Author: todayinconservation

            The United Nations has designated July 11 each year as World Population Day.  This date was chosen in 1990 because it was the anniversary of the Day of Five Billion, when the world’s human population was estimated to have reached five billion individuals in 1989.  Total world population in mid-2020 is around 7.6 billion people.

World Population Day is organized by the United Nations Population Fund, the primary global agency dedicated to reducing population growth by enhancing women’s health.  Each year, the organization chooses a theme to highlight critical issues.  In 2017, the theme was family planning, in recognition that “around the world, some 214 million women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not using safe and effective family planning methods, for reasons ranging from lack of access to information or services to lack of support from their partners or communities.” 

            Human population became a societal issue in the 1960s when the reality of rapid growth collided with fears about the ability of the earth to sustain large populations.  Books like Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, published in 1969, predicted massive famine in the 1970s and the total collapse of India. 

            Fortunately, the dire predictions of the 1960s have not occurred.  With increases in agricultural productivity and improved health in developing countries, population growth rates have fallen—perhaps a counter-intuitive outcome.  But when quality of life improves, birth rates gradually decline.  In the 1960s, the earth’s human population was expected to reach 15 billion individuals before stabilizing.  Today, the stable population is predicted to be about 11 billion.

            Despite this improvement, population continues to grow.  The Day of Six Billion occurred on October 12, 1999, and the Day of Seven Billion on October 31, 2011. Each year, we add a net of about 80 million people to the earth—the equivalent of the country of Turkey.  Birth rates are highest in Africa, and the continent’s total population is expected to double, from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion, over the coming generation. 

            Consequently, continued attention to the reduction of population growth rate is needed.  And the problem is a multi-faceted one, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has stated:  “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the world’s blueprint for a better future for all on a healthy planet. On World Population Day, we recognize that this mission is closely interrelated with demographic trends including population growth, ageing, migration and urbanization.”

References:

Coleman, Jasmine.  2011.  World’s “Seven Billionth Bay” is Born.  The Guardian, 31 October 2011.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/31/seven-billionth-baby-born-philippines.  Accessed July 11, 2017.

Sommerfeld, Julia.  1999.  World Population Hits 6 Billion.  NBC News.  Available at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072068/ns/us_news-only/t/world-population-hits-billion/#.WWUb64TytEY.  Accessed July 11, 2017.

United Nations.  World Population Day, July 11.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/events/populationday/.  Accessed March 24, 2020.

United Nations Population Fund.  2017.  World Population Day, 11 July 2017.  Available at:  http://www.unfpa.org/events/world-population-day.

Let’s get one thing straight right now:  Native Americans knew well before 1832 where the Mississippi River started.  So, what July 13, 1832, represents is the day when someone told the world about it.

            That someone was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.  Schoolcraft worked for the U.S. government, responsible for relations with Native Americans of the Upper Great Lakes Region.  He married a Native-American woman, Jane Johnston, and conducted his work with sincerity and respect.  He was also an explorer and writer, and he sought to investigate a doubtful claim of where the Mississippi River actually began.  An Ojibwe leader named Ozawindib showed Schoolcraft to the place where the Mississippi formed a small channel draining out of a small Minnesota lake—and the rest was history.

            The lake is now named Lake Itasca, and it lies within Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota.  The small channel has become quite a tourist site, and it has been stabilized with a small dam covered with a row of rocks that lets visitors walk across the 20-foot-wide Mississippi (I’ve done it—it’s fun).  And here begins one of the greatest rivers in the world.

            The Mississippi leaves the lake at 1475 feet above sea level and falls gently—very gently—to the sea below New Orleans.  A drop of water leaving Lake Itasca takes about three months to hit the ocean.  And it is a long journey, somewhere above 2,350 miles—different sources report different lengths, with Itasca State Park claiming the longest, at 2,552 miles.  The Missouri River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi, is actually about 100 miles longer.  When the entire length of the Missouri-Mississippi is combined, the river’s 3,710-mile length makes it the fourth longest in the world, behind the Nile, Amazon and Yangtze Rivers.

            The watershed of the Mississippi is just as impressive, covering all or part of 32 states and a sliver of 2 Canadian provinces.  The total area, 1.2 million square miles, includes about 40% of the continental United States.  The river’s two main tributaries are the Missouri, flowing from the West, and the Ohio, flowing from the East.  The Ohio River stretches the definition of a tributary, as it actually carries more water than the Mississippi where the two meet in Cairo, Illinois. 

            The Mississippi has always held a central role in American culture (e.g., the writings of Mark Twain) and commerce.  The US Army Corps of Engineers has built and maintains 29 locks and dams in the upper Mississippi that allows boat and barge traffic from Minneapolis to the ocean.  The Midwestern farmlands of the Mississippi watershed are the nation’s “bread-basket,” and most of the nation’s agricultural exports start there, travel on barges down the river and leave through the Port of New Orleans.  Adds to that exports of petroleum products and other bulk commodities, and the several ports in the New Orleans area together comprise the largest port district in the world.

            The river is subject to frequent floods, as snow-melt from the West and spring rainfall from the East and Midwest swell its discharge.  The largest occurred in 1927, when the river was 80 miles wide in some places.  That flood led to massive interventions by the US Army Corps of Engineers, building levees and other control structures.  Massive flooding followed in 1937, 1973, and as recently as 2019. 

            The river and its watershed are equally important for conservation.  The Mississippi Flyway is the route for 40% of the nation’s migratory waterfowl moving semi-annually between breeding grounds in Canada and wintering grounds in the southern U.S. and Latin America.  One quarter of all freshwater fish species in North America live in the watershed and 560% of all bird species. 

            Of particular importance is the diversity of freshwater mussels.  Most of the 39 species live in the clear upper waters of the Mississippi.  For about 40 years bracketing the start of the 20^th Century, the shells of these mussels were heavily exploited to make buttons, an industry ended when plastic buttons took over.  Today, commercial mussel harvest is prohibited to protect the dwindling populations of the animals, which have also been impacted by dams, sedimentation and pollution.  Several species are endangered, listed either by the federal or state governments.

            Altogether, the Mississippi River shows us how important and how fickle are the rivers of nature.  As Mark Twain said:

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”

References:

Garth, Gary.  2016.  American beginnings:  The source of the Mississippi River.  USA Today, Nov. 4, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2016/11/04/mississippi-river-source-headwaters/93241254/.  Accessed March 23, 2020.

National Park Service.  Mississippi River Facts.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/miss/riverfacts.htm. Accessed March 23, 2020.

National Weather Service.  Mississippi River Flood History 1543-Present.  Available at:  https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history. Accessed March 23, 2020.

State Historical Society of Missouri.  Henry Row Schoolcraft.  Available at:  https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/s/schoolcraft/. Accessed March 23, 2020.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.  Freshwater mussels of the Mississippi River.  Available at:  https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/watersheds/basins/mississippi/mussels.html. Accessed March 23, 2020.

This may be a conservation/environmental event or not, we’ll see.  On July 9, 2018, Starbucks announced that it would eliminate use of plastic straws sometime in 2020.  Where did this hatred of plastic straws come from? And is it important, or just the latest social media feel-good craze?

            Let’s go back to the beginning.  Straws have been around since that beginning.  Many animals use straw-like tools to drink, and early humans used them, too.  But they were all natural—hollow reeds and, duh, straw.  Straw straws fell apart quickly and often made the drink taste like, duh, straw.  So, in the 1880s, Marvin Stone objected to his mint julep tasting like straw and took to his work bench.  He spiraled paper around a pencil, glued it into place and coated it with wax—and the proper paper straw was invented.  Straws didn’t advance much until after World War 2, when all sorts of technology passed from wartime to peacetime uses.  And, abracadabra, we got plastic straws.

            Which brings us to 2011, when 9-year-old Milo Cress observed some disturbing straw-behavior.  He noticed that when drinks were served at restaurants with straws in them, some people took the straws out, never using them.  It seemed a waste to him, so he started a campaign, “Be Straw Free.”  But when he couldn’t find any data on straw use, Cress went on the hunt.  He asked straw manufacturers to guess, and, as he said, he chose “an estimate of around 500 million straws [per day].  That was the number I stuck to, because it seemed to be around the middle of what they were saying.”

            And what usage do the anti-straw people quote?  Yep, 500 million.  Milo Cress’s estimate, or guesstimate, or SWAG, or whatever.  I found only one other estimate, that Americans use about 1.6 straws per person per day, But that is so disturbingly close to dividing 500 million by the U.S. population that I think it’s the same number.  Whether it is 500 million or just 100 million, we can safely conclude that Americans use a lot of plastic straws every day.

            The next question, then, is how bad is this straw use and do we need to take to the streets to stop it?  Plastic straws are made from recyclable plastic, but, apparently, straws are so small and light that they slip through the cracks (literally) at recycling plants and generally end up in the garbage.  And, like the rest of garbage, some plastic straws end up washing downstream and into the ocean, where the concern lies.  Plastic garbage in the ocean and on shorelines is a major problem, and it includes lots of straws.  One estimate stated that 7.5 million plastic straws were found along U.S. shorelines over a five-year period.  If Americans use 500 million straws per day, that means that 1 straw out of every 120,000 finds its way to the shoreline.

            Of course that calculation is as dubious as the 500 million number, but I think it illustrates what the anti-straw campaign is really about:  Awareness. Even devoted anti-strawers admit that.  The campaign to stop using plastic straws is important only as a symbol, a rallying cry against thoughtless consumerism.  The goal is to make people aware that single-use plastic is trouble—we use lots of it, most gets thrown away, it lasts for a long time in the environment, and it can have nasty impacts on wildlife.

            Did Starbucks do right by taking this stand?  Hard to say.  The company is replacing straws with a plastic lid that actually uses more plastic than the straws, but can be more easily recycled (provided it makes it to a recycling bin).  Of course, if you just made a cup at home and carried it in your reusable ceramic mug made by a local potter…

References:

Caron, Christina.  2018.  Starbucks to Stop Using Disposable Plastic Straws by 2020.  The New York Times, July 9, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/business/starbucks-plastic-straws.html. Accessed March 21, 2020.

Connor, Alex.  2018.  That anti-straw movement?  It’s all based on one 9-year-9ld’s suspect statistic.  USA Today, Jul 18, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-movement-based-unverified-statistic-500-million-day/750563002/.  Accessed March 21, 2020.

Our Last Straw.  Facts & Figures.  Available at:  https://www.ourlaststraw.org/facts-figures. Accessed March 21, 2020.

Rude, Evelyn.  2018.  The Backlash Against Plastic Straws Is Spreading.  Here’s How They Got So Popular in the First Place.  Time, July 12, 2018.  Available at:  https://time.com/5336242/plastic-straws-history/. Accessed March 21, 2020.

Wilson, Stiv.  2018.  The Plastic Straw, Starbucks and a Movement at a Crossroads.  The Story of Stuff, July 13, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.storyofstuff.org/blog/the-plastic-straw-starbucks-and-a-movement-at-a-crossroads/. Accessed March 21, 2020.

            On July 10, 1985, two bombs placed on the hull of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior exploded, sinking the ship and killing two crew members. 

            The Rainbow Warrior was Greenpeace’s primary oceanic protest boat.  It was in harbor at Auckland, New Zealand, preparing for a voyage to interfere with planned nuclear tests by the French government at a nearby atoll.  Two spies from the French secret service placed the bombs, one near the propeller and another against the engine room wall. 

            Just before midnight, crew members reported:  “Suddenly, the lights go out.  There’s the sharp crack of breaking glass.  Then, a sudden roar of water.”  They thought that they’d been hit by another boat.  Then came a second explosion.  Within minutes, the boat listed, water filling the hull.

            The French government at first denied their involvement, but soon admitted that their secret agents had placed the bombs.  Reaction in New Zealand was intense and drove bad relationships between the two countries for years.  Eventually the United Nations was enlisted for arbitration that led to a French apology and compensation to New Zealand.  The secret agents were arrested and tried—and imprisoned for a mockingly brief two years each.

            The original Rainbow Warrior began its work for Greenpeace in 1978.  Before then, it had been a fishery research vessel for the UK Government.  Its first voyage for Greenpeace was to Iceland to protest commercial whaling.  Later it moved to the Pacific Ocean to campaign against nuclear testing.  The ship was named after a Native American saying that in a mistreated world “… people will rise up like Warriors of the Rainbow….”  And, indeed, the Rainbow Warrior rose again.  A second ship, Rainbow Warrior II, entered Greenpeace service in 1989, leading campaigns against nuclear testing, whaling, inhumane fishing, climate change and other environmental issues.  It was retired after 22 years, in 2011.

            That fall, a new Rainbow Warrior III entered service for Greenpeace.  The new ship was built purposefully as a protest campaign vessel.  It is nearly 200 feet long and can carry up to 30 crew members.  Storage space is available for 8 tons of scientific equipment for research work.  It is as fast as the commercial vessels it confronts; can launch small boats in high waves; has a helicopter pad for aerial surveillance; and has state-of-the-art communications systems.  As well as being mean, it is green.  It is powered largely by the wind (5 massive sails on an A-frame mast system), sports energy efficient hull and engines, and disposes no waste into the water.

References: 

Greenpeace.  The Bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.  Available at:  http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/the-bombing-of-the-rainbow-war/.  Accessed July 24, 2017.

New Zealand History.  Sinking the Rainbow Warrior.  New Zealand History, New Zealand Government.  Available at:  https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/nuclear-free-new-zealand/rainbow-warrior. Accessed Jluly 24, 2017.

What time was it at 34 minutes and 56 seconds past noon on July 8, 1990?  If you take out all the punctuation, it was 1234567890!  Playing around with numbers is great fun, and, since nothing else happened in conservation on any July 8 in history, let’s examine 8 important conservation and environment numbers today.

            Number 1: 7.6 billion. The human population of the earth is somewhere in the upper 7-billions, the exact number depending on who you ask.  This is the U.S. Census Bureau’s number; they also say the U.S., the world’s 3^rd most populous country, has about 330 million.  The world’s human population continues to grow at about 1.1% per year, but that is half the rate of growth during the 1970s, good news for all of us. 

            Number 2:  414 ppm.  The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the world’s official number, was 414.58 ppm on March 18, 2020, but it goes up every day.  And that carbon dioxide load gave us the hottest January on record in 2020, a full 2 degrees Fahrenheit above the temperature a century ago.

            Number 3:  15.4%.  That’s the amount of the world’s land area that is in protected status, as parks, preserves and other categories off limits to unregulated use.  Combined, that’s about the size of South America.  And then add about 3.4% of the earth’s marine area that is also protected.  The total has more than doubled since 1990, and it continues to grow, especially for marine ecosystems.

            Number 4:  1,864.  That’s the best estimate of the number of giant pandas living in the wild, in China, during the last range-wide survey in 2014.  The number is small, but it is a true success story.  In the 1980s, the number was about 1,100 and dwindling.  Now it is going up—17% in the last decade.  This is such good news that IUCN has changed the status of the giant panda from “endangered” to “vulnerable.”

            Number 5:  15%.  Since 1970, the area of the Amazonian rainforest has declined by slightly more than 15%.  Hidden in that number is both good and bad news.  The good news is that the rate of deforestation has been dropping steadily—only about 1% of the loss has occurred in the last decade, as public opinion and Brazilian government policy both ruled against converting forests to pastures and cropland.  And if you add re-forestation, the rate is about zero. The bad news is that Brazilian policy has reversed under the current president, and 2018 and 2019 saw deforestation rates bounce back up, to the level of a decade ago.  Stay tuned.

            Number 6:  65%.  When Gallup Polls asked Americans whether they favored environmental protection over economic growth, or the reverse, 65% chose environmental protection.  That number, in 2019, has risen, after a fall during the “great recession,” back to the levels in the 1990s.  Even more promising is that 42% of Americans think the seriousness of global warming is generally underestimated, the highest percentage ever.

            Number 7:  103.7 million.  That’s the number of Americans, 16 years and older, who participated in wildlife-related recreation in 2016—41% of the population.  That included 11.5 million hunters, 35.8 million anglers, and 86 million “wildlife watchers.”  And 327.5 million people visited National Park Service properties in 2019—about one visit for every person in the U.S. (although some, of course, are overseas visitors).  We do love our natural resources!

            Number 8:  365 (or 366).  Towards the end of his life, the famous nature photographer Ansel Adams said something like this:  Every day, I try to do something for the environment, no matter how small.  That’s a fine rule to follow, 365—or 366—days per year.

John Muir probably said it best:  “To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.”  And this day is when the United States decided to make it official: Alaska could become a state.

            Alaska statehood actually occurred on January 3, 1959, becoming the 49^th state.  But that is just a technicality.  On the previous July 7, in 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill into law that allowed statehood to happen.  A few details needed to be worked out by the people of Alaska (for example, they had to vote to agree to become a state), but July 7 is the day that really mattered.

            Admission to statehood completed an Alaskan journey started long earlier.  The Alaska Department of Natural Resources cites three milestones in that journey, but I’d suggest five.  First, the Native Peoples of Alaska made their way from Asia across the Bering land bridge, the first human inhabitants of the region.  Second, some thousands of years later, in the 1700s, Russian explorers started the colonization of the land.  Third, the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia on October 18, 1867.  The purchase was called “Seward’s Folly” at the time, belittling Secretary of State William Seward’s acquisition of 375 million acres for $7 million (do the math—that’s less than 2 cents per acre).

            It took about a century for the fourth event—Alaska became a state.  President Eisenhower was not enthusiastic about Alaska becoming a state.  He signed the bill without fanfare, stating simply, “Well, that’s 49” (he really wanted Hawaii admitted as a state, though, recognizing what Hawaiians went through in World War 2).  As part of the deal, the federal government granted the new state 28% of the land area, or about 103 million acres.  A bit of that land is yet to be chosen by and transferred to the state.

            The fifth major event in the land history of Alaska occurred in 1971, with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.  That law gave (or, more properly, gave back) 44 million acres to Alaska’s Native Peoples, along with $1 billion to support community investments.  The land was divvied up into 13 regional “native corporations” and 224 village corporations.

            These native, federal and state lands comprise more than 98% of Alaska’s land.  The federal lands are what most Americans consider their slice of Alaska (60% of the total), lands that are home to our love affair with Alaska.  The three largest land stewards are the US Forest Service (78 million acres), Bureau of Land Management (78 million acres), and US Fish and Wildlife Service (71 million acres).  Some of this land is protected for wildlife, but most of it is available for multiple uses. 

            The most stunning lands are, of course, the national parks and other National Park Service (NPS) units.  In its 48 million acres, the NPS lists 24 national park units (parks, monuments, preserves and historical parks) along with 13 Wild and Scenic Rivers.  The largest is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, 13.2 million acres in area (about the same size as Vermont, New Hampshire combined, as long as you throw in Rhode Island).  Seven of the ten largest national parks in the U.S. are in Alaska.  The third largest is Denali National Park, home of the highest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley (20,308 feet above sea level).

            And all this wilderness is still pretty wild.  Visitation to Wrangell-St. Elias in 2019 was 74,518 individuals—do some more math, that’s about 1 person for every 178 acres, once a year!  (that same acre in Zion National Park had 5,448 visitors.)  The total visitation for NPS properties in Alaska is about 3 million per year.  That’s about how many people visit Glacier National Park in a year—and Glacier isn’t all that heavily visited, either.  The least visited NPS unit is also in Alaska, the Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, on the Alaskan Peninsula.  It has about 600,000 acres, but has only about 100 visitors per year—you can do the math if you want, but let’s just say it is very wild!

            And wild is what Alaska should be.  We need it.  John Muir knew we needed it, too:

“So abundant and novel are the objects of interest in a pure wilderness that unless you are pursuing special studies it matters little where you go, or how often to the same place. Wherever you chance to be always seems at the moment of all places the best; and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or in any other for those who may not be happy here.”

References:

Alaska Department of Natural Resources.  Land Ownership in Alaska.  Available at:  http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/factsht/land_fs/land_own.pdf.  Accessed March 18, 2020.

Goodreads.  Travels in Alaska Quotes.  Available at:  https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3039576-travels-in-alaska.  Accessed March 18, 2020.

Govtrack.  H.R. 7999 (85^th):  An Act to provide for the admission of the State of Alaska Into the Union.  Available at:  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/85/hr7999/text. Accessed March 18, 2020.

National Park Foundation.  The Size of the Largest National Parks Will Blow Your Mind.  Available at:  https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/size-largest-national-parks-will-blow-your-mind. Accessed March 18, 2020.

National Park Service.  Working with Alaska, By The Numbers.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/state/customcf/bythenumbers/print.cfm?state=ak. Accessed March 18, 2020.

Everyone knows that John James Audubon was a great early naturalist and artist, painting the birds of America in the mid-1800s.  Everyone should also know the name of one of his colleagues, a pioneering naturalist and artist in her own right—Maria Martin Bachman.

            Maria Martin was born on July 6, 1796, in Charleston, South Carolina (died 1863).  Her family was wealthy, affording her the opportunity for a fine education in languages, the arts and natural science.  When she was 31, she moved into the home of her sister, who was in poor health, and her brother-in-law, the reverend John Bachman (many years later, after her sister died, Martin married John Bachman; hence, sometimes she is referred to as Maria Martin Bachman).  John Bachman was also a naturalist and a close friend of Audubon, who often visited Charleston and stayed at the Bachman home.

            Martin’s interest in the natural world grew along with her association with Bachman and Audubon.  When Audubon saw her drawings of birds, insects and plants during a visit in 1831, he invited Martin to begin painting for him.  He tutored her in painting, sharing techniques for painting and for posing birds and other objects.  Eventually, she became one of Audubon’s three chief assistants, painting the plant backgrounds and insect details for 18 of the plates in his famous four-volume Birds of America (learn more about Audubon here).

            Like Audubon, she painted mostly from nature, observing plants in the gardens of her friends and fellow naturalists in Charleston. Her extensive study of nature was responsible for the renowned scientific accuracy of her paintings, but her watercolors also revealed a deep artistic sensitivity, the color and composition enhancing an illustration’s impact.  Audubon wrote that “Miss Martin with her superior talents, assists us greatly in the way of drawing; the insects she has drawn are, perhaps, the best I’ve seen.”  Some historians suggest that Martin may have even painted a few birds for Audubon’s books (although later “touched up” by Audubon).

            Martin went on to illustrate and edit other pioneering taxonomic texts.  She prepared drawings of reptiles and backgrounds for John Edwards Holbrook’s North American Herpetology.  She served as editor, co-author and illustrator for John Bachman’s natural science and religious writings.  She joined Audubon and John Bachman by editing the text and painting backgrounds for much of their three-volume work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.  

            As was the case for most women in the early 19^th Century, Martin’s work was generally not signed or acknowledged.  Audubon, however, thought so much of her that he named a bird, Maria’s Woodpecker, in her honor (unfortunately, now a subspecies of the Hairy Woodpecker).  Perhaps we should allow Audubon’s words to reflect on a century of women and their contributions to conservation:  “I feel bound to make some ornithological acknowledgment for the aid she has on several occasions afforded me in embellishing my drawings of birds, by adding to them beautiful and correct representations of plants and flowers.”

References:

Audubon.  John J. Audubon’s Birds of America.  Plate 417, Maria’s Woodpecker et al.  Available at:  https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/marias-woodpecker-three-toed-woodpecker-phillips-woodpecker-canadian-woodpecker.  Accessed March 17, 2020.

Charleston County Public Library.  Maria Martin Bachman.  Available at:  http://sites.slicker.com/ccpl/content.asp?id=15539&action=detail&catID=6013&parentID=5746. Accessed March 17, 2020.

History of American Women.  Maria Martin Bachman.  Available at:  http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2016/02/maria-martin-bachman.html. Accessed March 17, 2020.

Sierra College.  Maria Martin Bachman.  Journal of the Sierra College Natural History Museum.  Available at:  https://www.sierracollege.edu/ejournals/jscnhm/v6n1/martin.html. Accessed March 17, 2020.

South Carolina Encyclopedia.  Martin, Maria.  Available at:  http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/martin-maria/.  Accessed March 17, 2020.

Staake, Jill.  2015.  Setting the Scene for Audubon’s Birds:  Maria Martin Bachman.  Birds & Blooms, November 3, 2015.  Available at:  http://www.birdsandblooms.com/blog/setting-the-scene-for-audubons-birds-maria-martin-bachman/.  Accessed March 17, 2020.

            On July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Act, which granted to states a quantity of federal lands to be sold for the purpose of creating colleges “for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts.”  Thus began the biggest program of public higher education that the world has ever seen—and along with it the advancement of conservation education, research and outreach.

            The act is named for Justin Smith Morrill, a congressman and later senator from Vermont.  Morrill believed that the condition of agriculture in the U.S. was declining and saw practical education as the key to reversing that trend.  Morrill believed in two principles of higher education—that it needed to be accessible to the general public, not just the wealthy; and that it needed to be practical, teaching skills necessary for the beneficial development of the nation.

            States generally responded by creating the required colleges of “agriculture and mechanic arts,” sometimes by establishing entirely new colleges and sometimes by expanding the mission of existing schools.  The upshot, however, was the formation of agricultural colleges in every state in the union—then and now known as “Land-Grant” institutions. 

            The Morrill Act of 1862 has been supplemented and amended many times, but four specific changes were seminal.  In 1887, through the Hatch Act, federal funding was added to expand agricultural research, driven by specific needs in each state.  Then, in 1914, the Smith-Lever Act added the mission of “extension” and the funding to support it.  Extension is the process of “extending” education informally to local communities, especially for improving the profitability and quality of life of rural families and businesses.  This was the birth of the “county extension agent,” who provided advice and training to her or his neighbors.  In 1890, a category of primarily African-American-serving universities was added to the program (19 exist today), and in 1994 a category of Native-American-serving universities was added (31 currently). Today, the Land-Grant system includes 106 universities.

            The Land-Grant definition of agriculture quickly shifted to include more than just growing crops and livestock.  Natural resource education, research and extension began with a focus on forestry, but then grew to include conservation and environmental science in general.  The vast majority of foresters, wildlife and fisheries professionals, grazing specialists and water and soil conservationists are the products of Land-Grant institutions.

            I myself am a product of the Land-Grant idea.  I attended and worked at six Land-Grant universities over the course of my career—the University of Illinois, University of Missouri, Cornell University, Virginia Tech, Penn State and North Carolina State University.  NC State is a perfect example of the conservation role of Land-Grants.  Among its many conservation programs, NC State’s College of Natural Resources has pioneered modern forestry, using advanced tree breeding, tree growth and nutrition, operations research and other management techniques to more than triple the productivity of forests in the southern U.S.  At the same time, its programs in wildlife conservation, soil management, hydrology and outdoor recreation have made forestry more sustainable for the wide range of values that forests provide.

            Clearly, the foresight provided by Senator Morrill, President Lincoln and their colleagues is the reason that American agriculture is the envy of the entire world and that conservation of natural resources is an established field in higher education and life.  As President Barack Obama said on the 150 anniversary of the Morrill Act, “land-grant institutions have helped bring a college education within reach for more Americans and empowered students with the tools they need to get ahead.  They have fueled groundbreaking research that has moved our country forward, and they have partnered with rural communities to develop robust solutions to the challenges they face.”  And they will continue to do so, as we seek a sustainable world.

References:

National Research Council.  1995.  Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities:  A Profile.  Committee on the Future of Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture, Board on Agriculture, National Research Council, Washington DC.  Available at:  https://www.nap.edu/read/4980/chapter/1#ii.  Accessed July 10, 2017.

North Carolina State University.  College of Natural Resources.  Available at:  https://cnr.ncsu.edu/.  Accessed March 17, 2020.

Obama, Barack.  2012.  Presidential message to honor the 150^th anniversary of the Morrill Act.  Available at:  https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/morrill-act-150-anniversary-president-message.pdf.  Accessed July 10, 2017.

Staley, David. J.  2013.  Democratizing American Higher Education:  The Legacy of the Morrill Land Grant Act.  Origins; Current Events in Historical Perspectice.  The Ohio State University and Miami University.  Available at:  http://origins.osu.edu/article/democratizing-american-higher-education-legacy-morrill-land-grant-act.  Accessed July 10, 2017.

The Duck Stamp—actually the “Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp”—came into force on July 1, 1934.  All hunters of migratory waterfowl must purchase and carry a Duck Stamp in order to hunt legally in the United States.

            The Duck Stamp was one solution to the deteriorating condition of waterfowl habitat during the first decades of the 20^th Century.  Conservationists finally convinced the federal government to provide a permanent source of funds for habitat protection and restoration in the form of a “revenue stamp.”  The first duck stamp, required for the 1934-1935 hunting season, cost $1.  The stamp featured a pair of Mallard Ducks landing in a marsh.  It was drawn by Ding Darling, then the Director of the Biological Survey (today known as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).

            Darling’s career, before and after his stint with the government, was as an editorial cartoonist with the Des Moines (Iowa) Register and Tribune newspaper.  He was an ardent conservationist, however, and an out-spoken critic of President Franklin Roosevelt’s conservation policies.  Roosevelt coerced Darling to come to Washington to see if he could do a better job running the nation’s wildlife programs.  Darling took the job, lasting for only a brief 22 months.  But during that time he became known as “the best friend a duck ever had” (read more about Darling here).

            The Duck Stamp is proof of Darling’s effectiveness.  The first year, about 600,000 stamps were sold; today about 1.7 million are sold annually.  An amazing 98% of the stamp revenue goes directly to conservation, a total of over $800 million since 1934 (credit for the program’s efficiency goes to Ms. Suzanne Fellows, who runs the entire Duck Stamp program almost by herself). More than 5.7 million acres of wetlands have been purchased or restored using Duck Stamp funds (learn about the first National Wildlife Refuge here. The idea of using revenue stamps for conservation has spread across the nation and world.  More than 1000 state, local and tribal stamps have been issued in the U.S. alone.  Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Argentina, Belgium, Australia, Russia and the U.K. all issue duck stamps.

            Along with their conservation value, the stamps themselves have become an artistic and collecting phenomenon.   The stamp is the longest running stamp series in U.S. history.  Since 1949, the artwork for the stamp has been selected through a national art contest—the only art competition of its kind run by the federal government.  The nation’s top wildlife artists vie for the honor of painting the winning entry each year.  Begun in 1989, a Junior Duck Stamp Program uses art as a stimulus to interest elementary school students in conservation.  The Smithsonian Institution’s Postal Museum has a continuing exhibit of Duck Stamps, and duck stamp aficionado’s have their own collector’s society.

References:

Brookman Stamps.  History of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act.  Available at:  http://www.brookmanstamps.com/Netcat/federal/History.htm. Accessed June 28, 2017.

Smithsonian National Postal Museum.  The Jeanette C. Rudy Duck Stamp Collection.  Available at:  https://arago.si.edu/exhibit_369.html. Accessed June 28, 2017.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Duck Stamps Dollars at Work.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/birds/get-involved/duck-stamp/duck-stamp-dollars-at-work.php. Accessed June 28, 2017.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  History of the Federal Duck Stamp.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/birds/get-involved/duck-stamp/history-of-the-federal-duck-stamp.php. Accessed June 28, 2017.

On the horns of a dilemma, I chose not to decide between horns.  Instead, I feature two great ornithologists today, both born on July 5.  Not only do they share expertise in ornithology, but they are also linked by their equally important expertise in genetics.  Let’s go in chronological order.

            Yoshimaro Yamashina was born in Tokyo on July 5, 1900 (died 1989).  He was a member of the royal family of Japan; the family’s wealth and status gave him opportunities to do as he wished.  What he wished to do was study birds.  After a short military career, he studied ornithology at the University of Tokyo, and, after graduation, founded an ornithological museum and laboratory that is now called the Yamashina Institute of Ornithology.

            He collected birds throughout Japan, eastern Asia and the Pacific.  He published his first major work, volume one of Japanese Birds and their Ecology, in 1933.  Volume 2 followed in 1941.  His interests spread to genetics, and he pioneered using chromosomes as the basis for avian taxonomy (his paper “Animal Taxonomy based on Cytology” in 1949 is a classic in the field).  He used his knowledge and position to support conservation, leading several organizations for preservation of avian biodiversity and receiving major awards for his science and public service.

            Yamashina may not be a commonly known name today, even among ornithologists, but the name of the second of today’s bird scientists is.  Ernst Mayr is known worldwide today as one of the 20^th Century’s greatest evolutionary scientists, but let’s start with his bird work.

            Ernst Walter Mayr was born on July 5, 1904, in the Bavarian region of Germany (died in 2005).  Mayr’s father was an amateur naturalist, so Mayr grew to love nature as well.  By age 10, he could identify all the birds in his local German ecosystem by sight and sound.  He went to the university to study medicine, but ornithology still captured him.  He switched from medicine to zoology at the University of Berlin, graduating with a Ph.D. at age 21.  He began working in the university’s museum, led a 2.5-year expedition to New Guinea, and then joined another expedition to the Solomon Islands.  He collected more than 7,000 bird specimens, noting that the work satisfied “the greatest ambition of [his] youth.”

            In 1931, he traveled to New York for a one-year job as an ornithological curator at the American Museum of Natural History (learn more about the museum here).  One year stretched to two full decades, as Mayr systematically (excuse the pun) worked through the museum’s bird collections.  He described 26 new species and 410 subspecies while at the museum.

            But Mayr’s mind couldn’t be caged with just birds. Lake Yamashina, he went deeper, into the link between diversity and genetics. In 1942, he published a book that unified the work of Darwin and Mendel, Systematics and the Origin of Species (learn more about Mendel here).  That work addressed the vexing question of exactly how new species formed.  He explained that populations of one species that were isolated from each other accumulated changes in their genes, through Mendelian genetics and mutation; natural selection working on those changes eventually separated the groups so much that they became new species.  Coming at the material from the viewpoint of a zoologist, and uniting European and American thought, Mayr produced what is sometimes called the “Bible of new systematics.”

            Mayr eventually left the museum for a second career as a Harvard professor.  The expansive nature of his work has earned Mayr standing as one of the greatest evolutionary scientists of all time.  He died at age 100, having published more than 700 scientific papers and 24 books, and received scores of major awards and honorary degrees. 

            July 5 has to be one of the best “double dates” of all time!

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Ernst Mayr.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernst-Mayr. Accessed March 16, 2020.

Harvard University.  Ernst Mayr:  An Informal Chronology.  Available at:  https://library.mcz.harvard.edu/chronology. Accessed March 16, 2020.

Public Broadcasting System (PBS).  Ernst Mayr and the Evolutionary Synthesis.  Available at:  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/2/l_062_01.html. Accessed March 16, 2020.

Ripley, S. Dillon.  1989.  In Memoriam:  Yoshimaro Yamashina, 1900-1989.  The Auk 106(4):721.  Available at:  https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v106n04/p0721-p0721.pdf. Accessed March 16, 2020.

Yamashina Institute for Ornithology.  Founder, Dr. Yamashina Yoshimaro.  Available at:  http://www.yamashina.or.jp/hp/english/about_us/founder.html. Accessed March 16, 2020.