The most famous explorers of the American west are Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who traveled from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back during 1804-1806. The story of their adventure is a foundation of American folklore.
Meriwether Lewis was an experienced soldier and frontiersman who also served as personal secretary to President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson asked Lewis to undertake a journey across the west, to chronicle the natural history, draw maps and make peace with the Native Americans who lived in the region. Lewis asked his former military leader, William Clark, to join him on the expedition as co-leader. Clark was also a veteran frontiersman and a skilled draughtsman. Together they gathered a crew of about 40 men and the necessary supplies to make the trip.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
The group—known as the Corps of Discovery—set off on May 14, 1804, from Camp Wood, near St. Louis, Missouri. They poled, paddled and pulled their boats up the Missouri River into present-day North Dakota, where they built Fort Mandan and stayed for the winter. The next spring, they set off again up the Missouri, reaching the headwaters. Their hope to find a water route that joined the Pacific with the Mississippi River failed, and they were guided across the mountains by Shoshone Indians. Eventually reaching the Columbia River, they floated downstream to the Pacific Ocean, where they stayed during the winter of 1805. The following spring, they made the return trip, completing their journey at St. Louis in September 1806. The total journey covered approximately 8,000 miles.
Map of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806.
Lewis and Clark contributed greatly to our understanding of the West. They sent back descriptions and specimens of 178 plants and 122 animals previously undescribed by science, including the grizzly bear, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, sagebrush, Douglas fir and ponderosa pine. They drew remarkably detailed and accurate maps of the entire region, used as the standard maps until the 1840s. They dealt peacefully with many Native American nations, and their success was in many ways tied to the help of those native peoples; the most famous of which was Sacagawea, who accompanied the expedition for much of the time.
One of the world’s great watersheds begins in the tributaries to Lake Superior, flows through the other four Great Lakes (Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario) and then follows the St. Lawrence River into the northern Atlantic Ocean. The lakes and rivers form the U.S.-Canada border from Michigan to New York. And for hundreds of years, humans have been modifying the watercourse to allow easier navigation. That effort took a major leap forward on May 13, 1954, when both Canada and the U.S. signed laws to create the St. Lawrence Seaway.
St. Lawrence Seaway (photo by Ad Meskens)
The watercourse runs for 2340 miles from Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Although long stretches are readily navigable, obstacles to transportation exist at several places, with shallow depths, rapids and waterfalls—including the famous Niagara Falls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. As early as 1680, engineers began working on canals and locks to bypass those obstacles.
The most significant of the early efforts was the construction of the Welland Canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls. Canada completed the Welland Canal in 1833, with 40 wooden locks over its 27-mile length, which made the four upper Great Lakes accessible from the sea. But much work remained, and the two nations started planning for a full deep-water system in 1895.
That plan arrived on May 13, 1954, when both countries passed parallel laws creating the authority to proceed. Over the next five years, the two countries spent $470 million to complete the system (Canada paid 70%). The system included 15 locks (13 in Canada, 2 in the U.S.) and deepening of the channel so that ships up to 740 feet long, 78 feet wide and drawing 26.5 feet of water could make the entire journey from ocean to Lake Superior.
The seaway has been a major boon for the industries of the upper Midwest. The seaway is open for much of the year, setting a record for ice-free operation in 2017 of 298 days. In 2017, 4,119 ships passed through the system, carrying 38 million tons of materials. Major cargoes are iron ore, coal, limestone, grain and other construction and industrial raw materials.
Unfortunately from an ecological perspective, the seaway also transports unintended cargo—non-native and invasive species. In earlier years, ships would empty the ballast water they carried when they arrived at a port—along with the water came many living species that could survive in the holds on the journey (today, ballast water needs to be exchanged before a ship enters freshwater). The obstacles to boat traffic were also obstacles to the movement of species; their removal has allowed species to migrate upstream. Organisms also attach to the hulls of ships or get caught on propellers and other external parts of ships.
For all these reasons, the Great Lakes above Lake Ontario have become home to more than 180 species that are not native. Most are of minor or localized concern, but several have become very abundant (that is, invasive) and cause significant damage to the ecosystem.
Among the worst is the sea lamprey, a parasitic fish that worked its way up the system when canals and locks allowed them to bypass obstacles. Sea lampreys attach to the sides of fish, drilling holes in the flesh and draining fluids from their host. Invasions of sea lampreys totally changed the fish assemblage of the Great Lakes, reducing the native lake trout to near extinction. In response, fisheries agencies introduced Pacific salmon and spends millions every year to control sea lampreys.
Sea lampreys attached to salmonid
A second disastrous species is the zebra mussel, which invaded through ballast water. The zebra mussel is a European species that developed massive populations in the Great Lakes. The large populations filter lake water at a large scale, consuming the micro-organisms that fed the rest of the native food-chain. They also create large encrustations on water intake and discharge pipes, reducing the effectiveness of water supply and electric power generating plants.
Zebra mussels encrusted on a native mussel shell (photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Other species of concern are non-native plants, such as purple loosestrife and Eurasian watermilfoil, and other fish, such as Asian carp species (silver and bighead carp). Despite efforts to combat the entry of non-native species, the very nature of the system—opening the waterway and allowing a continuous stream of boat traffic—means the invasion will continue. A 2012 study estimated that the total of these aquatic invasive species caused damages, lost income and containment costs of about $100 million per year—that cost will never go away.
We all love wolves today, but that was not the case 50 years ago. Wolves were thought to be ferocious predators that killed for fun as well as food. Among the events that changed our thinking was the 1963 book, Never Cry Wolf, written by Farley Mowat.
Mowat was born in Ontario on May 12, 1921 (died 2014). The family moved often, as his librarian father sought work farther and farther west. Their mode of transport was as unique as their son would become: they traveled in a ship’s cabin attached to a Model T truck frame that they called Rolling Home. They settled in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, during the Depression. Mowat became a lover of wild nature, even keeping a rattlesnake as a pet. He visited the Arctic with an uncle when he was 15, fueling a lifelong interest in Arctic environments and peoples. He fought in World War 2, including serving behind enemy lines in the Netherlands to coordinate a food drop that saved thousands of lives.
After the war, Mowat’s career as a storytelling author began. In all, he wrote 45 books that have been translated into 52 languages and sold 17 million copies. His books range from whimsical tales about animals for children to hard-hitting exposes of the treatment of Native Peoples in the Arctic. Topics for his work ranged from the life of gorilla biologist Dian Fossey to the exploitation of whales in Newfoundland, to tales of his war experiences to the general slaughter of all animals species.
Farley Mowat being inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2010 (photo by Tabercil)
He considered his work to lie between non-fiction and fiction, stating that he was suspicious of facts because they could be used to distort more fundamental truths. He wrote, “Having eschewed the purely factual approach, I was not willing to go to the other extreme and take the easy way out by writing fiction. My métier lay somewhere in between what was then a grey void between fact and fiction.”
His most famous book is Never Cry Wolf, published in 1963. In 1946, he spent a season as a lone biologist, dropped in the wilderness of northern Manitoba to study the life of wolves. His account portrayed wolves as gentle, loving animals that cared for their young and killed only what they needed to eat. And they often survived on mice (which Womat tried himself and quite liked). He described one adult male wolf as the ideal father: “Conscientious to a fault, thoughtful of others, and affectionate within reasonable bounds, he was the kind of father whose idealized image appears in many wistful books of human family reminiscences.”
His books were either loved or hated. Obviously, most peopled loved his work as he became one of Canada’s most popular authors. But others criticized his casual relationship with the facts, naming him not Farley Mowat, but “Hardly Know-it.” He was once denied entry into the United States, in 1985, because he was considered a subversive.
Nevertheless, his work on many topics—wolves, commercial whaling, treatment of native peoples—helped establish and motivate the modern environmental movement. Elizabeth May, a Canadian environmental politician, noted that Mowat “…was telling stories that made you laugh out loud, but which made you see that the natural world was a big part of who we are.”
This conservation calendar could include a story almost every day of the year about Charles Darwin and the second voyage of the Beagle. And there are a few scattered through the year. But today is special, because May 11, 1820, is the birthday of the boat that carried Darwin, HMS Beagle.
Beagle was born at the Woowich Dockyard in London. The dockyard was one of two built in the early 1500s by order of Henry VIII, who wanted boat-building to occur near his palace at Greenwich. Hundreds of ships were built at Woolwich and its companion, Deptford, over the centuries.
Beagle was built originally as an armed vessel, known as a brig (i.e, it had two masts). It carried ten cannons that could be used as needed during scouting and courier missions. The boat was 90 feet long and 24.5 feet wide. However, the Royal Navy found no immediate use for the capabilities of Beagle.
HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan
So, the ship was refitted to become a surveying vessel in 1825. The changes made the ship into a “bark” by adding a third mast. It was sent on its first voyage in 1826, a four-year survey of South America’s coastline. The original captain committed suicide on the voyage, and command was taken over by Robert Fitzroy.
Portrait of Admiral Robert Fitzroy, Captain of HMS Beagle (photo by Royal Naval College)
The second voyage of the Beagle is the one we all remember. Fitzroy remained the ship’s captain. Beagle was again re-built, raising the deck a foot and adding an outer hull of wood to increase its strength and flexibility. The task of the voyage was to sail around South America and then the entire earth, completing accurate measurements of the longitude of the earth. It carried a host of surveying and other experimental equipment, including 22 clocks (necessary to plot location) and lightning conductors. It carried a large crew, 68 in all, that made the ship incredibly crowded. Fitzroy thought the ship was perfect for the task at hand:
“Never, I believe, did a vessel leave England better provided, or fitted for the service she was destined to perform, and for the health and comfort of her crew, than the Beagle. If we did want any thing which could have been carried, it was our own fault; for all that was asked for, from the Dockyard, Victualling Department, Navy Board, or Admiralty, was granted.”
The second voyage lasted from 1831 to 1836. The ship was gone for 1742 days and traveled almost 40,000 miles.
Among the 68 crewmen was Charles Darwin. His task was to observe the natural history of the locations they visited, most of which were still barely explored. “Natural history” in those days included plants, animals, geology and fossils. To say that he enjoyed himself would be a classic understatement:
“The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career …. I have always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my powers of observation were improved….”
And the rest, as we say, is history. Darwin spent two decades researching the specimens he brought back and working out the concepts of natural selection and evolution.
While Darwin was working on his data and ideas, Beagle was not idle. The ship went back to sea the next year, on a six-year voyage to survey the coast of Australia. But three voyages were enough—in 1845, the Beagle’s masts were removed and the hull was moored in the estuary near Essex, England, to discourage smugglers. It was renamed Watch Vessel 7. After 25 years of such service, in 1870 what remained of the ship was decommissioned, broken apart and sold for scrap.
Most of us enjoyed reading stories about Curious George, the mischievous monkey, and his friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat. But for one six-year-old with her first library book, Curious George created a defining moment—she would be an explorer and study primates.
Birute Mary Galdikas was born on May 10, 1946, while her Lithuanian parents were traveling to a new home in North America. She grew up in Canada, but moved later with her family to the United States. She earned anthropology degrees at UCLA.
While a graduate student there, she met the famous paleontologist Louis Leakey. She wanted to follow in the footsteps of two other women he mentored, Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. But she wanted to study orangutans in Indonesia, a task that Leakey thought was more difficult. She was persistent, however, and Leakey warmed to the idea. In 1971, he found funding for her to begin her studies.
With her photographer husband, Galdikas set up a research station—named Camp Leakey—at the Tanjung Putting Reserve in Borneo, Indonesia. Orangutans are mostly solitary and they live in swampy forests, both factors that made her research difficult, but also important. Little was known about orangutans when she started working.
Like Goodall and Fossey, Galdikas’ patience and persistence paid off. The orangutans got used to her and accepted her observations. And what she learned changed our perceptions of the species. While adult males are highly solitary and competitive, females and young are less so. Females only give birth once every eight years, the longest interval between reproduction known in the animal world. The animals feed on more than 400 foods, taking advantage of whatever is available. They are highly intelligent, and researchers were able to teach individuals sign language.
Dr. Birute Galdikas in 2011 (photo by Simon Fraser University, University Communications)
Galdikas’ work has brought the ecology of orangutans to both scientists and the public. A cover story in National Geographic in 1975 cemented her prominence as an orangutan biologist. She remained in Borneo for 40 years studying orangutans, a record for one researcher observing one species at the same location. Although not as famous as Goodall and Fossey—partly, she believes, because she stayed rooted in her Borneo research camp—her work has had a major influence on our knowledge of and concern for orangutans. Her work has been featured repeatedly in National Geographic, in major newspapers, on television and in several film documentaries.
As the orangutans became popular, Gadikas’ work gained prominence. She has been awarded many honors for her work, including being the only foreign-born person to win Indonesia’s Kalataru Award, the country’s top prize for environmental work. In 1986, she and a group of supporters established the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), headquartered in Los Angeles and with branches around the world. The foundation supports global efforts to study and protect wild orangutans. She still splits her time between the foundation’s headquarters and her research camp in Borneo.
Bornean orangutan (photo by Julielangford)
She remains fundamentally concerned about the sustainability of orangutan populations in the wild. IUCN classifies the species as “critically endangered,” because of illegal hunting and habitat loss from illegal logging. Forest fires that ravaged Indonesia during the late 1990s had a major impact on orangutan habitat. In a 2000 interview with The New York Times, she said:
“I feel like I’m viewing an animal holocaust and holocaust is not a word I use lightly. The machine of extinction is grinding away. The destruction of the tropical rain forest in Borneo is accelerating daily. The consequences of this destruction for the orangutans will be final. And if orangutans go extinct in the wild, paradise is gone. And we’ll never have it again.”
She continues her research work not only to advance knowledge, but also to provide a steady presence for conservation in rural Borneo. Rural people need jobs that come from keeping the animals alive and the forests intact. Galdikas believes that “one of the best things that can happen to a forest is to have researchers there. They attract attention and get the government to enforce protections. Even if it is just a ‘paper park’ [where rules aren’t enforced very well] they can protect habitat, because developers are reluctant to do anything permanent, like create a plantation.”
So, she stays. And because she does, so do the orangutans. Curious George would be proud.
London in the 1850s was a stinking mess. Air pollution was terrible, but water pollution had reached the breaking point. An engineer named Joseph Bazalgette changed much of that by building the Thames Embankments. The final section, called the Chelsea Embankment, was opened on May 9, 1874, by Prince Alfred, completing one of the great engineering projects of the Victorian Era.
London was a huge city by the 1850s, with millions of residents. But it had nothing close to an organized sanitation system. Where sewers did exist, they emptied into scores of small rivers that ran open and putrid to the Thames—which also ran putrid. Things got really bad in the summer of 1858, known as the year of the Great Stink. Abnormally low flows in the Thames coupled with abnormally high temperatures made the Thames a swamp of stinking human wastes. So bad was the stench that Parliament had to suspend operations and Queen Victoria, out for a cruise down the river, was turned back after a few minutes.
Something had to be done, and the engineer Joseph Bazalgette had the answer. He proposed to build a series of giant sewers that ran along the two banks of the Thames, collecting the outfall of smaller sewers and carrying them miles downstream, beyond the sight—and smell—of Londoners. The project was approved, and Bazalgette set to work.
Contemporary drawing of the construction of the Thames River Embankments (photo by The Illustrated London News)
His project wasn’t just a set of sewer pipes. It involved the entire transformation of the Thames River in central London. Up to then, the Thames had broad, sloping banks that formed wide mud flats at low tide. Bazalgette’s project narrowed the river within high straight stone walls. Behind the walls and below the ground surface, he built sewers, of course, but also tunnels for trains (the famous London Underground) and channels for other needs, like electric cables and telephone lines. On top, he built a road, with walkways along the river and on the land side of the road. Gardens planted with trees at 20-foot intervals filled the intervening spaces.
The project was immense, and expensive. Begun in 1859, it continued through 1874. The total project includes the Albert, Thames and Chelsea Embankments, covering both sides of the river for a distance of more than five miles. Bazalgette not only solved the current issues, but anticipated the future. He estimated the population of London, generously estimated how much each person would produce in sewage, and then doubled that amount to accommodate future growth. The capacity of his sewers served the city for 80 years, until new capacity had to be designed.
The results produced marked improvements in public health. Cholera, which is spread through contaminated water and had occurred in regular outbreaks in London, basically disappeared in the area covered by the new structures. Public pride also soared. A river that Londoners were “converting…into a sewer” became “a magnificent promenade.”
Bazalgette’s achievement is one example of the growing concern that Americans and Europeans had for their diminished environments during the last half of the 19th Century. As the nastiest leavings of the industrial movement made shambles of urban areas around the civilized world, a growing movement began—and we all benefit from it today.
References:
Broich, John. 2013. London—Water and the Making of the Modern City. University of Pittsburgh Press, 214 pages (p. 47-48).
The superlatives assigned to Sir David Attenborough seem never to stop. Producer of the most watched nature documentaries in the world. The most traveled person in the world. The oldest person to visit the North Pole. The most trustworthy person in Britain.
My own close brush with his presence was on a visit to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in 2016. Their newly remodeled home was named the Attenborough Building in his honor, and it featured a soaring four-story living wall in its atrium. Attenborough, then just turned 90, appeared at the opening ceremony. But he entered not on a red carpet, but like we would expect David Attenborough to do—he rappelled down the wall from the top, landing with nonchalant grace, as though it were the only reasonable option.
David Attenborough was born on May 8, 1926, in a London suburb and he grew up in the English midlands town of Leicester. He was always interested in nature, collecting bird eggs and fossils from a young age. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge before serving in the Royal Navy. But he never worked as a scientist, instead enticed into the world of writing and broadcasting.
He was particularly attracted by the new world of television. In 1950, he began training with the BBC and soon became a television producer. Being on the air seemed unlikely, because his teeth were considered too big! He overcame that obstacle quickly, however, his charm, demeanor and gift for commentary trumping any dental deficits. He hosted a quiz show (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?) and another that brought animals into the studio.
Attenborough thought the studio format was limiting and stressful to the animals, and convinced the executives to let him produce a series filmed in the wild, Zoo Quest. And the rest, as they say, is history. The success of that show led to his assignment to lead a natural history group at the BBC and later, in 1965, to direct programming for the BBC (of note, Attenborough had the foresight to add a strange new comedy to their line-up; it was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus!).
He left the BBC in the early 1970s to produce independent nature documentaries. He hit it big in 1976, when his 96-episode masterpiece, Life on Earth, hit the airwaves. That series, watched by an estimated 500 million people, made Attenborough a household name around the world. Whether crawling into a termite nest or dropping into a cave, nothing was out of bounds for David Attenborough.
David Attenborough at the Great Barrier Reef in 2015 (photo by Australian department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
He is one of the world’s great storytellers, but he insists that nature is the real story. He has said, “…we mustn’t get the narrator in between the animal and the viewer too often.” Less is more when it comes to natural history. “If you can use four words intstead of five that’s good, and cut out every adjective you want to put in. People can see if it’s beautiful. You mustn’t be scared of silence.”
All of nature is his subject, but he always retained his intense love of birds. “I have been besotted with them since I was a schoolboy,” he said of his favorite bird, the Bird of Paradise, “when I read the travels of the great 19th Century British naturalists, the first Europeans to see these things. These birds are so romantic and they all have legends surrounding them. They all do the most extraordinary things, each with its individual dance and display.” His 10-episode series, The Life of Birds, in the late 1990s, was another masterpiece.
His list of awards is about as long as his list of nature documentaries. He was made a knight in 1985 and has more than 30 honorary degrees. In a 2014 poll, he topped the list of England’s most trustworthy public individuals.
Greater Bird-of-Paradise, David Attenborough’s favorite (photo by Andrea Lawardi)
His life observing and filming nature has also made him an avowed conservationist. A recent documentary series is about the relation between nature, humans and the built environment. He said of the London region, “Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape our planet is very striking. It’s also sobering. It reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world. Yet it is on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend.” He has become most worried about climate change and especially the role of the U.S.: “One doesn’t want to interfere with other nation’s affairs, but the trouble is nations of that size are globally important and what they do has a huge impact on us.”
He is now 92 years old, and he shows no sign of slowing down. He got a new pair of knees a few years ago, that he say gave him “another 20 years of life.” Thank goodness, because we can all use another 20 years of David Attenborough, rappelling down whatever wall he chooses.
Mother’s Day, as we all better remember, falls on the second Sunday of May. So, it seems fitting that on some day in May, this calendar ought to take a moment to celebrate mom.
We all think our mother deserves the award for “World’s Best Mom,” but what about all those other mothers in nature? Never fear, because this topic has been well explored, from the Animal Planet to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and dozens of blogs in between. Here is my compendium of just some of the great moms of the animal kingdom.
Among mammals, first on most lists is the elephant, Asian or African. Elephant moms carry their unborn babies for an astonishing 22-23 months, the longest of any animal. When born, the babies are a whopping 200 pounds. Then the mother takes care of them for up to sixteen years. I guess, just like human parents, elephants get tired of dealing with their kids when they hit the teen years.
African elephant mother and youngster (photo by Larry Nielsen)
In the marine world, and for pure dedication, I nominate the octopus. Opposite the spectrum from elephants, octopus moms lay from 50,000 to 200,000 eggs. Each one may not be particularly important, but the female octopus understands that protecting the bunch is critical to survival. She carefully arranges the eggs in a shape characteristic of each species, then protects the eggs from a sea-full of hungry predators. Without time to hunt for food, the female weakens and may even eat a tentacle or two to keep nourished. And when the young octopi say goodbye, the exhausted female is so weak she usually dies or falls prey to those enemies she had kept away from the kids.
The bird category has many candidates for best mom, but most bloggers list the Red-knobbed Hornbill, a resident of Indonesia. To keep their young away from predators, including the gigantic monitor lizard, these hornbills hide the mother and eggs. They nest in tree cavities, and the female seals herself into the cavity while the male builds a wall of their own feces, with only a small slot through which the male feeds the female. Mom hornbills stays locked up for two months of incubation before emerging—and, presumably, heading straight to the spa.
The Indonesian Red-knobbed Hornbill (photo by Dennis Irrgang)
Most insects are pretty cavalier about their parenting responsibilities, but not the humble earwig. Female earwigs incubate their eggs, clean fungus from them and guard them from predators. As the young emerge, the female helps remove egg fragments and grooms the young. They stay together through the second molting, a period of some months. And if the kids get particularly hungry waiting for the pizza delivery, they just might eat mom.
Alligators top the list of reptilian moms. Female alligators build large nests of rotting vegetation, which keep the eggs warm during their development. Interestingly, if the nest temperature is cooler, the young tend to hatch as females; if warmer, as males. Regardless, mother alligators care carefully for their offspring, gently holding them in those bone-crushing jaws as she goes about the daily chores. They stay together as a family for up to a year.
Those alligator jaws look fearsome to us, but they are a baby cradle to young ‘gators! (photo by Larry Nielsen)
The lists go on, with a decided bias towards mammals. Cheetahs, polar bears, koalas, seals and orangutans appear regularly. But let’s be honest—without moms, where would any of our species be? Cheers for all of them!
Sturrock, Leanne. 2017. Nature’s Best Mothers – Elephants to Organgutans, Take a Look at Natures Supermums. The Great Projects, Mar 26, 2017. Available at: https://www.thegreatprojects.com/blog/nature-s-best-mothers. Accessed May 3, 2018
Lassen Volcanic National Park came into existence on May 6, 1907, when President Teddy Roosevelt signed proclamations creating two national monuments—Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone. Nine years later, those two national monuments formed the core of the new Lassen Volcanic National Park, passed by congress and signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
Lassen is often called a hidden gem among the national parks. Although one of the earliest national parks—the 15th created—it has always been a runner-up in popularity to the great western parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone. Yet it shares many characteristics with those two world famous preserves.
Like Yosemite, Lassen sits in the rugged mountains of northern California, at the south end of the Cascade Mountains. Its high elevation means that snow blankets the park for much of the year—remnants of winter snows linger through July, and many roads are closed by October.
Lassen Peak (photo by Daniel Mayer)
Like Yellowstone, Lassen is renowned for its thermal features. Lassen Peak, the namesake mountain of the park, is the southernmost active volcano of the Cascades. It last erupted in 1915, one of only two volcanoes to erupt in the 20th Century (the other, of course, was Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980). The eruption blasted 30,000 feet into the air, creating a cloud of ash and smoke that traveled 200 miles. Smaller episodes of activity occurred for the next two years.
Smoke column after the May, 1915, eruption of Lassen Peak (photo by R. E. Stinson)
Tourism also erupted, as people traveled to see the results of the volcanic blast. They were rewarded with a phenomenal volcanic landscape. Lassen Peak itself retains a large scar down one flank, known as the “Devastated Area.” A series of cinder cones occur in the park as well, looking amazingly like the volcano a child might make for a science project. The park features several areas of intense thermal activity, where vents, fumeroles and mud pots create a geological fantasy land—a smaller and more compact version of Yellowstone. The region was made a national park because of these unique and scenic thermal and geologic features.
Southern flank of Cinder Cone (photo by User: Introvert)
Despite its qualities and location, Lassen Volcanic National Park is not highly visited. Annual visitation in 2017 was just at 500,000, a little over 10% of the visitation at Yellowstone or Yosemite. The number of visitors has remained at the same level for the past 40 years. It is considered a family-friendly park, and many of the visitors are from the surrounding area, unlike the throngs that come from around the world to visit Yosemite and Yellowstone.
But beware of the dense hydrogen-sulfide stench around “Fart Gulch!”
References:
Krahe, Diane L. and Theodore Catton. 2010. Little Gem of the Cascades: An Administrative History of Lassen Volcanic National Park. US National Park Service. Available at: http://npshistory.com/publications/lavo/adhi.pdf. Accessed May 2, 2018.
USGS. 2000. Volcano Hazards of the Lassen Volcanic National Park Area, California. USGS Fact Sheet 022-00. Available at: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2000/fs022-00/. Accessed May 2, 2018.
The systematic use of bird banding to enhance the conservation of birds was the invention of Frederick C. Lincoln, born on May 5, 1892 (died 1960). From his earliest days, Lincoln loved birds and built an exceptional career from that love.
As a teenager growing up in Denver, he worked summers for the Colorado Museum of Natural History. His supervisor was Alexander Wetmore (who became the Sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), who taught Lincoln various aspects of bird-craft, including the preparation of bird skins for scientific use. Lincoln liked the work so much that he never attended college, but went straight to work as an ornithologist after high school. By age 21, he had advanced to be Curator of Ornithology at the museum. He worked extensively with Wetmore, including undertaking several field expeditions throughout the southeastern U.S.
During World War I, Lincoln served in the Signal Corps as a carrier pigeon expert. Pigeons were essential for battle-field communication during the war, as telephones and other devices were unreliable. More than 100,000 carrier pigeons were used during World War I—by both sides—providing a 95% reliable communication channel.
Upon his return from military service, Lincoln joined the staff of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) with a very particular assignment: Organize and implement a national bird-banding program for migratory waterfowl. In 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act gave the survey the responsibility for estimating the health of waterfowl populations and setting hunting regulations across the country. The survey needed reliable information.
Frederick Lincoln with banded duck, 1921 (photo by National Photo Company Collection)
Lincoln was the man for the job. As colleagues described him, “Fred Lincoln was a rather quiet, studious person…” and “Lincoln approached his task with … characteristic professionalism, thoroughness, vision and dedication….” He combined the pieces of the emerging technique of bird-banding into a continental system with organized numbering schemes, data collection protocols and analytic methods.
The accumulating data about bird movements led Lincoln to propose the concept of migratory flyways, routes that birds generally took when moving between nesting and wintering grounds. The flyway system is now the basis for how waterfowl are managed across North America—and the world. As a colleague described, because of Lincoln’s work “the migration patterns of North American birds are probably known in more detail than is true for any other continent.”
Frederick Lincoln at his US Fish and Wildlife Service desk (photo by U.S. National Archives and U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory)
Lincoln also realized that reliable estimates of the total abundance of each waterfowl species was needed annually so responsible hunting regulations could be established. He developed a way to use bird-banding data from the previous year along with estimates of the next year’s hunting harvest to estimate abundance. That straight-forward technique, first described in a survey bulletin in 1930, is now a standard technique in fisheries and wildlife management, known as the “Lincoln Index.”
He authored hundreds of papers during his career, along with several foundational books in ornithology. His contributions were noted in 1956 when the man who had never stepped in a college classroom was presented an honorary doctorate by the University of Colorado. The next year, he received the Department of Interior’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award.
