makes decisions about managing the Avari River, including distribution of water among villages and users.

Singh is known as the “Waterman of India” for his work.  He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s highest honor, in 2001 for his community-based approach to water development.  In 2015, he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for water.  In accepting the award, Singh said:

“When we started our work, we were only looking at the drinking water crisis and how to solve that. Today our aim is higher. This is the 21st century. This is the century of exploitation, pollution and encroachment. To stop all this, to convert the war on water into peace, that is my life’s goal.”

Today, it seems, Singh vacillates between optimism and pessimism about the future of water.  He believes strongly in the success of local, small-scale efforts, but he holds grave concerns about large-scale programs.  Mining of groundwater, especially for crop irrigation, “is a sin.” Large dams, he believes, have created both more drought and flooding, rather than solving those problems:

 “In the 70 years since independence, more than 10 times more land is under drought and eight times more land is under flood. I have seen people in some of these villages being displaced three, four, eight times. This is not really development.  These dams are damned.”

Rajendra Singh, regardless of his emotions at any time, remains the ultimate “waterman.”  He says, “Water is my life, my happiness, my teacher.”  May we all feel the same.

References:

Ganguly, Amit.  2017.  Q&A:  “Waterman” Rajendra Singh loses hope as India runs out of groundwater.  Reuters, September 7, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.reuters.com/article/india-water-crisis/qa-waterman-rajendra-singh-loses-hope-as-india-runs-out-of-groundwater-idUSKCN1BI0QX.  Accessed June 6, 2018.

Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. 2001.  Singh, Rajendra, Community Leadership, India, 2001.  Available at:  http://rmaward.asia/awardees/singh-rajendra/.  Accessed June 6, 2018.

Stockholm International Water Institute.  2015.  Rajendra Singh – The water man of India wins 2015 Stockholm Water Prize.  Available at:  http://www.siwi.org/prizes/stockholmwaterprize/laureates/2015-2/.  Accessed June 6, 2018.

Zachariah, Preeti.  2017.  “Water is my life, my happiness, my teacher.”  The Hindu, June 10, 2017.  Available at:  http://www.thehindu.com/society/water-is-my-life-my-happiness-my-teacher/article18921839.ece.  Accessed June 6, 2018.

One of Robert Frost’s most beloved poems speaks of being faced with choosing one of two roads and taking “the road less traveled.”  In the U.S. today, he might have trouble finding a road less traveled—or so it seems with congestion on our highways and byways.

The city of Cleveland faced that dilemma itself when it installed the first electric traffic signal in the U.S.  On August 5, 1914, the city turned the switch at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105^th Street, and a new era of traffic management was born.  The first signal had lighted green signs that read “move” and lighted red signs that read “stop.”  The device was operated by a worker stationed in a nearby booth.  The inventor, James Hoge, received a patent for his “Municipal Traffic Control System,” which the Cleveland Automobile club described as “destined to revolutionize the handling of traffic in congested city streets….”  And it has.  Today the U.S. has an average of one traffic light for every ten miles of road!

In 1900, the road system in the U.S. was already well established, with about 2 million miles of roads crisscrossing the landscape. More than a century later, the road network has about doubled to 4 million miles.  Of course, most roads in 1900 were one or two lanes wide, and today some interstates have 15 lanes.  A more accurate portrayal of our road-system capacity, according to the National Academy of Sciences, is lane miles.  The U.S. has about 8.3 million of those, meaning that most roads (76% of all lane miles) are still two-lane rural highways.

One might think that the U.S. is virtually covered in roads.  Roads cover about 1.2% of the U.S. surface area (about 0.2 miles of road per square mile of land area), but, of course, the density differs greatly from New Jersey (the highest) to Alaska (the lowest).  However, the U.S. isn’t even close to having the world’s highest road densities, ranking 44^th among the world’s countries.  The average for the 28 countries of the European Union is 2.5 times denser than the U.S. and for Japan is 4.6 times denser than the U.S.

Regardless of how many roads we have, we love to drive on them.  In 2019, we drove motorized vehicles—cars, trucks, buses, RVs, motorcycles—3.3 trillion miles, or about 10,000 miles for every person, adult and child, in the U.S. (highway miles dropped in 2020 to 2.9 trillion, no doubt as the pandemic caused us to park our vehicles and stay home).  We also spent a lot of time sitting in traffic, yearning for the road less traveled.  In 2014, Americans idled in congested traffic for nearly 7 billion hours, at an estimated cost of $160 billion in lost time and wasted fuel.  During that waiting, we burned up over 3 billion gallons of fuel, producing the greenhouse gases and other pollutants for no good reason.

The environmental costs of our road system and the mileage we rack up on it are huge.  Building roads changes the environment, often fragmenting habitat for wildlife and changing the hydrology of streams.  Pollutants discharged from vehicles travel outward from the road surface itself, for some just a matter of a few feet, but for others hundreds of feet.  And the impacts vary according to the terrain and climate—elevation, slope, rainfall, soil type and others.

Fortunately, most expansion of the road system in the U.S. today is not by building new roads across undeveloped lands, but by expanding the lanes on existing roads.  Consequently, the environmental damage from road building should be lower in the future than in the past, and new guidelines and regulations, based on past experience and ongoing research, help reduce the impact even more.

For those of us who can’t abide sitting in traffic—what my friend Rick Knight calls “the need for speed”—the news isn’t very good.  From that first traffic signal in Cleveland in 1914, the U.S. now has over 300,000 traffic lights, and uncounted millions of stop signs.  If you find a road less traveled, count your blessings and don’t tell anyone!

References:

American Society of Civil Engineers.  2017.  Infrastructure Report Card—Roads.  Available at:  https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Roads-Final.pdf.  Accessed June 5, 2018.

a.  2017.  1^st electric traffic light system installed, August 5, 2014.  EDN Network, August 05, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4419285/1st-electric-traffic-light-system-installed–August-5–1914.  Accessed June 5, 2018.

National Academy of Sciences.  2005.  Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Paved Roads.  Available at:  https://www.nap.edu/read/11535/chapter/1.  Accessed June 5, 2018.

U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.  U.S. Vehicle Miles.  Available at: https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles.  Accessed August 3, 2022.

The reports had been coming in for some time—a pair of white giraffes, a female and cub, were roaming around the northeastern Kenyan countryside near the Ishaqbini Hirola Conservancy.  On August 2, 2017, wildlife rangers finally filmed the pair, confirming the existence of the rare animals.  Soon thereafter, the video went viral!

The pair are reticulated giraffes, found throughout southern and eastern Africa.  They are not albinos, but rather have a condition known as leucism, which prevents pigments from forming in skin tissue.  Pigments are formed in other tissues, however, so that the animals eyes, horns, hooves and other features are colored normally (albino animals normally have red eyes).  Leucism occurs in many vertebrates, including not only mammals, but also birds, fish and reptiles.

Although leucistic giraffes are rare, sightings have been reported as far back as 1912, with other reports sprinkled in the 1930s and 1950s.  In 2016, white giraffes were reported in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania.  Leucism is genetic, so the animals are white or only lightly colored from birth, but a condition of progressive loss of pigment has also recently been reported in Kenya.

Giraffes, whether white or not, are among the most popular of the great African mammalian fauna.  The giraffe is the tallest land animal on earth, able to graze at heights beyond the reach of other animals. The IUCN considers all giraffes to be of one species (Giraffa camelopardalis), but recognizes nine subspecies.  The species is considered “vulnerable” by IUCN, because numbers have been declining steadily over the past 30 years.  About 100,000 giraffes live in Africa, down from 150,000 in 1985.  The major cause of population decline is habitat loss, as forests are converted to farmland and as other land uses, including mining and urbanization, make habitat unsuitable.  The species is also impacted by armed conflicts and illegal hunting.

Aside from white giraffes, the area is most known as the remaining habitat for the hirola (Beatragus hunteri), an antelope endemic to southeastern Kenya and southwestern Somalia.  The species, also known as Hunter’s antelope, is considered “critically endangered” by IUCN, with the adult population numbering around 250 individuals.  The Hirola Conservation Programme began in 2005 to preserve the hirola and to improve the living conditions for local people that share the hirola’s habitat, recognizing “that conservation is a multi-stakeholder initiative and does not occur in isolation.”

Dr. Abdullahi Ali, founder and director of the Hirola Conservation Programme, said about the discovery of the leucistic giraffes, “Nature is always stunning and continue[s] to surprise humanity! These rare snow white giraffes shocked many locals including myself but these gave us renewed energy to protect and save our unique wildlife.”

Lest we think that we’ve got nature all figured out, think about these white giraffes—and think again!

References:

Hirola Conservation Programme.  1917.  Anoter White (Leucistic) Giraffe Sighting in the Hirola’s Range.  Available at:  http://www.hirolaconservation.org/index.php/component/k2/item/24-another-white-leucistic-giraffe-sighting-in-the-hirola-s-range.  Accessed June 4, 2018.

Joseph, Yonette.  2017.  Rare White Giraffes Cause a Stir in Kenya.  The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/world/africa/rare-white-giraffe-kenya.html.  Accessed June 4, 2018.

Muller, Zoe.  2016.  White giraffes:  The first record of vitiligo in a wild adult giraffe.  African Journal of Ecology 55(1):118-0123.  Accessed June 4, 2018.

August 3 is a special day in the West African nation of Niger.  It is Independence Day, when, in 1960, the country changed from being a French colony to a fully independent nation.  But it is also Arbor Day, the day of the year on which every Niger citizen is expected to plant a tree—to fight desertification.

The simultaneous celebration of independence and tree planting is no accident.  Niger is one of the poorest countries on earth, partly because of the invasion of desert into former crop and forestland.  Droughts have driven much desertification, but so have the practices of rural people.  Needing firewood, they often cut shrubs, trees and sprouts from stumps.  With each passing year, forests were farther away and desert was coming closer.  So, in 1975, the Niger government assigned Arbor Day—a day of national tree-planting—to the same day as their independence.  Trees, they reasoned, were an essential part of their future.  As the mayor of one community said, “We will not let the wind blow us away.”

The results have been spectacular, partly due to the work of Tony Rinaudo, an Australian agriculturist working for the non-profit group World Vision.  Rinaudo was working in Niger in 1983, depressed by the worsening conditions and the lack of progress to improve food supply.  As he looked across a mostly barren field, he detected an occasional sprout.  “In every direction there were no trees.  But then these shrubs caught my eye, and I suddenly realized that this wasn’t a shrub but a tree trying to regrow.”  He calls this the “underground forest,” stumps with living roots that are able to re-sprout and grow.  He and his colleagues created a program called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) that taught and encouraged farmers to protect these sprouts as future trees.  Since then, more than 200 million trees have returned on more than 12 million acres.

Aerial photographs from 1975 to today show an enormous expansion in the numbers and density of trees growing in Niger.  Chris Reij, from the World Resources Institute, who has worked in the region for decades, called this “probably the largest positive environmental transformation in the Sahel and perhaps in all of Africa.”  According to the FMNR website, along with the increase in trees and tree cover have come many benefits—ground-water levels are rising in wells; soil erosion is down and quality is up; more firewood is available, locally and sustainably; crop yields of grain are up by 500,000 tons; a hectare of farm land produces $56 more income per year; and 2.5 million people are living a higher quality of life.

References:

AnydayGuide.  Arbor Day in Niger.  Available at:  https://anydayguide.com/calendar/2073.  Accessed August 3, 2017.

DW Akademie.  2010.  Niger:  Fighting the battle against desertification.  Available at:  http://www.dw.com/en/niger-fighting-the-battle-against-desertification/a-4475725.  Accessed August 3, 2017.

On August 1, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill establishing Hawaii National Park as the nation’s 13^th national park.  The original park included three volcanoes—Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii and Haleakala on the island of Maui.  In 1961, the areas on the two different islands were separated into two parks—Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii and Haleakala National Park on Maui.

The park’s features first came to the nation’s attention in the early 1840s, when the U.S. Exploring Expedition landed there as part of a surveying voyage through the South Pacific.  Their report stimulated the beginnings of tourism visits.  Mark Twain experienced Kilauea in 1866, declaring, “Here was room for the imagination to work.”  Although the park was established in 1916, little was done at first to make it accessible or to protect it.  As one congressman quipped, “It should not cost anything to run a volcano.”  Since that time, of course, Hawaii and its parks have become major tourist attractions.  In 2016, nearly 2 million visitors enjoyed Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, making it the 14^th most visited national park in the country.

The volcanoes of Hawaii are extraordinary for several reasons.  First, they are the most active volcanoes in the world, offering a continuous look at the geological forces that created our landscapes.  Second, they are the most gentle volcanoes, spewing lava and ash at a low rate that allows visitors to get close to these processes without endangering their lives (although great caution should be used and all rules and signs should be followed—these volcanoes are dangerous).  The viewing opportunity is spectacular and unique in the world.  The recent eruption of Kilauea is a contemporary example of both of these characteristics.

Third, and most important for ecological reasons, the Hawaiian Islands are the most distant set of islands from a mainland anywhere in the world.  Consequently, the islands have developed a unique biota over 70 million years.  And because the volcanic activity is constantly adding new land and covering over existing lands with new rock surface, the entire area remains in the earliest successional stages, demonstrating nature’s ability to colonize the rawest of the earth’s environment.  Furthermore, Mauna Loa, as the world’s largest volcano, rises to more than 13,000 feet in elevation.  Adding the depth to the bottom of the crater (and additional 18,000 feet) makes this the highest mountain in the world from base to summit—higher by far than Mt. Everest.

The Hawaiian Islands contain 54 federally protected endangered and threatened species.  Among those is the Nene Goose, the state bird of Hawaii and a relative of the common Canada Goose.  But almost everything about the Nene Goose, from reproductive habits to habitat use and distribution, is so different from the Canada Goose that the Nene is critically endangered.  So is the Mauna Loa silversword, a plant that grows on the rocky slopes of the volcano and reproduces just once after decades of growth.  Subject to grazing by feral pigs, the Mauna Loa silversword was at one time down to a few individual plants.  Intense protection inside the park is now bringing the plant back.

Mauna Loa is also remarkable as a site for atmospheric research.  High on the mountain is the federal government’s Mauna Loa Observatory, famous for its continuous monitoring of carbon dioxide levels in the air, a series going back to the 1950s.  It is a perfect site for this work.  Sitting high on the slopes of the volcano, it lies above the inversion layer that can dramatically change surface conditions daily.  Because there is little or no vegetation growing there, the measurements are also unaffected by effects of plant metabolism, either removing or emitting chemicals into the air.  And because it is so far from the mainland, few local pollution sources impact its measurements.

References:

Earth System Research Laboratory.  About Mauna Loa Observatory.  U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.  Available at:  https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/aboutus/aboutus.html.  Accessed August 1, 2017.

Hamilton, Dwight.  History of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.  National Park Service, Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/kidsyouth/park-history.htm.  Accessed August 1, 2017.

HawaiiHistory.org.  Hawai’i National Park established.  Available at:  http://www.hawaiihistory.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ig.page&pageid=321. Accessed August 1, 2017.

National Park Service.  On the Brink of Extinction:  Paradise in Peril.  Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/nature/onthebrink.htm. Accessed August 1, 2017.

National Park Service.  Lieutenant Charles Wilkes.  Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/historyculture/lieutenant-charles-wilkes.htm. Accessed August 1, 2017.

In my generation of fisheries biologists, we were all required to read the 1887 paper, The Lake as a Microcosm.  The paper was an early expression of ecological principles—the relationship of organisms to their habitat, the cascading of the food chain, the role of birth rates and death rates in maintaining populations.  The author was Stephen A. Forbes, the father of aquatic ecology.

Stephen Alfred Forbes was born on May 29, 1844, in Silver Creek, a small town in far northwestern Illinois.  He was the son of a farmer, who died when Forbes was just ten years old.  The family was supported thereafter by Forbes’ older brother, who eventually sold the farm to keep the family out of poverty.

When he was 16, Forbes joined the northern army to fight in the Civil War.  Though hardly more than a boy, he rose rapidly to the rank of captain.  He was captured by the confederacy and held as a prisoner of war for six months.  When he was discharged at the end of the war, he attended medical school, but never completed his degree (put off, it is said, by the need to perform surgery without anesthetics).  Instead, he taught school and devoted himself to the study of nature, always his fundamental interest.

In 1872, he took a job as curator of the Illinois Natural History Museum in Bloomington, Illinois.  When the museum was transferred to the state government five years later, he became its director.  During this time, Forbes wrote actively for scientific journals about the natural history of his home state, including some of the earliest descriptions of aquatic invertebrates and an ongoing survey of the biology of the Illinois River.  In all, Forbes published more than 500 articles about natural history.

When the museum was renamed the Illinois Natural History Survey and moved to Champaign-Urbana, Forbes moved with it.  He was also named the state entomologist and became a professor at the University of Illinois—all without any degrees.  That deficiency was corrected in 1884, when the University of Indiana awarded him a doctorate in zoology.  Forbes eventually rose to Director of the Illinois Natural History Survey, from 1917 until his death in 1930.

He was an able administrator, but his great skill was in the field and laboratory.  He reveled in the waters and fields of Illinois and throughout the country.  His capacity for observation led him to understand what few had grasped at the time—nature was a vast complex of relationships among species and their habitats, a “community” and an ecosystem.  The Lake as a Microcosm is a classic because it lays out so many principles of ecology with both scientific accuracy and elegant prose.  Two excerpts demonstrate his understanding.

“If one wishes to become acquainted with the black bass, for example, he will learn but little if he limits himself to that species. He must evidently study also the species upon which it depends for its existence, and the various conditions upon which these depend. He must likewise study the species with which it comes in competition, and the entire system of conditions affecting their prosperity, and by the time he has studied all these sufficiently he will find that he has run through the whole complicated mechanism of the aquatic life of the locality, both animal and vegetable, of which his species forms but a single element.

It is a self-evident proposition that a species cannot maintain itself continuously, year after year, unless its birth-rate at least equals its death-rate. If it is preyed upon by another species, it must produce regularly an excess of individuals for destruction, or else it must certainly dwindle and disappear. On the other hand, the dependent species evidently must not appropriate, on an average, any more than the surplus and excess of individuals upon which it preys, for if it does so, it will regularly diminish its own food supply, and thus indirectly, but surely, exterminate itself.”

Stephen Forbes presided over an era of massive change in the way science considered natural history.  When he began his career, natural history was about collecting artifacts—unusual objects, beautiful specimens of birds, shells and rocks, and exotic species from foreign lands.  Then Forbes and others began seeking to understand the processes that produced such beautiful and wonderful plants and animals.  Then they began using those processes to improve the human condition through agricultural techniques and natural preservation.  And by the time of his death in 1930, natural history had become the science of ecology.

References:

Encyclopedia.com.  Forbes, Stephen Alfred (1844-1930) American Entomologist And Naturalist.  Available at:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/historians-and-chronicles/historians-miscellaneous-biographies/stephen-alfred-forbes.  Accessed May 29, 2018.

Forbes, Stephen A.  1887.  The Lake as a Microcosm.  Bulletin of the Scientific Association (Peoria, Illinois) 1887:77-87.  Available at:  http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/FORB1887.htm.  Accessed May 29, 2018.

Howard, L. O.  1931.  Biographical Memoir of Stephen Alfred Forbes, 1844-1930.  National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, Volume XV.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/forbes-stephen.pdf.  Accessed May 29, 2018.

John Muir didn’t like organizations of any kind—churches, political parties, clubs, even nations.  Although he lived in the U.S. for most of his life, he never really thought of himself as belonging to the country.  He listed his address as “earth-planet, universe.” He only became a U.S. citizen late in life to obtain a passport needed for international travel (learn more about John Muir here).

He made one exception to his policy of avoiding groups, and he did so in a big way.  On May 28, 1892, Muir joined a small group of fellow Californians to create what is now the largest grassroots environmental organizations in the world—the Sierra Club.

Muir had pondered starting an organization of like-minded wilderness lovers for some time, encouraged by many of his friends.  But he resisted, guided by his firm avoidance of people gathered into groups.  Preserving his beloved Sierra Nevada Mountains, however, proved more powerful than his urge to stay unaligned.  And so, led by J. Henry Senger and a group of students at the University of California-Berkeley, Muir and a few others founded the Sierra Club.

The club’s purpose was “to explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; and to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada.”  John Muir became the club’s first president, serving until his death in 1914. The club’s charter members numbered 182, many of them scientists.  The club began publishing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1893, which continues to this day as the magazine Sierra.

Almost immediately, the club began influencing conservation affairs.  It fought successfully against shrinking the borders of Yosemite National Park and for the protection of other western scenic icons—including the Grand Canyon—as national parks and monuments.  Working alongisde John Muir, it lost the fight to protect the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite from damming, a heartbreak that is often cited as a prelude to Muir’s death (learn more about Hetch Hetchy here).

A major early feature of the club was a series of annual mountaineering excursions.  Originally, it was an “alpine club,” organized around the interests of those who loved to explore the high mountains.  The founders, including Muir, understood that bringing novices into the mountains, for a gentle but authentic experience, would help build public support for conservation.  For years, Muir himself led the annual outings that became a signature of the club.   The Sierra Club has continued this practice, with the goal of getting people out of the city and into nature.  Today, the club sponsors more than 20,000 outings per year.

Until the 1950s, the Sierra Club remained largely focused on California and adjoining states.  But with growing national environmental interest, the club expanded its programs to cover the entire nation.  In 1951, the club restated its purpose, now with the intent “to explore, enjoy and preserve the Sierra Nevada and other scenic resources of the United States.”  Under the entrepreneurial leadership of David Brower, the club began a long-term relationship with wilderness photographer Ansel Adams, producing books, calendars and other artworks (learn more about Ansel Adams here).  Now, the beauty of nature could travel to the homes of the nation, as well as the nation travelling to them.

The club has since become the largest and most well-known environmental organization in the world.  It counts 3 million members and supports in 64 local chapters located across the U.S. and around the world.  The club’s headquarters remain in San Francisco, but in 1963 it opened an office in Washington, DC, to allow access to federal agencies and lawmakers.  The club has taken on a broader environmental agenda, recognizing that pollution was as big a threat to nature as was direct development.  The club continues to lobby for land protection, but also for clean air, clean water, and reduction of our dependence on fossil fuels.

References:

Cohen, Michael P.  1988.  The History of the Sierra Club:  1892-1970.  Sierra Club Books.  Excerpt available at:  https://vault.sierraclub.org/history/origins/.  Accessed May 28, 2018.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Sierra Club, American Conservation Group.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sierra-Club.  Accessed May 28, 2018.

Sierra Club.  About the Sierra Club.  Available at:  https://www.sierraclub.org/about.  Accessed May 28, 2018.

We revel in the glory of the African elephant, giant panda or Galapagos tortoise—the charismatic megafauna that gets most of our attention, whether on television or at the zoo.  But I think the group that deserves the award as the world’s number one animal group—perhaps we should call them the charismatic omnifauna—are the birds.

We all love birds.  According to the 2011 Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Association Recreation, about 50 million Americans feed or observe birds at their homes, spending billions of dollars on bird feeders, sunflower seeds and suet.  USA Today reports that eagles are the most common mascots of high school and college sports teams, virtually lapping the mascot in second place (tigers).  I won’t bore you with more statistics—suffice it to say that only a bird-brain wouldn’t agree that birds are the greatest.

One dedicated bird-lover was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  On this day, May 27, in 1784, Mozart went to the contemporary Viennese equivalent of a pet store.  He was amazed by a bird that sang a variation on a work that he had just completed—Piano Concerto in G, K. 453—under the utmost secrecy.   Bird behaviorists Meredith West and Andrew King have suggested that this particular bird probably had heard snatches of the folk tune on which Mozart’s concerto was patterned, but Mozart, known as a skillful and absent-minded whistler, might have stimulated the bird to respond.  He bought the bird, a European Starling, and for the next three years, it was his companion and muse.  When his pet died, Mozart mourned as if for a human—a funeral procession accompanied the grieving composer to the graveyard, sang hymns and listened to an elegy Mozart wrote for the occasion (“He was not naughty, quite, But gay and bright, And under all his brag A foolish wag…”).

This day marks the birthday of another important bird lover—Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1902.  Carson started watching birds early and continued throughout her life, whether at the bird feeder in her backyard or on a Pennsylvania overlook as the annual hawk migration passed by.

Carson’s love of nature expressed itself in her twin loves of science and writing.  For decades she nurtured the two loves simultaneously, becoming a leading scientific editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a nationally acclaimed nature writer.  But when her third book, The Sea Around Us, hit the New York Times best-seller list and stayed for 86 weeks, her fate was decided—she quit her government job and became a writer, full-time.

Her next book, and her last, is the classic for which we universally praise Carson, Silent Spring.  She began the book with a fable that laments the loss of bird song:

“On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.”

The cause of this silence?  The wanton aerial spraying of pesticides, whose impact Carson detailed in the body of the book.  Her perseverance to get to the bottom of this problem and share it with the world, even as she gradually succumbed to breast cancer, has made our world immeasurably healthier and more beautiful.  And through the book, Carson became the acknowledged prophet of the modern environmental movement.

So, as May nears its end and summer is about to begin, let us praise the sounds that fill our lives with beauty and joy, and thank Rachel Carson and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for bringing them to us.

References:

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

West, Meredith J. And Anddrew P. King.  1990.  Mozart’s Starling.  American Scientist 78(2):106-114.  Available at:  http://www.indiana.edu/~aviary/Research/Mozart%27s%20Starling.pdf.  Accessed May 28, 2018.