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When Wikipedia lists a person born on December 10 as a “composer and ornithologist,” the entry deserves some further research.  And so, today, I report on the life of Olivier Messiaen, French composer and ornithologist, born this day in 1908 (died 1992).

Messiaen was born in Paris of educated parents.  That he was a musical prodigy became apparent soon.  By age 7, he was composing; at age 11, he entered the Paris Conservatory of Music.  He became a skilled organist and, at the end of his studies in 1930, became the principal organist for the Church of the Trinity in Paris.  He kept that position for the next 40 years, along with a long list of related teaching, composing and conducting commissions in France and around the world (for example, he wrote an orchestral piece for the American bi-centennial based on a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park).

He fought in World War II and was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis in a Polish war camp during 1940-1941.  While there, he composed what is considered his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time, which he and three others performed for 5,000 prisoners.  “Never,” he said later, “had I been listened to with such attention and understanding.”

Messiaen himself was a great listener, especially to nature.  He was always enchanted by birdsong, and he spent much of his time outdoors listening to birds and recording their song.  He often said that birds were the earth’s first musicians, and the best.  He could identify nearly any bird in Europe and many from other locations by their songs.  Although having no academic or scientific credentials in ornithology, he grew to be considered one of the world’s authorities on bird vocalization in the 20^th Century.

He incorporated what he heard into his compositions.  His music includes the songs of more than 250 birds.  In one piece, Chonochromie, composed in 1960, he scored 18 violin parts, each playing the song of a different bird, all at the same time.  During a rehearsal for this complicated piece, one performer was said to throw a shoe at Messiaen out of frustration!  Some compositions feature birdsong, but one in particular—his Catalogue of the Birds, composed for solo piano in 1958—is entirely built from birdsong.  Writing in The Atlantic, Matthew Gurewitsch described what Messiaen could do with the music of birds:

“Birdsong moves faster than human fingers; the first thing to go when an instrumentalist mimics a bird is tempo. Also, Western melodies are strung together from notes, well-defined pitches neatly arrayed on scales. Birds sing microtones. They phrase in arabesques that swoop and glide. Their staccato “notes” are more like jagged shards than human musicians’ points and beads of sound. The timbres and attacks are often energetic to the point of harshness, yet to our ears in the wild they may sound ineffably sweet. For the piano and for instruments of the orchestra Messiaen invented ways of clustering and combining notes to produce, often with uncanny verisimilitude, an impression of the real thing. Call it trompe-l’oreille.”

          Messiaen was not always appreciated but by the last decades of his life, he had become known as one of the century’s greatest composers.  And a true conservationist.

References:

Gurewitsch, Matthew.  1997.  An Audubon in Sound.  The Atlantic, March 1997.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/an-audubon-in-sound/376810/.  Accessed December 120, 2017.

Kozinn, Allan.  1992.  Olivier Messiaen, Composer, Dies at 83.  The New York Times, April 29, 1992.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/29/arts/olivier-messiaen-composer-dies-at-83.html?pagewanted=all.  Accessed December 10, 2017.

McComb, Todd.  Olivier Messiaen.  All Music.  Available at:  https://www.allmusic.com/artist/olivier-messiaen-mn0001528006/biography.  Accessed December 10, 2017.

By executive order, President Calvin Coolidge created the Wupatki National Monument in central Arizona, on December 9, 1924.  The monument stands out for its exceptionally high density of archeological sites created by Native Americans of the desert Southwest.

The Wupatki region has been inhabited by Native Americans for at least 10,000 years.  Over the centuries, various Indian groups occupied the area, with fluctuations in population depending on specific climatic conditions.  The most recent major colonization occurred after the 10^th Century, when the Sunset Crater volcano, a few miles southwest of the monument, erupted and coated the entire region with layers of volcanic ash.  The ash nourished the soil and held water, improving the conditions for agriculture.  The low plains of the region were dotted with settlements of Native Americans, known primarily as the Sinagua people.

The Sinagua built large structures from stable red sandstone rock, held together firmly by mortar.  Consequently, they were able to build multi-story settlements with as many as 100 rooms.  The Indians abandoned the structures around 1250, for unknown reasons, but presumably because less favorable climate caused failure of local agriculture.

The monument was designated “…to preserve and protect thousands of archeological sites scattered across the stunning landscape of the Painted Desert and the grassland prairies….”  A survey during the 1980s catalogued an estimated 2700 archeological sites in Wupatki, and several thousand more exist in nearby areas.  Some are the large structures for which the monument is well known, but other are distributed throughout the monument’s 56 square miles (about 35,000 acres).  The museum contains nearly 500,000 catalogued archeological items, making it a highly significant historical research repository.

Wupatki National Monument also has significant natural resource value.  The large acreage is mostly undeveloped and at some distance from major human settlement (Flagstaff is about 26 miles away).  Consequently, the monument provides a wilderness-like setting (although not formally designated as a wilderness), with unbroken vistas of juniper woodlands, grasslands and desert scrub communities against a backdrop of sandstone cliffs and the looming San Francisco mountains.  More importantly, it provides dark night skies and natural soundscapes.  As the noise of modern civilization increases, the natural soundscape of Wupatki is a natural resource all its own, useful as a baseline for understanding changes in soundscapes across the region and nation.

References:

Desert USA.  Wupatki National Monument.  Available at:  https://www.desertusa.com/wup/du_wup_desc.html.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

National Park Service.  2015.  Foundation Document, Wupatki National Monument, Arizona.  May 2015.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/wupa/getinvolved/upload/WUPA-Foundation-Document-Web-Final-May-2015.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

National Park Service.  Wuptaki National Monument, Arizona.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/wupa/learn/historyculture/places.htm.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

The American Bird Banding Association was formed on December 8, 1909.  At the annual meeting of the American Ornithological Union at the Hotel Endicott in New York City, Dr. Leon J. Cole presided over the formal establishment of the association, with 34 founding members, and became its first president.  The purpose of the association was to conduct “…the banding of wild birds and the recording of accurate data on their movements.”

Cole, a Ph.D. trained geneticist, had been a bird enthusiast throughout his life (born 1877, died 1948).  He began advocating for a systematic approach to bird banding beginning in 1901, in a paper published by the Michigan Academy of Sciences:

“It is possible such a plan might be used in following the movements of individual birds, if some way could be devised of numbering them which would not interfere with the bird in any way and would still be conspicuous enough to attract attention of any person who might chance to shoot or capture it.”

Birds had been banded in various ways for hundreds of years.  Most accounts credit John James Audubon with the first recorded use of bands when he attached silver wire threads to the legs of fledgling Phoebes around 1800.  However, no comprehensive plan for recording the data—both the origin of banded birds and the location of their recovery—existed.  Under the guidance of Cole and the American Bird Banding Association, over 4000 bands were distributed to amateur birders in 1910—and the science of bird banding began.  Today, Leon Cole is credited as the somewhat-forgotten father of American bird banding.

The American Bird Banding Association spurred the development of regional banding groups throughout the country.  It remained the central organizer of bird banding until 1920, when the work was turned over to the U.S. Biological Survey.  With the passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the federal government took on the major responsibility for the health of bird populations—and had the greatest need for information about them.  The work was entrusted to Frederick Lincoln, who oversaw the program from 1920 to 1946.  Lincoln became famous for his genius as the architect of the modern bird-banding data management system.  Today, the national coordination of bird banding resides in the Bird Banding Laboratory of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, within the U.S. Geological Survey.

The most recent data provided by the Bird Banding Laboratory shows that over a fifty-year span from 1960-2010, 64 million birds have been banded following federal banding protocols.  The lab has recorded more than 4 million records of banded birds being recaptured or sighted.  Recently, more than 1 million birds have been banded and nearly 100,000 recoveries have been recorded annually.

References:

Bird Banding Laboratory.  A brief history about the origins of bird banding.  Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey.  Available at:  https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/homepage/historyNew.cfm.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

Cole, Leon J.  1910.  The tagging of wild birds:  Report of progress in 1909.  The Auk 27(2):153-168.  Available at:   http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4071108.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

McCabe, Robert A.  1979.  Wisconsin’s forgotten ornithologist:  Leon J. Cole.  The Passenger Pigeon, Wisconsin Society for Ornithology 41(3):129-131.  Available at:  http://images.library.wisc.edu/EcoNatRes/EFacs/PassPigeon/ppv41no03/reference/econatres.pp41n03.rmccabe.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

Wood, Harold B.  1945.  The history of bird banding.  The Auk 62(2):256-265.  Available at:  http://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v062n02/p0256-p0265.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

On December 7, 2015, Beijing, China, took the historic action of issuing a red alert for air pollution, the first time it had ever done so.  The city was responding to a heavy smog event that was expected to last for several days, endangering the health of Beijing’s 23 million residents.

In 2013, China developed a four-step air smog grading system, increasing in severity from blue to yellow to orange to red.  The system uses a number of criteria for judging severity, including visibility, humidity and the concentration of small particles, known as PM 2.5.  PM 2.5 are combustion particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, small enough to enter lungs and in some cases the blood stream.  China also has a more general air-quality alert system that uses the concentration of major pollutants (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone) to create an AQI—air quality index.

The AQI on December 7 exceeded 450, prompting the first ever red alert.  Levels of PM 2.5 also sky-rocketed. The World Health Organization considers PM 205 levels lower than 10 to be acceptable; the U.S. classifies PM 2.5 levels over 200 particles as “very unhealthy” and over 300 as “hazardous.” Concentrations in Beijing on December 7 reached 253, prompting the first ever red alert.  Environmental groups have termed this and other serious air pollution events as “airpocalypses.”

A red alert requires schools to close and reduces car traffic by 50%, allowing only vehicles with even or odd license plates to drive.  The alert lasted for several days, until weather conditions changed and disbursed the pollutants.

PM 2.5 concentrations in Beijing had exceeded those on December 7 many times in the past, but the government only issued orange alerts, the level below red.  Observers suspected that this first red alert was a response to public pressure, as China and the world’s other nations were actively negotiating the Paris climate accords at the same time.  Since then, Beijing has issued several other red alerts.

Air pollution in China is a major environmental issue in the world’s largest country.  China produces more air pollution than any other nation, much of it the result of heavy industrial manufacturing and electricity generation that relies substantially on burning coal.  The U.S. embassy in Beijing monitors air pollution at the embassy.  From 2008 to 2015, the embassy recorded unhealthy, very unhealthy or hazardous air quality on two-thirds of all days; air quality was good on only 2% of days.

China continues to make major commitments to improving air quality.  More than half of all new electricity generation in China is based on renewable energy; China installs new renewable energy at the highest level of any country in the world.  Despite these actions, turning around the devastating air pollution in China’s main cities will take many decades.

References:

BBC News.  2015.  China pollution:  First ever red alert in effect in Beijing.  BBC News, 8 December 2015.  Available at:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35026363.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Phillips, Tom.  2015.  Beijing issues first pollution red alert as smog engulfs capital.  The Guardian, 7 December 2015.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/07/beijing-pollution-red-alert-smog-engulfs-capital.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Wong, Edward.  2015.  Beijing Issues Red Alert Over Air Pollution for the First Time.  New York Times, Dec. 7, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world/asia/beijing-pollution-red-alert.html.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Yaoti, Ren.  2016.  A guide to China’s smog alert colors.  GB Times, Jan. 15, 2016.  Available at:  https://gbtimes.com/guide-chinas-smog-alert-colours.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Eliot Furness Porter was born on December 6, 1901 (died 1990).  He became one of the most renowned nature photographers of the 20^th Century, compared in importance and skill to Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz.  Educated as a chemical engineer and medical doctor, he taught biochemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe College during the 1930s.

From an early age, Porter was fascinated by both nature and photography.  He was given his first camera at the age of ten and immediately began to photograph birds—a subject that became a lifelong obsession.  While teaching college he continued to refine his photographic skills, focusing on the black-and-white palette that defined artistic photography of the times.  In 1938, the influential photographer Alfred Stieglitz offered Porter a one-person show at his New York gallery.  The success of that show convinced Porter to abandon teaching in favor of a career as a professional photographer.  He moved to New Mexico and began to chronicle the southwestern landscape.

At the time, Kodak was marketing its first popular color film—Kodachrome.  Although color photography was scoffed at by serious photographers, Porter embraced the innovation.  He perfected intricate processes for printing color images.  His use of color ushered in the modern era of photography.  Ansel Adams described Porter as “master of nature’s color.”

Porter also brought a new perspective to the nature photograph.  Rather than the sweeping, majestic landscapes of Ansel Adams, Porter concentrated on the small, the familiar, even the insignificant.   A group of fallen leaves, a collection of pebbles gathered on a sand bar, or the pattern of mineral veining in a rock wall were the kind of subjects he admired and photographed.  He was particularly fond of lichens, the partnership of fungus and algae that colonizes rocks and tree trunks.  “Sometimes,” he said, “you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.”  A critic described his work this way:

“Mr. Porter’s eye is less for the grand sweep than for details of running water, iridescent pools, rock walls, rock textures, caverns, violent twists of sandstone, lichens, willows, leafy trees. He looks for the grand truth in the minute. It is the color that conveys the grandeur. Purples, blues, reds, yellows, oranges — all of them overlaid with metallic brilliance — compose natural beauty of overwhelming vitality.”

            He recognized that photography could be used for political purposes, and he put its influence to work on behalf of the burgeoning environmental movement of the 1960s.  “Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment….”  He formed a winning partnership with David Brower, the longtime leader of The Sierra Club.  In 1962, The Sierra Club issued a book of Porter’s photographs accompanying quotes from Henry David Thoreau—In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.  The book was an instant success, a masterpiece of photography, aesthetic design and printing technology; it virtually created the coffee-table book genre.  His second book, displaying photographs of the Glen Canyon taken just before it was flooded by closure of the Glen Canyon Dam, is considered the impetus for passage of The Wilderness Act of 1964.

References:

Amon Carter Museum.  Eliot Porter Collection Guide.  Available at:  http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/porter/about.php.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

Honan, William.  1990.  Eliot Porter, Photographer, is Dead at 88.  New York Times, November 3, 1990.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/03/obituaries/eliot-porter-photographer-is-dead-at-88.html.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

International Center of Photography.  Eliot Porter.  Available at:  https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/eliot-porter?all/all/all/all/0.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

2016. Paul Getty Museum. Eliot Porter. Available at:  http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1426/eliot-porter-american-1901-1990/. Accessed December 5, 2016.

Solnit, Rebecca.  2002.  In Photography is the Preservation of the World.  Sierra Magazine, September/October 2002.  The Sierra Club, San Francisco, CA.  Available at:  https://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200209/porter.asp.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

The United Nations has declared December 5 as World Soil Day.  Noting that “soils constitute the foundation for agricultural development, essential ecosystem functions and food security and hence are key to sustaining life on Earth,” the United Nations General Assembly created World Soil Day in 2014 and additionally declared 2015 as International Year of Soils.

Each World Soil Day features a theme highlighting a particular aspect of soil health.  For 2022, the theme is “Soils, Where Food Begins.” According to the United Nations,

• 95% of our food comes from soils.
• 18 naturally occurring chemical elements are essential to plants. Soils supply 15.
• Agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050. 
• 33% of soils are degraded. 
• Up to 58% more food could be produced through sustainable soil management.  

December 5 was chosen as World Soil Day to honor the dedicated environmental work of the late king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was born on December 5, 1927.  At the time of his death in 2016, King Adulyadej was the longest serving monarch—70 years—and beloved by the Thai people for his humility and devotion to improving the lives of his fellow citizens.  He was particularly interested in soil as the basis of rural prosperity, recognizing that the work of thousands of years of soil formation could be destroyed by a single thoughtless act of improper use.

King Adulyadej was an advocate of using vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) to control soil erosion.  Vetiver grass is a perennial with long vertical roots that is exceptionally useful for stabilizing soils on sloping hills.   Starting in 1991, the king led experiments and demonstrations to develop the use of vetiver as a “miracle grass.”  So promising was this work that The International Erosion Control Association awarded the king its International Merit Award in 1993.  Later that year, the World Bank presented him with a bronze sculpture of a vetiver plant “for technical and development accomplishment in the promotion of the vetiver technology internationally.”

World Soil Day is overseen by the Global Soil Partnership, established in 2012.  Their report on the “Status of the World’s Soil Resources” offers these sobering statistics:

• Over one-third of the earth’s ice-free surface has been cleared of natural vegetation, making it susceptible to erosion, loss of nutrients and biodiversity.
• If soil erosion continues at its current rate, by 2050 the earth will have lost the equivalent of the arable land of India.
• Increasing soil salinity has reduced productivity on agricultural lands the equivalent of the area of arable land of Brazil.

Fortunately, soil scientists and agriculturists know how to prevent further damage and reverse the damage that has already occurred.  It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it!

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2017.  World Soil Day.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/world-soil-day/en/.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2015.  Status of the world’s soil resources.  UNFAO, Rome, Italy.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/resources/highlights/detail/en/c/357163/.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  Undated.  Global Soil Partnership.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/en/.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Global Pulse Confederation.  Undated.  Pulses.  Available at:  http://pulses.org/.   Accessed December 4, 2016.

Office of the Royal Development Projects Board.  2000.  The royal messages concerning vetiver:  A miracle grass.  Bangkok, Thailand.  Available at:  http://prvn.rdpb.go.th/files/royal%20messgaes_book.pdf .  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Pacific Rim Vetiver Network.  Undated.  The King of Thailand and the miracle vetiver grass.  Available at:  http://prvn.rdpb.go.th/king.html.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

United Nations General Assembly.  2014.  World Soil Day and International Year of Soils, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 2013 (resolution 68/232).  New York, New York.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/68/232.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. government agency that oversees the conservation of marine species, de-listed the eastern Steller sea lion from the Endangered Species List, effective on December 4, 2013.  The de-listing acknowledged the rapid increase in the abundance of the population as well as the desire to balance conservation of the sea lion and one of its primary prey species, the white sturgeon.

The Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) is one of the largest members of the marine mammal group known as pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walrus).  Males grow as large as 2500 pounds; females are about one-quarter that size.  Males can live to age twenty, but females are known to live for thirty years or more.  Males defend territories and mate with large numbers of females.  They reside in colonies that may contain hundreds of individuals.

Steller sea lions live along the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Canada, from northern California up to and around the Alaskan coast.  The species is divided into two subgroups, the western and eastern populations; the dividing line is in southern Alaska at Cape Suckling.  The de-listing covers only the eastern population.  The western population is still listed as endangered, its abundance having plummeted mysteriously since the 1970s.

But the eastern population has done spectacularly well.  In 1979, the population stood at about 18,000 individuals; it was listed as an endangered population in 1990.  Since then, it has been increasing at more than 4% per year, above the goal stated in the population recovery plan.  As of 2015, the population numbered over 80,000 individuals.

An evaluation for de-listing had been requested by the fisheries and wildlife agencies of Washington and Oregon in 2010.  Those states feared that the rapidly expanding sea lion population would have a negative impact on salmon populations, many of which are also endangered, and the white sturgeon.  Sea lions have learned to congregate at the base of dams on major rivers, where fish concentrate during their upstream migrations.  Populations at the base of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River have become particularly abundant and problematic.  The fish are easy prey for the sea lions, and white sturgeon populations in the Columbia River have declined in parallel to the increases in sea lions.

Removal of the eastern Steller sea lion from the Endangered Species List means that the species will no longer receive intensive monitoring and priority consideration when actions are proposed for managing rivers, dams and other wildlife populations.  However, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act 
continues to protect this species and all other marine mammals from harvest.

References:

Columbia River Basin Bulletin.  2013.  Steller Sea Lions Delisted; Gives States Option Of Seeking Lethal Removal Below Bonneville Dam.  Fish & Wildlife News, October 25, 2013.  Available at:  http://www.cbbulletin.com/428830.aspx.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

IUCN.  2017.  Eumetopias jubatus.  IUCN Red List.  Available at:  http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/8239/0.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

NOAA Fisheries.  2013.  NOAA removes the eastern Steller sea lion from the Endangered Species Act list.  Available at:  http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/mediacenter/2013/10/23_10_essl_delist.html.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

NOAA Fisheries.  Steller Sea Lion (Eumetopias jubatus).  Available at:  http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/sealions/steller-sea-lion.html.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

On December 2, 1946, a small group of the world’s nations that conducted whaling met in Washington, DC, and signed the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.  That Convention created the International Whaling Commission, a global group that oversees the conservation of whales and their relatives throughout the world’s oceans.

The Convention establishing the International Whaling Commission (IWC) states that the agreement and IWC were formed “…for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus mak[ing] possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.”  In other words, when created, the task of the IWC was to regulate whale stocks as renewable natural resources, to be harvested sustainably by the world’s whaling nations.  They addressed this charge by setting harvest regulations that governed whaling for many decades.  The regulations, like many early fishing rules, did little to reduce the overharvest of whales.  Consequently, a large range of nations and organizations have changed the IWC and whale management.

From a small number of members who represented whaling nations, the membership has grown to 88 countries (as of November, 2022), many of whom are landlocked and most of whom have no intention to conduct whaling.  Consequently, the IWC has become largely an environmental organization with the dominant view that whales and their relatives should not be harvested.  In 1986, therefore, the IWC set a moratorium on all commercial whaling.  The success of this moratorium is revealed in the growing populations of most whale species, including the de-listing of some populations of California gray and humpback whales from the U.S. Endangered Species List.  From a low of only a few hundred remaining individuals, populations of the blue whale, the world’s largest animal, have rebounded several fold.  While blue whales are still far below sustainable levels, their continued presence on earth is assured.

Some whaling does continue, however. Both Norway and Iceland, IWC members, conduct commercial whaling on inshore stocks of smaller whales, operating under a provision of the convention that allows them to “object” to the catch limits imposed by the Commission.  Japan continues to conduct “scientific whaling” under the provisions of the IWC, but the actions of the Japanese are considered by many to be a sham that merely allows Japanese whalers to kill and sell whales.  Aboriginal whaling is allowed in several locations worldwide, including in Alaska, where Inuit hunters harvest bowhead whales.

The IWC relies strongly on the scientific community of whale biologists to provide the data for their decisions.  The Commission’s annual Scientific Committee meeting is attended by more than 200 scientists.  According to the U.S. Department of State, the IWC Scientific Committee is “…considered the preeminent scientific authority on large whales.”  With a moratorium on commercial whaling in place, the IWC has gone on to address other dangers to whale populations, including collisions with boats, entanglement in fishing gear, behavioral changes caused by whale-watching tourism and climate change.

The IWC is headed by an Executive Secretary who oversees a small staff operating out of Cambridge, England.  The Commission holds a general meeting every two years at which the rules for whaling are considered.  The most recent meeting was held in Slovenia in October, 2022..

References:

International Whaling Commission.  History and purpose.  Available at:  https://iwc.int/history-and-purpose.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

U.S. Department of State.  International Whaling Commission (IWC).  Available at:  https://www.state.gov/e/oes/ocns/opa/biodiversity/whale/.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

William Temple Hornaday, one of the leading conservationists of the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, was born on December 1, 1854 (died 1937).  Hornaday was the finest taxidermist of his time, but made history by promoting the preservation of living specimens in two of the world’s premier zoos.

Hornaday was born in central Indiana, a farm boy who wanted adventure and scientific study rather than days behind a plow.  He attended Iowa State University, but left before graduating to become a taxidermist for Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, a biological specimen company in Rochester, New York.  Ward’s sent him on collecting expeditions throughout the tropics, where his skill as a marksman and his fearlessness as an animal tracker soon became evident.  A major expedition to India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia yielded many specimens—at the time considered the largest collection assembled by one person—and provided the experience for the first of 15 books he wrote, Two Years in the Jungle.

His expertise as a taxidermist led to his appointment as the Smithsonian’s chief taxonomist in 1882.  Fearing that the American bison would be extinct soon, the Smithsonian’s leader sent Hornaday on a collecting expedition to the West to shoot bison specimens for museums across the world (an odd paradox:  to preserved some knowledge of a vanishing species, one is required to kill individuals!).  While completing the assignment, Hornaday concluded that bison and many other species would soon be gone unless something was done—and a conservationist was born:  “It is the duty of every good citizen to promote the protection of forests and wildlife.”

His first idea was to preserve some groups of living bison for captive breeding.  He convinced the Smithonsian’s leadership in 1887 to create a Department of Living Animals, a zoo of small enclosures behind the iconic Smithsonian Castle on the Capitol Mall, and put him in charge.  Within a year, the zoo was bursting with animals and visited by a continuing stream of curious tourists.  Within two years, Hornaday lobbied Congress that the nation needed a grander facility to display its living heritage.   They agreed and appropriated funds to buy a large tract of land in Rock Creek Park to house the growing collection in a much more natural setting—the beginnings of the National Zoo we know and enjoy today.

Hornaday wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, however, and he left the zoo soon after the final plans had been drawn.  After a few years working in real estate, he became the first director of the New York Zoological Park (known popularly as the Bronx Zoo, much to Hornaday’s distress), where he served for three decades.  There he built the zoo and its associated programs into one of the world’s primary conservation organizations, the World Conservation Society.  While the zoo’s director, he was at the center of a national scandal in 1906, when the zoo displayed a human pigmy from the Congo in the primate house.

Hornaday was a dedicated conservationist throughout the later half of his life.  He promoted game protection laws to limit both market and recreational hunting.  He believed strongly in captive breeding as a fundamental tool of wildlife management and viewed hunters as a cause of species decline (views that put him at odds with other prominent conservationists, such as Aldo Leopold).  He was particularly vocal about preservation of the American bison.  His 1913 bestseller, Our Vanishing Wildlife:  Its Extermination and Preservation, was a call to action for the nation.  Hornaday was also a leader of the scouting movement, responsible for the incorporation of conservation and environment as fundamentals of the scouting portfolio.

References:

Bechtel, Stefan.  2012.  The Peculiar Victorian Taxidermist Who Created the National Zoo.  The Atlantic, May 16, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/the-peculiar-victorian-taxidermist-who-created-the-national-zoo/257251/.  Accessed December 1, 2017.

New York Times.  1937.  Dr. W. T. Hornaday Dies in Stamford.  New York Times, March 7, 1937.  Available at:  https://www.ancestry.com/boards/surnames.hornaday/129/mb.ashx?pnt=1.  Accessed December 1, 2017.

Smithsonian Institution.  1989.  William Temple Hornaday, Visionary of the National Zoo.  Smithsonian News Service, February 1989.  Available at:  http//:nationalalzoo.si.edu/AboutUs/History/hornaday.cfm.  Accessed February 11, 2015.

On November 14, 2013, the U.S. government crushed nearly 6 tons of elephant ivory in a historic demonstration of its commitment to stopping poaching and illegal wildlife trade.  The action by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ushered in a new era in elephant conservation.

Ivory has a long history as a favored raw material for art—jewelry, statuary, piano keys and other decorative purposes.  The commercial market for ivory, however, is the primary reason for the drastic overharvest and near extermination of African elephants during the 20^th Century.  In response, the world’s nations together made international ivory trade illegal in 1990.  Elephant populations have been recovering since then, but a new wave of poaching since about 2010 is driving elephant numbers down again—and bringing a renewed sense of urgency to elephant conservation.

As nations catch poachers and disrupt illegal trade, they accumulate ivory.  The ivory is kept in warehouses, generally with no plan for what to do with the stockpiles.  On two occasions, several African nations were allowed to sell their ivory stockpiles, so that the revenue could be used for elephant conservation and to offset agricultural losses caused by elephants trampling peasant’s fields.  Those sales sparked controversy, some feeling that the sales encouraged a black market and further poaching, and world opinion is now deciding against any such future sales of ivory

Kenya made the first commitment to destroying ivory when it burned its stockpile on July 19, 1989.  They burned ivory again in 1991 and 2011, joined by two other countries.  But ivory destruction took hold as a global strategy in 2013, when the Philippines and U.S. destroyed their ivory collections.

The first U.S. ivory crushing, on November 14, 2013, destroyed the 25-year accumulation held, along with other wildlife contraband, at a US Fish and Wildlife Service warehouse near Denver, Colorado.  An industrial-scale rock crusher, the kind used to grind road demolition waste into gravel, ground elephant tusks, statues and jewelry into pea-sized fragments as the leaders of American conservation looked on.  Carter Roberts, CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, said, “By crushing its contraband ivory tusks and trinkets, the U.S. government sends a signal that it will not tolerate the senseless killing of elephants.”

Other countries got the signal.  Since then, 16 additional countries have crushed or burned their ivory stockpiles, including China, the largest market for illegal ivory sales.  In all, 275 tons of ivory have been destroyed.  Twice more, in 2015 and 2017, the U.S. crushed ivory, both times in Times Square, New York City.  Unfortunately, confiscated ivory continues to accumulate.

Ivory destruction is symbolic, but real actions have followed.  The U.S. made virtually all internal sales of ivory illegal in 2016 (only antique ivory and ivory included on musical instruments are exempted).  China has instituted policies to do the same by 2018.

It is tempting to put a price tag on the value of the destroyed ivory, but that would undermine the whole idea.  As Ross Harvey of the South African Institute of International Affairs wrote, “…ethically, elephant ivory should have no material value, and elephant tusks should only be regarded as valuable on living elephants….crushing a stockpile of confiscated ivory sends a signal to the world that ivory is not for sale.”

 

References:

 

Actman, Jani.  2016.  U.S. Adopts Near-Total Ivory Ban.  National Geographic News, June 3, 2016.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/us-ivory-ban-regulations/.  Accessed November 13, 2017.

 

Actman, Jani.  2017.  Does Sestryoing Ivory Save Elephants?  Experts Weigh In.  National Geographic News, August 2, 2017.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/wildlife-watch-ivory-crush-elephant-poaching/.  Accessed November 13, 2017.

 

Poaching Facts.  Ivory Stockpile Burns.  Available at:  http://www.poachingfacts.com/history/ivory-stockpile-burns/.  Accessed November 13, 2017.

 

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  2013.  U.S. Destroy Confiscated Ivory Stockpile, Sends Message that Wildlife Trafficking, Elephant Poaching Must be Crushed.  USFWS News Release, November 14, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/le/pdf/Ivory-Crush-News-Release.pdf.  Accessed November 13, 2017.