Category: Uncategorized

Tero Mustonen, Finnish Environmentalist, Born (1976)

Save the rainforest!  That’s what we hear over and over—and for good cause.  But at the other ends of the earth, there are also valuable ecosystems, doing valuable work to sustain our lives.  Tero Mustonen is a champion for Arctic ecosystems, urging us to protect them from misuse, and doing his utmost to make that happen.

Tero Mustonen was born (June 23, 1976) and raised in the small Finnish village of Selkie in far eastern Finland, only 35 miles from the Russian border.  “I grew up in a fishing family. We were close to nature, living without running water in a small village in the boreal forest each summer.”  He still lives in Selkie, where he continues to fish commercially and has become the head of the village.  He believes that indigenous knowledge is essential to keeping Arctic ecosystems—all ecosystems, really—functioning properly.  “In most places around the world, we do not know how things were prior to the 1900s, so indigenous memory can inform about changes and ecosystems….Without indigenous peoples and their wisdom, there would not be nearly enough preserved biodiversity.”

But Mustonen also understands that modern science and techniques are necessary tools to sustain nature.  “I decided I needed scientific training to understand properly what was going on in the landscapes I knew.  I often say that I first went to a real school, fishing on the ice, and then I learned the analytical tools to make the link to scientific knowledge.”  He learned well, earning his doctorate in 2009 from the University of Eastern Finland.

That scientific knowledge helped Mustonen put his experience into a broader context—a context built on peat.  About 30% of Finland is covered in peat, a compressed material of soil and decomposing vegetation.  The peat does not decompose completely due to insufficient oxygen, thereby absorbing and storing huge quantities of CO2.  Peat has been used locally throughout time as a fuel source.  But the local practices were sustainable, and the vast peatlands of Finland were hardly changed until the end of World War II.  Then, the country drained nearly half of its peatlands for mining.  Mustonen recently noted, “Intact peatlands were seen as unproductive wastelands….we have lost approaching half of our wet peatlands and their wildlife—more than 12 million acres.”

Mustonen has developed a comprehensive strategy for combating these losses and restoring the peatlands—rewilding, he calls it.  In 2000, he created the Snowchange Cooperative “…to integrate Indigenous knowledge with science and to advance the voices of traditional communities in the North, while helping them maintain fisheries and reindeer herding in the face of climate change and other threats.”  

And it works.  He and his colleagues at Snowchange talk with Indigenous people and village elders to learn the history of the local peatlands.  They use that knowledge to employ modern techniques to make initial restoration changes.  “I’m not a big fan of machinery, but we need excavators at first to block ditches, raise [water] tables and restore water flow.”  Then they let nature take over, accepting that the results will occur gradually and that the peatlands are unlikely to return to their former state.  “We do rewilding rather than strict ecosystem restoration…. But we can recover rich, biodiverse wetlands.”  The restored sites attract native wildlifeand once again begin to remove CO2 from the air.  “One moonscape we took over in 2015 has gone from three bird species to 210, including rare waders such as Terek sandpipers.”

They started small, working in Mustonen’s home village of Selkie in 2010.  When a mining company began working around the village, acid mine drainage began killing fish.  But the company agreed to let Snowchange restore three wetlands.  From there, the group began buying abandoned industrial sites and “rewilding” them.  Today, Snowchange has about 80 sites under rewilding, covering 130,000 acres.

Mustonen has expanded his efforts across the Arctic and also into the Pacific, particularly with the Maori of New Zealand (unfortunately, their work in Russia ended when Russia invaded the Ukraine).  That process seeks to restore not only ecosystems, but also Indigenous peoples.  “We never wanted to be just a conservation organization.  We are appalled that the Sami people in northern Finland … are the only Indigenous peoples in Europe who don’t have proper land rights.”

In the U.S., Mustonen’s approach is called community-based conservation.  Making local people, including Indigenous peoples, part of the decision-making and implementation processes grows friends rather than enemies and develops partners rather than resisters.  For his approach, Mustonen won one of the six 2023 Goldman Environments Prizes, often called the “Green Nobels.”  And I noble approach it is!   

References:

Goldman Environmental Prize.  2023.  Tero Mustonen.  Available at:  https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/tero-mustonen/#recipient-bio.  Accessed January 20, 2024.

Pearce, Fred.  2023.  Finland Drained Its Peatlands.  He’s Helping Bring Them Back.  Yale Environment 360.  Available at:  https://e360.yale.edu/features/tero-mustonen-interview.  Accessed January 20, 2024.

Schueman, Lindsey Jean.  2023.  Climate Hero:  Tero Mustonen.  One Earth, April 25, 2023.  Available at:  https://www.oneearth.org/conservation-hero-tero-mustonen/.  Accessed January 20, 2024.

Snowchange Cooperative.  2024.  Home.  Available at:  http://www.snowchange.org/.  Accessed January 20, 2024.

University of Eastern Finland.  2023.  Tero Mustonen wins the Goldman Environmental Prize, a.k.a. the “Green Nobel.”  24.4.2023.  Available at:  https://www.uef.fi/en/article/tero-mustonen-wins-the-goldman-environmental-prize-aka-the-green-nobel.  Accessed January 20, 2024.

Well, we could have an argument about this date.  Most websites will say that Kruger National Park was established on May 31, 1926, when South Africa enacted a law allowing for ecosystem reserves that could be labelled as “national parks,” and named Kruger National Park as the first one in the country on that day.

But I prefer the date on which a wildlife reserve, although not a national park per se, was established.  On March 26, 1898, South African President Paul Kruger declared a “Government Wildlife Park.”  Later that park would be renamed the Sabi Game Reserve, and later still, in 1926, would be renamed again, this time after the president who first created it—Kruger National Park.

Well, whichever date you choose as the birthday, Kruger is some kind of park.  It covers 7,580 square miles, more than twice as large as Yellowstone National Park in the U.S.  It is a long park, stretching 220 miles north to south and 56 miles east to west at its widest.  It is the largest national park in South Africa, but only the sixth largest on the African continent (the largest is Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, roughly three times bigger than Kruger).  

Kruger has enormous biodiversity.  It holds 147 mammal species (including most of what we call charismatic megafauna), over 500 species of birds, and over 100 species of reptiles.  Consequently, it is classified by UNESCO as an important biosphere (called the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere).  The park has been enormously successful in allowing native plants and animals to thrive.  In early years, elephants numbered fewer than 100; today the population exceeds 31,000.  Rhinos had to be re-introduced from other habitats to restart a rhino population; today, there are about 3,000.

The park, however, has been marked by controversy from its earliest years.  When declared a national park in 1926, the native Tsonga people who lived inside the park’s boundaries.  The park was fenced to keep the animals and the native citizens apart.  Today, the park is ringed by human communities that lay right up against the fences, with more than 2 million residents.  Most of the people and communities are impoverished.

One consequence is that poaching has long occurred, primarily for elephant tusks and rhino horns.  The extent of poaching has risen and fallen over the years, with a strong spike in the late 2010s.  Poaching is down now, due to aggressive and technologically assisted enforcement, but the rhino population continues to shrink.

The great success of the elephant population led to such large increases in numbers that the park culled elephant herds for several decades.  Culling was thought necessary to keep the elephants from over-grazing their habitats, but after continuing controversy, it was stopped in 2000.  Neither the elephants nor the habitat have appeared to suffer from the growing elephant numbers.

Tourism is big business to the people who lives around the nine entry gates to the park.  About 1.5 million people visit the park annually, their dollars supporting the local economies.  Kruger is also tourist friendly because the roads are paved and individuals can drive personal vehicles through the park.  

So, choose the date you’d like for the birth of Kruger National Park.  But whichever date you prefer, my recommendation is to  visit for a fantastic wildlife viewing experience.

References:

Global Alliance for National Parks.  2013.  Kruger National Park.  Available at:  https://national-parks.org/south-africa/kruger.  Accessed March 19, 2023.

Pinnock, Don and Helena Kriel.  2022.  Beyond its exceptional beauty, Kruger National Park is on the ropes and hurting.  Conservation Action Trust.  Available at:  https://conservationaction.co.za/recent-news/beyond-its-exceptional-beauty-kruger-national-park-is-on-the-ropes-and-hurting/.  Accessed March 19, 2023.

South African National Parks.  Kruger National Park.  Available at:  https://www.sanparks.org/parks/kruger/tourism/history.php.  Accessed March 19, 2023.

The Mexican gray wolf made the news recently.  Good news it was, too.  But the story goes back much further.

The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is the smallest of five subspecies of the gray wolf.  Males grow up to about 80 pounds and females about 50 pounds; they stand about two and one-half feet tall at the shoulder.  They have thick coats that vary widely in color from gray to brown, resembling at a distance the much smaller coyote.  They live in small packs, usually fewer than five individuals, and females have 1-6 pups annually.  Their natural range covers northern Mexico, plus the states of New Mexico, Arizona and western Texas.

That was the range, until the late 1800s, when livestock ranching became big business and ranchers wanted the wolves gone.  Along with a natural diet of deer, elk and smaller game, wolves ate livestock when available.  The U.S. government and western states began programs to shoot and poison Mexican wolves, including giving poisons to the nation of Mexico to use on their own wolves.  Populations of the wolf declined rapidly and, by the 1950s, the Mexican gray wolf was determined to be extinct in the wild.

With the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 (learn more about the ESA here) and under pressure from conservation organizations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Mexican subspecies of gray wolf as endangered on April 28, 1976.  Subsequent changes to the listing occurred on March 9, 1978 and February, 2015, but the subspecies continues to be listed as endangered.

Soon after the initial ruling in 1976, seven known wolves were gathered together for a captive breeding program, now centered at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The captive breeding proved successful (and continues to be so), and in 1998, wolves began to be released into the wild at locations in New Mexico and Arizona.

The reintroduced wolves have prospered.  A news release by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in February, 2023, reported that by the end of 2022, 59 wolf packs had established territories, 40 in New Mexico and 19 in Arizona.  The total estimated population is now 241, including 31 breeding pairs that had 121 pups last year.  The population grew by 23% between 2021 and 2022, a massive increase.

The Mexican gray wolf still has a long way to go, however.  In the latest revision of the recovery plan (September, 2022), the stated goals for delisting the sub-species include having two self-sustaining populations (one in the U.S. and one in Mexico) that average at least 320 (U.S.) and 200 (Mexican) individuals over an 8-year span, are growing year to year and are genetically diverse.  These conditions are expected by 2043.

So, three cheers for the Mexican gray wolf and for the partners in the U.S. and Mexico who are making its recovery possible.  And let me say that it is an especially sweet story for a loyal fan of the North Carolina State University Wolfpack.  As we say here, “Go Pack!”

References:

Center for Biological Diversity.  Saving the Mexican Gray Wolf.  Available at:  https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/Mexican_gray_wolf/index.html.  Accessed March 6, 2023.

New Mexico Game and Fish.  Mexican Gray Wolf.  Wildlife Notes.  Available at:  https://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/download/education/conservation/wildlife-notes/mammals/Mexican-gray-wolf.pdf. Accessed March 6, 2023.

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  2023.  Mexican Wolf Numbers Soar Past 200 in Latest Count.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-02/mexican-wolf-numbers-soar-past-200. Accessed March 6, 2023.

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  2022.  Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, Second Revision, September 2022.  Available at:  https://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/Final%20Mexican%20Wolf%20Recovery%20Plan%20Second%20Revision%202022%20signed_508%20compliant_1.pdf. Accessed March 6, 2023.

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuge/sevilleta. Accessed March 6, 2023.

If you need an example of Type-A personality from the 19th Century, I’ve got your man.  Spencer Fullerton Baird, born on February 3, 1823 (died 1887), held several jobs at the same time and in the process created our great national museums and our first foray into fisheries management.  His name and picture should ber next to the dictionary definition of “overachiever.”

Baird was born in Reading, Pennsylvania.  His father was a lawyer, but also a devoted naturalist.  Father and son often tramped through the woods around Reading, studying the area’s natural history.  Baird wasn’t a very good student, preferring to learn by observing nature in the field (a trait that he maintained his entire life).  Obviously intelligent, he enrolled at Dickinson College at the age of thirteen and graduated with a B.S. four years later (right, when he was seventeen).  He became friends with ornithologist John James Audubon and was a devotee of the work of Louis Agassiz at Harvard (learn more about Audubon here).  After an unsuccessful try at medical school, he returned to Dickinson, receiving an M.S. in 1843.  While in school, he corresponded with many of the leading naturalists of the era, including George Perkins Marsh, collected voraciously around the mid-Atlantic states, and published papers in biological journals.  He became a professor of natural history and chemistry at Dickinson in 1845.

On the recommendation of George Perkins Marsh, in 1850, he was appointed to the Smithsonian Institution as Assistant Secretary of Natural History.  Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian, and Baird’s boss, was not interested in developing a large collection.  Nevertheless, when Baird reported for his job, he brought with him his personal collection of biological specimens, numbering in the thousands and reportedly filling two railroad boxcars and weighing 8.5 tons.  His job at the Smithsonian was generally routine and administrative, but he did the work willingly and with skill, earning the respect and tolerance of Secretary Henry.

Tolerance was needed, because Baird never veered from his goal of building a large national collection (despite Henry’s indifference).  His second job at the Smithsonian was to oversee the development of the National Museum, the portion of the institution that we now know as the National Museum of Natural History.  In 1872, Secretary Henry formalized that work by appointing Baird as Director of the museum,  with full control of its operations. He developed exchange programs with collectors and museums around the U.S. and world, gradually building the Smithsonian’s collections.  His strategy, as he wrote to Marsh, was to accumulate such a large and unwieldy collection that Congress would be forced to appropriate money for both a building and the necessary staff to curate the specimens that filled it.

When Secretary Henry died in 1878, Baird was named his successor, becoming the second Secretary of the Smithsonian.  With a free hand to develop the institution as he wished, he worked to build a new museum building, which opened in 1881 (now the Arts and Industries Building, next to the Castle), created a small zoo beside the Castle that evolved into the National Zoo, and added a program to study American Ethnology, primarily the cultures of Native Americans.  He remained Secretary until his death in 1887.

Baird’s other big job was one added to his responsibility in 1871.  Concerns over the status of marine commercial fish species prompted the Congress to create the U.S. Fish Commission to study the situation and advocate for its improvement.  They named Baird the first commissioner, a job that he was to undertake at the same time as pursuing his other responsibilities (with no additional pay) and that he also kept until his death.  

Fish Commissioner was a job that Baird loved, perhaps more than his role as Secretary of the Smithsonian.  He was always devoted to field work and natural history, although his leadership of the museum kept him from pursuing field studies as much as he wished.  But as fish commissioner, designing and directing field studies was his primary task.  To do so, he founded the Woods Hole Laboratory, which has become one of the world’s leading oceanographic and marine biological research institutions.  He also authorized the construction of the first federal fish hatcheries and built two ocean-going research vessels (the Fish Hawk and Albatross) (learn more about the Albatross here).  He spent as much time as possible at Woods Hole, especially during summer months when he invited the most distinguished marine scientists of his time to conduct research on the fish and aquatic biota of the Atlantic coast.

Baird was a distinguished leader and administrator of our nation’s greatest scientific bodies, a legacy enough for any person.  But he also remained a prolific scientist himself, publishing more than 1200 papers and reports over his life.  As the National Marine Fisheries Service writes in his biography, “Baird is credited with initiating the fields of marine ecology, fisheries biology or fisheries science, and laying the foundation of oceanography. He was also a pioneer in biogeography, the study of biological and geographic factors that influence the distribution of life on Earth.  He believed research and education went hand in hand. From the start, he invited visitors to see what researchers were studying by displaying aquaria full of local species. He was convinced that in a democratic society, people are entitled to know about the activities of the institutions maintained with public funds.”

So, as you roam the great museum on Washington’s National Mall, reflect on the great men and women who made these things possible.  Including one enormous overachiever named Spencer Fullerton Baird.

References:

Billings, John S.  1889.  Memoir of Spencer Fullerton Baird, 1823-1887.  National Academy of Sciences.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/baird-spencer-f.pdf.  Accessed February 24, 2023.

NOAA Fisheries.  Spencer Fullerton Baird:  Founder of the Woods Hole Laboratory and Fisheries Science.  Available at:  https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/spencer-fullerton-baird-founder-woods-hole-laboratory-and-fisheries-science.  Accessed February 24, 2023.

Smithsonian Institution Archives.  Spence Fullerton Baird, 1823-1887.  Available at:  https://siarchives.si.edu/history/spencer-fullerton-baird.  Accessed February 24, 2023.

For the second time, an African American is leading the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  The first African American Administrator of the EPA was Lisa Jackson, who served under President Obama (learn more about her here).  The second, and current, Administrator is Michael Regan.

Michael S. Regan was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, on August 6, 1976.  His mother was a nurse and his father, a Vietnam veteran, spent a career in the North Carolina National Guard and also served as an agricultural extension agent.  Regan grew up hunting and fishing with his father and grandfather, experiences that gave him the impetus for a career as an environmentalist.

He graduated with a B.S. in 1998 from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University with a major in earth and environmental science.  He immediately went to work for the EPA in North Carolina, serving for a decade and rising to lead programs on air pollution reduction and energy efficiency.  He went on to work for the Environmental Defense Fund from 2008 to 2013.  He eventually became the Associate Vice President of U.S. Climate and Energy for the EDF.  He left there and opened his own consulting firm.  While working, he earned a Master of Public Administration from George Washington University.

In 2017, he was appointed Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.  While secretary, he negotiated several high-profile pollution cases, including a settlement with Duke Energy to remediate coal-ash wastes at a cost to the company of more than $1 billion.  He also created an Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory board to address long-standing issues related to environment blight in African American communities.

Regan left his position as secretary in 2021 to become EPA Administrator under President Biden.  He was approved by the U.S. Senate 66-34, the bi-partisan endorsement fostered by North Carolina’s two Republican senators.

References:

Influencewatch.  Michael S. Regan.  Available at:  https://www.influencewatch.org/person/michael-s-regan/. Accessed January 19, 2023.

North Carolina Department f Environmental Quality.  Michael S. Regan.  Available at:  https://deq.nc.gov/about/leadership/michael-s-regan. Accessed January 19, 2023.

US Environmental Protection Agency.  EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan.  Available at:  https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-administrator.  Accessed January 19, 2023.

In the mid-1800s, the American west was a distant wilderness to most people.  Americans, and the rest of the world, saw the landscape mostly through the works of artists who accompanied survey expeditions.  Their often monumental and romanticized paintings fired the imagination of an “American Eden.”  Perhaps the most famous of these artists, both at the time and still today, is Albert Bierstadt.

Albert Bierstadt was born on January 7, 1830 (died 1902), in Prussian Germany.  His parents emigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts, when Albert was just two years old.  His father built barrels for the whaling industry, providing a comfortable childhood for Albert and his two brothers.

The boy was a natural artist, constantly sketching what he saw around him in the New England landscape.  Little is known about his early life, but his skill at drawing led him to become an art teacher at age 20.  Then, in 1853, he traveled to Germany, studying with experienced artists and sketching across Germany, Switzerland, and Italy for four years.  He matured as an artist, demonstrating exceptional talent at representing the vertical landscapes of the Alps.

Once back in New Bedford, he began to exhibit his European work, gaining recognition for his luminous use of light and color that produced serene and gentle landscapes.  He traveled throughout New England, and like other artists of the Hudson River School, he painted highly evocative and idealized American landscapes.

Bierstadt, however, along with others including Thomas Moran, became enthralled by the landscape of the American West.  During 1857-1859, he took two trips, making countless sketches and experimenting with the new field of photography.  He travels convinced him that the American West “has the best material for the artist in the world.”  He took a studio in New York City and, using the sketches from his travels, began painting the large canvases for which he became famous.  He used the techniques he honed painting in the Alps to produce mystical scenes based on recognizable landscapes but modified to evoke tranquility and majesty.

For the next several decades, Bierstadt took his place as one of the nation’s most revered landscape artists.  His monumental canvases graced the U.S. capitol and the finest galleries across the nation (where they can still be seen today).  He emphasized the grandeur of the natural environment, generally minimizing the presence of the human-built world. The popularity of his work is often credited with energizing the drive to protect western landscapes as national parks.  He was also appalled by the destruction of American bison and other species.  “The continual slaughter of native species,” he said, “must be halted before all is lost.”

In his later years, he spent parts of every year in the Bahamas, where his wife had moved for medical reasons.  His paintings of tropical environments are generally considered of equal quality to those he painted of the American West.

Bierstadt’s popularity fell as the 20th Century approached, with critics dismissing his large canvases as overly sentimental.  His reputation revived in the 1960s as the environmental movement renewed Americans interest in the need for protecting our great natural resources. Today his works occupy a prominent position as symbols of the majesty of the western landscape.  As he said,“Truly all is remarkable and a wellspring of amazement and wonder.  Man is so fortunate to dwell in this American Garden of Eden.”

References:

Albertbierstadt.org.  Albert Bierstadt Biography in Details.  Available at:  https://www.albertbierstadt.org/biography.html.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

National Gallery of Art.  Albert Bierstadt.  Available at:  https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.6707.html.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

The Art Story.  Albert Bierstadt.  Available at:  https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bierstadt-albert/.  Accessed January 5, 2023.

It went by various names.  Taxonomists call it a bristlecone pine.  Local mountaineers call it Prometheus.  A particular scientist labelled  it WPN-114.  And then he cut it down.  Later, he learned that it was nearly 5,000 years old, the oldest known living non-clonal organism in the world.  Uh-oh.

Donald Currey was a geography graduate students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill studying the Little Ice Age that occurred during the last few thousand years.  He went to Nevada to age bristlecone pines, among the world’s oldest trees, that grew on glacial deposits associated with the ice age.  Bristlecone pines, like all trees growing in temperate regions, can be aged from the rings in their wood.  Currey was using a device called a Swedish increment borer to drill a narrow hole into tree trunks to extract samples for dating.  He had chosen this particular tree, WPN-114, for no particular reason than it was surely old enough to cover the desired span of years.

Now the story gets a little confusing.  Some accounts state that Currey got his increment borer stuck in the tree and, needing to retrieve it for subsequent work, he asked the U.S. Forest Service, which operated the national forest in which he was working, for permission to cut down the tree.  Other accounts state that the gnarly shape of the tree didn’t allow Currey to get good samples with his borer, so he realized he had to cut the tree down to get complete cross-sections of the trunk.  Whatever the precise reason, the Forest Service gave permission for the tree to be cut.  On August 7 (or perhaps August 6—this detail is a little sketchy as well), 1964, a crew used chain saws to cut down the tree.

Later, when Currey analyzed samples from the tree, he discovered a startling fact.  This particular tree, unbeknownst to any of the people working with it, contained more than 4,800 annual growth rings.  That made it the oldest living non-clonal tree in the world (stands of some clonal trees, like aspen, are now considered one individual and, therefore, are given ages that go back thousands of years).  Subsequent analysis discovered more rings and, given that trees growing in the harsh environment where this tree lived sometimes don’t grow at all in a year, the tree’s age is now estimated to have been well over 4,900 years when it was cut.

It was an accident, of course.  Not that the tree was cut down—that was purposeful, and done with permission.  And it wasn’t a  big deal at the time.  As one observer has stated, “But it wasn’t something that I think they struggled with at the time, because it was just a tree, and the mindset was that trees were a renewable resource and they would grow back. And it didn’t seem like it was any particularly special tree.” But the fact that it was the world’s oldest living thing was an accident.  One with mixed blessings.

On the negative side, of course, the tree was dead.  It had made it through thousands of years of storm and strife but had succumbed to the needs of science and the power of the chainsaw.  Donald Currey came in for lots of blame in subsequent years, eventually refusing to talk about it any more.  He came out okay, however, having become a highly regarded geography professor at the University of Utah.  He died in 2004.

On the positive side, the reported age of this tree made the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), which grows only in high elevations of California, Nevada And Utah, a highly regarded species.  Before this, it had been overlooked as beautiful or remarkable, considered noteworthy mainly by photographers that admired its twisted, gnarly shape.  But, the tree has remarkable adaptations to its cold, windy, rocky habitat.  The tree’s roots nourish only the portion of the tree directly above them.  Consequently, portions of the tree can die, but other portions remain healthy, often supported by a single root and a ribbon of bark only inches wide.  The dense wood resists pests, diseases and the harsh climate.  The trees grow in sparse stands just below the tree line.  And we now know that the species is one of the longest living on earth.  Bristlecone pines are now protected on all federal lands.

A second positive is that the loss of WPN-114, or Prometheus, caused a national controversy as the news of its cutting became known.  The tree lived in Humboldt National Forest, on the Utah-Nevada border where Wheeler Peak, the second-highest mountain in Nevada rises to over 13,000 feet.  Local advocates had long wanted the area to be re-classified as a national park, and they seized on the loss of Prometheus as evidence for their position.  They won, and, in 1986, Great Basin National Park was created.  The park covers over 77,000 acres, but because of the same harsh environment that grows bristlecone pines, it is one of the least visited parks.

The name Prometheus for this tree turns out to be highly ironic.  Prometheus was the ancient Greek who stole fire from the gods, effectively giving humans knowledge and civilization.  And Prometheus the tree was felled in the pursuit of knowledge, largely because our knowledge was insufficient to notice how special it was.  But as more knowledge has come, we have learned that Prometheus wasn’t really the oldest tree—other older individuals have been found since, and more, even older, trees will be discovered in the future.  

References:  

Cohen, Michael P.  2004.  Oldest Living Tree Tells All.  Terrain.org, No. 14, Winter/Spring 2004.  Available at:  https://www.terrain.org/essays/14/cohen.htm.

Eveleth, Rose.  2012.  How One Man Accidentally Killed the Oldest Tree Ever.  Smithsonian Magazine, November 15, 2o012.  Available at:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-accidentally-killed-the-oldest-tree-ever-125764872/

National Park Service.  Bristlecone Pines.  Great Basin National Park, Nevada.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/grba/planyourvisit/identifying-bristlecone-pines.htm.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the world’s leading source of comprehensive information on global climate change.  And during the years when the panel was forming its seminal analyses and conclusions, it was led by a man known to his friends worldwide simply as “Patchy.”

Rajenda Pachauri was born in Uttarakhand, India, at the base of the Himalayan mountains, on August 20, 1940 (died 2020).  The beautiful setting in northern India nurtured his love of nature and his concern for sustainability of the earth.  He studied at La Martiniere College in Uttar Pradesh and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering before coming to the United States in the 1970s to received both an M.S. and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University (in industrial engineering and economics).  He held several short-term positions at U.S. institutions before returning to India in the late 1970s.

In 1981, he co-founded The Energy Resources Institute (known globally as TERI) near New Delhi.  He led that organization for three decades, from 1981 to 2016.  Under his leadership, TERI grew to become a global force in energy research and policy analysis.  TERI’s mission is “to usher transitions to a cleaner and sustainable future through the conservation and efficient use of energy and other resources, and innovative ways of minimizing and reusing waste.

One of Patchy’s and TERI’s signature initiatives was the “Light a Billion Lives” program.  Begun in 2007, the program aims to “replace inefficient and harmful lighting and cooking methods with efficient, affordable and reliable clean energy alternatives.”  When I had the privilege to spend time with Patchy during a visit to NC State, he explained that a core element of the program was to furnish solar lanterns to homes that did not have electricity, allowing young students to study in the evening without the health danger presented by burning kerosene lamps.  In addition, the program set up locally owned businesses where the solar lanterns could be recharged during the day.  Students at NC State worked with TERI to develop more efficient solar lanterns.  According to the program’s website, more than a million homes and 5.65 million people have been impacted.  

Patchy’s most widely known accomplishment, however, was his leadership of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  From 2002 to 2015, he led the program, which involves hundreds of scientists from around the world working collaboratively to assess the scientific basis for understanding climate change.  The reports published by the IPCC have been the foundation for modern efforts to recognize, mitigate and adapt to the realities of climate change.  In 2007, the IPCC, including Patchy as its leader, received the Nobel Peace Prize (along with Al Gore), for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Pachauri wrote 25 books during his career, was awarded dozens of honorary doctorates (including one from NC State), and received among the highest civilian awards from nations around the world, including India’s second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2008.  His career was marred by an accusation of sexual harassment by a former college (a charge the he denied and remained in court at the time of his death in 2020).

The impact of Dr. Pachauri on the global progress to address climate change is undeniable.  He leadership showed the world the consequences of unfettered use of greenhouse gases, setting the world’s nations on their current agendas to make a more sustainable world.  We do well to continue to follow his warning as we engage more fully in the task to eliminate fossil fuels:  “The price of waiting is enormous.”

References:

Schwartz, Joh.  2020.  Rajendra Pachauri, 79, Dies; Led Nobel-Winning Climate Agency.  The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2020.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/science/rajendra-pachauri-dead.html.

TERI.  2020.  Dr. R K Pachauri:  A visionary for sustainable development.  Available at:  https://www.teriin.org/memoriam/bio.php.

TERI.  Mission and Goals.  TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute.  Available at:  https://www.teriin.org/mission-and-goals.

TERI.  Lighting a Billion Lives.  Available at:  http://labl.teriin.org/index.php.