Category: Uncategorized

Education, we are all told, is most effective when it is holistic, when it emphasizes critical thinking and integration of ideas and knowledge.  We treat this as a new concept, but Sombath Somphone, a Laotian educator and environmentalist, has worked according to this concept for decades.

Sombath Somphone was born on February 17, 1952, in a small farming community along the Mekong River in Laos.  His father began as a farmer, but soon moved on.  “After I was born, my dad realized that the amount of land that grandpa had opened up to divide up among his eight siblings would not be enough to sustain his family, so that’s when he became more of a merchant.”  Because his father was often away, buying or selling wares, Sombath was the man of the house.  

Sombath balanced schoolwork with overseeing the family, but he was still usually the best student in class. He eventually got sent to boarding schools, where he prospered.  He was known as a very serious young man.  “I don’t joke around. I guess it’s a complex—being from a poor family from a rural area who went to town.”

As the French withdrew from their former colony, American teachers became more common.  One took Somphone under his wing and secured an opportunity for him to go to high school in Wisconsin for the 1969-1970 academic year.  That year taught him several lifelong lessons.  First, he learned what it meant to be an outsider.  “You are different. People look at you because you are different and you know you are different.”  Second, he realized that economies and communities were also different.  “Even though materially we were poor, somehow the level of our [the Laotian’s] contentment and happiness was very high. Our social security was the family. You cannot put a cash value on this.”

He returned to Laos, but soon was headed back to the U.S. on a college scholarship to the University of Hawaii.  He studied agriculture, earning both Bachelors and Masters degrees.  He became a leader of Asian students in 1973, but stayed out of the political conflicts that divided communist-leaning and American-leaning friends.  “I didn’t want war.  I wanted development.”

He worked in a variety of agricultural development projects across southeast Asia, scraping together resources and followers to sustain his work.  His approach was not well received by conventional leaders and funders.  He rejected the popularity of modern technology, instead continuing his views that integration of ideas and systems was most important.  “I was going organic and chemical-free. I was again running against the current….”  A tour of duty with the United Nations in Cambodia got Somphone noticed as “a competent expert,” opening the eyes of Laotian leaders.  He was able to return to Laos in 1989 with funding for a new project.

Somphone created the Rice-Based Integrated Farm Systems program to implement his ideas.  He was stymied by a lack of workers to join the program, so, when a new Laotian initiative allowed private schools to open, he created his own school—the Participatory Development Training Center (PADETC)—in 1996.  The school developed initiatives for small rural agri-business, including using organic fertilizers, recycling, and energy efficiency.  PADETC still operates today using Somphone’s ideas of collaboration and caring, rather than competition. “I’m using the word heart. Our education system doesn’t bring out the goodness of people’s hearts. They teach people to be more competitive but less caring.”

Throughout his career, Somphone raised suspicions that he was working for ulterior motives.  Some thought him a CIA spy, others that he was an agent for one or another of anti-government groups.  None of that was true.  His interest in politics and government was only that a formal system was needed to undertake and support the sustainable development of the Laotian land and people.  He received many awards for his work, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, often called the Asian Nobel Prize, in 2005.  Nevertheless, he was abducted in December, 2012, after being detained by police, and has not been seen or heard from since.

In a final speech, at the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in Vientiane only a few months before his abduction, he summarized his view in words we should all heed:

“We focus too much on economic growth and ignore its negative impacts on the social, environmental, and spiritual dimensions. This unbalanced development model are the chief causes of inequality, injustice, financial meltdown, global warming, climate change, loss of bio-diversity, and even loss of our humanity and and spirituality. . . .More focus needs to be given to the protection and conservation of Laos natural resources and environment through reducing the degradation of forests, safeguarding water resources and preventing the release of toxic chemicals into land, water and air by unregulated urban and industry development.”

References:

Anonymous.  Sombath Somphone.  2004.  Available at:  https://sombathdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/magsaysay-bio.pdf.  Accessed May 7, 2021.

PADETC.  Our Founder, Sombath Somphone.  Available at:  https://www.padetc.org/about-us/our-founder/.  Accessed May 7, 2021.

Somphone, Sombath.  2012.  Challenges for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development—A View from Laos.  Asia-Europe People’s Forum, 16-19, 2012, Vientiane, Laos.  Available at:  https://sombathdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/keynote_speech-sombath_10_october_2012.pdf.  Accessed May 7, 2021.

Costa Rica is famous for its commitment to conservation and sustainability.  The country has more of its land and waters in protected parks and other reserves (about 27%) than any other nation in the world.  And much of that success can be traced to Alvaro Ugalde, known as the father of Costa Rica’s national parks.

Ugalde was born in Heredia, Costa Rica, a mountain village, on February 16, 1946 (died 2015).  He had an early love of nature and pursued that love to get his first college degree in biology from the University of Costa Rica in 1970.  Later, he studied at the University of Michigan, earning an M.S. in Natural Resource Management (1973).

Costa Rica’s first national park, Santa Rosa had been established in 1970, through the urging of Mario Boza, who would work with Ugalde for decades in their campaign for conservation (Mario Boza is rightfully credited as the co-father of the country’s national parks). “Even before I finished my BS in Costa Rica,” Ugalde said, “I was already a volunteer in the first national park, which existed but had no staff, no management. So I decided to start volunteering there…”. He volunteered patiently, until he was finally put on the payroll as the park’s first director.

In 1974, Ugalde became director of the country’s national parks when Boza, who had held the position, resigned to move to an academic position.  That began Ugalde’s 17 years at the helm, building the system into the success we know it as today.   He worked closely with a succession of presidents, effectively convincing one after the other that conservation and ecotourism would be good for the country.  Part of his success was “because some of the parks that we started with—actually most of the park system, were ecosystems that were still pretty much left out by the agricultural development, either because they were very steep mountains like all our mountains, especially the top part of them, or because they were swamps, beautiful wetlands of course but swamps nonetheless for agriculture and just by luck maybe, lack of action, something like that.”  Park after park was added to the system, which now includes 29 national parks and many more other forms of protected areas.

Ugalde left the government in 1991 and spent a decade working with the United Nations and other conservation organizations.  In 1999, he co-founded the Nectandra Institute, which works to conserve the cloud forests of Costa Rica; he served as president until his death in 2015.  He was also active in the Osa Foundation, an organization committed to the preservation of the Osa peninsula on the south coast of Costa Rica.  Over his life, Ugalde earned many awards for conservation, within Costa Rica, throughout the Americas, and, indeed, throughout the world.

Ugalde was particularly interested in the Osa Peninsula, which contains Corcovado National Park.  The park is the largest in Costa Rica, occupying a large portion of this region rich in biodiversity (purported to contain 2.5% of the world’s biodiversity).  “Osa is as one of the most magnificent places on the planet,” he said, “a place that later, through my actions, would become Corcovado National Park, a place for which I am still fighting for almost 40 years later.”

Ugalde well understood that environment and development must co-exist for sustainability, recognizing the importance of natural capital as the basis for human society.  He wrote the following:

“Costa Rica’s national parks and other protected areas, not only help protect more than 4% of earth’s biodiversity, in a tiny country that is largely invisible on a world map, but also played a pivotal role in restoring forest cover back to near half of Costa Rica’s land area, after falling to a low of approximately 1/5 in the 80s. These parks also set the stage for what is today perhaps our top money maker: the tourism industry. It turned out to be an excellent investment in our natural capital.

Furthermore, the national parks system, together with other lands that are under the ownership and protection of local communities, non-profit organizations and private individuals, have helped maintain vital services the Planet provides us, services we notoriously take for granted, such as the provision of drinking water and the “hidden water” contained in virtually all our goods and services, soil erosion control, flood mitigation, carbon sinking and climate moderation. “

References:  

Boza, Mario.  2015.  M.Sc.Álvaro F. Ugalde Viquez. Bi ocenosis 30(1-2):2-4.

Cahn, Robert and Patricia.  1979.  Treasure of parks for a little country that really tries. Smithsonian 10(6):64-73.  Available at:  https://www.cartermuseum.org/collection/treasure-parks-little-country-really-tries-robert-and-patricia-cahn-nd.  Accessed February 23, 2021.

Camerson, Blair.  2015.  Interview of Alvaro Ugalde for Innovations for Successful Societies, Princeton University.  Available at:  https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/sites/successfulsocieties/files/interviews/transcripts/3917/D2%20FT%20BC%20Alvaro%20Ugalde_Final.pdf.  Accessed February 23, 2021.

Osa Conservation.  Available at:  https://osaconservation.org.  Accessed February 23, 2021f

Ugalde, Alvaro.  In Alvaro’s Words.  Nectandra Institute.  Available at:  https://www.nectandra.org/retro/article.php?name=NaturalCapital.  Accessed February 23, 2012.

The statement from the United Nations Environment Programme just about says it all.  Upon presenting Dr. Robert D. Bullard with the 2020 Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award, the UNEP noted “Robert Bullard has shown us how one person can mobilize others to build a movement for the planet and for social justice. His commitment to the idea that all people, regardless of background, have a right to clean air and clean water reflects a human-rights based approach to the environment, which is critical for global discourse. UNEP is honoured to recognize this pioneer with our highest possible award.”

Robert Doyle Bullard was born in Elba, Alabama, on December 21, 1946.  He was a good student as a child, graduating second in his high school class.  He received a Bachelor’s degree from Alabama A&M University in 1968 and then served two years with the US Marine Corps.  He then studied sociology at Atlanta University (M.A., 1972) and Iowa State University (Ph.D., 1976). 

He took a position as an assistant professor at Texas Southern University, a HBCU in Houston.  While there, his wife, attorney Linda McKeever Bullard, asked for his help developing data for a lawsuit challenging the siting of a landfill in an African-American neighborhood.  Driving around the city with maps and colored markers, he discovered that the vast majority of landfills in Houston were in African-American communities, although only 25% of the city’s population was Black.  “It was an awakening for for me,” he remembered.  “I decided I am not going to do dead white men sociology.  I am going to do kick-ass sociology.”

And the rest, we might say, is environmental justice history.  Bullard expanded his study nationwide, documenting in his first book (Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality, 1990) that pollution landed disproportionately on minority communities.  That book, and his continuing work, established a new field of research and activism and earned Bullard the rightful title as “father of environmental justice.”

Bullard has labored for a lifetime to help the world understand that environmental degradation and racism are not two problems, but one.  “It took us almost 25 years until the two movements merged,” he said, “until folks on both sides woke up to the realization that what we were experiencing in low-income and communities of colour was a form of systemic racism with detrimental health impacts. Not only that, but that these environmental disparities were having detrimental effects on life expectancy, home ownership and transformative wealth creation.”

His work is an inspiration of passion and persistence.  He has written or co-written eighteen books that range broadly across environmental justice, encompassing sustainability, land use, housing, transportation, smart growth and many other issues.  He has received numerous awards for his work, frequently cited as among the most important African-American environmental voices in the nation.  He moved among several universities during his career, but returned to Texas Southern in 2011, where he began.  He served as dean of public affairs there until 2016, and is now Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy.

After more than forty years in the academic and activism trenches of environmental justice, he remains optimistic.  “On our side we have lots of committed troops on the ground and a growing movement of young people,” he said. “Because of the way race operates in this society, there are some people — poor white people, for example — who have been given blinders; they’re blinded by racism and have voted against their own best interests. When we take the blinders off and allow every single American to rise and reach his or her potential without these artificial barriers, then we could really become a great country.”

In accepting the UNEP Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award, Bullard expressed what I think we all need to realize:  “There is a long arc of justice, and we have to understand that this is not instant oatmeal. If we get you all to understand that these struggles are long term, we will reach that North Star: justice, fairness and equity for all.”

References:

Bullard, Robert.  Dr. Robert Bullard, Father of Environmental Justice (website).  Available at:  https://drrobertbullard.com/biography/.  Accessed January 28, 2021.

Dicum, Gregory.  2006.  Meet Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice.  Grist, Mar 15, 2006.  Available at:  https://grist.org/article/dicum/.  Accessed January 28, 2021.

UN Environmental Programme.  2020.  Robert Bullard — Lifetime Achievement Award.  Available at:  https://www.unenvironment.org/championsofearth/laureates/2020/robert-bullard.  Accessed January 28, 2021.

Things are a lot different today in national parks than they were a century ago.  At the turn of the 20th Century, parks had official boundaries, but little else—few or no staff, few roads and other facilities and almost no enforcement of park rules.  One man, Charles Young, however, demonstrated that conditions could be different.

Charles Young was born on March 12, 1864, in Kentucky, the son of former slaves.  His family moved across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, where the Emancipation Proclamation had made them free.  He attended school there, graduating with honors from the integrated high school in 1881.

He taught high school in his hometown until 1884, when he won admission to West Point.  After suffering through academic, isolation and racist struggles, he graduated in 1889, only the third African American to do so.  Young went on to a series of assignments in the western United States before being posted as an instructor to the military science program at Wilberforce University, Ohio, in 1894.  He taught there for several years, earning a distinguished professorship and adopting Wilberforce as his hometown for the rest of his life.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Young, now a major, returned to regular duty, leading a squadron of Buffalo Soldiers (the nickname of the 9th Cavalry of African American army soldiers) in Cuba.  He then became military attache in Haiti, the first American American to hold such a prominent military and diplomatic post.

In 1903, Young achieved another first.  At the time, the US Army was responsible for staffing national parks, and Young was named Acting Superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (now a part of Kings Canyon National Park), the first African American to serve as a park superintendent.  His tenure was short, lasting only from June through November (the usual summer term for such assignments).  But whereas other military leaders given such an assignment might consider it a paid vacation, Young was exceptional.  Previous detachments had made only minimal progress at the parks, but Young undertook his assignment with energy and commitment.  During their stay, Young and his Buffalo Soldiers built more than 15 miles of quality roads and 18 miles of trails—the same pathways still used today by millions of Americans to visit the parks’ giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world.

Young and his troops also took seriously the laws to protect the parks.  They turned back shepherds and their flocks of sheep, previously grazing illegally on park lands.  They enforced the prohibition on hunting, with no poaching violations reported during their tenure.  Noting that some of the largest and most accessible trees were suffering from over-visitation, they built fences around the trees to keep the visitors at a distance. The local community was so pleased with Young’s accomplishments that they wished to name a tree in his honor, as had been done for other notable Americans.  He declined the honor, however, suggesting that a tree be named instead for Booker T. Washington, the great African American educator.  

Young returned to active duty after his time in the parks, serving with distinction in the Philippines, Mexico and Liberia.  He was the highest-ranking African American in the US Army at the start of World War I, but was forced to retire in 1917 (various accounts suggest that his forced retirement was to avoid his becoming the first African American to achieve the rank of general).  After the war, the Army reinstated Young as a colonel.  He died while on an assignment in Nigeria in 1922.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Charles Young spent only a short time as an active conservationist, but his role was transformative, not only for the parks he worked in but also as an example that the parks could—and should—be more actively managed and protected.  He clearly understood what the parks were about, as he wrote in his final report as Acting Superintendent:

“Indeed, a journey through this park and the Sierra Forest Reserve to the Mount Whitney country will convince even the least thoughtful man of the needfulness of preserving these mountains just as they are, with their clothing of trees, shrubs, rocks, and vines, and of their importance to the valleys below as reservoirs for storage of water for agricultural and domestic purposes. In this, lies the necessity of forest preservation.” 

References:

Arlington National Cemetery.  Charles Young, Colonel, United States Army.  Available at:  http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/cdyoung.htm.  Accessed January 27, 2021.

National Park Service.  Colonel Charles Young.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/chyo/learn/historyculture/colonel-charles-young.htm#CP_JUMP_3401413.  Accessed January 27, 2021.

National Park Service.  Colonel Charles Young, Early Park Superintendent.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/historyculture/young.htm.  Accessed January 27, 2021.

Lisa Perez Jackson has traveled a largely straight career path—and one that led steadily up to the highest levels of environmental leadership.  And as an African-American woman, she demonstrates that a similar career path is available to anyone with the courage and dedication to take on the challenge.

Jackson was born in Philadelphia on February 8, 1962.  She was adopted when two weeks old by Benjamin and Marie Perez, and grew up in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.  As she grew up in her mostly minority, working-class neighborhood, she experienced that the environment was not neutral—poorer people suffered much more from pollution and environmental neglect than did wealthier people.  She decided to dedicate her career to helping people live better lives.  She loved science and math, and was an excellent student—the valedictorian of her high school graduating class.

That success led to a scholarship to Tulane, where she intended to become a doctor.  But a summer engineering program and her study of the Love Canal disaster convinced her to switch to engineering. As she remembered, “…I came to realize that by protecting our environment I was approaching the same problem from a different angle—by making sure people didn’t get sick in the first place.” She completed chemical engineering degrees from Tulane (BSE in 1983) and Princeton (MS in 1986).

She joined the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1987 as an engineer, working first in Washington, DC, and then New York City.  She worked primarily on the remediation of toxic contaminant sites (Superfund sites), especially in New Jersey.  She worked for the EPA for 19 years, including stints as deputy director and acting director of the Northeast Region’s enforcement division.

She left the EPA in 2006 to become the leader of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.  Along with pollution control, that agency also included historic preservation, state parks and fish and wildlife, giving Jackson much broader responsibility for conservation and environmental sustainability.  

Three years later, President Obama tapped Jackson to become Administrator of the EPA.  She took office in January, 2009, the first African-American and third woman in that role.  She observed, “Serving as EPA Administrator holds a special significance for me.  I didn’t see African-Americans in positions of leadership in government when I was a child.  Being able to serve in this role is a tremendous credit to the bold individuals before me who fought for equality for over a hundred years.”

At EPA, Jackson worked to modernize the nation’s approach to toxic chemicals and raised the environmental performance standards of vehicles.  She led the agency’s response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Perhaps most important was her leadership of efforts to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant, clearing the way for more direct mitigation of climate change.  She scoffed at the idea that environmental regulation depressed the economy.  She said, “The rules and standards EPA enforces not only protect human health, but inspire innovation in industries seeking to be cleaner and more efficient. These new ideas and processes open doors for new jobs and spur our economy.”  She served as EPA Administrator until 2013.

She joined Apple, Inc. after that and now serves as the company’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives.  Under her guidance, Apple has achieved 100% renewable power and is working to expand renewable energy use through its supply chain.

Jackson exemplifies how science, technology, education and community action can improve lives.  She sits on the leadership boards for Tulane University and Conservation International, among other groups. But passion, she asserts, is a fundamental necessity for success:  “… The technology might be the spark, but what keeps the flame going is you find your passion and you use technology to advance what you care about.”

References:

Howard-Titlon Memorial Library, Tulane University.  Lis Perez Jackson.  Available at:  https://exhibits.tulane.edu/exhibit/tulanewomen/academicwomen/lisa-perez-jackson/.  Accessed January 26, 2021.

Jackson, Lisa P.  2011.  Lisa Jackson’s Story:  Protecting the Health and the Environment of the American People.  The White House, February 3, 2011.  Available at:  https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/02/03/lisa-jacksons-story-protecting-health-and-environment-american-people.  Accessed January 26, 2021.

Travis, Mary Ann.  2019.  Lisa Jackson, recipient of 2019 Tulane Distinguished Alumni Award, acts on making the world better.  Tulane University.  Available at:  https://news.tulane.edu/news/lisa-jackson-recipient-2019-tulane-distinguished-alumni-award-acts-making-world-better.  Accessed January 26, 2021.

Wilcox-Lee, Naomi.  2017.  Lisa Perez Jackson:  A Life in Balance.  Sheroes of History, October 26, 2017.  Available at:  https://sheroesofhistory.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/lisa-perez-jackson-a-life-in-balance/.  Accessed January 25, 2021.

Wild Turkey populations now thrive in 49 of the 50 states in the United States.  But a century ago, over-hunting and habitat destruction drove the species to near-extinction.  The credit for recovering this extraordinary species goes to someone else just as extrarodinary—Professor Henry S. Mosby.

Henry Sackett Mosby was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on October 28, 1913 (died 1984).  He spent most of his life in his beloved home state.  He earned degrees from Hampden Sydney College (B.S.) and the University of Michigan (M.S.).  He took a job as a field biologist with the Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries in 1939.  He completed his doctorate, also from the University of Michigan, in 1941, while working on his favorite species—the Wild Turkey—in Virginia.  His dissertation became a book, co-written with C. O. Handley, The Wild Turkey in Virginia, published in 1943; it remains a classic in the field. 

Mosby served as an army meteorologist in Europe during World War II, and on his discharge, returned to Virginia to take up work again as a wildlife biologist through.  In 1947, he joined the faculty of the department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (known now as Virginia Tech).  He retired in 1977 as head of the department.

His dissertation research, along with his later years of continued investigation, served as the basis for the restoration of the Wild Turkey first in the southeastern U.S. and then throughout the nation.  Today the species now occupies virtually all suitable habitat throughout its range and is hunted in 49 states (Alaska is the only state without Wild Turkey hunting). In recognition of his role in the bird’s recovery, the National Wild Turkey Federation created the Henry S. Mosby Award, given annually to a wildlife professional whose efforts toward Wild Turkey sustainability mirror those of Mosby

Mosby was influential in the development of the wildlife profession during the mid-20th Century.  He was a charter member of The Wildlife Society, the principal scientific organization for wildlife professionals.  He edited The Wildlife Society News (now The Bulletin) for seven years.  He originated and then edited the first two editions of Game Investigation Techniques, issued in 1960 and 1963; the book, now in its eighth edition, continues to be the primary techniques handbook in the wildlife profession. Mosby was elected president of The Wildlife Society in 1965.

As important as Henry Mosby was to the restoration of the Wild Turkey, he was equally important to his students and colleagues at Virginia Tech.  During his career, he advised 54 M.S. and 7 Ph.D. students, participated in Boy Scout activities across generations, and led religious groups both on and off campus.  I was privileged to fill his position after his retirement in 1977; I felt his uplifting presence every day as I sat in his office, typed on his rickety manual typewriter and heard the stories of his warm gentlemanly spirit.  As Bird McGinnes, his faculty colleague and eulogist, wrote, “Although he was a recognized national authority on the wild turkey, and the turkey was his favorite subject for hunting and conversation, Henry’s deepest love was for the young people who came to him to learn.”

References:

McGinnes, Burd S.  1965.  Henry Sackett Mosby, 1913-1984.  Wildlife Society Bulletin, 1391):97-98. 

“I had to be all things to all fishes.”  So said one of the most important women fisheries scientists of the early 20th Century, Dr. Emmeline Moore.  She was, indeed, important to fish, given that she directed one of the world’s most extensive surveys of fishes and other aquatic organisms at a time when such work, by men or women, was in its infancy.

Emmeline Moore was born on April 29, 1872, in Batavia, New York (died 1963).  Her family—a large one of immigrant parents and nine children—lived on a farm.  She particularly explored the edges of the farm that bordered wetlands of the Tonawanda Creek.  “I used to go the swamps every Sunday.  I remember seeing my first cardinal flowers and ferns there.”  

Her schooling and early career were interspersed during the first two decades of the new century.  She graduated from high school in 1895 and became a public school teacher as the century changed; later she earned university degrees at Cornell and Wellesley, then taught biology in high school and for a year at a college in South Africa; she earned her doctorate from Cornell and then taught at Vassar College for several years.  She was originally attracted to botany, but gradually began to link plants and fish production. 

Her fisheries career began in earnest during World War I.  While teaching at Vassar, she spent summers working for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries at the federal fish hatchery in Fairport, Iowa, where she studied how to improve fish culture in support of the war effort.  Her 1920 publication “Some Plants of Importance in Pondfish Culture” represented an early perspective on the ecological inter-relations of trophic levels and her realization that comprehensive knowledge of the biota of a waterbody was necessary to understand its fish production capability.

After the war, she was hired by the New York Department of Conservation as a botanist and later fish culture specialist for a survey of Lake George.  Soon her organizational and management skills became apparent, and in 1926 she was appointed Director of the Biology Survey for the state.  Her primary task was to continue and expand the survey of Lake George to the entire watershed of the lake, covering  scores of lakes and hundreds of square miles.  From 1926 to 1939, she directed the survey, hiring, training and overseeing dozens of seasonal field workers and producing 17 reports of findings.  She was known to “rule with an iron hand,” but also as a dignified “lady with great understanding.”  She hired students for her field crews who often went on to careers in conservation fields.  Her comprehensive survey of the Lake George watershed was the largest in the world at the time and probably still ranks among the top.

Among the many firsts recorder by Moore, she was elected president of the American Fisheries Society for 1927-1928—the first woman to hold that position.  Another fifty years passed before the second woman held the presidency.  Throughout her career, she was an avid participant in the American Fisheries Society, the oldest and premier scientific and professional organization for fisheries (established in 1870).  

Moore also believed that science must be communicated effectively to the public.  She assured that the reports of the New York Biological Survey were well illustrated with artistic and scientifically accurate drawings of fish and other organisms.  She wrote for and spoke frequently to the general public, reasoning that scientists and managers needed “to get over to the public the idea that a research job is necessary to get facts before coming out with a recommendation for improved management of the resources.”

Dr. Emmeline Moore has achieved a revered place in fisheries history.  The New York Department of Conservation named a research vessel, the Emmeline-M, in her honor in 1956.  In 2009, the American Fisheries Society created the Emmeline Moore Award, given annually to a person committed to expanding diversity in the field of fisheries.  She was “all things to all fishes” a century ago, and she continues to inspire us today.

References:

Balon, E. K., Michael N. Bruton, and David L. G.Noakes.  2012.  Women in ichthyology:  an anthology in honor of ET,Ro and Genie.  Available at:  https://books.google.ca/books?id=d6bzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed September 16. 2020.

Zatkos, Lauren, and 11 others.  2020.  AFS Roosts: Emmeline Moore, All Things to All Fishes.  Fisheries 45(8) 435-443.

Native Americans called the place the “bad lands” because traveling through the landscape was so difficult.  The name stuck as ranchers, farmers and other settlers attempted to carve a living from the land.  Perhaps the best use of the region was settled when it was declared a national monument on January 25, 1939, by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The badlands region of southwestern South Dakota served as home to several Native American groups for as long as 11,000 years.  Their descendants were the Lakota Indians who still live in the region.  Most Native American lands were appropriated by the federal government for granting to homesteaders in the late 1800s.  Conflicts began, including the famous battle at Wounded Knee (which is not in the park itself, but about 45 miles south).

After the turn of the century, homesteading began in earnest.  Changes in federal law expanded the size of a homestead from the traditional 160 acres to 640 acres, acknowledging the inability of a small tract to support a family.  Life was hard, with dry summers, brutally cold winters and strong winds at all times.  During the Dust Bowl years, farming became so difficult that most families abandoned their lands or sold them back to the federal government.

During this time, the idea of preserving the lands gained attention.  In various stages, plans for a national park or monument were developed and passed.  The creation of a park was pushed most vigorously by South Dakota Senator Peter Norbeck, also known for his commitment to wildlife and waterfowl in particular.  The Badlands National Monument was officially created by the proclamation of President Roosevelt on January 25, 1939 (later, in 1978, the monument was reclassified as Badlands National Park).

The park covers approximately 240,000 acres of highly eroded hills surrounded by a mixed-grass prairie ecosystem.  The area was covered by an ancient sea that disappeared gradually, depositing sediments until about 28 million years ago.  Because of this history, Badlands contains exceptional fossil beds, serving as the nation’s most productive site for mammalian fossils from the Oligocene.

The early arguments over whether Badlands should be a national park or monument revolved around access for recreational visitors—it was a hard place to get to.  Today, however, it has become a popular site.  From a low of about 10,000 annual visitors during World War II, annual visitation is now around 1 million.

The park is notable for a fauna that is well adapted to life in such harsh conditions.  Although both American bison and pronghorn antelope were extirpated, they have been reintroduced and are thriving.  Of particular interest is the endangered black-footed ferret, which has suffered because of habitat loss, declines in their prey (especially prairie dogs), and disease.  Populations have been re-introduced into Badlands National Park as part of the recovery plan that is based entirely on captive breeding and establishment of carefully protected populations.

References:

Mattison, Ray H. and Robert A. Grom.  1968.   History of Badlands National Monument.  Badlands Natural History Association.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/badl/index.htm.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

National Park Service.  Badlands.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/badl/learn/nature/mammals.htm.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

US-Parks.com.  Badlands National Park History.  Available at:  http://www.us-parks.com/badlands-national-park/history.html.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

A 1937 George Gershwin hit song starts this way:  “A foggy day in London town, had me low, had me down; I viewed the morning with alarm, the British Museum had lost its charm.”  Perhaps the museum lost its charm for Gershwin, but the rest of the world remains enchanted.  The museum opened to the public on January 15, 1759, and amazes nearly 7 million people every year.

The British Museum was the first national museum in the world.  It was founded in 1753, when the will of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), a successful London doctor, bequeathed his collection to the British people (in exchange, actually for 20,000 British pounds).  He had begun collecting while traveling as the personal physician to the governor of Jamaica.  His main interest was natural history, and he brought back 800 species of plants and animals, many alive, from that voyage.

He never stopped collecting.  He also acquired collections of others, accumulating more than 71,000 objects, mostly natural history, during his life (the Enlightenment Gallery at the museum represents the way an 18^th Century museum looked, with an overwhelming preponderance of natural specimens displayed as objects of curiosity).  His library exceeded 50,000 volumes.  His collections filled up his house in the Bloomsbury district of London, across the street from the current site of the library, and then the house next door.  He eventually had to move to the Chelsea district to find a home with sufficient space (his home was on the square that now bears his name).

From the beginning, the museum was free and open to the public, a service to “all studious and curious Persons.” Its doors have remained open since then, except during the two world wars in the 20^th Century. About 5,000 people visited the museum in 1759; nearly 7 million now visit each year, making it the most popular attraction in the United Kingdom.

But that tells just part of the story.  As the museum became more and more popular in the late 1800s, and as the collections continued to grow and diversify, the facilities became overly crowded.  Consequently, a new building was constructed in the South Kensington district of London to house the natural history collections.  That building opened in the 1880s, splitting the attendance between the sites.  Now run as the independent Natural History Museum (read more), it attracted about 4.6 million visits in 2016.   The British Library, which was part of the museum until 1973, also attracts more than 1 million visitors annually.  In all, then, nearly 13 million people visit the British Museum and its offspring every year.

The British Museum itself is now primarily a cultural and archeological museum, known for outstanding exhibits including the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon friezes (which may be on their way back to Athens).  But its role as the conservator of the natural history of the world during the age of exploration helped shape our understanding of natural selection, evolution, biodiversity, ecology and conservation.  It will never lose its charm.

References:

British Museum.  The Museum’s story—General History.  Available at:  http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/the_museums_story/general_history/sir_hans_sloane.aspx.  Accessed January 15, 2018