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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.

We remember Aldo Leopold as the “father of wildlife conservation,” but we could just as easily recognize him as the father of wilderness.  Leopold’s foresight and vision led him to propose that a new concept—wilderness—be carved out of America’s national lands.

            Aldo Leopold was a forester by training, and his first professional job was on the national forests of New Mexico.  From 1909 to 1924, he worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming the Chief of Operations for the Albuquerque District of the US Forest Service.  The biggest part of his job was to perform long field observations of the district’s forests, assessing their conditions and making recommendations for improvements (learn more about Leopold here).

            On his field inspections, he observed a troubling trend, “the domestication of the landscape.”  In order to provide for the many uses of national forests, roads were being extended deep into the forests, along with the accompanying power and phone lines, buildings and people.  Even from a recreational perspective, Leopold objected:  “It is just as unwise to devote 100 percent of the recreational resources of our public parks and forests to motorists as it would be to devote 100 percent of our city parks to merry-go-rounds.”

            Instead, he believed a portion of the landscape should be left without human development.  Undeveloped land was a storehouse for natural diversity, providing knowledge about ecological processes and habitat for wild species that didn’t fare well around humans.  Wilderness, he argued, was also a “product” of the forest, just as were trees and hunted game.  Leopold had written the first professional article about wilderness areas in 1921, and three years later he proposed to his supervisors that the Forest Service act on that idea.

            And he knew the perfect place—the Gila National Forest.  The sprawling forest in western New Mexico had been impacted less than other forests because of its imposing terrain.  In the Gila, the Rocky and Sierra Madre Mountains meet, forming a complex mix of forested mountains, mesas and canyons linked by broad grasslands and deserts.  The district forester agreed, and on June 3, 1924, he signed the Gila Wilderness Area into existence—the first such designation in the world.

            Since then, of course, many more wilderness areas have been created—today the U.S. has 803 wilderness areas covering over 111 million acres (about 4.5% of the country).  The Gila is the largest in New Mexico, covering about 560,000 acres.  The Aldo Leopold Wilderness Area is adjacent to the Gila on the East, adding another 200,000 acres to form a contiguous area as large as Rhode Island.  All wilderness areas are now protected under The Wilderness Act, passed in 1964 (learn more about the Wilderness Act here).  Wilderness areas are managed by the land management agency in whose lands they lie—the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or U.S. Forest Service.

            The Gila is a nature lover’s paradise.  It is a crossroads of ecosystems, with an expansive biodiversity. The forests range from pinion-pine-juniper stands on the east to ponderosa pine in the central portion and spruce-fir areas on the higher-elevation west.  The fauna ranges from elk to Gila monsters, and several packs of re-introduced Mexican wolves call the Gila home.  As Tim Gibbons wrote, on the Gila “you can hook a catfish on one cast and the endemic Gila trout on another.”  Trails wind 800 miles through the landscape (not sure Leopold would like that), but are accessible only on foot or horseback.

            So, not only must be thank Aldo Leopold for the conservation philosophy he wrote in Sand County Almanac and the technical ideas he developed for wildlife management, but also for starting us on the path to preserving wilderness.  Bravo, Aldo!

References:

Gibbons, Tim.  2014.  An American Original:  Aldo Leopold in the Gila Wilderness.  Your National Forests Magazine, Summer/Fall 2014.  Available at:  https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-forests-magazine/aldo-leopold-in-the-gila-wilderness. Accessed March 13, 2020.

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

US Forest Service.  History of the Gila Wilderness.  Available at:  https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/gila/learning/history-culture/?cid=stelprdb5038907. Accessed March 13, 2020.

Wilderness Connect.  Gila Wilderness; and Fast Facts.  Available at:  https://wilderness.net/visit-wilderness/?ID=205.  Accessed March 13, 2020.

How fitting it is that the man who led the creation of our great National Park Service should have been born on the 4^th of July.  Often called “America’s Best Idea,” the national parks of the United States have become a symbol of what democracy and freedom mean to a nation’s people.  And we have Stephen Mather to thank for it.

            Stephen Tyng Mather was born on July 4, 1867 in San Francisco (died 1930) to a prominent family.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1887, and then became a reporter for the New York Sun.  He later joined his father, working for a New York company that manufactured borax, a salt of the element boron and an important ingredient in detergents.  Mather was charged with promoting his company’s rather routine product.  To do so, he developed an advertising campaign around the name, “20 Mule Team Borax,” which became one of the most recognizable brands in America (ask your grandparents).  Mather left that company and formed his own borax-manufacturing firm, becoming a wealthy millionaire as a result.

            Mather was a model of American success.  One admirer described him as “a figure larger than life—tall, blue eyed, ally of avant-garde poetry, a man of ‘colossal popularity’ in the business world, an ‘alloy of drive and amiability.’”  But he also suffered from recurring bouts of depression, so severe that he sometimes required hospitalization.  Mather had one reliable antidote for his depression—immersion into nature. He especially loved the country’s few western national parks, Yosemite and Sequoia in particular. 

            On a visit to those two parks in 1914, he was appalled by their condition.  The parks were basically unmanaged, with no professional staff, shabby development and illegal use by miners, loggers and cattlemen.  He wrote to the Secretary of Interior, a friend from college, complaining about what he saw.  The Secretary wrote back, “If you don’t like the way the national parks are run, why don’t you come… and run them yourself.”

            Mather did as asked, retiring from business and moving to Washington for a planned one-year stint as an unpaid leader of the national parks.  He lasted for 25 years, becoming the first director of the National Park Service when formed in 1916.  Through his genius, vision and hard work, he led the transformation of the parks into the treasure we know today.  People liked him, listened to him, believed in him.  In 1915, he conducted the “Mather Mountain Party” tour to several western parks; his guests included business leaders, elected politicians, scientists and the editor of National Geographic (learn more about National Geographic here)   One later said, “If [Mather] was out to make a convert, the subject never knew what hit him.”

            Mather fostered the legislation that formed the National Park Service in 1916 and then used his position as founding director to protect and enhance the parks.  The 13 existing national parks and 18 national monuments were united under one agency, and each was assigned professional staff.  Mather knew that the parks would succeed only if the public loved them, so he commissioned roads and comfortable lodging for the growing trend of automobile vacations.  He developed policies that protected the scenic beauty of parks while also making their grandeur accessible to the public.  He expanded the park idea into the eastern U.S., adding Shenandoah , Great Smoky Mountain (learn more about this park here), and Mammoth Cave National Parks.  When money ran out, he paid from his own pocket, spending more than $250,000 over his term (at a time when the entire agency budget was $20,000 a year).

            Although John Muir is remembered as father of the national parks (learn more about Muir here), Stephen Mather might be called their favorite uncle—adding discipline when needed but being great fun the rest of the time.  Mather’s contributions are recorded in a small plaque displayed at most national parks today.  It tells his story well:  “He laid the foundation of the National Park Service, defining and establishing the policies under which its areas shall be developed and conserved unimpaired for future generations.  There will never come an end to the good that he has done.”

References:

American Academy for Park & Recreation Administration.  Stephen Tyng Mather.  Available at:  https://www.aapra.org/pugsley-bios/stephen-tyng-mather.  Accessed March 13, 2020. 

Public Broadcasting System.  Stephen Mather (1867-1930).  Available at:  https://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/people/nps/mather/. Accessed March 13, 2020. 

Schultz, Eric B.  2019.  Preservation and Entrepreneurship:  The Ongoing Impact of Stephen Tyng Mather.  Gettysburg Foundation, September 16, 2019.  Available at:  https://www.gettysburgfoundation.org/gettysburg-revisited/blog-reimagining-gettysburg/preservation-and-entrepreneurship. Accessed March 13, 2020. 

Swift, William.  Stephen T. Mather.  National Park Service:  The First 75 Years.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sontag/mather.htm. Accessed March 13, 2020. 

If you were looking for a poster illustration of how species go extinct, you could stop your search right here at the Great Auk.  This large, flightless bird of the North Atlantic had no chance of survival as a new and lethal force entered its environment—humans.

            We have few details about the ecology of the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) , but what we do know foretells a tragic story.  Early sailors called them penguins (although they aren’t), and they share several life-history traits with penguins.  Great Auks evolved to be big—about 2 feet tall and weighing about 10 pounds, too big to fly.  Like penguins, Great Auks were clumsy on land.  But they were excellent swimmers, using their shortened wings as fins to propel them in pursuit of fish.  They stayed in the water except for breeding, when they came ashore in large colonies to lay, brood and hatch a single egg per female.  The colonies stretched across the North Atlantic, from the waters off Great Britain all the way around to the Canadian maritime provinces.

            Great Auks numbered in the millions until the trouble began.  In the last “little ice age” (circa 1500-1800), sea ice linked their breeding islands together with larger land areas.  That gave polar bears access to Great Auk breeding grounds, increasing natural predation on the birds.  But the big change came as fishing and sailing traffic across the North Atlantic increased.  Humans quickly learned that the Great Auk was, forgive the ornithologically inaccurate pun, a sitting duck.  The dense flocks on breeding islands were exploited easily; one sailor reported that the birds were so thick “that a man could not put his foot between them.”  Another sailor noted that harvesting the defenseless birds was as effortless as collecting stones. The birds provided eggs and meat for sailors, bait for fishing, feathers for pillows, and even fuel—the oil-rich carcasses could be burned when other fuels ran low. 

            By the mid-1800s, hunting had made the birds scarce.  Breeding colonies had been destroyed on many smaller islands, leaving only a few larger colonies extant.  As numbers dwindled, collectors became the next threat.  One specimen of an adult bird or an egg could bring $16, the equivalent then of a year’s wage for a skilled worker.  About 80 specimens remain in museums and private collections today.

            The last major colony of Great Auks bred on an Icleandic island called Geirfuglasker, which means “Great Auk Rock.”  Nature destroyed that colony in 1830 when the island sunk after a volcanic eruption.  Five years later, however, a few birds were found on nearby Eldey, a tiny island of about 10 acres.  Museums and private collectors quickly targeted the island.  A trio of collectors caught and killed the last pair of Great Auks on July 3, 1844.  In the process, they also accidentally crushed the last egg.

( The story requires a little caveat. Sources differ on exactly when those last two birds were captured and killed.  Modern websites generally agree on July 4, 1844.  But older sources state that the probable date of extinction was in June, not July, and anywhere from the 2^nd to the 5^th.  Alfred Newton, an early professor of zoology at Cambridge University and an expert on the Great Auk, interviewed the collectors some years after their return; he likes July 3rd.  But, as other observers have said, sailors are not particularly good with dates—so, you pick!)

            The story of the Great Auk joins with several others—the Passenger Pigeon, for example—that demonstrate what can happen when extinction’s perfect storm occurs (learn more about the Passenger Pigeon here).  When a species has an innately risky life history, has great value to humans, and can’t defend itself, tragedy is the likely outcome. 

References:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Great Auk.  Available at:  https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/greauk/introduction. Accessed March 12, 2020.

Giaimo, Cara.  2019.  Why the Great Auk Is Gone for Good.  The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2019.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/science/great-auks-extinction.html. Accessed March 12, 2020.

Galasso, Samantha.  2014.  When the Last of the Great Auks Died, It Was by the Crush of a Fisherman’s Boot.  Smithsonian Magazine, July 10, 2014.  Available at:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/with-crush-fisherman-boot-the-last-great-auks-died-180951982/. Accessed March 12, 2020.

John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove.  The extinction of The Great Auk.  Available at:  https://johnjames.audubon.org/extinction-great-auk. Accessed March 12, 2020.

National Geographic.  Jul 3, 1844 CE:  Great Auks Become Extinct.  Available at:  https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/jul3/great-auks-become-extinct/.  Accessed March 12, 2020.

The United States government had been conserving fisheries and wildlife for a long time, through the gradual accumulation of individual programs and offices.  But on June 30, 1940, the two primary agencies were married—a union that has lasted for 80 years and led the dramatic return of much of our native wildlife.

            The marriage had a long courtship.  Federal fisheries management began officially in 1871, when Congress created the Fish Commission to oversee the rebuilding of depleted marine fisheries; eventually the Fish Commission became the Bureau of Fisheries within the Department of Commerce.  Federal wildlife management began officially 14 years later, in 1885, when the US Department of Agriculture created the Section of Economic Ornithology, addressing the relationship of birds and farming.  A year later mammals were added to the charge and the agency was eventually renamed the Bureau of Biological Survey. 

            These two agencies, working separately and in two different cabinet departments (Commerce and Agriculture) carried the nation’s primary responsibility for all matters concerned with fisheries and wildlife.  President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t like the arrangement, so in 1939, he moved the two into the Department of the Interior, with this logic:

“These two Bureaus have to do with conservation and utilization of the wildlife resources of the country, terrestrial and aquatic. Therefore, they should be grouped under the same departmental administration, and in that Department which, more than any other, is directly responsible for the administration and conservation of the public domain.”

But that wasn’t enough.  The next year, on June 30, Congress and the President agreed on another reorganization that married the two as one comprehensive agency—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).  Roosevelt further reasoned that “[t]he natural areas of operation of these two bureaus frequently coincide, and their activities are interrelated and similar in character. Consolidation will eliminate duplication of work, facilitate coordination of programs, and improve service to the public.”

            Several later reorganizations have occurred (the most important was the removal of commercial and marine fisheries management back to the Department of Commerce), but the USFWS has remained mostly stable since 1940.  It now operates through a Washington, DC, headquarters, 8 regional offices, and field offices distributed across the country.  The USFWS employs about 9,000 people supported by about $2.7 billion in appropriations, both discretionary and mandatory.

            The programs of the agency have expanded over the years as concerns for fisheries and wildlife resources have evolved.  The USFWS states that its mission is to “work with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.”  The agency address that mission through these major programmatic areas:

• Operation of the National Wildlife Refuge System, which contains 568 refuges, 38 wetland districts and 5 marine national monuments covering 95 million acres of lands and 760 million acres of submerged lands and waters;
• Restoration of fish and wildlife populations and their habitats, including both hunted and non-hunted (or non-game) species and raising fish in 70 national fish hatcheries;
• Protection of threatened and endangered species, primarily through the Endangered Species Act (however, marine and anadromous species are protected by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Department of Commerce);
• Management of migratory birds, including hunting quotas throughout the U.S, laws and treaties that cover birds that migrate internationally, and the Duck Stamp program (Duck Stamps are basically licenses that must be purchased by all hunters of migratory birds);
• Leadership of the U.S. role in international conservation, including treaties and other agreements with nations of the world, such as the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES);
• Enforcement of all federal wildlife laws, such as the Lacey Act (that prohibits interstate trade in wild species); and
• Management of federal excise tax programs that provide funding to states and territories for fisheries and wildlife restoration, known commonly as the Dingell-Johnson and Pittman-Robertson Acts.

The job of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a big one, and it gains in importance with each passing year.  The successes of the agency—many of which have been described on other pages in this website—have produced the bountiful resources that we enjoy today, from self-sustaining wolf populations to resurgent Wild Turkey populations.  May they remain happily married and in love—with nature—for another 80!

References:

Crafton, R. Eliot.  2018.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:  An Overview.  Congressional Research Service, July 20, 2018.  Available at:  https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45265.  Accessed March 11, 2020.

Natonal Archives.  Records of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Available at:  https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/022.html#22.1. Accessed March 11, 2020.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  About the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/help/about_us.html. Accessed March 11, 2020. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Public Lands and Waters, National Wildlife Refuge System.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuges/about/public-lands-waters/index.html. Accessed March 11, 2020.