Category: Uncategorized

A lobbyist once told me that all things are like pancakes—they all have two sides.  Today’s story is about a man who certainly had two sides, two very complex and very confusing sides.  The man is Grey Owl, one of Canada’s earliest conservationists, and an imposter on a grand scale.

            So, let me first tell you about Grey Owl, the conservationist.  Grey Owl—his name meant he-who-flies-by-night in the Ojibwa language (a bit of foreshadowing…), was half Native American and half Scotsman, but he chose to live as an Ojibwa Indian in northern Canada.  There he learned the ways of the wilderness, hunting and trapping to earn a living and survive, winter and summer, for decades. He met a Mohawk woman, named Anahareo, with whom he lived.  After Grey Owl had trapped a female beaver from its lodge, Anahareo convinced him to raise the two young beavers left behind.  Anahareo loved animals and hated the cruel trapping practices of the frontiersmen.

            Grey Owl was captivated by the young beavers and soon became concerned that beavers would become extinct from the heavy trapping that Canada was experiencing to feed an insatiable European market for beaver pelts.  He was consumed by the vision that the Canadian wilderness—and the Native People who lived sustainably in it—were doomed unless conservation replaced exploitation.  In his forties, Grey Owl began to write extensively about conservation, eventually publishing four books on the subject.  His writing was very popular and, in the 1930s, he was arguably Canada’s most famous author and conservationist, compared favorably to John Muir.  He lectured widely and produced conservation films.  He was especially popular in England, where one lecture tour pulled in a quarter million people. In 1936, he reflected on his work:

“Every word I write, every lecture I have given, or ever will give, were and are to be for the betterment of the Beaver people, all wild life, the Indians and halfbreeds, and for Canada, in whatever small way I may.”

            The Canadian government provided him housing and an area to raise beavers for release in Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan.  Some credit him with saving the beaver—the national animal of Canada—from extirpation.

            He died suddenly of pneumonia in 1938, and then the wheels started coming off the story of Grey Owl.  Journalists investigated the details of his life—and the truth emerged:  Grey Owl was an imposter.  He was not half Native American, he had not been born in Mexico. 

            His real name was Archibald Belaney, born on September 18, 1888, in Hastings, England.  His parents—one British and one American—left him to be raised by two maiden aunts in Hastings.  From his earliest days, however, he yearned to get away from the stifling society of Hastings and head to the wilderness. He told a young friend that he was going to go to Canada.  His friend asked, “To fight the Indians?” Belaney answered, “No, to become an Indian.” At 17, he made his escape, crossing the Atlantic and then disappearing into the forests of northern Canada. 

            He lived with the Ojibwa People, learning their language and ways.  He dyed his hair black and darkened his skin with henna dye.  He roamed among various tribes, eventually meeting Anahareo and becoming the committed conservationist that captured the Canadian conscience.

            Opinions about Belaney vary, of course.  Some see him as a charlatan who stole the Native Peoples’ voice.  Others see him as a mixture of good and bad.  Clive Webb, at the University of Sussex, proposed that we “separate some of his personal shortcomings from his great work as a conservationist.”  And Don Smith, of the University of Calgary, saw him this way:

“This is 1930s Canada, it seemed to have inexhaustible forest.  His personal life was a mess but he had insight, he had vision. This man had a message. Everybody’s green now. He was green when there was nothing to it. His message was ‘you belong to nature, it does not belong to you’.”

As the lobbyist said, there are two sides to every pancake.  You decide on which side of this man—the conservationist Grey Owl or the imposter Archibald Belaney—you’d like to pour your syrup.

References:

Brower, Kenneth.  1990.  Grey Owl.  The Atlantic online, January, 1990.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/90jan/greyowl.htm.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Howes, David, and Constance Classen.  Grey Owl, White Indian.  Canadian Icon.  Available at:  http://canadianicon.org/table-of-contents/grey-owl-white-indian/.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Onyanga-Omara, Jane.  2013.  Grey Owl:  Canada’s great conservationist and imposter.  BBC News, 19 September 2013.  Available at:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-24127514.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

Smith, Donald B.  2015.  Archibald Belaney, Grey Owl.  The Canadian Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/archibald-belaney-grey-owl.  Accessed June 10, 2019.

When President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he said to her, “So you are the lady who started all this.”  When Senator Abraham Ribicoff met Rachel Carson just before she gave testimony to his committee, he said the same to her.  Ribicoff was wholly correct—Rachel Carson had started what would become the modern environmental movement.

            Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, near Pittsburgh.  As a girl, she loved two things—nature and writing.  “I can remember no time,” she said, “when I wasn’t interested in the out-of-doors and the whole world of nature.” She began writing stories for magazines at an early age, and published her first paid contribution at age eleven.  She would later say that she had become a professional writer then.  It seemed inevitable, even then, that Carson would combine her two interests into one career.

            Carson’s mother taught her to be an independent thinker and observer, traits she carried throughout her life.  At college, she majored in biology, an unusual field for women at the time, and, even more unusually, went on to complete a Master’s degree in marine biology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.  She fell in love with the sea the first time she saw it and never again lived or worked far from saltwater.  Except for short intervals, she and her mother lived together in a small ranch house in Silver Spring, Maryland, and later summered in a cottage on the Maine shoreline.

            Through her teacher and mentor in graduate school, Carson landed a temporary job with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (now the Fish and Wildlife Service) writing radio scripts about fisheries.  Her work was so exceptional—combining a solid scientific approach with a lyrical style—that she was hired permanently.  She became the first professional scientist hired in the history of the agency.  Eventually, she became head of the agency’s editorial office, effectively running a small in-house publishing enterprise.  She worked there for fifteen years.

            Carson also wrote independently while she worked for the government, authoring magazine articles to supplement her meager salary.  She published her first book about the sea, Under the Sea Wind, in November, 1941.  Critics loved it, but it sold few copies—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a month later kidnapped the nation’s attention.  But, she persisted, publishing a second book about the sea, The Sea Around Us, in 1951.  This time, the book was hugely successful, landing at the top of the best-seller list for months.  A third book, The Edge of the Sea, followed in 1955, cementing Carson’s national reputation.

            As the 1950s came to a close, the U.S. was wildly prosperous, but larger worries, including the Cold War and nuclear annihilation, loomed like a storm cloud over the world.  One such worry was the effect that broadcast spraying of pesticides was having not only on the targeted insects, but also on beneficial insects, fish, birds, pets and even humans.  Carson’s influential friends tried to persuade her to take up this cause, but she wanted nothing to do with it.  Carson was a shy, private person who didn’t like the spotlight.  Even though her books were famous, she protected her privacy fiercely. 

            However, when she could find no one else to address the issue of pesticide spraying, Carson took the plunge to write “the poison book.”  She spent several years researching the topic, compiling obscure reports, corresponding with experts and connecting the threads among pesticides, wildlife mortality, and human health.  DDT was the primary target, but Carson also explored the impacts of other chemicals we now call “persistent organic pesticides.” She presented her conclusion—that large-scale aerial spraying of pesticides was poisoning the earth—in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. 

            Like her earlier books, Silent Spring was an instant success.  The public was won over by the logic and detail of her analyses—Silent Spring had more than 50 pages of references.  The book caused massive backlash from the chemical and agricultural industries, which cast Carson as a fear-monger without scientific credentials.  Moreover, they claimed, she was a childless spinster with no authority to speak about future generations.  A typical response claimed, “isn’t it just like a woman to be scared to death of a few little bugs?  As long as we have the H-bomb everything will be O.K.  She’s probably a peace-nut, too.”  And a communist.

            As we now know, Rachel Carson was largely correct in her conclusions (her assertions about human cancer were not accurate), and society rallied in support of her.  Silent Spring launched a decade of new laws and approaches to chemical use and environmental protection. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, along with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, are all examples of her impact.  Rachel Carson has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the 29^th Century, largely because of Silent Spring.  She was, indeed, the lady who started it all.

            Unfortunately, Rachel Carson didn’t live long enough to see most of these changes.  She died in early 1964, just before her 57^th birthday and only 18 months after Silent Spring appeared. Throughout her research and writing for the book, she was suffering from cancer that spread relentlessly through her body.  She dealt with her approaching death just as she had all aspects of her life—independently and observantly, logically and in a natural context.  She reflected on the life of the monarch butterfly and then on her own life:

“For the Monarch, that [life] cycle is measured in a known span of months.  For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know.  But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course, it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end.”

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

At the time it happened, the Johnstown Flood was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.  It was the biggest news story since the assassination of President Lincoln, 24 years earlier.  And it is a lesson of tragic proportion that dams, which do much good, are also tremendously dangerous.

            The spring of 1889 had been a wet one in western Pennsylvania.  Johnstown, a town of 30,000 residents a bit east of Pittsburgh, and the surrounding area had experienced unusually high amounts of rainfall. Rain had been falling for several days leading up to the disaster that occurred on May 31. The Conemaugh River, which flowed through Johnstown, ran swollen and angry. 

            Fourteen miles upstream from Johnstown, a reservoir sat on the South Fork of the Conemaugh River.  The reservoir, called Lake Conemaugh, had been impounded by the South Fork Dam, an earthen dam built in 1853.  The lake was built to provide water to feed the many canals that transported canal boats throughout Pennsylvania and New York (learn more about the Erie Canal here).  The lake covered 425 acres and was 50 feet deep at the dam. Both the dam and the reservoir were the largest in the U.S. at the time. But as the canal system was replaced for transportation by railroads, the dam and lake became obsolete and fell into poor condition.

            A group of wealthy residents of Pittsburgh, including Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, bought the lake and dam in 1879 as a private fishing and recreational resort for themselves and their families.  They made repairs to keep the dam intact, but the work was shoddy, performed by unqualified laborers.  They also modified the dam in two ways.  First, they lowered the dam by two feet to allow a wider road across the top.  Second, they fitted the spillway with screens to keep the fish they stocked into the lake from escaping.

            These changes proved catastrophic.  When the heavy rainfall raised the water far above usual levels, large amounts of debris washed from the shorelines to the dam, clogging the screened spillway.  The water built higher and began to flow over the top of the lowered dam.  Spillways exist at dams to prevent water from ever going over the top of a dam, because the downstream side will erode under the rush of water coming over the top. 

            Conditions continued to worsen throughout the day of May 31.  By mid-afternoon, warnings were being issued that the dam was in peril, but the news was slow getting downstream to Johnstown.  At 3:15 PM, the dam burst.  Twenty million tons of water blew through the dam, forming a wall of water 40 feet high, raging downstream at 40 miles per hour.

            The wall hit Johnstown about 4 PM, with virtually no warning.  The devastation was massive.  Four square miles of downtown Johnstown were completely destroyed, including 1600 homes.  At total of 2,209 people died; 99 entire families were wiped out.  A railroad bridge through town became clogged with debris that grew to a 30-acre pile; it started on fire, killing 75 people who had sought refuge there from the raging waters.

            The scale of the response matched the scale of the tragedy.  The Red Cross, which had begun during the Civil War and was led by Clara Barton, came to Johnstown and stayed for months, building shelters and caring for the injured and homeless.  This effort was the beginning of the ongoing work of the Red Cross when disasters strike across the world.  Lawsuits were filed against the wealthy dam owners for negligence, but no judgments were ever made because of the difficulty of proving fault.

            The story of the Johnstown Flood teaches several lessons.  First, dams are essential features of modern infrastructure. The U.S. has more than 87,000 dams, and the worldwide total is many times that.  Dams provide stable water supplies, prevent flooding, and generate power.

            Second, however, is that dams are dangerous.    If they are not built properly and maintained properly, they will fail. Hundreds of dam failures occur annually, although most are small and few take human life.  The cause is almost always water flowing over the top of the dam, just as was the case in the Johnstown Flood (read about the world’s biggest dam disaster here).

            And, third, although dams, particularly large dams, are not popular in the United States now (the golden era of dam building in the U.S. was from 1950 to 1980), they are very popular throughout the world.  New dams continue to be built across most of the developing world, where the needs for water and power outweigh the environmental concerns that drive American decision-making.

References:

Degen, Paula and Carl.  2013.  The Johnstown Flood of 1889.  Eastern National, 64 pages.

History.com.  The Johnstown Flood.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-johnstown-flood.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

Johnstown Flood Museum.  Statistics about the great disaster.  Available at:  https://www.jaha.org/attractions/johnstown-flood-museum/flood-history/facts-about-the-1889-flood/.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

National Park Service.  Johnstown Flood National Memorial.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/jofl/index.htm.  Accessed May 7, 2019.

Everglades National Park stands as one of North America’s great ecosystems and parks, taking its place on the podium alongside Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon.  But the Everglades lacks the grandeur of those other parks—which makes its creation and existence so much more meaningful.

            The southern end of Florida is more water than land.  Water lies just below or above the surface of the soil for hundreds of miles in all directions, originally from Orlando south.  The area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before the Spanish came and spread diseases that wiped out the original inhabitants.  Later, other Indian groups, most notably Seminoles, were forced south to live there, but never in large numbers or widely dispersed.

            In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1800s that anyone thought twice about the area we now call the Everglades.  It was a swamp, and swamps were useless, breeding sites for noxious insects, reptiles and plants.  “A swamp is a swamp,” said famous park developer Frederick Law Olmstead .  As coastal development accelerated, so did attempts to drain the edges of the swamp and divert water into canals.  Much of the swamp was transformed, becoming agricultural lands that fed the Florida economy.

            Some folks began to appreciate the huge swamp for what it was—a biodiversity miracle.  Vast quantities of wildlife lived in the swamp.  And the variety—more than 360 bird species winter there—was astounding.  The Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, led by May Mann Jennings, wife of the Florida governor, persuaded the U.S. to create the small Royal Palm National Park in 1916.  The federation managed the park until 1947.

            But things really started moving when a young landscape architect, Ernest Cole, moved to Miami in 1925.  He was an outdoor enthusiast and was immediately entranced by the nearby wetlands.  He began lobbying Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service Director, to create a big park (learn more about Mather here).  Cole’s persistence has earned him the nickname, “Father of the Everglades.” But the park wasn’t a scenic masterpiece like the popular western park.  Not until a delegation of officials took a blimp ride (yes, in the Goodyear Blimp!) over the swamp did they understand the habitat value of the area and join Cole in his advocacy for a new park.  On May 30, 1934, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed an act to create Everglades National Park, specifically for “the preservation intact of the unique flora and fauna and the essential primitive natural conditions now prevailing in this area.”  This was not a park dedicated for tourism, but for biodiversity conservation.

            Thirteen more years passed until enough land was acquired—now just over 1.5 million acres—and the park became a reality.  On December 6, 1947, President Truman dedicated the park, saying, “Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country.”

            The wisdom of those early leaders is evident today.  Everglades National Park preserves the largest subtropical wetland in North America, housing nine distinct habitats.  It is an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance—one of only three locations in the world to have all three designations.  Surprisingly, it is not one of the most visited national parks, averaging about 1 million visitors per year.  All the better, perhaps, for the preservation of this unique ecosystem.

            The Everglades has many problems, however.  For many years, it was on UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage Sites (thankfully, now off that list).  Diversion of freshwater and draining were two major issues, both because of the lack of freshwater itself and because of salt-water intrusion from the ocean margins. But recent efforts have focused on re-establishing natural water flows.  Invasive species are a constant issue, as animals and plants escaped or released from captivity find a welcome home in the swamps.  The massive increase in the population of Burmese pythons is a common news story.

            It is a huge ecosystem, however, and when the forces of nature operate on such a large scale, the insults of humans are hardly strong enough to persist.  Let’s hope so.  And let’s hope that the images so ably recorded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas continue to be the images we all experience:  “The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.”

References:

Holleran, Patrick.  Everglades National Park.  Park vision.  Available at:  http://www.shannontech.com/ParkVision/Everglades/Everglades.html.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

National Park Service.  Ernest F. Coe, Everglades National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/historyculture/cf-coe.htm.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

Public Broadcasting Service.  Everglades National Park.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/parks/everglades/.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

U.S. Department of the Interior.  2017.  10 Things You Didn’t Know About Everglades National Park.  Blog, 12/5/2017.  Available at:  https://www.doi.gov/blog/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-everglades-national-park.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

U.S. Government Printing Office.  1934.  An Act To provide for the establishment of the Everglades National Park in the State of Florida and for other purposes.  Federal Register, May 30, 1934.  Available at:  https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/73rd-congress/session-2/c73s2ch371.pdf.  Accessed May 2, 2019.

It is the machine that changed the world.  It started mass manufacturing.  It created a huge middle class.  It gave good jobs to unskilled workers, and they created labor unions.  It put average Americans on wheels.  It was the Tin Lizzie.  And after two decades of production, the last Model T—the 15^th million one—rolled off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, on May 26, 1927.

            Henry Ford had big ambitions when he started making cars.  But none was bigger than his vision for the Model T:

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.”

And he succeeded, perhaps beyond even his expectations.  He started building Model T Fords in 1908, using the technique of the assembly line that had been first introduced by Ransom Olds.  Ford’s car had fully interchangeable parts, a reliable and speedy engine could reach 45 mph), and lots of bells and whistles that could be added (unlike the myth that it was only made in black, the Model T came in several custom colors, but so dark that they all looked pretty much like black).  It was cheap to begin with, but his improvements in manufacturing processes and design kept the price going down.  Introduced in 1908 for $825, by 1925 it sold for $260.  The Model T Ford was 57% of global car production in 1925, and the 15 millionth sold made it the biggest selling car model in history from its origin to 1972 (when the VW Bug passed it).

            The Model T revolutionized American life.  Truly, anyone with a decent job, blue collar or white, could afford one, both to buy it and keep it running.  Ford introduced a minimum wage that allowed his workers to climb into the middle class, regardless of their education or skill level.  A car gave people freedom and independence; they moved to new homes and communities in the “suburbs.”  They started traveling, and a tourism industry developed to meet their needs—hotels became “motor hotels,” shortened to motels.  Vacations at national parks and monuments became part of the American dream, an attainable dream.

            Many observers have said that the Model T Ford was the most important innovation of the 20^th Century.  Others say it defined the 20^th Century.  E. B. White (Charlotte’s Web, right?) lamented the passing of the Model T when he wrote in 1936, “The last Model T was built in 1927, and the car is fading from what scholars call the American scene—which is an understatement, because to a few million people who grew up with it, the old Ford practically was the American scene.”

            And, of course, the American love of the car and the highway has become part of our national personality.  In 2017, the U.S. had 272.5 motor vehicles on its roads, about half of which (113 million) were passenger cars.  Those vehicles drove 3.2 trillion miles (yes, trillion).  That’s about 10,000 vehicle miles driven for every person—adult and child—in the U.S.  The country has 225 million licensed drivers; basically anyone who qualified for a license has one.  And we lap the rest of the world in vehicle miles traveled per person.  Only Canada is close to the U.S.—Canadians love their cars almost as much as Americans do.

            So, thanks to Henry Ford for making a car that we can all use and enjoy.  And let’s not blame him for indirectly creating a greenhouse gas problem of huge proportion.  But let’s hope that another Henry Ford is out there, working hard on a new emission-free transportation system that will relegate the “gas-guzzler” to the Museum of Things That Have Outlived Their Usefulness.

References:

Casey, R.  Model T.  ASME Landmarks Program.  Available at:  https://www.asme.org/about-asme/who-we-are/engineering-history/landmarks/233-model-t.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

Statista.  Number of motor vehicles registered in the United States.  Available at:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

Weber, Austin.  2008.  Ten Ways the Model T Changed the World.  Assembly, September 2, 2008.  Available at:  https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/85804-ten-ways-the-model-t-changed-the-world.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

White, E. B.  1936.  Farewell, My Lovely.  The New Yorker, May 8, 1939.  Available at:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1936/05/16/farewell-my-lovely.  Accessed April 25, 2019.

According to the website “On This Day,” April 30, 1864 is the date when the first fee for a hunting license was established by the State of New York.  I’ve not been able to confirm that event, and usually I wouldn’t validate such a claim with a post if I couldn’t directly verify it from several sources.

            But since nothing much else happened in conservation on any April 30, I am going to take the chance that this is a true historical event.  Why?  Because it gives me a chance to reflect on the importance of hunting and fishing licenses and fees to conservation.

            Before getting to the money, however, lets note the reality that hunters and anglers were the first folks who really spoke up for wildlife in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Those who exploited wild game and fish resources recognized that harvests were too high and populations were declining and even disappearing.  So, they started talking about it, around the U.S. and around the world, and pressing for government action.  Here’s how Teddy Roosevelt put the case:

“In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wildlife, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.”

They argued for all the conservation tools that we now take for granted:  seasons defining when people can fish and hunt; limits on the size and number of animals killed; controls on the kind of equipment that can be used; refuges where animals are free from hunting or fishing; and, perhaps most fundamental, elimination of commercial hunting in the U.S.

            Anglers and hunters have always supplied the vast majority of the money spent on fisheries and wildlife conservation, too.  Which brings us back to hunting and fishing licenses and fees.  Today, every state charges a license fee for the right to hunt and fish.  Often the schemes are quite involved, with additional fees for different weapons or rights to capture particular species.  Most of the fees are quiet low—much too low, I have always argued—less than the cost of a tank of gas to get from home to the field.  Some fees, however, are quite high.  In Montana, the fee for non-residents to hunt for a bighorn sheep is $1250.  States have collected over $20 billion in licenses and fees since they started, exceeding $1 billion in 2018 alone.

            All this money gets put to good use.  Fishing and hunting licenses pay about 75% of the budgets of most state fisheries and wildlife agencies.  Those agencies don’t just serve anglers and hunters, but all the people of their state.  They provide the base protection and management for native biodiversity of all types, whether a butterfly or a bat, and manage millions of acres of lands used by all of us for recreation of all kinds.

            One special kind of license is the federal Duck Stamp.  Anyone who hunts for migratory waterfowl—duck, geese, swans and the like—must purchase an annual Duck Stamp (it’s called a “stamp” because it looks like one).  The fee when started in 1935 was $1; today a stamp costs $25.  The funds from Duck Stamps go to purchase, improve and maintain National Wildlife Refuges.  And the program is so efficient that 98 cents of every dollar go directly to this purpose.  Since inception, the Duck Stamp program has invested more than $750 million in wildlife refuges.

            A hidden fee that hunters and anglers also pay is an excise tax on hunting and fishing equipment.  The fees are known after the federal legislators who proposed the law to establish them—Pittman-Robertson for hunting and Dingell-Johnson for fishing.  The federal government collects the money—10% of the cost of fishing equipment and 11% of the cost of hunting equipment—at the wholesale level, so you don’t see it when checking out at the sporting goods store.  That money flows back to state fisheries and wildlife agencies as “restoration funds” to help improve the health of animal populations and their habitats.

            And here’s a little trivia question that’ll stump most people, even wildlife professors.  Why is the fishing excise tax 10%, but hunting is 11%?  The answer is that the Pittman-Robertson program was created before World War II, and during the war all excise taxes (paid on lots of luxury items, like cigarettes and alcohol) were increased by 10%–so the hunting tax went to 11%.  The Dingell-Johnson program was created after the war and set at the usual round number of 10%.  Cool, eh?

            So, should you ever confront the argument that fishing and hunting is bad for wildlife, take a step back and remember who started all this and who still pays for most of it—the guy in the bass boat and the gal in the orange vest!

References:

goHunt.  How did hunting fees start?  Available at:  https://www.gohunt.com/read/how-did-hunting-fees-start#gs.4mtzs3.  Accessed April 12, 2019

Lawrence, Brent.  Hunters, anglers:  The backbone of wildlife conservation.  USFWS Pacific Region.  Available at:  http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com/post/119301140095/hunters-anglers-the-backbone-of-wildlife.  Accessed April 12, 2019.

Palmer, T. S.  1904.  Hunting Licenses:  Their History, Objects and Limitations.  US Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office.  Available at:  https://archive.org/details/hunting00tspa/page/n3.  Accessed April 120, 2019.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Hunters as Conservationists.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/refuges/hunting/hunters-as-conservationists/.  Accessed April 12, 2019.

In 1982, the International Theatre Institute, working through UNESCO, created International Dance Day, occurring on April 29 each year.  The date recognizes the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre, the originator of modern ballet, who lived from 1727-1810.

            In support of each year’s recognition, a prominent representative of dance pens a message regarding the universality and importance of dance.  For 2019, Karima Mansour, an Egyptian dancer, choreographer and teacher, wrote the message.  She began, “At the beginning there was movement… and since the dawn of time, dance has been a strong means of expression and celebration.”  The popularity of “Dancing with the Stars” proves her message.

            I’d like to interpret the “dawn of time” a bit differently than Ms. Mansour.  Long before humans arrived and ever since, animals have danced as part of their life story.  Dance is so ubiquitous in nature that in 2015 BBC Earth produced a two-part video series about dancing animals. And so, it seems a good time to remind us all that there are some pretty nifty dancers roaming around nature’s ballrooms.

            The competition for best dancers among invertebrates is a hands-down victory for the peacock spider.  The male of this 2-inch Australian species sports a brightly decorated abdomen that it raises and lowers rhythmically to attract mates.  It also raises and lowers its third set of legs in unison, as if waving to say “Hi, wanna come up to my web?”

            All dancing isn’t just for mating.  Verreaux’s sifaka, a lemur endemic to Madagascar, is highly adapted for climbing trees and jumping from one branch to another.  Its long, muscular hind legs and short front legs are ideal for an arboreal habitat.  But the sifaka also travels on the ground, and because its anatomy wouldn’t allow running on all fours, it uses a graceful leaping gait to move along.  Jean-Georges Noverre would love the ballet performed by the dexterous sifaka.

            Several candidates compete for the best aquatic dancers.  The streamlined bodies of humpbacks whales and river otters could get them jobs in an underwater Cirque de Solei.  But the BBC is an unabashed advocate of the mudskipper.  Mudskippers are small fish (about 4 inches long) that live in tidal pools, mangrove swamps and mud flats in Africa and Asia.  More than 30 species exist.  The fish are remarkable because they spend about 75% of their time on land (albeit really wet land); they can absorb oxygen from the air through their mouth and gills and through their moist skin—hence they spend most of their time rolling in the mud.  But when males need to be noticed, they launch themselves into the air, up to 18 inches high, flex their bodies and fall back with a loud thud.  This break-dance move lets females know they are around and ready to bogie!

            The champion animal dancing taxon, however, is unquestionably Aves.  The displays that birds make, separately and in pairs, are the stuff of legends.  The Sage Grouse is considered the best by many observers, as the males puff out their chests, inflating and emptying two inflatable air sacks.  The booming sound fills the lonely prairie, attracting mates from miles around.

            But my money is on the Clark’s Grebe as the winner of Dancing with Nature’s Stars.  These birds pair up for life, and they prove their devotion to each other through an elaborate couple’s dance.  They romp through a variety of steps, often facing each other and performing mirror-image moves—preening feathers, ducking their heads, displaying their head feathers.  But then the action explodes as they race together, side by side, walking—well, dancing—across the water with wings held at an aerodynamic angle.  The dance could be right out of Swan Lake, or at least Grebe Pond!

            Most species do some sort of dance, just like most of us like to cavort around the family room. But some species are truly remarkable, and on a day when we recognize the power of dance to bring joy and meaning, let’s not forget our animal dancers!

References:

BBC.  2015.  Ten dazzling dancers of the animal kingdom.  BBC blog, 26 June 2015.  Available at:  http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150626-animal-dancers-that-dazzle.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

Dunne, Daily.  2018.  Eight of nature’s grooviest dancing animals.  BBC Science Focus, 28 February 2018.  Available at:  https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/eight-of-natures-grooviest-dancing-animals/.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

International Theatre Institute.  International Dance Day.  Available at:  https://www.international-dance-day.org/internationaldanceday.html.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

It took two days before the government of the Soviet Union admitted that something had happened to their nuclear power facilities at Chernobyl.  They might never have admitted anything, if Scandinavian scientists hadn’t begun to detect increased levels of radiation in the air on Monday morning, April 28, 1986.

            What the Soviet Union had to admit, slowly and unwillingly, was that the biggest nuclear accident in history had occurred at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station at 1:23 AM two days earlier, on Saturday, April 26.  The plant’s operators were conducting a test to simulate what would happen if the power supply to the plant was reduced.  As the test was proceeding, everything went wrong.  Control rods jammed, and the reactor reached 120 times its full power, blowing the top off the building.  The graphite core started to burn, radioactive steam escaped into the atmosphere, a second explosion occurred.  The fire alarm sounded, and dispatchers begged desperately, “Call everybody, everybody.”

            The fire burned for several days, and radioactive steam, ash and dust continued to fall over an extended area.  Chernobyl is in present-day Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus.  Although the area was somewhat remote, a few nearby towns had developed to serve the nuclear power facilities built there.  A little more than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate the region, resettled elsewhere by the Soviet government.  An area of 1600 square miles, called the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), was emptied of people—and remains virtually empty to this day.

            Most of the evacuated people were fortunate, but others not so.  Two workers in the plant were killed in the explosion.  A total of 134 people developed radiation poisoning, and 28 of those died a few weeks after the explosion.  About 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed among adults who were children in the area at the time of the explosion.  Because thyroid cancer is fairly easy to recognize and treat, only 15 deaths have occurred.

            The Chernobyl explosion is, without doubt, among the modern era’s worst human disasters.  But there appears to be a silver lining to the radioactive cloud Chernobyl produced. The CEZ created an accidental protected area for wildlife that exceeds the size of almost all European parks and reserves.  The area that previously held farms, towns and other artifacts of human use is now, in essence, a wilderness area.  Although structures still exist, the habitat is devoid of humans.

            And nature loves it!  Researchers monitoring wildlife populations have seen large increases in population sizes and the return of many species that were rare before the accident.  Ukrainian wildlife researcher Sergey Gaschak said, “We have all large mammals: red deer, roe deer, wild boar, moose, horse, bison, brown bear, lynx, wolves, two species of hare, beaver, otter, badger, some martins, some mink, and polecats.”  Predatory birds have also made major comebacks.  Grazing animals have reached densities similar to those in other wildlife preserves, and wolf densities are seven times higher than in other locations.  The return of growing populations of top predators is particularly noteworthy, because this indicates the health of the entire food chains leading to them.  Radiation does not appear to be building up in the CEZ populations or bio-accumulating up the food chains.

            On particularly interesting experiment is the reintroduction of the endangered Przewalski’s horse.  This is the only un-domesticated species of horse in existence, and until a few years ago existed only in captivity.  Recently, individuals have begun to be released into suitable habitat, including the CEZ in 1998.  Like other species there, this small population appears to be thriving.

            The conclusion, overall, must be that human influences on wildlife are much more serious than exposure to radiation, at least at the levels in the CEZ.  Humans and wildlife compete for habitat—if we get out of the way, the wildlife will come back.  Despite what many people say, nature is not fragile—it is strong and resilient, as long as we give it a chance.

            And here’s another hopeful outcome:  In 2018, a new solar array was constructed at the site of the nuclear accident!

References:

Deryabina, T. G. et al.  2015.  Long-term census data reveal abundant wildlife populations at Chernobyl.  Current Biology 25(19):PR824-PR826.  Available at:  https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)00988-4.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Kaplan, Sarah and Nick Kirkpatrick.  2015.  In the eerie emptiness of Chernobyl’s abandoned towns, wildlife is flourishing.  The Washington Post, October 6, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/06/in-the-eerie-emptiness-of-chernobyls-abandoned-towns-wildlife-is-flourishing/?utm_term=.dc79645be390.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

The Chernobyl Gallery.  Timeline.  Available at:  http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline/.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Wendle, John.  2016.  Animals Rule Chernobyl Three Decades After Nuclear Disaster.  National Geographic, April 18, 2016.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

World Nuclear Association.  2018.  Chernobyl Accident 1986.  Available at:  http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Normally I would title an entry like this one with the current name of the agency or park under discussion.  But today I’ve used the original name—Soil Conservation Service—because it represents more directly the nature of the agency.  Today, the agency is called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a nice name but much more ambiguous than the original.

            In the early decades of the 20^th Century, American agriculture was developing rapidly, aimed at feeding a growing nation and supporting the food needs of servicemen fighting in Europe during World War I.  One consequence was cultivating land that never should have been farmed in the Great Plains; another was damage to the soils of farmland that was overused and improperly managed.  Soil erosion was rampant and crop yields were declining.

            A young North Carolina soil scientist, Hugh Hammond Bennett (1881-1960), saw the damage as he worked on soil surveys for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  When Bennett attended Teddy Roosevelt’s 1908 Governors’ Conference on Conservation, he heard a presentation on soil degradation that cemented his “determination to pursue that subject to some possible point of counteraction.”

            Bennett wrote continually about soil erosion in scientific journals and popular magazines, warning about the dangers of soil damage.  He gained national attention when he co-authored a USDA bulletin, stating his opinion “that soil erosion is the biggest problem confronting the farmers of the Nation….”  At his urging, some funds were allocated from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to address soil issues. The Department of the Interior created a small Soil Erosion Service in 1933 and put Bennett in charge. Bennett used the position to his advantage, lobbying Congress about soil.  He was a compelling witness, once pouring water on a conference table to show Congress how soil erosion occurs. 

            When serious droughts created the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s, Bennett pressed the need for soil conservation.  He testified before Congress in spring, 1935, while dust storms passed through Washington, DC, darkening the skies and clouding the congressional chambers.  Then the biggest dust storm in history swept across the Great Plains on April 14, causing many to believe that the end of the world was upon them.  He used these storms to argue his point—successfully.  On April 27, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation Act, creating the Soil Conservation Service (SCS).  Bennett became director, a position he held for the next 16 years and earning him the name “father of soil conservation.”

            The SCS began immediately to help farmers protect their soil.  It offered expert advice and provided funding for soil protection actions like building farm ponds to raise the water table and planting tree shelterbelts to slow down wind erosion.  The work was organized around “soil conservation districts,” local groups made up of elected representatives of farmers, ranchers and timber owners.  The operating scale of work was the small watershed, a concept that was meaningful for soil protection, logical to landowners and practical for funding.

            In the 82 years since the agency’s founding, the work has grown in both scope and scale.  Activities now address biodiversity conservation, recreational access, management of suburban watersheds and many other topics.  Hence, in 1994, the agency’s name changed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), designated as the principal point of conservation for USDA.

          

Today, NRCS has a approximately $5 billion annual budget and employs about 12,000 people who work in 2900 offices around the country, generally focused on one or a few counties.  Local conservation districts, which now have a variety of names, number almost 3,000, about one for every county in the nation.  They are represented by the National Association of Conservation Districts, whose mission is “to promote the wise and responsible use of natural resources for all lands by representing locally-led conservation districts and their associations through grassroots advocacy, education and partnerships.”

            Let’s give Hugh Hammond Bennett the last words:  “Take care of the land and the land will take care of you….”

References:

National Association of Conservation Districts.  About NACD.  Available at:  https://www.nacdnet.org/about-nacd/.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

NRCS.  Hugh Hammond Bennet.  Available at:  https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/about/history/?cid=stelprdb1044395.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

NRCS.  More Than 80 Years Helping People Hel the Land:  A Brief History of NRCS.  Available at:  https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/about/history/?cid=nrcs143_021392.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

When Teddy Roosevelt, 26^th President of the United States, died on January 6, 1919, it wasn’t long before conservationists began advocating for a park in his name.  Roosevelt was, after all, our “conservation president,” a leader who established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks and 18 national monuments encompassing 230 million acres in all.  But it did not prove easy to get a park named for him.

            As a young man, Roosevelt traveled to the Dakota Territory for a hunting trip in 1883.  He fell in love with the land and with the idea of being a rancher.  That year, he bought one ranch and a second one the next year.  For the next several years, he visited the area often to manage his ranches and enjoy the western lifestyle.  The work toughened him and convinced him that he could do anything. “I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota,” Roosevelt said later.

            It seemed logical, then, that a park dedicated to Roosevelt’s conservation heritage be created in North Dakota.  In 1921, North Dakota asked Congress to create such a park, and by 1924 a park association formed in the state to promote the idea.  The National Park Service didn’t think the area deserved a national park, but agreed, in 1928, to propose a small national monument as a tribute to Roosevelt.  Some action began in the 1930s, when the same extended drought that created the Dust Bowl (learn more about the Dust Bowl here) caused North Dakota farmers and ranchers to abandon their lands.  The U.S. government bought back millions of acres and created the Little Missouri National Grasslands on the North Dakota-Montana border. 

            A portion of the grasslands was put into a cooperative park venture among several federal and state agencies, and, by 1935, a Roosevelt Recreation Demonstration Area was established.  But when a permanent home for a park was sought, neither the State of Nork Dakota nor the National Park Service wanted to take responsibility.  After World War 2 ended, the National Park Service again declined to take on the property, declaring that it was not worthy of national park status.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ended up with the land, designating it a national wildlife refuge.  But with the aggressive and persistent lobbying of North Dakota Congressman William Lemke, Congress passed and President Truman signed, on April 25, 1947, a law creating Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park.  Thirty-one years later, on November 10, 1978, President Carter signed the law that dropped “memorial” from the name and finally made it official—Teddy Roosevelt finally had his national park, nearly 60 years after his death.

            Three separate units comprise the park.  The majority of the park’s 70,447 acres are in the South Unit (about 46,000 acres) and North Unit (about 24,000 acres).  Between these units is the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of 218 acres, one of the two original ranches owned by Teddy Roosevelt.  No area of the park is highly developed, with only primitive campsites, hiking trails and scenic drives, but the Elkhorn unit is kept purposely undeveloped to represent the rugged wildness of Roosevelt’s time.  Visitation to the park is relatively low, averaging about 500,000 per year for several decades but recently reaching about 750,000.

            The park, therefore, retains the character that Roosevelt loved about the West.  It is about nature—rugged, beautiful, an island of solitude.  And it reminds us that taking care of such places is a solemn duty.  As Roosevelt said in 1910,

“There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.”

References:

National Park Service.  Park History, Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/park-history.htm.  Accessed April 8, 2019.

U.S. Department of the Interior.  2016.  The Conservation Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt.  USDOI blog, 10/27/2016.  Available at:  https://www.doi.gov/blog/conservation-legacy-theodore-roosevelt.  Accessed April 8, 2019.