Author: todayinconservation

It was the perfect place to build a dam.  The Italian Alps had formed a deep, steep-sided valley that could provide the site for a tall, narrow dam capable of providing enormous amounts of hydro-electricity.  So, the Italians built it—the Vajont Dam, highest arched dam in the world at the time.  The tragic flaw would not surface until later.

            The Vajont Valley is in northeastern Italy, about 60 miles north of Venice.  Mount Toc, a 4,800-foot peak, forms the southern boundary of the valley, dominating the landscape.  The dam is 860 feet tall, a thin arched structure, much like Hoover Dam in shape. The dam went up between 1957 and 1960, when the gates were closed and the reservoir behind the dam began filling. 

            That’s when the trouble began.  As the dam filled, the slope of Mount Toc began to slide downhill.  Engineers had expected some movement, knowing that landslides were common in the Alps and that the side of Mount Toc might be somewhat unstable.  Their strategy was to fill the lake slowly, alternately raising and lowering the water level, creating small controlled land movements that would eventually stop.  The strategy worked for a time, as engineers monitored the “creep” of the mountain and made changes in water level to slow it down if the movement was too fast. 

            A little problem occurred in November, 1960, when 700,000 cubic meters of the mountain slid into the reservoir—in ten minutes.  The dam held and the lake absorbed the landslide without incident.  The large rock-pile in the middle of the reservoir was a cause for concern, however, because engineers worried that a bigger landslide might block water from reaching the dam and so stop the ability of the dam to generate electricity.  In response, they designed and built a tunnel between the upper part of the reservoir and the dam, so that a potential blockage could be by-passed.

            Then came the big problem.  The summer and fall of 1963 were wet, the unusually high rainfall raising the lake’s water level higher and faster than desired.  As the lake behind the dam reached a depth of about 800 feet, Mount Toc started slipping more.  Some observers got nervous, but the general feeling was that the mountain would hold.  Then, at 11:39 PM on October 9, the entire side of Mount Toc fell into the reservoir.  An area 1.5 miles by 1 mile containing about 250 million cubic meters of rock (400 times bigger than the earlier landslide) fell into the reservoir in 45 seconds.  The landslide completely filled the valley, to a height well above the top of the dam.

            The water in the reservoir had to go somewhere.  An 850-foot tall wall of water pushed up the opposite side of the valley from the landslide, destroying one small town on the hill.  Another wall of water was pushed upstream, flooding several more villages.  The landslide pushed all the water between the slide and the dam into a huge wave that towered 700 feet above the dam.  It fell on five downstream towns, the weight of the water destroying everything in its path.  A flood wave traveled downstream, still more than 200 feet high when it hit the mouth of the Vajont River one mile below the dam.  In all, 2059 people are known to have died, crushed by the falling water or drowned in the accompanying floods.   In one downstream village, 94% of the residents died.

            The geology of the region was much more complex than thought when the dam was designed and built.  Rather than solid rock, the slope of Mount Toc was relatively unstable, composed of rubble ancient landslides.  Underlying the rubble was a thin layer of clay that acted as a gigantic slip-n-slide for the mountain.  High rains and the rising water in the reservoir helped to waterlog the clay layer, which eventually gave way all at once.  And, as you might expect, post-mortems revealed that the early tests of the geology were too few, insufficiently detailed and their cautions largely ignored.

            Dams are the largest and most intrusive human-made structures on the planet.  They provide enormous benefits—water for direct human use and irrigation, renewable electricity, efficient transportation, flood protection—but they are also dangerous.  As an old adage states that in time the river washes away the dam.  And, indeed, most dam tragedies are caused by the washing-away of the dam as water goes over the top of the dam and erodes it from downstream.

            But not in this case.  In a tribute to Italian engineering, the dam withstood the disaster on October 9, with only slight damage to the top of the structure.  The dam still stands, and it still generates electricity—water in the reservoir upstream of the landslide is routed through the by-pass tunnel, which also wasn’t damaged, to the turbines located in the dam.

References:

Bressean, David.  2017.  Expecting A Disaster:  The 1963 Landslide of the Vajont Dam.  Forbes, Oct 9, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2017/10/09/expecting-a-disaster-the-1963-landslide-of-the-vajont-dam/#2d53844011f8.  Accessed October 1, 2019.

Mauney, Lee.  Case Study:  Vajont Dam (Italy, 1963).  Association of State Dam Safety Officials.  Available at:  https://damfailures.org/case-study/vajont-dam-italy-1963/.  Accessed October 1, 2019

Petley, Dave.  2008.  The Vaiont (Vajont) landslide of 1963.  American Geophysical Union, AGU100, 11 December 2008.  Available at:  https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2008/12/11/the-vaiont-vajont-landslide-of-1963/.  Accessed October 1, 2019.

This date in 1974 represents the creation of a new category of U.S. National Park Service units—the “national preserve.”  Two national preserves were created on this date—the Big Cypress in southern Florida and the Big Thicket in southeastern Texas.

            National preserves are much like national parks—they must be functioning ecosystems that contain outstanding natural, scenic and recreational values.  While virtually no extractive activities can occur in national parks (you can’t take home a leaf or souvenir rock from a national park), some utilization of natural resources is allowed in national preserves, as long as that use doesn’t impact the fundamental values of the preserves.  Which activities are allowed is specific to each preserve, but typically allow hunting, fishing and trapping and oil, gas and mineral extraction.

            The U.S. has 19 named national preserves to date.  Ten of the preserves are in Alaska, created to ensure protection of Alaska’s wild lands while also allowing subsistence use and mineral extraction by Native Alaskans and other residents.  Most of the others are also in the western U.S.  The National Park Service also lists two national “reserves,” which are essentially the same as national preserves but whose management may be delegated to the states in which they occur (specifically Idaho and Washington). 

            Big Cypress National Preserve is the twin region to Everglades National Park.  It covers about 730,000 acres (a bit larger than Rhode Island) just north of the Everglades and serves as an essential watershed feeding freshwater into the park and adjacent estuaries.  The impetus for national preserves came from the perceived need to protect Big Cypress from further development (it was the proposed site for a major airport development in the 1960s), but also continue the historical uses of the landscape—for recreation, oil and gas extraction, Native American uses and other private landownership.  Consequently, the new category of “national preserves” was created to accomplish both goals.

            Big Cypress is fundamentally a huge freshwater wetland that includes significant habitats of hardwood hammocks, pine savannahs, prairies, cypress swamps and tidal estuaries.  The preserve hosts a wide variety of rare and endangered species, including 9 federally and 151 state protected species.  The state list includes 120 plants, an indication of the exceptional diversity of the area.  The park is home to the Florida panther, a critically endangered species.  Nearly 800,000 visitors enjoyed the park in 2018, but in some recent years visitation topped one million.

            Big Thicket National Preserve covers about 113,000 acres in southeastern Texas.  The area is considered of great ecological importance as the convergence of a variety of ecosystems—swamps, deciduous forests, prairies, pine savannas and dry sandhills.  The resulting biodiversity is said to be the highest in the world outside the tropics. Because of these extraordinary properties, the United Nations designated Big Thicket as a Biosphere Reserve in 1981 and the American Bird Conservancy designed the preserve as a “globally important bird area” in 2001.  The Big Thicket is home to several federal and many state threatened and endangered species, including the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Texas trailing phlox and Louisiana black bear.  About 200,000 visitors enjoy the preserve annually.

            The kinds of areas protected by the National Park Service vary widely, from small historical sites to sprawling western landscapes.  While most of these areas are dedicated to preservation (that is, only non-consumptive uses), the national preserves are examples of sustainable use.  And, as such, they illustrate “conservation” in the truest sense—using resources today in ways that don’t destroy their ability to continue providing benefits in the future.

References:

National Park Service.  Big Cypress National Preserve.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/bicy/index.htm.  Accessed September 30, 2019.

National Park Service.  Big Thicket National Preserve.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/bith/index.htm.  Accessed September 30, 2019.

Imagine a combination of John Muir and Mark Twain, one an astute observer of nature and the other a journalist of his worldwide travels.  Both were enormously popular during their lives—and both are still popular today.  Now, imagine them as a British woman doing the same things at about the same time—and you have Isabella Bird.

            Isabella Bird was born in Yorkshire, England on October 15, 1831 (died 1904).  The daughter of a clergyman and his wife, Bird was a proper young English woman in all ways.  She was a sickly child and young adult, however, plagued especially by back troubles.  Doctors recommended that she travel for her health, so her father gave her 100 English pounds and told her to go wherever she wished.

            And did she ever go!  For the rest of her life, she traveled and traveled and traveled.  It is said that when she died, her bags were packed for her next planned expedition.  Unlike other well-bred Europeans of the time, however, she set her course for the wilderness, wherever she could find it.  Her first trip was to the western United States, where she began writing the compelling natural history that made her famous:

“This is no region for tourists and women, only for a few elk and bear hunters at times, and its unprofaned freshness gives me new life. I cannot by any words give you an idea of scenery so different from any that you or I have ever seen. This is an upland valley of grass and flowers, of glades and sloping lawns, and cherry-fringed beds of dry streams, and clumps of pines artistically placed, and mountain sides densely pine-clad, the pines breaking into fringes as they come down upon the ‘park,’ and the mountains breaking into pinnacles of bold grey rock as they pierce the blue of the sky.”

She traveled around the world, making many trips to the U.S. and Canada, but also trips to Australia (it was hot, she said, and full of flies and drunk men), New Zealand, the Middle East, China, Japan, and Korea.  But it was a seven-month stop-over in Hawaii, on her way home from Australia in 1873, that changed her life.  She loved Hawaii because “there are none of the social constraints of colonial rule or Victorian moral correctness.”  She also loved the coral reefs, volcanic landscapes and tropical forests.  She became an excellent horsewoman, learning to ride astride her horse, a position that solved her chronic back problems. She wrote intimate and informal letters home to her sister, Henrietta, and later published them as a book.  The book was an instant best-seller, earning her fame and financial independence.

            After her Hawaiian visit, she landed in California and headed east on horseback (by herself) into the Rocky Mountains.  She settled for a time in Estes Park, Colorado, entranced by the scenery and the wildlife.  She teamed up with a local cowboy and outlaw known as “Mountain Jim” (she described him as “a man any woman would fall in love with but who no sane woman would every marry”).  Together they climbed Longs Peak, an extraordinarily difficult ascent, just a few years after the first recorded climbs.  She was, as one biographer wrote, a true “outdoor bad ass.”

            Her second book, published in 1879, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, was also a best-seller.  Her descriptions of the Estes Park region appealed to the educated men and women of the Eastern U.S. and Europe, eager for tales of wilderness and adventure.  She wrote, “I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one’s life and sigh.”  She was the female counterpart to John Muir, writing much as he did and about similar places.  The National Park Service suggests that Bird should be called the “Mother of Rocky Mountain National Park” for bringing the area, and its need for protection, to the loving attention of the American public. Just like John Muir, she enthralled readers with the majesty of these places and the need for their conservation:

“Grandeur and sublimity, not softness, are the features of Estes Park.  The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite and their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some mood of fury.”

References:

Encyclopedia.com.  Isabella Lucy (Bird) Bishop. Available at:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/british-and-irish-history-biographies/isabella-lucy-bird-bishop.  Accessed September 27, 2019.

Heaver, Stuart.  2015.  Isabella Bird, Victorian pioneer who changed West’s view of China.  South China Morning Post, 8 Aug 2015.  Available at:  https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1846990/isabella-bird-victorian-pioneer-who-changed-wests-view-china.  Accessed Septpember 27, 2019.

National Park Service.  Isabella Bird’s 1873 Vist to Rocky Mountain National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/romo/isabella_bird_visit.htm.  Accessed September 27, 2019.

Ross, Tracy.  2019.  Seven reasons Isabella Bird should be your new role model.  Visit Estes Park, Jan 04, 2019.  Available at:  https://www.visitestespark.com/blog/post/seven-reasons-isabella-bird-should-be-your-new-role-model/.  Accessed September 27, 2019.

No, it isn’t an official day, endorsed by the United Nations or the U.S. Congress or even Charlie the Tuna.  The origins are as murky as a cloud of octopus ink.  According to one site, it began in 2007, but no one has claimed responsibility.  And it is on October 8 because, well, because the “oct”-opus has 8 legs.

            So, eight cheers for the octopus, a not so humble denizen of the world’s marine shorelines.  Octopuses (and yes, it is octopuses, not octopi, because the word’s origin is Greek) are pretty remarkable creatures.  They have eight suction-cup covered arms, each of which is largely independent of the rest of the creature.  Each arm is packed with neurons that give an octopus extraordinary senses of touch and smell.  So, an octopus can be catching prey with one arm while battling off predators with another.  Octopuses are also intelligent—as intelligent as a domestic cat, I’ve read—able to use tools, map out their habitats, and change colors to match the background.  They have three hearts which transport blue blood (incorporating copper, not iron, into the blood molecules) around their body.  The body itself is worn like a hat, on top of the head, and the head attaches directly to the arms.  Octopuses are soft bodied (except for a hard biting beak), able to wiggle through small spaces and transform their shapes to look bigger and more ferocious or smaller and inconspicuous.  Some species are small and inconspicuous—a few inches across—while the Pacific octopus can weigh more than 100 pounds and reach 30 feet from one arm tip to another.

            They are also remarkable diverse and resilient.  Fossil specimens date back about 300 million years, predating dinosaurs and vastly outlasting them.  They come in 289 species, distributed in all the oceans and seas of the world.  We have no idea how many exist, because they are solitary, territorial and cryptic—counting them is pretty much out of the question.  They have short life spans of just a few years and produce hundreds of thousands of young each year.  Consequently, population sizes can fluctuate wildly from year to year.

            All in all, it seems octopuses are thriving just as well now as 300 million years ago.  Only one species found in New Zealand is endangered; the other 288 are of “least concern” or unknown status.  Commercial fisheries are thriving, although worldwide catches vary a lot annually.  Catches peaked in the 1960s, at about 100,000 tons per year (that’s a lot of calamari!); current catches are around 30,000 tons.  A recent article suggested that octopuses will probably keep on doing well, replacing the ecological niche that overfished marine species had occupied.  They can also respond quickly to favorable environmental conditions, as occur during El Nino years.

            Lest you feel that the octopus is getting undue attention with its own day, never fear.  Cephalopods get most of a week for celebration.  October 9 is Nautilus Night, and the 10^th is Squid/Cuttlefish Day (what do you call an affectionate octopus?  A cuddle fish).  October 11^th is devoted to the kraken, a mythological giant sea monster that was modeled after the giant squid.  Krakens were believed to be the size of small islands, able to envelop and sink large sailing ships. 

            Octopuses of different species are hard to separate, looking more or less alike.  Yes, they are pretty much i-tenticle!

References:

Arkhipkin, Alexander.  2016.  Here’s Why Octopus and Squid Populations Are Booming.  The New Republic, May 25, 2016.  Available at:  https://newrepublic.com/article/133734/heres-octopus-squid-populations-booming.  Accessed August 27, 2019.

Bradford, Alina.  2017.  Octopus Facts.  Silversea, June 8, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.livescience.com/55478-octopus-facts.html.  Accessed August 27, 2019.

Courage, Katherine Harmon.  2013.  Happy International Octopus Day!  Scientific American, October 8, 2013.  Available at:  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/happy-international-octopus-day/.  Accessed August 27, 2019.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  Species Fact Sheets—Octopus vulgaris.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/3571/en.  Accessed Augusst 27, 2019.

The Museum of Unnatural Mystery.  The Kraken.  Available at:  http://www.unmuseum.org/mob/kraken.htm.  Accessed August 27, 2019.

The National Wildlife Federation.  Octopuses.  Available at:  https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Octopuses.  Accessed August 27, 2019.

Remember the adage that “if we see farther, it is because of the giants on whose shoulders we stand?”  Today’s entry is about a man for whom that saying could have been written, at least for the broad fields of agriculture, conservation and natural resources.

            Henry Agard Wallace was born on October 7, 1888 (died 1965) on a farm in Orient, Iowa.  Iowa is the birthplace of several great conservationists, but more about that later.  The Wallace family was an agricultural dynasty.  Both his father and grandfather played large roles in the development of modern agriculture, through crop breeding, publishing, and public service.  The young Wallace did the same.  He learned about crop breeding from George Washington Carver, the African-American innovator of peanut crops and products, who lived with the Wallace family.  Wallace went to Iowa State, where his father taught agriculture, and both father and son helped establish several new agricultural science programs over the years.  When his father went to Washington as President Coolidge’s Secretary of Agriculture, the younger Wallace took over editing the family’s farm journal, Wallace’s Farmer.

            Wallace was an even better crop breeder than his father.  He developed the first commercial hybrid corn variety to be marketed widely in the U.S., a product that laid the foundation for his company, Pioneer Hi-Bred, once the largest seed-corn producer in the world Later, he had similar success with hybrid egg-laying chickens (you might have eaten an egg from one of his company’s chickens this morning at breakfast).

            Wallace grew up a Republican, but he became disillusioned with Republican farm policies during the Great Depression.  He became a Democrat and served as an agricultural advisor to presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt.  When Roosevelt was first elected in 1933, he brought Wallace to Washington as his Secretary of Agriculture.  Wallace kept that job for eight years, before becoming Roosevelt’s vice-president in 1941.

            Most biographies focus on Wallace’s years as vice-president (a checkered outcome), but his role as Secretary of Agriculture is our interest.  Wallace believed that the world of commerce, agricultural and beyond, needed to be regulated by government so that it did not destroy the very basis on which it depended—that is, natural resources.  He expressed his viewpoint in 1936:  “Probably the most damaging indictment that can be made of the capitalistic system is the way in which its emphasis on unfettered individualism results in exploitation of natural resources in a manner to destroy the physical foundations of national longevity.”

            That philosophy made him a friend of two of Iowa’s most prominent conservationists, Ding Darling and Aldo Leopold.  When it became clear to Wallace that the Bureau of the Biological Survey (now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) was in desperate need of reorganization, he convinced President Roosevelt to bring in Darling and Leopold (and one other person) to do the work.  A short time later, he talked the president into giving Ding Darling the task of implementing the recommendations as Chief of the Survey.  In less than two years, Darling reformed the agency, expanding its infant National Wildlife Refuge System into the essential habitat protection agency that we know today.

            Aldo Leopold never went to Washington, but returned to his job as the first professor of wildlife science in the U.S., at the University of Wisconsin.  Leopold is known widely as the father of wildlife management and even more widely as author of modern conservation’s ethos in his book, Sand County Almanac.   

            Wallace also believed that the future of the world depended not just on U.S. success, but on improving the condition of all people throughout the globe.  He spoke about the “common man,” meaning not just the average American, but also the poor and needy around the world (so moving were Wallace’s exhortations to work for all that he inspired Aaron Copeland to compose his famous piece, Fanfare for the Common Man).

            Part of Wallace’s vision included breeding crops that could relieve famine across throughout the tropics.  His message inspired another crop breeder (and, I would argue, great environmentalist) from Iowa, Norman Borlaug.  Borlaug went to Mexico where he bred hybrid wheat and other crops, leading what has become known as the Green Revolution.  As the techniques of the Green Revolution spread from one country and region to others, Borlaug was credited with saving 1 billion human lives. 

            Henry Wallace came in for much criticism during his public service career.  He was idealistic, often given to causes (for example, communism and spiritual mysticism) that he later regretted.  Equipped with integrity and a strong moral compass, he made a poor politician and deal-maker.  He spoke strongly in favor of re-distributing wealth and power, even as an exploding economy seemed to be “lifting all boats.” 

            But what he lacked in charisma and popularity he made up for in other ways.  Most importantly for conservation, he understood that money wasn’t everything.  The human condition and the condition of our natural resources were more important.  And let some great people stand on his shoulders.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies:  8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, 255 pages.

Ross, Alex.  2013.  Uncommon Man; The strange life of Henry Wallace, the New Deal visionary.  The New Yorker, October 7, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/14/uncommon-man.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

United States Senate.  Henry Agard Wallace, 33^rd Vice President (1941-1945).  Available at:  https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Henry_Wallace.htm.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

Wallace Global Fund.  Henry A. Wallace.  Available at:  http://wgf.org/henry-wallace/.  Accessed August 21, 2019.

Absolutely nothing happened in conservation and the environment on October 6.  At least I can’t find anything.  Happily, however, October 6 is Mad Hatter’s Day, so designated because Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter character has a sign in his hat that reads “In this style 10/6.”  The 10/6 refers to the cost of the hat in Victorian England—10 shillings and a sixpence—but that didn’t matter to a group of computer techs in Boulder.  In 1986, they interpreted the 10/6 as a date and declared October 6 to be forever known as Mad Hatter’s Day, a day of universal silliness.

            So, what could be better than to observe some really silly “hats” in nature on this date.  I’ve combed the annals of natural history to find what I consider some of the weirdest sets of head-gear that nature has produced.

            In the realm of mammals, let’s head to Ireland and visit the extinct Irish elk (Megaloceros).  Alas, it was neither an elk (rather the largest deer that ever lived) nor Irish (not just Irish, that is, as it lived in Europe, Asia and Africa).  It was huge, about 6.5 feet tall at the shoulders.  But its antlers are the real story.  They grew up to 12 feet wide and weighed hundreds of pounds.  One can imagine this behemoth moving across the landscape, its rack of antlers looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s uplifted and flexed biceps.  There are many ideas about the antlers being the elk’s terminator—it couldn’t lift its head up; it couldn’t move through thick forests—but no one knows.

            For reptiles, I give the nod to the Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus).  This freshwater turtle lives in the Mary River (duh) along the coast of Queensland, Australia.  It’s a pretty ordinary looking turtle—until it starts sporting a growth of algae on its head, making it look like a startled chia pet!  Its head-gear is what attracted me, but biologists are more amazed at one other feature of its morphology.  Seems it breathes through its cloaca; that is, it breathes through its rear end.  Enough said.

            The bird realm, however, is where weird hats reach their full expression.  Long, elaborate feathers on the bird’s head are the general mode of decoration.  The African Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), for example, sprouts long feathers out the back of the head, presumably reminding early British ornithologists of the quill pens that 19^th Century male secretaries carried behind their ears.  The South American Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) has similar head plumes, but the feathers are just one distinctive feature.  It has other names, like the “stink bird,” because it eat—and digests—buds and small leaves like a cow, and its excretions are so foul that its body odor is repugnant.  The Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius), from New Guinea and Australia, takes the living-fossil award, sporting a large flat crest (called a casque) that resembles the dinosaur Diplophosaurus.

            But my crowning favorite is the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise (Pteridophora alberti), also from New Guinea.  It looks a bit like an over-sized Grosbeak (about 9 inches long), but with one very big difference—males grow two long (and I mean long) feathers from their heads.  These two feathers can be twice as long as the bird itself, up to 20 inches long!  Usually letting the feathers trail beneath it, the male can raise those feathers straight up in the air.  So outrageous is this plumage that when specimens were first brought back to Europe, they were disputed as fakes. .

            You are free to choose your own number one among nature’s maddest hatters.  If you are having trouble choosing a favorite, I recommend you stick with a sure winner—Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat!

References:

Australian Museum.  Mary River Turtle.  Available at:  https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/reptiles/mary-river-turtle/.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

Beauty of Birds.  King of Saxony Birds of Paradise.  Available at:  https://www.beautyofbirds.com/kingofsaxonybirdofparadise.html.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Hoatzin Opisthocomus hoazin.  Available at:  https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/hoatzi1/overview.  Accessed August 19, 2109.

San Diego Zoo.  Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius).  Available at:  https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/secretary-bird.  Accessed August 19, 1019.

University of California, Berkeley.  The Case of the Irish Elk.  Available at:  https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/artio/irishelk.html.  Accessed August 19, 2019.

I just couldn’t resist making October 5 about Catherine Cooper Hopley, although her name is, as they say, hardly a household word.  In the late 1880s, however, it was—for one particular reason.  She wrote the first popular book in the English language about snakes!

            Catherine Cooper Hopley was born in a small town near Canterbury, England, on October 5, 1817 (died 1911).  Few details exist about her childhood, but she had three brothers, one of whom, John Hopley, moved to Ohio and became a well-known entomologist.  She visited her brother’s family in Cleveland in the 1850s, staying for several years and working as a teacher and artist.  She visited Virginia in 1860 and became trapped there when the Civil War began.  Although she prevented from leaving Confederate territory, she wrote articles and made sketches of life in the south for London newspapers.  She met Confederate leaders and became a tutor for the children of the Florida governor.  She was allowed to go back to England in 1863, the Confederates glad to be rid of someone they thought was a British spy working for the Yankees.  Back in England, she wrote several books about life in the American South, illustrated with her own drawings. 

            But then Hopoley found a new interest—snakes!  She was an unlikely candidate to become a herpetologist—a woman in Victorian England—but she was a quick study, equipped with great powers of observation and an artistic eye.  She wrote scientific articles about the natural history of snakes, and other stories about the relationship between snakes and people.  In 1882, she published the first popular book about snakes in the English language, Snakes:  Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life.  A reviewer wrote that “her book is careful, thorough, and almost exhaustive…. Miss Hopley has the art of interweaving her own experiences—incident, anecdote, and reminiscence—in the pleasantest fashion with severer scientific matter.” 

            Getting the book published was no easy task, she told an interviewer in 1893:  “I had the greatest difficulty in getting any publisher to touch my work.  My poor snakes were regarded as loathsome, venomous, and slimy creatures, subjects enough to give one the nightmare.”  Hopley continued to work on the natural history of snakes and wrote another volume on the subject in 1888, British Reptiles and Batrachians.  She died in 1911, known as a “renaissance woman” for the range of her capabilities as scientist, teacher, author, artist and linguist.

            I think her knack of combining science and literature (ala Rachel Carson) makes her the perfect example of a great teacher.  Another of her contemporary reviewers noted that “the general reader will find the book a fascinating one, while the more scientific student will rise from its perusal with the consciousness that … he has learned something new about snakes themselves.” 

            How appropriate that Hopley was born on October 5, now known as World Teachers’ Day.  World Teachers’ Day was adopted in 1994 by UNESCO to recognize the rights and responsibilities of teachers around the world.  And as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals note, education is of fundamental importance in creating and maintaining a sustainable world.

References:

Haverstock, Mary Sayre, et al.  2000.  Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900, A Biographical Dictionary, pages 425-426.  Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=ZdICm_W8xKwC&pg=PA425&lpg=PA425&dq=catherine+hopley+bio&source=bl&ots=s7kGObILbk&sig=ACfU3U3LEnuMtYFGcFYAuAcXyMO9RnxcyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiatMrmjYPkAhUCEqwKHRcfBz0Q6AEwB3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=catherine%20hopley%20bio&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

Ohio Memory.  Catherine Cooper Hopley, Renaissance Woman.  Available at:  https://ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/1849.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The American Naturalist. 1884.  Hopley’s Snakes, Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life.  The American Naturalist 18(4):402-403.  Available at:  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/273644.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The British Quarterly Review.  1883.  Snakes:  Curiosties and Wonders of Serpent Life.  The British Quarterly Review 77:476-477.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=W3pHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA476#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

The Sketch.  1893.  Snakes! A Chat With Miss Catherine C. Hopley.  The Sketch 3:415-416.  Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=tDBIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA415#v=onepage&q&f=false.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

UNESCO.  World Teachers’ Day.  Available at:  https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldteachersday.  Accessed August 14, 2019.

No one knows exactly when St. Francis was born, so we need to celebrate his role as patron saint of ecology on the next best thing—his feast day, October 4, which commemorates his death in 1226 (actually, he died near midnight on October 3, but the Catholic Church has chosen the next day to honor him).

            The man who would become St. Francis was born as Giovanni di Bernardone in 1181 or 1882 in Assisi, Italy.  When his father returned from a business trip to France to find he had a son, he re-named him Francesco, or Francis as he was known then and since. The son of a wealthy merchant, he entered adulthood in the lap of luxury.  He loved the good life, known for his high spirit and devotion to parties.  He also sought adventure and fame as a soldier and was once a prisoner of war.  He also loved the outdoors and nature.

            Still as a young man, Francis received several visions that made him abandon his hedonistic ways and become a devout Christian.  When asked if he would marry, he replied “Yes, I am about to take a wife of surpassing fairness.”  He meant poverty, a commitment he continued throughout his life, forsaking his inheritance and living always in the most humble manner.  He often slept outdoors or in caves, and his clothing was a simple tunic tied around the waist by a rope.  Once when robbed by road criminals and left with no resources, he declared himself happy and free to follow a life of poverty and spiritualism.

            His role as a spiritual leader expanded as he pursued his mission.  He founded three Catholic orders, including the Franciscan Order named after him.  He gathered followers as he rebuilt churches, helped the poor and declared the sanctity of all life.  The principle of sanctity for all of god’s creations, whether human, animate or inanimate, is the source of his reputation as a lover of nature.  He believed that since god had created all, then all were kin.  His meaning was clear in his “Canticle for the Sun” (or Canticle for the Creatures, as it is also known):, which reads in part:

“Praised be you, my Lord, with all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

who is the day and through whom You give us light,

and he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor;

and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised by You, My Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

In heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,

and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather

through whom You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Sister Water,

who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised by You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night,

and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised by You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,

who sustains and governs us,

and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.

            He was considered then (and now) as the most conscientious follower of the principles of Jesus of Nazareth to leave behind worldly goods and follow the spirit.  He was beatified as St. Francis in 1226, only two years after his death. 

            He loved nature, and many stories relate to how he could commune with birds (he called them “little brethren the birds”) and other animals.  And so has grown the image of St. Francis of Assisi as the symbol of a loving relationship with nature.  So strong is his example that in 1979, Pope John Paul II formally named St. Francis as the “Patron Saint of Ecology.” 

            Long before this, however, the broader world took note of St. Francis’ meaning to the protection of the earth and biodiversity.  In 1931, the International Animal Protection Congress in Florence (just a short distance from Assisi) adopted October 4 as World Animal Day, choosing the date because it was the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi.

            World Animal Day has been celebrated ever since.  The mission of World Animal Day is “to raise the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe.”  The celebration covers all animals, wild and domestic.  In recent years, more than 1000 events have been held in more than 100 countries annually. 

            So, whether you prefer to recognize October 4 as World Animal Day or the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, keep the ideals of both in your heart and hands.

References:

Custodia Terrae Sanctae.  Franciscan Texts.  Available at:  https://www.custodia.org/en/franciscan-texts.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

Franciscans for Ecology.  Papal Declaration of Francis as Patron of Ecology.  Available at:  https://francis35.org/english/papal-declaration-francis-patron-ecology/.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

New Advent.  St. Francis of Assisi.  Available at:  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

World Animal Day.  About World Animal Day.  Available at:  https://www.worldanimalday.org.uk/about_us.  Accessed August 12, 2019.

Ask anyone to name a famous veterinarian, and they are likely to name James Herriot, author of the best-selling book, All Creatures Great and Small.  Herriot was a veterinarian in northern England from 1930 through the 1980s.  He tended to farm animals and pets during his career.  I know this isn’t a website about domestic animals, so let me explain why I’m covering him today.

            First of all, October 3, 1916, is his birthday (died 1995).  Second, nothing else directly connected to conservation seems to have happened on any October 3 in history.  Third, if you love animals, domestic or wild, how can you not write about this guy?

            Of course, James Herriot wasn’t even his real name.  He was born James Alfred Wight, in County Durham in northeast England.  He became a veterinarian in 1940, opening a small rural practice in the town of Thirsk (now a thriving tourist town because of Herriot’s fame).  He loved his work, and he regularly entertained his family and others with the cases, animals and people he came across in his practice.  He thought he might write down his stories, but tending to the area’s animals took all his time.

            When he was 53, his wife challenged him to write a book about his experiences.  He bought a typewriter and began writing, often while his wife and children watched television in the same room.  Because veterinarians were not allowed to advertise at the time, he needed a pseudonym for his books.  He was writing one evening while his family was watching a televised soccer match in which the goalkeeper, Jim Herriot, played exceptionally well.  Perfect, he thought, and the author James Herriot was born.

            His books quickly gained popularity, first in the United Kingdom and soon after in the U.S..  His editor said that “James’ unique blend of warmth and joy and skill as a writer made him perhaps the most personally beloved storyteller of his time.”  His 18 books, including several about his veterinary experience and several more children’s stories about animals, have sold more than 60 million copies.  In other words, he put veterinary practice on the literary map.  As youngsters read his books, thousands were inspired to take up the profession. 

            And along with that growth has come a similar interest in and recognition of wildlife veterinary practice (aha, the link to conservation).  Wildlife veterinarians come in two basic varieties.  First are those who practice clinical medicine on individual animals, perhaps in zoos or animal rehabilitation centers.  They treat animals for injuries and the problems of old age and confinement. 

            Second are those who practice on free-ranging wildlife populations. These veterinarians focus on keeping large groups of animals healthy, perhaps in national parks or just on undeveloped lands.  They focus more on diseases and other conditions that are communicable and can spread rapidly across groups of animals. 

            In conservation, we need to pay much more attention to the health of free-ranging wildlife.  Each year, the Working Group on Wildlife of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) tracks the spread of wildlife diseases.  In 2017, they reported several major issues:  in Mongolia, more than half of all Saiga antelopes died from disease, along with many ibex, gazelles and other ruminants; avian influenza attacked wild (and domestic) birds throughout East and South Asia; anthrax outbreaks affected hippos, elephants, zebras and wildebeest in East Central Africa; a parasite attacked white-tailed deer in North American; and chronic wasting diseases continued to affect animals across the world.

            Monitoring wildlife disease, treating affected animals and eliminating disease organisms is all part of our commitment to conservation and sustainability, primarily because human changes to the environment, including contacts with diseased domesticated animals, have made wildlife populations increasingly susceptible to disease.  As James Herriot said, “I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.”  Herriot’s commitment to all creatures, great and small, mirrors our need to care for all the biodiversity of our earth, whether a lion or an ant-lion.

References:

Biblio.com.  James Herriot.  Available at:  https://www.biblio.com/james-herriot/author/379  Accessed August 9, 2019.

Tabor, Mary B. W.  1995.  James Herriot, 78, Writer, Dies; Animal Stories Charmed People.  The New York Times, Feb 24, 1995.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/24/obituaries/james-herriot-78-writer-dies-animal-stories-charmed-people.html.  Accessed August 9, 2019.

World Organization for Animal Health.  2018.  Highlight from the Working Group on Wildlife.  OIE Bulletin.  Available at:  https://oiebulletin.com/?officiel=highlights-from-the-working-group-on-wildlife.  Accessed August 9, 2019.

The greatest zoo in the world—the San Diego Zoo—was founded on this date in 1916.  Why?  Because a medical doctor heard a lion roar and decided his city needed to hear that roar forever.

            San Diego’s Balboa Park was the site for the 1915-16 Panama California Exposition.  The two-year event celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and specifically San Diego as the first port of call for westbound ships using the canal. The exposition featured a row of cages with living wild animals, mostly from the Americas but also including an African lion.  Toward the end of the event’s run, no one knew what to do with the animals.

            But Dr. Harry Wegeforth had an idea.  As he and his brother were driving by the exposition site, they heard the lion roar.  Wegeforth said to his brother, “Wouldn’t it be splendid if San Diego had a zoo?  You know ….I think I’ll start one.” So, he called a meeting with his brother and three other leading citizens on October 2, 1916, and formed the San Diego Zoological Society.  Within a few months, they were incorporated and took possession of the row of cages and their inhabitants.  True to Wegeforth’s vision, San Diego now had a zoo!

            It wasn’t much at first, just an unfenced row of cages along a Balboa Park pathway.  Harry Wegeforth’s determination to make it a success was about all it had going for it.  He waged an unrelenting campaign to secure land from the city and funding from anyone who would contribute.  The zoo scraped by on private gifts (Ellen Scripps, patron of many San Diego institutions, was a regular donor), leftover food from stores and restaurants, and animals brought to the city by sailors returning from their voyages.  One of their first big animals was a Kodiak brown bear that had been a ship’s pet but outgrew its welcome.  When presented the bear at the dock, Wegeforth needed a plan to get it to the zoo.  With no alternatives, he put the bear on a leash, sat it in the front seat of his car and drove it to the zoo, to the amazement of all he passed (he later rode an Asian elephant from the train to the zoo, again startling San Diego’s citizens).  The same year saw the birth of three lion cubs

            Within a year, the local newspaper called the zoo “the largest and finest collection of animals on the Pacific Coast.”  It was gaining popularity and visitation, and the city gave the zoo about a hundred acres as a permanent home in the park.  Wegeforth hired a new administrative manager for the zoo in 1925, Belle Benchley.  She quickly rose in his esteem and was soon made the zoo’s executive director so Wegeforth could go back to practicing medicine.  She kept the job for 26 years .  Benchley was an organizational whiz, but also had an instinctive connection to the animals. “She described herself as housekeeper, dietitian, consulting physician, and homemaker to an adopted family of animals.”

            Under Benchley’s leadership the zoo blossomed.  She gave hundreds of public presentations each year.  She used buses to bring school children to the zoo, the start of its educational mission.  She finally pressured the city to enact a law giving the zoo 2 cents of every $100 of assessed real estate, creating a reliable funding base for the zoo.  During World War II, when male staff went off to fight, she hired women to replace them, mentoring a whole generation of female zoo professionals.  By  1951, more than one million visitors came to the zoo.

            Benchley’s tenure as the zoo’s leader was the foundation for a continuing set of innovations that have made the San Diego Zoo the finest in the world.  The zoo pioneered larger, more natural enclosures for animals, bounded by moats rather than fences.  Today those exhibits are gathered into “bioclimatic zones” that emphasize ecosystems rather than individual species. They began breeding programs for rare and endangered animals, including tree kangaroos, clouded leopards, meerkats, and Przewalski’s horses.  The zoo remains the most successful home for breeding giant pandas outside China.

            In the 1960s, the zoo pioneered the idea of much larger natural habitats, ones in which the animals roamed free and the visitors were contained.  They established the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is an 1800-acre expanse about 30 miles northeast of the original park.  The large park allows behavioral research and more extensive breeding programs, most notably for the California condor.  The zoo also houses a collection of tissue and genetic materials from 1000 species, kept frozen for future use in research and breeding (the “Frozen Zoo,” they call it).  The grounds of both facilities house similarly diverse specimens of plants from around the world, with nearly 30,000 species represented.

            The mission of the San Diego Zoo Gobal, as it is now known, is as a “conservation organization committed to saving species around the world.”  To accomplish that mission, the zoo has 5 international field stations and runs programs in 45 countries working on the conservation of 130 species.  It has introduced 44 species back into the wild, using animals born through its conservation breeding program (including 180 rhinoceros). More than 5 million people visited the zoo’s facilities in 2017, ranking it the best zoo in the world.

            From the roar of a lion and the vision and dedication of first one man and one woman and then thousands, the San Diego Zoo Global is making our world more sustainable.  Stop by sometime.

References:

Encyclopedia.com.  Benchley, Belle (1882-1973).  Women in World History:  A Biographical Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/benchley-belle-1882-1973.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  San Diego Zoo.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/place/San-Diego-Zoo.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

K., Karie.  2019.  Dr. Harry Wegeforth, Two Stubborn Elephants, and One Fiesty Diablo.  Available at:  https://zoohistories.com/tag/harry-wegeforth/.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Matteson, Sarah.  2016.  The San Diego Zoo After 100 Years.  San Diego History Center Quarterly 62:2.   Available at:  https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/2016/april/san-diego-zoo-100-years/.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

San Diego Zoo.  Our Mission.  Available at:  https://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/our-mission.  Accessed August 7, 2019.

Wilkens, John.  2016.  How San Diego Zoo evolved into a powerhouse.  The Sand Diego Union-Tribune, May 9, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/zoo/sdut-zoo-timeline-anniversary-san-diego-animals-2016may09-story.html.  Accessed August 7, 2019.