Category: Uncategorized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Muir, the father of American conservation, loved the Yosemite Valley like no other place on earth.  He wrote, “How vividly my own first journey to Yosemite comes to mind.  It was bloom-time of the year over all the lowlands and ranges of the coast; the landscape was fairly drenched with sunshine, the larks were singing, and the hills so covered with flowers that they seemed to be painted….”  Those of us lucky enough to have visited Yosemite feel much like Muir.  And we owe the existence of Yosemite National Park largely to John Muir’s efforts.

            Yosemite was well known to California tourists by the time Muir arrived in 1868.  In fact, part of the area was already a park.  The lands belonged to the federal government, and in 1864, President Lincoln had signed a law that transferred Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees to the state of California for a park.  This law required that “the premises shall be held for public use, report, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time.”  Although Yellowstone is officially the nation’s first “national park” (created in 1872), many people consider this action to be the inspirational spark for the national park idea.

            The park was created, but California did little to manage its use.  Quickly the Yosemite Valley became overrun with shabby hotels and other buildings, sheep grazing denuded the meadows, and timber harvest carried away the forest. 

            John Muir was not about to accept this travesty.  Muir formed a partnership with magazine publisher Robert Underwood Johnson with the goal of preserving the larger ecosystem surrounding the valley.  Protecting the whole was important, Muir argued, because “the branching canons and valleys of the basins of the streams that pour into Yosemite are as closely related to it as are the fingers to the palm of the hand—as the branches, foliage and flowers of a tree to the trunk.”  Muir wrote articles for Johnson’s magazine; Johnson lobbied his influential friends for political support.  They were almost immediately successful.  On October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the law that created Yosemite National Park

            There was still a problem, however.  California still controlled the Yosemite Valley, a geographic hole in the doughnut of the national park.  And that hole was an ecological disaster.  Mounting the same sort of campaign that he had done before, Muir was once again successful.  In 1906, Yosemite Valley was returned to federal ownership by California and became part of Yosemite National Park.  Today, the park stands as a unified ecosystem covering about 1200 square miles and is surrounded by national forests and other protected lands that help keep the magnificence of Yosemite intact.

            And people still love it.  Record visitation occurred in 2016, the National Park Service’s centennial year, when just over 5 million people went to Yosemite.  Yosemite ranks sixth in visitation among all national parks.

            Yosemite does have one sad chapter.  After an earthquake and fire destroyed most of San Francisco in 1906, the city proposed that a valley within Yosemite be dammed to make a reservoir to create a large and reliable water source.  John Muir again came to the park’s defense:  “Dam Hetch Hetchy!  As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”  Eventually Muir lost his argument, and the Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed and flooded—and remains so to this day.

References:

Gisel, Bonnie.  A Short History of Yosemite National Park.  Sierra Club.  Available at:  https://content.sierraclub.org/grassrootsnetwork/sites/content.sierraclub.org.activistnetwork/files/teams/documents/A%20Brief%20History%20of%20Yosemite%20National%20Park%20by%20Bonnie%20Gisel.pdf.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

National Park Service.  Yosemite.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

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

OhRanger.com  History of Yosemite.  Available at:             http://www.ohranger.com/yosemite/history-yosemite.  Accessed July 18, 2019.

Turns out that September 30 is a pretty dam important day!  Two major dam-related events occurred on this date, both relating to the availability of water and water-based energy.

            The first event, on September 30, 1882, didn’t make much of a splash then and is remembered even less today.  Dams had always been used for power, by building up a head of water behind the dam and directing water that fell over the top of the dam into a water wheel.  The water turned the wheel, which then turned grinding stones and other devices.  As time passed, these water mills got more complicated, with the wheel’s shaft attached to long axles that could power many tools, like saws and conveyor belts.

            But on this date in 1882, something special happened.  In Appleton, Wisconsin, the owner of a paper mill, H. J. Rogers, attached a dynamo (that’s a generator for electricity) to his water wheel and began producing electricity.  His small dam on the Fox River generated enough electricity to power his paper mill and the lights in his house.  Within a few years, similar electric generators were in use on small dams across the United States and soon throughout the world.  Most of these were short dams, only a few feet high, with a low capacity to generate electricity. 

            As the inventions of the industrial revolution began to allow bigger machines and structures to be built, dams got in on the action.  Dams got taller and longer; they were built with concrete and steel rather than dirt and wood; they contained large turbines that could generate massive amounts of electricity.  The U.S. government got into this business in a big way in 1902, when the Reclamation Act created the Bureau of Reclamation and authorized work across the American West to create dams, canals and other structures for irrigation, flood control, and hydro-electricity.

            The U.S. built many large dams during the first half of the 20^th Century, but the crowning masterpiece was Hoover Dam, dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt on—you guessed it—September 30, in the year 1935.  Hoover Dam was then and is still now considered a monumentt to the ingenuity, hard work and undaunted optimism of the American spirit.

            Hoover Dam impounds the Colorado River along the Nevada-Arizona border, a few miles southeast of Las Vegas.  Enterprising businessmen had tried to tame the Colorado River many times, primarily to supply irrigation water to southern California’s sprawling farmlands.  Their attempts to build earthen dams, levees and canals always ended in disaster as the powerful and unpredictable Colorado River triumphed over their amateurish engineering.  Taming the Colorado River would require the full force of the U.S. government and much bigger thinking than had been used before.

            So, in 1928, Congress authorized funding for the Boulder Canyon Project, the largest dam ever built up to that time.  A site was found in Black Canyon on the Colorado, where nearly vertical rock walls rose over 800 feet from the river.  Construction began in 1931 on the gargantuan project.  First, massive tunnels were blasted into the canyon walls so the Colorado River could be re-directed around the dam site during construction.  The four tunnels were 56 feet in diameter, running in total more than three miles through the hard rock.  The rock from inside the tunnels was then used to make a temporary dam (called a coffer dam) on the river high enough that all the water could be diverted through the tunnels, leaving a dry river bottom.

            Then workers at the dam site began to remove loose materials from the shear canyon walls.  Suspended from ropes, the workers—many of whom were Native Americans—picked, drilled and blasted their way down the canyon walls.  Only then, two years into the project, could the actual dam construction begin.  Massive amounts of concrete were transported in huge buckets from the cliff tops to the river bottom.  Slowly—very slowly, so the concrete could cool without cracking—the dam took shape, rising to the huge arched shape we so proudly recognize today as Hoover Dam.

            The story of building the dam could fill a book (actually, it has filled many books), but let’s end with a few facts about the project.  About 21,000 workers labored on the dam, and nearly 100 of them lost their lives in the process.  The amount of concrete used could have paved a road from San Francisco to New York City.  The dam, which was the largest in the world when it was completed in the summer of 1935, is 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long.  It provides irrigation water for about 2 million acres of California’s agricultural lands.  The dam runs 17 turbines that provide electricity for 1.3 million homes.  It impounds Lake Mead, one of the world’s largest reservoirs.

            Ten thousand people crowded around the dam on September 30, 1935, in 102-degree temperatures, to listen as President Roosevelt dedicated the dam. 

            “This morning,” he said, “I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind. …We know that, as an unregulated river, the Colorado added little of value to the region this dam serves.  When in flood the river was a threatening torrent.  In the dry months of the year it shrank to a trickling stream….That is why I have the right once more to congratulate you who have built Boulder Dam and on behalf of the Nation to say to you, ‘Well done.’”

            Opinions about dams in the U.S. have changed a great deal since then, but the triumph of human capabilities and the positive values that come from the effective management of water can hardly be questioned.  Let’s just  hope that those capabilities become even more effective when we acknowledge that rivers, even if not tamed by humans, have enormous value to the regions through which they flow.

References:

Bureau of Reclamation.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/index.html.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hoover-Dam.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

History.com.  Hoover Dam.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/hoover-dam.  Accessed July 16, 2019. 

National Park Service.  Reading 3:  Excerpts from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Speech at the Dedication of Boulder Dam, Sept. 30, 1935.  Available at:   https://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/140HooverDam/140facts3.htm.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

National Park Service.  5.  The Origins of Hydroelectric Power.  Available at: https://www.nps.gov/articles/5-the-origins-of-hydroelectric-power.htm.  Accessed July 16, 2019.

I’m cheating a bit with today’s entry.  Technically, in 2019, National Public Lands Day will be celebrated on September 28.   However, it doesn’t always fall on this date.  National Public Lands Day occurs on the fourth Saturday in September.  That is the 28^th in 2019.

            The date moves around in order to accomplish the purpose of National Public Lands Day (NPLD).  Volunteers from around the United States pitch in on the fourth Saturday (when most people aren’t working or in school) to maintain and improve our great public lands.  It’s a fine strategy—for the September 22 version in 2018, more than 113,000 volunteers spent nearly half a million hours at 1,176 sites doing $11 million of work! 

            NPLD began in 1994, as a project of the National Environmental Education Foundation.  That foundation was chartered by the U.S. Congress to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “make the environment more accessible, relatable, relevant, and connected to the daily lives of all Americans.  The organization has many programs, but National Public Lands Day is one of their most successful.  NPLD has become the single largest day of volunteer activity in America’s public parks in the year.

            NPLD has a number of sponsoring groups, including the primary land-management agencies of the U.S. government and many state and local park programs.  The Bureau of Land Management is the most active, with 172 events in 2018, followed by the National Park Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers.  For two decades, the Toyota Corporation has been the lead private partner for the day’s activities.  Over that time, more than 50,000 Toyota volunteers have worked at more than 600 sites, contributing 193,000 hours.

            The participants in NPLD are many and varied.  In 2018, the most frequent kinds of participants were university students, public school groups, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and corporate groups.  The work is also varied—removing invasive plants, collecting trash, restoring degraded lands and waters, planting trees, building and repairing facilities, and maintaining trails.  NPLD activities also often include related outdoor recreation and environmental education events—you know, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down!

            And here’s a little bonus for all of us:  Admission to all National Park Service parks, monuments and other sites is free on National Public Lands Day.  And if you do chose to join as a volunteer for NPLD, don’t worry about missing out—you’ll get a coupon good for a fee-free day of your choice.  So, grab your work gloves and get to a park!

References:

National Park Service.  National Public Lands Day.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/npscelebrates/public-lands-day.htm.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

NEEF.  About NEEF.  Available at:  https://www.neefusa.org/about-neef.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

NEEF.  2018.  Final Report—25^th Annual National Public Lands Day.  Available at:  https://www.neefusa.org/sites/default/files/assets/npld/2018/NPLD2018-FinalReport.pdf.  Accessed July 9, 2019.

So you don’t believe in Paul Bunyan or Sasquatch, here’s one you can believe in:  Johnny Appleseed was a real man who roamed around planting apple trees.  And many consider him one of our earliest and most ardent conservationists. But, there is a bit more to the story than just that.

            John Chapman, who would become known during his life and for all time as Johnny Appleseed, was born on September 26, 1774, near Boston, Massachusetts (died 1845).  When he was 18, he left home to venture into the wilderness—which, at the time, was Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.  He never took up a homestead, rather sleeping outdoors or in the barns of friendly farmers he met along his journeys.  He eventually began working as an orchardist, learning the trade that we would today call horticulture.

            The myth suggests that Chapman wandered haphazardly, planting applet trees at random, rather like a distracted flower girl dropping petals at a wedding.  In fact, he worked from an ingenious strategy.  In the early 1800s, the federal government was beginning to give grants of land to settlers who would tame the forests of the upper Midwest into cultivated land.  In order to gain title to the land, however, settlers had to prove their intention to remain there by planting 50 apple trees in three years—a sign of investment in the future.

            Chapman recognized that meeting this requirement would depend on a source of trees.  So, he set out ahead of the wave of settlers and planted apple-tree nurseries at what he thought were likely spots for settlement.  A few years later, when settlers arrived, he sold them the trees they needed from his orchard.  He did this over and over, mostly in Ohio and then Indiana, enjoying a steady stream of income that made him a wealthy man.  When he died, he purportedly owned 1200 acres of apple orchards across the region.

            He didn’t need all that money, however, because he was a devout Christian who purposely lived a life of poverty.  He never had a home, wore no shoes and the simplest of clothes (his favorite garment was an old seeds sack with holes cut for his head and arms), and ate no meat or animal products. When a farmer couldn’t afford to buy his trees, he gave them away with a promise from the farmer to pay him in the future.  He also served as a missionary, teaching his brand of religion to everyone he met.

            Chapman, apparently for religious reasons, also believed that trees should be grown from seeds, not grafting.  So, he gathered apple seeds from cider mills in Pennsylvania and hauled them westward to create his orchards.  Unfortunately, apple trees grown this way produce nasty little sour apples, inedible as raw fruit.  But, they made great cider—hard cider—that settlers used as their household drink because the available water was usually unhealthy.  So, Johnny Appleseed supplied not big juicy eating apples, but the raw materials for making alcohol.  Good old Johnny.

            So, where does the conservation come in?  According to the journal American Forests, “Chapman was a successful businessman, but he was also a conservationist and a true outdoorsman.”  National Geographic called him “an icon of the conservation movement” and another source named him an early ecologist.  Primarily, that praise comes from his planting of trees.  Planting trees is a true conservation activity, given that trees do so much for us, from providing apples, even sour ones, to absorbing greenhouse gases. 

            But his biggest claim as a conservationist, I think, comes from his dedication to preserving biodiversity.  He believed in the fundamental value of all living things, no matter if they were obviously useful or not.  He loved insects and, as they say, wouldn’t hurt a fly.  In fact, one night while watching insects become attracted to his fire and dying in the flames, he doused the fire and slept in the cold to avoid harming any more.  Once bitten by a rattlesnake, he reacted violently and killed the snake; for the rest of his life, he despaired of his intemperate action:  “Poor fellow, he only just touched me, when I, in the heat of my ungodly passion, put the heel of my scythe in him and went away.”  When he saw domestic animals, especially horses, being mistreated, he bought the animals and then paid a local agent to nourish them back to health.  He understood the values of many wild plants, a trait that earned him respect among Native American tribes he visited.

            And for your next trivia contest, here’s one for you.  Yes, Johnny Appleseed did wear a tin pot for a hat.  He didn’t see any reason to own two things—a pot and a hat—when one could do both jobs just fine. 

References:

American Forests.  2014.  From businessman to folk legend:  Johnny Appleseed.  Loose Leaf, September 26, 2014.  Available at:  https://www.americanforests.org/blog/from-businessman-to-folk-legend-johnny-appleseed/.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

Birkhimer, Lily.  2012.  Johnny Appleseed:  Folk Hero.  Ohio Memory, September 28, 2012.  Available at:  https://ohiohistoryhost.org/ohiomemory/archives/849.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

Kettler, Sara.  2015.  7 Facts on Johnny Appleseed.  Biography, Mar 10, 2105.  Available at:  https://www.biography.com/news/johnny-appleseed-story-facts.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

National Geographic.  Sep 26, 1774 CE:  Happy Birthday, Johnny Appleseed.  National Geographic Resource Library.  Available at:  https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/sep26/happy-birthday-johnny-appleseed/.  Accessed July 6, 2019.

For the fifth time in the history of the United Nations, a pope climbed the dais in the General Assembly chamber at UN headquarters in New York to address the world’s leaders.  This time, Pope Francis had a strong focus within an overall appeal for peace and love:  The earth’s environment must also receive the same care we give each other.

            Pope Francis was the inaugural speaker at the ceremony on September 25, 2015, when the UN General Assembly endorsed its new agenda for human development and environmental care.  The agenda, known as the Sustainable Development Goals, evolved from the Millennium Development Goals that operated from 200 to 2015.  The new agenda of 17 will govern the world’s philanthropy through 2030.

            Pope Frances was a compelling choice to introduce the new program.  As the world’s foremost spokesperson for ethics and morality, the pope’s messages carry extraordinary weight with not only the world’s Catholics, but for all people.  Moreover, Pope Francis has chosen to highlight the needs for conservation and environmental sustainability as no pope before him.  A native of Argentina, the pope chose Francis as his papal name because St. Francis of Assisi is his moral guide and inspiration. As Pope Francis stated, Francis of Assisi “is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians.  He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast.”

            Pope Francis made his commitment to conservation clear earlier in 2015, when he issued his Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si,’ subtitled On Care for Our Common Home.  The 144-page book is a comprehensive assessment of the state of the earth and a call for us to change our ways of living to embrace sustainability and care of the poor—as he calls them, “the excluded.”  He stated explicitly that he was writing to all humans, not just Catholics, by noting that “we need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

            Pope Francis’ address to the UN asserted that a “right of the environment” exists for two specific reasons.

“First, because we human beings are part of the environment, we live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human activity must acknowledge and respect….Second, because every creature, particularly a living creature, has an intrinsic value, in its existence, its life, its beauty and its interdependence with other creatures.  We Christians, together with the other monotheistic religions, believe that the universe is the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator, who permits man respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the Creator; he is not authorized to abuse it, much less to destroy it.  In all religions, the environment is a fundamental good.”

In both this address to the UN and his encyclical letter, Pope Francis went on to draw a fundamental relationship between caring for the environment and caring for the poor and downtrodden humans of the world.

“The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment.”

The pope is particularly concerned about climate change and those who deny it. 

“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climactic system….most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides, and others) released mainly as a result of human activity…. Climate change…represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

References:

Pope Francis.  2015.  Pope Francis’s speech to the UN in full.  The Guardian, 25 Sep 2019.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/25/pope-franciss-speech-to-the-un-in-full.  Accessed July 1, 2019.

Pope Francis.  2015.  The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.  On Care for Our Common Home.  Paulist Press, New York.  144 pages.

Sengupta, Somini, and Jim Yardley.  2015.  Pope Francis Addresses U.N., Calling for Peace and Environmental Justice.  The New York Times, Sept. 25, 2015.  Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/world/europe/pope-francis-united-nations.html.  Accessed July 1, 2019.

Ask just about anyone to name a historical figure in forestry, and the name Gifford Pinchot is sure to pop up.  Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) is commonly called the father of American forestry—the first trained forester working in the U.S., the originator and first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and the conservation mentor of Teddy Roosevelt. 

            Pinchot came from a wealthy family.  His father was a successful wallpaper merchant in New York City who built a summer home in 1886 on the banks of the Delaware River in Milford, Pennsylvania.  He called the estate Grey Towers, and for several decades the family spent their summers roaming the 102 acres of the estate.  Summers at Grey Towers taught Gifford Pinchot to love forests and to care deeply about the need for their conservation.

            Gifford wasn’t the only Pinchot interested in conservation—family members before and after him were also conservation leaders.  So, it came as no surprise that Pinchot’s son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, donated Grey Towers and its accompanying lands to the U.S. Forest Service in 1963 to become a conservation center.

            The new center was called the Pinchot Center for  Conservation Studies (now shortened to just the Pinchot Center for Conservation).  The idea then, as now, was simple and direct, as reflected in the current mission statement:

“The mission of the Pinchot Institute is to strengthen forest conservation thought, policy, and action by developing innovative, practical, and broadly-supported solutions to conservation challenges and opportunities. We accomplish this through nonpartisan research, education, and technical assistance on key issues influencing the future of conservation and sustainable natural resource management.”

            The dedication ceremony occurred on September 24, 1963.  What should have been a sleepy little event attended by a few local politicians and conservation professionals became a national event when President John F. Kennedy agreed to deliver a commemoration address.  This was the first stop on an 11-state tour to promote conservation. At Grey Towers, an adoring crowd of more than 12,000 was on hand as Kennedy’s helicopter landed in a field a few hundred yards from the dedication site.  The president took the dais and began extolling the virtues of both Gifford Pinchot and conservation in general.

“Above all, [Pinchot] was a gifted, driving administrator, transforming a minor Federal bureau into a dynamic, purposeful agent of national policy…. In the space of a few short years, he made conservation an accepted virtue in the nation’s conscience.”

“But Pinchot’s contribution will be lost if we honor him only in memory….For our industrial economy and urbanization are pressing against the limits of our most fundaments needs:  pure water to drink, fresh air to breathe, open space to enjoy, and abundant access of energy to release man from menial toil.”

“The dispute is no longer one of principles or goals—it is now merely a question of pace and means.  And no one maintains that the obligation to use our resources efficiently and thoughtfully depends solely on the Federal Government….Conservation is the job of us all.”

            Kennedy wasn’t there long—70 minutes—and he lived only another two months.  But the Pinchot Institute has continued to prosper.  In collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, the institute provides a prominent voice for rational, science-based management of the nation’s natural resources. 

References:

Dwyer, Dan.  1963.  The Day JFK Was Here.  Port Jervis Union-Gazette, September 24, 1963.  Available at:  https://fhsarchives.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/9241963-the-pinchot-institute-dedication-ceremony-the-day-jfk-was-here/.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

Kennedy, John F.  1963.  Remarks of the President at Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies, Milford, Pennsylvania, September 24, 1963.  Available at:  https://www.pinchot.org/about_pic/history.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

Pinchot Institute for Conservation.  History.  Available at:  https://www.pinchot.org/about_pic/history.  Accessed June 25, 2019.

It took an act of Congress and a Proclamation by President Ronald Reagan—but, on September 23, 1986, the United States got a national flower: the rose.  

            Actually, the country got a “national floral emblem,” but let’s agree that a rose by whatever bureaucratic name we choose is still the national flower.  It wasn’t easy, apparently.  Over decades, many legislators had argued hot and heavy for their favorite plant—dogwood, corn tassel, mountain laurel, columbine and more.  Senator Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, was a loyal promoter of the marigold.  The marigold, said Dirksen in 1967, epitomizes America, “Its robustness reflects the hardihood and character of the generations who pioneered and built this land into a great nation.”

            Alas, all pretenders to the crown (of thorns, yuk, yuk) were defeated in 1986 when the entire Congress rallied behind the rose.  Not the red rose—which is an official symbol of England—but all roses.  President Reagan waxed eloquently about the virtues of the rose in his Proclamation No. 5574:

“The study of fossils reveals that the rose has existed in America for age upon age. We have always cultivated roses in our gardens. Our first President, George Washington, bred roses, and a variety he named after his mother is still grown today. The White House itself boasts a beautiful Rose Garden. We grow roses in all our fifty States. We find roses throughout our art, music, and literature. We decorate our celebrations and parades with roses. Most of all, we present roses to those we love, and we lavish them on our altars, our civil shrines, and the final resting places of our honored dead.”

            You might think the United States has a long list of national natural symbols, but that isn’t the case.  The Bald Eagle was selected as the national animal (not bird) in 1782, when it appeared on the Great Seal of the United States, but nothing new showed up until the rose in 1986.  And only two more have joined the list since then.  The oak—all species, just like the rose—was selected as the national tree in 2004, and the bison was named national mammal in 2016 (had to be the national mammal, because we already had a national animal).  But that is it.  Just four natural symbols of the United States.

            The individual states, however, have abandoned any sense of restraint.  States have official amphibians, bats, birds, butterflies, cacti, crustaceans, dinosaurs (!), dogs, fish, flowers, grasses, horses, insects, mammals, microbes, mushrooms, pets, plants, reptiles, seashells, and trees.  My home state of North Carolina has 5 official plants, including the Venus flytrap (native to the state), and 13 official animals.  I’m sure other states are even more profligate in offering prizes to their favorite species.

            Other countries are much like the U.S, however. in having a short list.  Canada named the beaver as their national animal in 1975, and the maple tree is their official “arboreal emblem”—big surprise there, eh?  They added an official horse in 2002, a Canadian breed “known for its great strength and endurance, resilience, intelligence and good temper (sounds like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to me). Mexico apparently hasn’t gotten to this task yet.  Australia has only the kangaroo as its official animal and the golden wattle (an acacia shrub) as official plant.  England’s official animal is the lion—interesting because it isn’t native to the country!  It also lists the red rose as an official flower and the oak as the official tree (copying the colonies, apparently).  They also have named fish’n’chips as their official meal, so perhaps we could redefine that as an official fish (cod) and official plant (potato).

References:

Government of Canada.  Official symbols of Canada.  Available at:  https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-symbols-canada.html#a7.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

National Rose Garden.  The National Flower.  Available at: http://nationalrosegarden.com/the-national-flower/.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

New York Times.  1986.  A National Flower:  Rose is Victor.  New York Times, Sept. 24, 1986.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/24/us/a-national-flower-rose-is-victor.html.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

State Symbols USA.  The Mighty Oak Tree, National (U.S.) Tree.  Available at:  https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-or-officially-designated-item/state-tree/mighty-oak-tree.  Accessed June 24, 2019.

One of the triumphs at the beginning of the modern environmental movement was the establishment of Assateague Island National Seashore.  The barriers islands of which Assateague is a part are so significant that in 1979 the United Nations designated the Assateague region as a World Biosphere Reserve (the Virginia Coast reserve).  However, it took a long time to get there.

            Assateague wasn’t even its own island until 1933.  Before then—at least in recent times—the stretch of land was part of a longer island that ran to the north all the way to Delaware.  But a major storm in 1933 cut a channel between the sound and the ocean. In order to make the sound accessible near Ocean City, the channel was widened, deepened and stabilized.  Assateague Island was born, and so far, we are doing what is necessary to keep it alive.

            The island itself is 37 miles long, the northern two-thirds in Maryland and the southern one-third in Virginia.  It is between 0.5 and 2.5 miles wide, and ocean water regularly washes over the island during storms and high seas.  Consequently, the island is moving slowly westward, retreating from the ocean and moving toward the mainland.  The island is also losing area at the northern end from erosion and gaining area at the southern end by accretion.  These barrier islands roam around a lot.

            That roaming tendency is what saved the Assateague area from the development that has swallowed up most of the Atlantic coastline.  The barrier beaches of the region have been used for centuries for fishing and hunting, but permanent communities were small and few.  The northern end of Assateague Island held several life-saving stations that eventually became part of the U.S. Coast Guard.  Various plans for developing Assateague Island into private tourist and residential areas have been attempted for at least a century, all of them ending in destruction by storms, waves and tides.

            Along with interest in development has come interest in preservation.  As soon as the island was formed, both federal and state agencies began considering it for public recreation and wildlife habitat.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge at the southern end in 1943 and Maryland created a state park at the northern end in 1956.  For decades the National Park Service sought to make the island an undeveloped natural ara, but was rebuffed by those interested in more intrusive tourist development.  Eventually, a coalition formed which allowed the National Park Service to acquire the entire island, but allow Maryland to keep its state park and the Fish and Wildlife Service to keep its wildlife refuge as separately managed units.  On September 21, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that established Assateague.

            The decision was wise.  Assateague is a jewel in the national seashore crown, the largest natural area (just under 40,000 acres) between Cape May and Cape Hatteras.  It is home to more than 320 species of birds, with spectacular spring and fall waterfowl migrations stopping over at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.  The Delmarva Peninsula Fox Squirrel, an endangered species, is resident in the wildlife refuge. 

            The island is also famous for its wild horses.  The most well known are the “wild ponies” in the Chincoteague area, which are now kept in pens and excess numbers are auctioned every summer.  But the more interesting horses are those in the northern half of the island (the two populations are isolated by a fence along the Virginia-Maryland border).  These are managed by the National Park Service and allowed to roam freely.  However, the population size is kept in check by inoculating horses with a vaccine that reduces successful pregnancies.

            The seashore is extremely popular with tourists, lying close to the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas.  About 2 million people visit annually, a number reached soon after the park’s creation and staying steady for half a century. 

References:

Mackintosh, Barry.  1982.  Assateague Island National Seashore—An Administrative History.  National Park Service.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/management/upload/asisadminhistory.pdf.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

New World Encyclopedia.  Assateague Island.  Available at:  https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Assateague_Island.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

OceanCity.com.  Assateague Island.  Available at:  https://www.oceancity.com/assateague/.  Accessed June 14, 2019.

U.S. National Park Service.  Assateague Island National Seashore.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/historyculture/history-and-culture.htm.  Accessed June 14, 2019.