Category: Uncategorized

In the United States, wildlife belongs to the state in which it lives.  And the individual states have the authority to regulate the management of that wildlife.  Before 1900, unscrupulous hunters took advantage of a legal loophole by poaching animals in one state and then moving them to another state where the harvest and sale of the animals was legal.  States were helpless to control the change in jurisdiction because they could not regulate interstate commerce.

Until 1900, that is, when the Lacey Act became federal law.  John Lacey, an Iowa congressional representative, was concerned about the effect of dwindling wildlife and the importation of exotic species that became agricultural nuisances.  He introduced a bill to control both.  The bill, known as the Lacey Act of 1900, passed congress in late April and President William McKinley signed it into law on May 25, 1900.  The Lacey Act became the first federal wildlife regulation.

And it has remained one of the most effective conservation laws in history.  The law made illegal the interstate commerce of wild animals or their parts if killed in violation of a state law.  No longer could poachers kill protected animals in one state and sneak them into another state where their possession and sale were legal.  Coupled with state laws that made market hunting illegal within an individual state (which most states enacted soon after this), the Lacey Act effectively stopped market hunting in the United States.

The Lacey Act has been amended many times over its century of implementation.  It now covers not only wild birds and mammals, but also fish and other aquatic organisms, plants and any wildlife taken in violation of international laws.   The most pertinent section of the law reads in part as follows:

“It is unlawful for any person – (1) to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase any fish or wildlife or plant taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law, treaty, or regulation of the United States or in violation of any Indian tribal law; (2) to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce – (A) any fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law or regulation of any State or in violation of any foreign law; (B) any plant taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law or regulation of any State; or (C) any prohibited wildlife species (subject to subsection (e) of this section);….”

Other parts of the law regulate the marking of wildlife so that the origin can be confirmed; define that guides are subject to the law; regulate importation of various species considered ecologically dangerous; and outlaw “animal terrorism,” meaning attempts to interfere with businesses that use or trade legally in animals.

As the Lacey Act has been enlarged and amended, it has become more controversial, challenged many times in judicial appeals.  While most Americans endorse the protection of wildlife, they are less united on the law’s use for plants, particularly for commercial wood.  Recently, raids on the Gibson Guitar Company for their presumed illegal use of endangered wood raised the specter that the Lacey Act was inappropriately used to attack a long-standing American company and their beloved product—the Gibson guitar.  Similarly, the flooring company Lumber Liquidators recently paid a $13.15 million fine and received a five-year probationary sentence for use and mislabeling of imported endangered woods, believed to be the largest criminal penalty ever levied through the Lacey Act.

Despite legal challenges and regularly required clarification of how and when the law can be used, the Lacey Act has been the salvation for wildlife within the United States.  In his extensive review of the Lacey Act in 1995, legal analyst Robert S. Anderson ended this way:

“Addressing his House colleagues in 1900, Congressman John Lacey said, ‘There is a compensation in the distribution of plants, birds, and animals by the God of nature. Man’s attempt to change and interfere often leads to serious results.’ He acted on these sentiments by introducing a brief statute that created little stir during its initial consideration and remains somewhat obscure, even among environmentalists, almost 100 years later. Though Lacey is rarely ranked with notable conservationists such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold, his legacy remains vibrant and effective today in the form of a law that is arguably our nation’s most effective tool in the fight against an illegal wildlife trade whose size, profitability, and threat to global biodiversity Lacey could probably not have imagined.”

Three cheers for the conservationist of the day, John Lacey!

References:

Anderson, Robert S.  1995.  The Lacey Act:  America’s Premier Weapon in the Fight against Unlawful Wildlife Trafficking.  Public Land and Resources Law Review, 16:29-85.  Available at:  https://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1199&context=plrlr.  Accessed May 25, 2018.

Larkin, Paul.  2012.  The Lacey Act:  From Conservation to Criminalization.  The Heritage Foundation.  Available at:  https://www.heritage.org/report/the-lacey-act-conservation-criminalization.  Accessed May 25, 2018.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Lacey Act.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/le/pdffiles/Lacey.pdf.  Accessed May 25, 2018.

Wisch, Rebecca F.  2003.  Overview of the Lacey Act (16 U.S.C. SS3371-3378).  Animal Legal & Historical Center, Michigan State University.  Available at:  https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-lacey-act-16-usc-ss-3371-3378.  Accessed May 25, 2018.

The story of bison (Bison bison) conservation is usually told from the United States perspective, but a Canadian version closely parallels the U.S. experience.

The bison was once the most abundant large herbivore of the North American continent, with vast herds of 30-60 million animals living from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Canada.  As humans settled the lands, converting forests and prairies to farmlands and towns, they exterminated bison populations.  The grasslands of the Great Plains, in the U.S. and Canada, remained the last available habitat for bison.

Bison played an important ecological role in those grasslands.  They grazed the vegetation as they roamed over large areas.  Dispersing seeds as they went, bison continually renewed the floral community.  A diverse faunal community thrived in the grasslands, with hundreds of bird species and dozens of small mammals.

But the Great Plains proved no impediment to the onslaught of human settlement.  Enabled by a growing network of railroads, cattle ranchers drove out bison herds and farming uprooted the sod.  Ruthless hunters shot every animal they could, shipping enormous quantities of hides and bones to booming east-coast markets.  Soon, bison were nearly gone, reduced to a few hundred individuals in isolated herds.  By 1881, Canada considered bison extirpated.

The folly of bison mis-management, however, was soon replaced by efforts at restoration.  In 1907, Canada established a pure bison herd of about 700 animamls at Elk Island National Park, near Edmonton, Alberta.  That herd has been the source for bison reintroduction since then, not only in Canada, but also around the world.

Grasslands National Park was a “natural” for bison reintroduction.  The park is in southern Saskatchewan, just north of the international border with Montana.  The park ecosystem is a short-grass prairie, subject to strong winds, harsh and variable climate, and long periods of drought, and with vegetation historically maintained by large herbivores—namely prairie bison.

The reintroduction project began in December, 2005, when 71 animals were translocated from Elk Island to Grasslands.  They were kept in a 40-acre enclosure for the winter, to allow the animals to acclimate to their new home.  On May 24, 2006, the bison were released to roam freely in the park’s 70-square-mile West Block.  For the first time in 120 years, bison had rejoined the natural ecosystem.

The herd has thrived.  In 2015, it was thinned and now numbers over 300 adult animals.  Parks Canada has followed the successful Grasslands reintroduction with a similar project in Banff National Park.  Sixteen bison were translocated to Banff from Elk Island in 1917, where they are being held for release into the wild during later 2018.  Bison populations now exist at seven Canadian national parks, including both subspecies of plains and wood bison.

The IUCN classifies the bison as a “near-threatened” species, as populations are still low, many are hybrids with cattle, and many carry chronic diseases.  Wild, disease-free populations exist only in a few protected conservation areas and number fewer than 5,000 individuals.  Despite these ongoing worries, however, like so many wildlife species that had been nearly gone a century ago, the bison is on the way back—in the U.S. and Canada.

References:

Defenders of Wildlife.  Basic Facts About Bison.  Available at:  https://defenders.org/bison/basic-facts.  Accessed May 23, 2018.

Parks Canada.  2017.  Bison Reintroduction.  Available at:  https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2017/02/bison_reintroduction.html.  Accessed May 23, 2018.

Parks Canada.  Grasslands National Park Bison update.  Available at:  https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/sk/grasslands/visit/visit7.  Accessed May 23, 2018.

The United Nations has designated May 22 annually as the International Day for Biological Diversity.  The day commemorates the day on which the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in 1992 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Biological diversity, as we all know, is of tremendous importance.  Our lives depend on it in dozens of ways, from providing our food to cleaning our air and water and providing us recreation and inspiration.  However, as we all also know, biodiversity is generally sacrificed to the more direct and immediate demands of the economic system.

The creation of the Convention on Biological Diversity was a giant step forward in recognizing and valuing those aspects of nature’s bounty that typically lie outside the economic system.  The Convention actually entered into force on December 29, 1993, after it had been ratified by at least 30 nations.  Today, 196 countries are parties to the convention, including the European Union (adding 28 countries to the list).  The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that has not joined the convention, despite being a leader in its origin and content.  The U.S. acts in accordance with the convention, but the Senate has never taken up the necessary action to ratify U.S. commitment.

The convention proclaims that “conservation of biological diversity is a common concern of humankind,” and it lists three specific objectives as “the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources….”

The value of biodiversity is enormous.  At least 40% of the world’s economic productivity relies directly on biological resources; in developing countries, that percentage is much higher.  Estimating the economic value of biodiversity as a proxy for its total value has been covered in thousands of analyses.  A 2012 paper lists 1350 individual valuations, covering 22 different ecosystem services across 10 biomes.  Total average economic value, in international-dollars/hectare/year, ranges from a high of $352,000 for coral reefs to a low of $491 for the open ocean.  The second highest value exists in coastal wetlands, at just under $194,000.

A worthwhile side note:  The UN celebrates the International Day for Cultural Diversity on May 21, the day before their biodiversity day.  The juxtaposing of these days may be a coincidence, but their relationship is real.  As Gro Harlem Brundtland so famously noted, environmental sustainability is one leg of the three legged stool of global success, along with freedom from want and quality public health.

Despite its increased profile, biodiversity remains under great stress.  In its latest global report, the Convention on Biological Diversity notes the status of 55 target elements from the 2011-2020 strategic plan.  Of those 55, only 5 are on track for reaching their targets by 2020.  Among those five, the only substantive goal is protecting 17% of the earth’s land and freshwater ecosystems.

So, biodiversity conservation has a long journey ahead of it.  The International Day for Biological Diversity is one way to keep the importance of this work in the public eye.  A new theme is selected each year.  In 2018, the theme is “Celebrating 25 Years of Action for Biodiversity.”  Let’s hope that in 25 more years, there will be much more to celebrate.

References:

Convention on Biological Diversity.  1992.  Convention on Biological Diversity.  Available at:  https://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

Convention on Biological Diversity.  Global Biodiversity Outlook 4.  Available at:  https://www.cbd.int/gbo/gbo4/publication/gbo4-en.pdf.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

Convention on Biological Diversity.  International Day for Biological Diversity 2018.  Available at:  https://www.cbd.int/idb/2018/.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

de Groot, Rudolf et al.  2012.  Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units.  Ecosystem Services 1(1):50-61.  Available at:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041612000101.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

The Rio Grande is one of North America’s great rivers, travelling 1885 miles from headwaters in Colorado, through New Mexico and forming the border between the U.S. and Mexico for more than 1200 miles in Texas.  Yet, because of extensive water withdrawals, in many years, the Rio Grande dries up before it reaches the sea.

To bring order to water withdrawals between Mexico and the U.S., the two countries have entered into water-sharing agreements.  The first was signed on May 21, 1906.  It requires the U.S. to provide Mexico with 60,000 acre-feet of water annually from the upper region of the watershed. That water generally comes from Elephant Butte Reservoir, in central New Mexico, which is a major water-storage impoundment providing water for irrigation and municipal use in New Mexico and the El Paso-Juarez region.  The river often stops flowing south of Elephant Butte because the water is all allocated and withdrawn, leaving none for the channel itself.

The second agreement was signed in 1944.  It allocates water from the lower region of the river, downstream of El Paso.  This treaty requires Mexico to provide 350,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. from its tributaries annually; the U.S. does not have to provide any water from its tributaries to Mexico.  The river often also dries up in this region because of water withdrawals, and often is empty when it reaches the ocean.  Because of the use of water, the Rio Grande is often considered two rivers, upstream and downstream, rather than one.

The Rio Grande is a good example of a reality that is common around the world.  Rivers often form the borders between nations, and, therefore, their watersheds and water flows are shared among nations.  According to the UN, nearly half of the earth’s surface is in watersheds shared by two or more countries, through a total of 263 rivers and lakes that serve as national borders.  Transboundary waters, as they are called, involved 145 nations.

Often, rivers connect many more than two nations.  Nineteen water basins are shared by more than five countries, including the Congo, Nile, Rhine and Zambezi.  The Danube, which runs through central Europe, flows through 18 countries!

As Mark Twain famously said, “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.”  To avoid fighting, more than 3600 treaties, conventions and other agreements have been negotiated to allocate the water in shared watersheds.  Today, most countries deal peacefully with their neighbors about water, even when they may engage in violent and long-running contests over other issues, such as religion, immigration or borders.  The UN cites that the last half-century has seen only 37 aggressive disputes over water, while 150 treaties have been signed.  Consequently, an entire discipline has developed in international affairs to address water-sharing concerns—water diplomacy.

Water, as we know, is the most valuable resource.  And nations, even warring nations, understand that their short-term and long-term existence depends on the orderly and rational allocation of the water that nature makes them share.

References:

Carter, Nicole T. et al.  2017.  U.S.-Mexican Water Sharing :  Background and Recent Deveopoments.  Congressional Research Service.  Available at:  https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43312.pdf.  Accessed May 21, 2018.

International Boundary & Water Commission.  Treaties Between the U.S. and Mexico, Convention of May 21, 1906.  Available at:  https://www.ibwc.gov/Treaties_Minutes/treaties.html.  Accessed May 21, 2018.

Rister, M. Edward  et al.  2001.  Challenge and Opportunities for Water of the Rio Grande.  Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 43(3):367-378.  Available at:  https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/113529/2/jaae433ip6.pdf.  Accessed May 21, 2018.

United Nations.  International Decade for Act ‘Water For Life’ 2005-2015.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/transboundary_waters.shtml.  Accessed May 21, 2018.

The European Community chose, in 2008, to designate May 20 each year as a day to celebrate the importance of seas and oceans to the European people.  By that action, the combined nations of Europe recognized that Europe is as much a maritime continent as a land continent.

Consider these facts about the relationship of Europe to its coasts and marine environments.  23 of the EU’s 28 nations have a coastline.  Europe has 70,000 km of coastline in all, bordering the Mediterranean, North, Baltic, Norwegian and Black Seas.  That coastline is seven times as long at the U.S. coastline and 4 times as long as Russia’s.  Almost half of Europe’s population lives in maritime regions, and 40% of the GDP comes from there.  Europe’s maritime region is the largest of any nation in the world.  In fact, Europe controls more marine territory than terrestrial territory!

However, that marine territory, although still highly productive, is not in good shape environmentally.  About two-thirds of marine habitats and one-quarter of species conditions were deemed “unfavorable” by the EU in its latest report on ocean conditions.  Invasive species are on the rise, with 320 new non-native species observed since 2000.  Half of commercial fish stocks in European waters are fully or over-exploited, and fish catches have been declining over the past decade.  Marine pollution continues to grow, with increasing worries about noise from shipping, renewable energy development and oil drilling.  Plastic litter is also being recognized as an emerging issue, with most litter originating from land-based activities.

As a consequence, the EU has enacted an Integrated Marine Policy, or IMP, to govern uses and conservation of marine areas.  The first objective of the IMP is “maximizing the sustainable use of the oceans and seas….”  The objective includes efforts to reduce and adapt to climate change and reduce all forms of pollution.  For fisheries, the objective includes eliminating discards of unwanted catches; outlawing harmful fishing practices; reducing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing; and developing aquaculture that does not threaten wild fish stocks or create localized pollution.

The EU has also increased the pace of creating marine protected areas.  Nearly 8000 protected sites exist, covering almost 6% of the total marine area.  More than half of that area is in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas.

European Maritime Day is one effort to raise the profile of marine conservation and to focus leaders annually on marine issues.  Each year, a new theme is covered during a major conference held at rotating sites around Europe.  The theme for the 2021 virtual meeting is “A green recovery for the blue economy.”

References:

European Commission.  European Maritime Day.  Available at:  https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/maritimeday/en/about-emd.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

European Commission.  Maritime Affairs—Facts and figures.  Available at:  https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/documentation/facts_and_figures_en.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

European Environment Agency.  2015.  Europe’s seas:  productive, but not healthy or clean.  Available at:  https://www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/europe2019s-seas-productive-but-not.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

European Environment Agency.  2015.  Marine protected areas in Europe’s seas.  Available at:  https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/marine-protected-areas-in-europes.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

European Parliament.  The Integrated Maritime Policy.  Available at:  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_3.3.8.html.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

European Union.  2008.  Joint Tripartite Declaration Establishing a “European Maritime Day.”  Available at:  https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/maritimeday/sites/mare-emd/files/20080520_signed_declaration_en.pdf.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

When you walk into Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, you are met by two gigantic African elephants, locked in battle.  When you walk around the mammal hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, you see a series of magnificent displays of African wildlife in natural settings.  Whenever you observe a diorama of a natural history scene anywhere, you are witnessing the legacy of Carl Akeley.

Carl Ethan Akeley was born on May 19, 1864, in Clarendon, New York (died in 1926).  He cared little for the work of the family farm, but fell in love with animals and was intrigued by the possibility of preserving them after they died.  At 12, he stuffed his first specimen, a friend’s canary—he wanted to bring her comfort by preserving the animal so it could continue to be with her.  He never was far from taxidermy for the remainder of his life.

After leaving high school, he moved to Rochester and began work for Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, which collected and prepared specimens for museums.  Akeley quickly learned the trade, but disparaged it, calling the current practice as the “upholsterer’s method of mounting animals.”  Skins were stuffed with sawdust, cotton and straw into the vague shape of an animal, sewn together and dropped on their straightened legs.

His big break came when P.T. Barnum asked Ward’s to preserve the memory of the famous elephant, Jumbo, which had been killed in a railroad accident.  Akeley and a colleague, J. William Critchley, worked for five months on the project, creating a new style of taxidermy.  They built up the body from bones or wooden and steel elements, sculpted the elephant’s body in clay, sprayed it with wet cement, and stretched the skin over it, making a realistic and gigantic mount.  A new, naturalistic era of taxidermy began.

Two years later, Akeley moved to the Milwaukee Public Museum and began making realistic dioramas of animals in their natural habitats.  His success there led to his employment by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1896.  While there, he made several trips to Africa to collect specimens.  During a trip in 1905, he and his wife, Delia, shot the two elephants that still stand in the central hall of the museum.

But it was his first trip to Africa, in 1896, that made Akeley a bit of a legend.  While shooting what he thought was a warthog, he wounded a leopard.  The leopard charged Akeley, biting him in the hand.  Rather than trying to escape the jaws, Akeley jammed his fist down the leopard’s throat and used his other arm to attempt strangling the animal.  They wrestled to exhaustion, with Akeley finally outlasting the leopard.

In 1909, Akeley moved to the American Museum of Natural History, where he worked for the rest of his life (taken ill on an African expedition in 1926, he died and was buried in Africa).  His approach to taxonomy reached its zenith at the New York museum, now permanently displayed in a series of 28 dioramas in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals.

The secret to his mastery of taxidermy lay beneath the skin.  He was actually a sculptor. He studied animals alive in the field and took careful measurements of the animal carcasses.  He also was a sculptor, creating life-sized pieces in bronze (a pair still stand in the central hall of the American Museum of Natural History).  He was an inventor, also, with dozens of patents.  One was for an improved motion-picture camera that replaced the bulky machines he had to take to Africa on early trips.  Another was a cement sprayer to cover his clay sculptures that is still used in commercial applications.

Today, killing animals to display them seems barbaric, but when Akeley began working, it was considered an act of conservation.  Africa was being rapidly developed by colonial nations, and African wildlife was disappearing at astonishing rates.  Neither zoos nor photography were considered adequate to educate the public about wildlife, but museum dioramas could serve that purpose. Fearing the extinction of African species before the developed world could see or study them, museums took the desperate step of hunting them.  So, like Audubon a century before, Akeley and his colleagues shot rare and precious animals and brought their remains back to the great museums of the world.

But Akeley realized that more was needed than simply showing people dead animals in artificial settings.  One of his most important taxidermy projects created a display of mountain gorillas, using specimens he shot in the Belgian Congo.  His motives were pure:  “I have been constantly aware of the rapid and disconcerting disappearance of African wildlife. [This] gave rise to the vision of the culmination of my work in a great museum exhibit, artistically conceived, which should perpetuate the animal life, the native customs, and the scenic beauties of Africa.”  But it was also one of his most heart-rending projects.  After wounding an immature gorilla, he said, “I came up before he was dead.  There was a heartbreaking expression of piteous pleading on his face.  He would have come to my arms for comfort.”   Over time, Akeley was haunted by the feeling that he was a murderer.

Observing mountain gorillas in the Belgian Congo, Akeley realized that conserving the habitat of the animals was more important than collecting them.  He worked tirelessly to convince King Albert of Belgium that this portion of the Congo should be preserved for mountain gorillas.  In 1925, the government established a 200-square-mile gorilla sanctuary.  That sanctuary has grown into the 3,000-square-mile Virunga National Park, home to a majority of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas.  Without Akeley’s persistence, most experts believe the mountain gorilla would now be extinct.

References:

American Museum of Natural History.  2016.  The Man Who Made Habitat Dioramas.  Available at:  https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/news-posts/the-man-who-made-habitat-dioramas/.  Accessed May 17, 2018.

Barclay, Bridgitte.  2015.  Through the Plexiglass:  A History of Museum Dioramas.  The Atlantic, Oct 14, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/taxidermy-animal-habitat-dioramas/410401/.  Accessed May 17, 2018.

NPR.  2010.  Wrestling Leopards, Felling Apes:  A Life in Taxidermy.  Available at:  https://www.npr.org/2010/12/04/131107085/wrestling-leopards-felling-apes-a-life-in-taxidermy.  Accessed May 17, 2018.

The Field Museum.  Carl Akeley.  Available at:  https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/history/carl-akeley.  Accessed May 17, 2018

David A. Johnston, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, was camped near Mount St. Helens on the morning of May 18, 1980.  He had been stationed there to monitor smaller earthquakes and eruptions on the mountain over the previous several months.  That morning, at 8:32, he radioed, “This is it!”  And it was.  Mount St. Helens erupted that morning, destroying 200 the surrounding landscape and killing 57 people, including Johnston.

Mount St. Helens, in central Washington, was one of the beautiful, cone-shaped mountains of the Cascades, standing tall at 9600 feet above sea level.  The mountain, like others in the volcanically active Cascade Range, had experienced eruptions before, one around 1800 that might have been bigger than the modern eruption.  But this one was different.  A magnitude-5.1 earthquake under the mountain dislodged the north-facing slope, creating the largest landslide ever recorded—anywhere on earth.  Then the volcano erupted through the barren flank, sending a wave of rock and ash sideways, instantly destroying 200 square miles of forest.  Eruptions followed from the top of the mountain, spewing ash and smoke 12 miles into the air.  The mountain’s height dropped by 1300 feet.  A wave of mud moved across the landscape at 90 miles per hour.

The destruction to the ecosystem was enormous.  In the blast zone, trees were laid flat; 4 billion board-feet of timber were lost, enough to build 500,000 homes.  Spirit Lake, just below the mountain, was covered in ash and completely disappeared, along with 15 miles of the North Fork Toutle River.  Along with the 57 human fatalities, an estimated 11 million fish, 1 million birds and about 20,000 large mammals perished.  The federal government estimated the total damage at $1.1 billion.

The eruption itself is a testament to the power of nature, but even more remarkable is the recovery.  Observers at the time expected recovery of the ecosystem to take generations, perhaps centuries.  But once again, nature demonstrated the power and resilience of natural processes.  The federal government created the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument (a U. S. Forest Service property) so that scientists could study the natural recovery process.

The pace and scope of recovery have surprised everyone.  Within days, insects had returned.  Within weeks, plants were sprouting.  Lupines, which are able to fix nitrogen from the air and thus take advantage of the available landscape, populated quickly, their beautiful flowered stalks decorating the ashy grey ground.  The river quickly reformed a channel to carry melting water and rainwater from the newly sculpted mountainside.  Likewise, Spirit Lake began to reform, capturing the runoff water.  Elk have returned to graze on the lush vegetation.

Today, nearly 40 years after the eruption, the Mount St. Helens ecosystem is a laboratory that challenges much of what we had thought about succession.  The ecosystem is not the same, so the ecological processes are less about recovery than about creation.  Spirit Lake, for example, which had been a relatively barren cold-water lake is now shallower, more productive and more diverse.  Coniferous forests have been replaced in many areas by deciduous forests of alders, which also can fix nitrogen from the air.

The lesson, I believe, is not that nature is fragile, but that nature is tough.  A physical process like a volcano, earthquake, flood or drought may have profound acute impacts, but the persistent and patient biological processes that follow will create a new ecosystem as interesting, beautiful and productive as the one it replaced.  In the end, nature wins.

References:

Bagley, Mary.  2013.  Mount St. Helens Eruption:  Facts & Information.  Live Science, February 23, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.livescience.com/27553-mount-st-helens-eruption.html.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

Casey, Michael.  2015.  35 years after Mount St. Helens eruption, nature returns.  CBS News, May 18, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/35-years-after-mt-st-helens-eruption-nature-returns/.  Accessed May 16, 2018.

Lindsey, Rebecca.  1984.  Devastation and Recovery at Mt. St. Helens.  NASA Earth Observatory, June 17, 1984.  Available at:  https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sthelens.php.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

Swenson, Keith and David Catchpoole.  2012.  After devastation … the recovery.  Creation Ministries International, 14 November 2012.  Available at:  https://creation.com/after-devastation-the-recovery.  Accessed May 18, 2018.

The Australian state of New South Wales completed its first biobanking agreement on May 17, 2010.  The agreement placed 80 hectares of native vegetation into a permanent preserve in exchange for $1.7 million.  This particular reserve includes 36 hectares of the critically endangered Cumberland Plain ecosystem, which is home to 17 threatened species.

Biobanking is one class of “ex situ conservation,” which seeks to compensate for environmental degradation in one place by improving or protecting the environment in another place.  The method has been used in the U.S. since the 1970s for wetland mitigation.  For example, if a road must be built through a wetland, then a comparable piece of wetland somewhere else needs to be protected or improved.  The protected wetlands are in “mitigation banks” created by other landowners who are willing to maintain their lands as permanent, maintained wetlands in exchange for a financial payment.  Many nations have similar limited programs for specific types of habitats or the habitats of endangered species.

The biobanking scheme in New South Wales was created by the Threatened Species Conservation Act of 1995, but it took many years to be implemented.  It is a complex scheme with several significant elements.  First, an assessment process was required that could evaluate a piece of ground and determine what biodiversity values were either being destroyed by its development or enhanced by its protection and maintenance.   Biodiversity value relates to the composition, structure and function of ecosystems, a more comprehensive definition than is typically used in environmental assessments.

Second, sites need to be enrolled that become the lands to be protected or enhanced.  In the first case in New South Wales, 80 hectares were enrolled by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, who own the site in southwest Sydney.  Protecting urban lands, like those around Sydney, is particularly important in Australia, where development and high-priority environmental lands often overlap.  The program now lists 83 land parcels that have enrolled, and the website lists 158 needs for additional lands to be enrolled.

Third, a market needs to be established that allows developers to buy “credits” from the protected lands.  This is handled in New South Wales by the Ministry of Climate Change, Environment and Water.  The market price includes two elements.  First is a price for a trust fund that the government operates that uses investment returns to pay landowners for their annual costs of maintaining and improving the property.  That trust fund currently has a $50 million balance.  Second is a price for the value of the credits themselves, that the property owner can determine based on competition.  In the case of the first New South Wales property listed, the trust fund cost was $555,000 and the value of the credits themselves was $1.1 million.

Although some conservationists feel such ex situ conservation schemes are inappropriate because they fail to protect all sites everywhere, most believe that this represents a positive step.  It helps to put economic values on conservation so conservation can be compared to other land uses, and it engages private enterprise in the sustainability journey, a process that most experts believe is both desirable and inevitable.  Expect more of this, not less.

References:

Financial Review.  2010.  NSW:  BioBank scheme to reduce diversity, criticis say.  Financial Review, May 17, 2010.  Available at:  http://www.afr.com/news/politics/nsw-biobank-scheme-to-reduce-diversity-critics-say-20100517-ivj8w.  Accessed May 15, 2018.

NSW Environmental Trust.  2016.  Annual Report, 2015-2106.  Available at:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/grants/160581-annual-report-2016-trust.pdf.  Accessed May 15, 2018.

Rodricks, Sasha.  2010.  Biodiversity banking and offset scheme of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.  TEEBcase.  Available at:  http://img.teebweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Biodiversity-Banking-and-Offset-scheme-New-South-Wales-Australia.pdf.  Accessed May 15, 2018.

UNDP.  Biodiversity Offsets.  Available at:  https://www.undp.org/content/sdfinance/en/home/solutions/biodiversity-offset.html.  Accessed May 15, 2018.

One of the world’s greatest ecologists and one of Spain’s great scientists was Ramon Margalef, born May 16, 1919 (died 2004).  Margalef lived through—and broadly influenced—the development of ecology into a mature and meaningful scientific discipline.

Ramon Margalef i Lopez was born in Barcelona, where he said he “lost time in Trade School and other foolishness.”  As a boy, he loved to watch the life in water puddles, intrigued by the tiny organisms he saw swimming there.  Over time, that interest expanded into fish and other natural organisms and places.  He did not finish school, but was drafted into military service during the Spanish Civil War and later just before the start of WW2.  While serving, he collected fish and wrote scientific papers.

Afterwards, he attended college at the Universitat de Barcelona, striving through individual effort to understand a broad array of subjects. He built a microscope from flea-market purchases and many devices for field observations. He learned to speak six language, nutured a love of literature, and pursued physics, but his primary attraction remained the natural history of freshwaters.  He earned a BS degree in 1949 and a doctorate two years later (yes, in just two years).

He was a field biologists and ecological theoretician, noting that a good scientist should be proficient in both realms.  “The good ecologist,” he said, “should be able to screw down screws with a hammer and to sink nails with a screwdriver.”  He worked at the Spanish Fisheries Research Institute from 1949 to 1967.  In 1967, he was appointed Spain’s first professor of ecology, at the Universitat de Barcelona, where he remained until his retirement 20 years later.  He continued to work—out of a tiny office, it is said—until days before his death in 2004.

He was a prolific author, publishing more than 400 papers and numerous books.  His Spanish textbook on ecology was the standard for generations.  But it was a 102-page volume, published in 1968, based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in 1966, that earned him a global reputation.  The book, Perspective in Ecological Theory, presented a way to look at ecology in terms of information theory—nature was organized and operated according to the precepts of information flow.  His approach fostered the analysis of the living world as a system, rather than a random assemblage of species.  His theories, sometimes wrong but always creative and stimulating to other ideas, allowed the flowering of systems ecology, quantitative analysis and synthesis of field observations into meaningful patterns.

He continued his personal interest in limnology and oceanography throughout his career.  He published a Spanish textbook on limnology that, like his ecology text, became a classic.  Although a highly praised theoretician, he maintained that he was really “just a naturalist.”  But he understood that “making lists [of species] to characterize different types of ecosystems” was an inadequate way to understand them.  He consolidated the immense range of his knowledge into “a multishaped cover of life.”

On a person note, I read Perspectives in Ecological Theory when I was a doctorate student in the early 1970s and have kept it close throughout my career.  Looking at my copy now, I remember my excitement at the insights it provided.  It is my most annotated book.  In the margin of page 41, I wrote, “It seems absolutely breathtaking that the patterns of life in the world could be theorized in this way! Fantastic.”

The rest of the world agreed with me.  Ramon Margalef is one of the most honored ecologists in history, awarded the highest scientific recognition available in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and other countries.  Awards are named for him in several scientific societies, most notably the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.

He was a humble man with a good sense of humor who excelled also at public education.  He wrote several books for the general audience that remain best-sellers in Spain.

His understanding of life as a system led him to two conclusions about conservation.  One, he included humans and their impacts as part of natural ecosystems, a novel idea in the 1960s and now a standard part of our approach.  Second, and following the first, he understood that human use of nature was both necessary and natural—but that overuse would cause the systems to destabilize. Humans shouldn’t use all the water in rivers, for example, because “wasted water in rivers is vital to ecosystems.”

References:

Eaude, Michael.  2004.  Ramon Margalef, Modest founding father of ecological science.  The Guardian, 31 May 2004.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/01/guardianobituaries.research.  Accessed May 14, 2018 (note:  this article contains the incorrect date of Margalef’s birth).

Peters, Francesc.  2010. Ramon Margalef, The Curiousity Driven Life of a Self-Taught Naturalist.  Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin 19(1):2-14.

Ros, Joandomenec.  2004.  In memory of Ramon Margalef (1919-2004).  International Microbiology 7(3).  Available at:  http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1139-67092004000300010&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en.  Accessed May 14, 2018.

The beginning of the first U.S. environmental movement is often pegged to the 1908 Conference of Governors, which occurred during May 13-15.  The conference was the first meeting that called together the nation’s leaders to address the topic of conservation.

Teddy Roosevelt was president during this time, his terms running from 1901 to 1909.  He was an ardent conservationist, advised throughout his presidential term by another prominent conservationist—Gifford Pinchot.  Pinchot was the nation’s first chief forester, but more than that, he was a close advisor to Roosevelt on all areas of public policy.  Pinchot espoused a general principle that natural resources should be used sustainably, neither over-exploited nor under-exploited.

Pinchot, along with the leader of the Inland Waterways Commission, W. J. McGee, convinced Roosevelt that he should call the nation’s leaders together to confront what they all saw as the despoliation of America’s natural resources.  Accordingly, with McGee serving as the chief organizer of the event, Roosevelt invited hundreds of individuals to come to Washington for the conference.

Although themed as the governors’ conference, the attendees went far beyond state and territorial governors and their representatives.  Anyone who was anyone came.  The entire cabinet, all justices of the Supreme Court, senators and congresspersons, leaders of virtually all major business and philanthropic organizations (not just environmental groups, of which there were few), and representatives of federal and state agencies attended.

The attendees met for three days, with speeches and presentations covering a wide range of geographic locations and types of resources.  At the time, “natural resources” included agriculture, minerals and mining, water and forests—virtually everything that humans depended on from nature.  Certain aspects that we now consider essential parts of natural resources, such as biodiversity, weren’t represented—but it was early times for conservation.

The premise of conservation at the time was two-fold.  First, natural resources should not be over-used, so severely exploited that their productive capacity would be lost in the long run—soils should not be eroded, for example.  Second, natural resources should not be wasted, allowed to lie unused when the nation required all resources to fuel its prosperity—forests, for example, should be harvested to take advantage of the wood, the trees not left standing until they died or allowed to decompose once they had fallen.

The intense attention to resource management was needed because the country had not been paying attention.  As one senator stated, “Those who succeed us can well take care of themselves.”  And one representative said conservationists were “google-eyed, bandy-legged dudes from the East and sad-eyed, absent-minded professor and bugologists.”  At this time, however, soil erosion was rampant, wildlife species had been hunted to near extinction, and eastern forests had been virtually cleared.

The Governors’ Conference changed that laissez-faire attitude, perhaps by the sheer size and scope of the meeting.  At the conclusion, on May 15, the group issued a “Declaration of the Conservation Conference.”  Among its pronouncements were the following:

“We the Governors of the States and Territories of the United States of America, in Conference assembled, do hereby declare the conviction that the great prosperity of our country rests upon the abundant resources of the land chosen by our forefathers for their homes and where they laid the foundation of this great Nation.

We look upon these resources as a heritage to be made use of in establishing and promoting the comfort, prosperity, and happiness of the American People, but not to be wasted, deteriorated, or needlessly destroyed.

We declare our firm conviction that this conservation of our natural resources is a subject of transcendent importance, which should engage unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States, and the People in earnest cooperation.

We declare the conviction that in the use of the natural resources our independent States are interdependent and bound together by ties of mutual benefits, responsibilities and duties.”

            The nation—and the world—has never looked back from that day onward.  The 20^th Century saw the founding of most natural resource science disciplines, the creation or expansion of major federal conservation agencies, the parallel creation of state-level natural resource agencies, passage of laws to protect resources and the general growth of public awareness of and commitment to environmental sustainability.  (Also of note is that this meeting of governors was the start of annual governors’ conferences on various topics that led to the formation of the National Governors Association.)

We often say that we can see farther because we stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us.  Most of them were there in Washington in May, 1908.

References:

Conference of the Governors of the United States.  1909.  Proceedings.  Available at:  https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu09109439;view=1up;seq=2.  Accessed May 11, 2018.

Dorsey, Leroy G.  2016.  Theodore Roosevelt, Conservation, and the 1908 Governors’ Conference.  Texas A&M Press, College Station.  Available at:  https://www.questia.com/library/120093465/theodore-roosevelt-conservation-and-the-1908-governors.  Accessed May 11, 2018.

Library of Congress.  Today in History – May 13.  Available at:  https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/may-13/.  Accessed May 11, 2018.

PBS.  Declaration of the Conservation Conference, May 15, 1908.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/conconf.htm.  Accessed May 11, 2108.