Category: Uncategorized

            The world’s first national park, Yellowstone, was established on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses Grant added his signature to the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act.  The creation of Yellowstone was a revolutionary event.  During a time of western colonization, the practice of the federal government was to give land away, or sell it, so that it could be used for productive processes—mining, farming, lumbering, cattle grazing and the like.  To set aside a piece of land this size required the location to be extraordinarily special.

            And it was—and remains so today.  The park covers a huge land area, totaling nearly 3500 square miles, bigger than both Rhode Island and Delaware—combined.  The vast majority lies in Wyoming, with slivers running into Montana and Idaho.  Because of its immense size and long period of protection, Yellowstone is considered the northern hemisphere’s best preserved natural ecosystem.  Management today recognizes that value, and natural processes—including fire and wildlife population fluctuations—are allowed to occur without restraint as fully as possible.

            But what makes Yellowstone unique are its thermal features.  The park contains the world’s largest active volcanic caldera, measuring 30 by 45 miles.  It has more than 10,000 geothermal surface features, about half of all found in the world.  Geysers—of which Old Faithful is the most famous, and not particularly faithful—number more than 500, again more than half of the world’s total.  The park experiences as many as 3,000 earthquakes every year, obviously most not large enough to be felt by visitors.

            The wildlife of Yellowstone is also spectacular.  The mammal diversity is high, with 67 native species, and 285 bird species live in the wide range of environments in the park.  The park contains the only continuously free-ranging American bison population still in existence, attracting visitors to the Hayden Valley where the largest herds graze.

Two species are symbolic for the park, as well as controversial.  Grizzly bears are a favorite species.  Before 1975, the bears were treated much like pets, as visitors fed them from their cars and campgrounds and used the bears as photographic props.  Since 1975, when grizzly bears were added to the Endangered Species list, they have been managed as natural residents of the park.  Feeding and other casual contact have been outlawed, and people have been removed from prime bear habitat.  As a consequence, grizzly bears have increased in abundance.  Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes the bears should be removed from the Endangered Species list, a federal judge has ruled that they remain imperiled and will remain on the list, as of September, 2018.

            Similar trends have occurred for Yellowstone’s other symbol—the gray wolf.  Wolves had been eliminated from the park in the early 1900s, but after being added to the Endangered Species list in the 1970s, a restoration process began.  The first strategy was stocking wolves from Canadian packs.  The successful restoration efforts have led to the total recovery of wolf populations, with more than a dozen packs now occupying the park.  They are no longer on the Endangered Species list.  Some people object to the restoration of wolves, citing their predation on cattle and elk outside the park. 

            Most people, however, love what has happened to restore and preserve Yellowstone.  Annual visitation now tops 4 million people, making Yellowstone one of the top five destinations for national park enthusiasts.  Expect big crowds in July, though, as more than 30,000 people each day descend onto the park’s roads and picnic grounds. 

            We take for granted today the level of care and management that Yellowstone receives, but the park didn’t start that way.  The park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, was unpaid and had neither a budget nor staff to help him.  Eventually Congress balked at the government’s inability to manage the park, and they turned it over to the U.S. Army in 1886.  Army troops patrolled the park on horseback, guarding the major attractions and expelling poachers.  Not until the National Park Service was created in 1916 did the job of managing the park revert to a civilian workforce(learn more about the NPS here) .  Today that workforce includes more than 300 permanent and 400 seasonal employees, dedicated to preserving one of the world’s great natural treasures.

References:

National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park.  Birth of a National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/yellowstoneestablishment.htm.

National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park.  Park Facts.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkfacts.htm.

UNESCO.  World Heritage list:  Yellowstone National Park.  Available at:  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/28.

Yellowstone National Park.  Grizzly Bears & the Endangered Species Act.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/bearesa.htm.

Apparently everyone related to conservation took the day off on December 20.  Throughout history,there were no conservation-related births, events, tragedies, new laws—nothing.  I guess they needed a day to get ready for the holidays.  Now that might be what an average researcher might conclude, but not me. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find out that one of America’s greatest films was released on this date—It’s A Wonderful Life!

            The film came out on December 20, 1946.  It was directed by Frank Capra and starred Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a small-town banker, and Donna Reed as his wife, Mary.  After some money goes missing and the bank is on the cusp of default, George is so distraught that he contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve.  An angel (played by Henry Travers) appears to George and shows him all the wonderful deeds George has done over the years, improving the lives of countless of his neighbors.  George draws back from the bridge railing,the money is found, and all is well for Christmas. 

While the film was originally a flop at the box office, the years have been kind.  It’s A Wonderful Life is now considered a classic of American films, rating among the top of the American Film Institutes’s listings, and it is shown more or less continuously on cable television from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.

            The movie reminds me of why I am an optimist—an optimist in general and an environmental optimist specifically.  We might despair over some environmental loss in the news—an oil spill, reversal of pollution regulations, the listing of a new endangered species—just like George Bailey.  But, also like George Bailey, if we look a little deeper and broader, we can see an amazing and wonderful world behind the headlines.

            Go back a century to the environmental conditions around the world at the height of the industrial revolution.  In big cities,the air was deadly, filled with smoke, dust, soot and pathogens.  The water was putrid, choked with household and industrial waste.  Infectious diseases ran rampant, fueled by lack of sanitation.  Wildlife species were hunted to extinction or near extinction. 

            Then a new idea began to emerge:  a healthy life requires a healthy environment.  The world started passing laws to protect the air, water and nature.  Infrastructure got built to supply clean water and wash away wastes, to filter particulates out of the air, to regulate the taking of fish and wildlife.  People like John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ding Darling, Rachel Carson—the George Baileys of the conservation movement—picked up the mantle for protecting our resources.

            In 1981, I wrote a paper for the American Biology Teacher called “The Case for Environmental Moderation (or why people who live in recycled bottles shouldn’t throw stones).”  In that paper, I argued the following:

“A friend once told me that where the environment was concerned, one could either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Nonsense. No one is totally devoted to preserving the environment.To paraphrase Descartes, ‘I am, therefore I pollute.’ The alternative to polluting the environment is to stop living; and then, as every Agatha Christie fan knows, someone still must dispose of the corpse. In practice, we all compromise environmental quality for the benefit of other desires—for wealth and convenience usually, but for other reasons as well, including the relief of human misery.”

Now, 41 years later, I am even more convinced that I am correct.  We could site many instances where things continue to improve, and in the references I list several.  The giant panda was recently upgraded by IUCN from endangered to vulnerable status, because of the conservation actions of the Chinese people.  The world continues to add more lands to protected status, especially today in marine environments.  We continue to improve the nutrition of the world’s poor, adequately feeding two billion more people every day than we did two decades ago. 

            Others also seem to be taking another look at our environment, replacing the characteristic pessimism with a more useful optimism. Technical improvements in almost every exploitative activity—please understand that exploitation of nature is necessary for human survival—is getting more efficient and effective, from agriculture to transportation to energy production and use. 

            Along with technical improvements comes recognition that the earth is today a combination of natural and human-based processes.  Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow wrote in 2015 that the ecological tenet “everything is connected to everything else” is usually thought of as pessimistic—mess with one part of the environment and the other parts go sour as well.  But she noted that there is another interpretation, once you get past the idea that anything human is inherently evil:

“But the corollary is the possibility of virtuous circles. Specifically, various kinds of ‘regenerative’ agriculture can purportedly sequester carbon,  make land more resistant to both drought and flood, and render soil much more conducive to growing nutritious plants. The notion that ‘everything is connected’ becomes a source of optimism.”

Tuhus-Dubrow also quoted Laura Martin, a doctoral student at Cornell, who asks us to replace the metaphor of the ecological footprint with a new one—the ecological handprint.  “A footprint is a mark one never meant to leave. A handprint, as opposed to a footprint, is deliberate, skilled and artful. It evokes human agency and the human ability to shape the world by choosing among many possible natures.”

            I like that metaphor.  By putting our hands on the earth and shaping it with care, respect and love, we can nurture a better, fairer, more sustainable world.  As long as we keep Gro Harlem Brundtland’s definition of sustainability in mind—live today so future generations can live as they wish—my optimism stands solid. And if you’d like to read about some folks who made a very positive impact on our world and its environment, read my book, Nature’s Allies–Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World.

            George Bailey said “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  I say “It’s a Wonderful World,” on December 20 and every day.

References:

Internet Movie Database.  It’s a Wonderful Life(1946).  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Nielsen, Larry A.  1981. The Case for Environmental Moderation (or why people who live in recycled bottles shouldn’t throw stones). The American Biology Teacher 43(4):208-210, 224).  Available at: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/25808/Case.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Perrin, Sam.  The Case for Environmental Optimism.  Ecology for the Masses, May 28, 2018.  Available at:  https://ecologyforthemasses.com/2018/05/28/the-case-for-environmental-optimism/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Skorton, David J.  2017. The Argument for Environmental Optimism: Opinion by Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton.  Smithsonian Insider, April 2017.  Available at: https://insider.si.edu/2017/04/argument-environmental-optimism-opinion-smithsonian-secretary-david-j-skorton/.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

Tuhus-Dubrow, Rebecca.  2015.  The Eco-Optimists.  Dissent Magazine, Winter 2015.  Available at: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-eco-optimists.  Accessed December 12, 2018.

“In the world of science, Richard Leakey is as close to royalty by birth as one gets.”  So wrote Richard Schiffman in 2016.  And with good cause.  Leakey’s parents—Louis and Mary Leakey—are the world’s most famous paleo-anthropologists, having discovered the earliest human fossils at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, proving that humans evolved not in Asia, but in Africa. Their son Richard took his heritage seriously, but moved far beyond the realm of fossils.           

Richard Leakey was born on December 19, 1944, in Nairobi, Kenya (died 2022).  He grew up on his parents’ field sites, finding his first fossil when he was just six years old.  Fossil-hunting didn’t attract this Leakey, however—animal hunting was more his speed. He quit school when he was 16, instead learning to fly, collecting skeletons (of non-extinct species) to sell to museums, and leading wildlife photographic expeditions.

            While flying on one such safari, he spotted an exposed set of cliffs that seemed like a promising fossil site. Not ignoring his heritage, he followed up on the site. Up every day at 4:30 AM, he and his “Hominid Gang” of diggers excavated an amazing trove of humanoid fossils in what would become one of the world’s richest finds. Just 25, Leakey was now a famous paleontologist in his own right, even though it was not his primary desire. The Kenyan president made him Director of the Kenya National Museum, a position he held from 1968 to 1989.  During those three decades, he built the museum into international prominence while also promoting wildlife conservation and habitat protection for the nation.

            His true calling took hold again in 1989, when he left the museum to become director of Kenya’s wildlife and parks agency (now called the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS).  The agency was corrupt from top to bottom, and both elephants and rhinoceros were being poached at alarming rates.  Leakey, with his direct and forceful approach to all problems (“I’m not much into reflection, I like to get things done”), armed his wildlife officers and told them to shoot poachers to kill.

            But he knew that not just Kenya, but the world needed to change.  “We also had to somehow impact the market.  My idea was to destroy confiscated ivory by bonfire.   That generated massive publicity around the fact that elephants were being killed for their teeth, which led to CITES putting an international ban on ivory sales.”

            He lasted five years as Director of KWS, but by then his enemies—those who profited from the corruption he was battling—regained control. He crashed his plane in 1993, resulting in the amputation of both legs below the knees.  The cause of the crash has never been proven, but Leakey and others believe the plane had been sabotaged.  At a political rally in 1995, he was whipped by his opponents.

            Leakey entered politics directly in 1995, forming a new party called Safina (which means “Noah’s Ark” in Swahili).  He won a seat in parliament, and eventually became the Secretary of the Cabinet, the most important political appointment in Kenya. He retired from government service in 2001.  Although some have accused him of both arrogance and greed in seeking high office, it seems more likely that Leakey was just following his birth-right mission. He said that “public service is different from government service.  I was raised to believe that in public service you remain absolutely neutral politically.”

           In recent years, elephant poaching skyrocketed, so the country turned again to its wildlife conservation hero.  Leakey rejoined the KWS in 2015 as chair of the agency’s board.  He held another ivory bonfire, this time burning $100 million of ivory.  Leakey believed that any market for ivory—even the legal selling of confiscated tusks—leads inevitably to illegal markets because consumers don’t know the reality:  “My feeling is that many people who are buying this ivory in China and elsewhere simply don’t know what it is doing to elephants.” Quickly, Kenya’s rate of poaching again declined under Leakey’s leadership.

            But Leakey was more than a protector of wildlife.  He understood that the lives of Africans are interwoven with the lives of wildlife, the essence of sustainability. “Without tackling poverty there is no security for anybody in our society, no institutional security, no national security—and definitely no security for our wild lands and wildlife.”

            And he understood what wildlife means to the human soul:

 “When I studied fossils, I was dealing with species that became extinct because of climate change, because of over-predation. Today, when I stand on the magnificent Kenyan landscape in the midst of so many of their successors, the survivors—now different species—it’s a very powerful experience. I feel I’m at home with them. I understand myself better. I sense my place within the larger continuum of life.”

References:

Academy of Achievement.  Richard E. Leakey,Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist. Available at:  http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Astill, James.  2001.  African warrior.  The Guardian, 9 October 2001.  Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,565776,00.html.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Richard Leakey.  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Leakey.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Schiffman, Richard.  2016.  Why Kenya Is Burning 100 Tons of Elephant Ivory.  Scientific American, April 27,2016.  Available at:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-kenya-is-burning-100-tons-of-elephant-ivory/.  Accessed December 9, 2018.

Want to start an argument about how to produce electricity without climate change?  Bring up nuclear energy (and at this moment in 2022, that argument just got more interesting with news that a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been achieved).  Want to start an argument about the history of nuclear energy among a bunch of nuclear dudes?  Just ask which was the first nuclear energy plant!

But for our purposes today, we’re going with the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in western Pennsylvania (don’t look for it on a map, because it is gone).  Several candidates for the title of “first” exist, depending on the qualifiers used, but it appears that Shippingport may have been the first “full-scale” commercial plant built solely to produce electricity.  It was fired up on December 2 and started sending electricity through the power grid on December 18, 1957.

Shippingport only got there by accident.  When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War 2, the public was deadly scared of what the world’s capacity to harness atomic energy might mean; the arms race and the cold war resulted.  But U.S. President David Eisenhower had a different idea—to use the power of atoms to create energy.  He called his idea “Atoms for Peace,” and directed U.S. federal agencies to get cracking on ways to use atoms in other ways.

Consequently, a new atomic age began.  The U.S. started building atom-fueled navy ships, especially aircraft carriers.  While the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) developing a nuclear reactor for a new aircraft carrier, Congress decided it was too expensive and took away the funding.  With a partially built nuclear reactor, the AEC quickly changed strategies—let’s turn it into a commercial nuclear energy plant, producing electricity for the country.  President Eisenhower agreed and he assigned Admiral Rickover to manage the process (Rickover is known as the “Father of the Atomic Navy”).  The AEC chose Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on the Ohio River west of Pittsburgh, as the location, and Rickover got it built, pronto.  His biographer noted:

“Commercial nuclear power was now a reality, just four and a half years after the task was assigned to Admiral Rickover. Three years later, commercial plants based on this design began to spring up across the country, and shortly after that, around the whole world.”

Indeed, nuclear energy has expanded around the country and world.  Today, 99 nuclear reactors produce electricity in 30 U.S. states, supplying 20% of the nation’s electricity.  The U.S. has more nuclear reactors and capacity than any other country in the world (surprised by that, aren’t you?).  France is next with 58, then Japan (42), China (39) and Russia (37).  But nuclear energy provides a much higher proportion of all electricity in other countries than in the U.S.—France gets 72% from nuclear, Belgium gets 50%, and Sweden gets 40%.  The UK is about tied with the U.S. at 19%.  Worldwide, about 450 nuclear reactors produce about 11% of all electricity.

After the spectacular nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, several countries declared a divorce from nuclear energy.  Japan itself has lowered its reliance on nuclear from 30% of all electricity to just 4% today.  Germany is supposedly phasing out all its nuclear energy capacity, needing to find a replacement source for the 12% of electricity that nuclear provides.  The U.S. has only opened one new nuclear facility since 1996, with two more under construction now.  But this won’t increase capacity, as older plants are taken off-line.

Other parts of the world, however, are developing nuclear capacity as an alternative to air-polluting fossil-fuel facilities (the major fuel being displaced is coal).  In early 2018, 58 nuclear reactors were under construction.  Twenty of those were in China alone, followed by 6 each in India and Russia.  Many European countries are building new reactors to replace aging or retired reactors.

“Retirement” was the fate of the Shippingport plant.  After the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster—also in Pennsylvania—public opinion turned against nuclear energy.  In 1982, the plant quit producing electricity, and by 1989 the entire facility was totally gone.  Both the accident-free operation of the plant for 25 years and its decommissioning are used as examples of how well nuclear energy can work.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), nuclear energy has a target on its back.  Nuclear energy is the safest of all methods of producing electricity (deaths per kilowatt hour generated), and nuclear plants operate more reliably and much closer to full capacity than fossil-fuel plants.  And depending on how you do the math, nuclear energy doesn’t generate greenhouse gases (when the fossil-fuel energy consumed by mining of materials and construction of reactors is included, there is a net contribution of greenhouse gases—just like all power plants).  But spectacular accidents like Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island drive policymakers and the public against nuclear energy.  And the safety of long-term storage of radioactive wastes is a chronic worry that can’t be explained away.

But here is the question that we all must consider:  From what source do you wish to get your electricity?  It is not an easy question, and, regardless of individual answers, it is clear that nuclear power plants will be part of our global energy future for a long, long time.

References:

Craddock, Jack III.  2016.  The Shippingport Atomic Power Station.  Standford University.  Available at:  http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/craddock1/.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Energy Information Administration.  Nuclear Explaned—U.S. Nuclear Industry.  Available at: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=nuclear_use.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Statista.  2018.  Number of under construction nuclear reactors worldwide as of February, 2018.  Available at:   https://www.statista.com/statistics/513671/number-of-under-construction-nuclear-reactors-worldwide/.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

World Nuclear Organization.  2018.  Nuclear Power in the World Today.  Available at:  http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx.  Accessed December 5, 2018.

Many children revolt in the shadow of a famous and demanding father.  Alexander Agassiz, however, the son of world renowned scientist Louis Agassiz, did quite the opposite.  He followed in his father’s large footsteps, complementing his father’s scientific creativity with a dogged determination and organizational ability.

Alexander Agassiz was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on December 17, 1835 (died 1910).  He lived there with his famous father and artistic mother, enjoying the natural environment and the intellectual stimulation. His father was “bigger than life,” as the saying goes, both in physical stature and presence—he commanded every room he entered.  Alexander, in contrast, was slight of build and quiet, more given to the detail of his work than its promotion.  For example, he became skilled at dissection, preparing detailed and tidy specimens for scientific observation.  Nonetheless, Alexander grew to become a man of strength, courage and determination.

When his mother died at an early age, Alexander began a life of revolving stays with relatives in the Freiburg region of Germany.  There he gained the idea that he would become a natural scientist. He often disappeared for days at a time, sleeping in barns or on haystacks, saying, “Almost anybody would give such a tiny traveler a piece of bread or a bit of cheese.”

He moved to the U.S. in 1849 to stay with his father who had taken a job at Harvard.  Alexander, who was fluent in French and German, quickly learned English—his grammar was meticulous and his writing clear, but he sometimes spoke haltingly.  Regardless, he earned several degrees from Harvard.  He worked side-by-side with his father, helping him establish and grow Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (which also covered botany, geology and anthropology).  He learned that his father could raise money well, but could spend it even better, always leaving the museum—and the family—cash-strapped.

Consequently, Alexander accepted a role with a Houghton, Michigan, copper mine with which his family was connected.  He quickly learned that the mine itself was a great resource, but was being squandered by the company’s poor management. Within a three-year stay, from 1866 to 1869, he developed the mine into a highly profitable enterprise equipped with the newest technology, along with innovative mine safety and worker and community welfare programs.  The mine became the world’s largest copper producer. He remained president of the mining company until his death, but with his family’s money problems solved, he happily returned full-time to Harvard and science.

Soon thereafter, two sorrows tainted his life—both his beloved father and his beloved wife died within a few weeks in 1873.  He devoted his life and career to their memories.  He never remarried, but remained with Harvard University for the rest of his life, helping to organize, administer and expand the museum.

He also devoted himself to his scientific work, especially his interest in oceanography.  Until his death in 1910, he conducted numerous large-scale expeditions among all the world’s oceans.  Characteristically, his voyages were carefully planned and plotted to survey the largest possible regions efficiently.  He invented new equipment (marine dredges), collected thousands of species and mapped huge areas of the ocean floor.  He focused his biological studies on echinoderms, producing a major revision of their taxonomy.  His bibliography occupies 8 pages.  At the time of his death, a colleague said that all current knowledge of “the great ocean basins and their general outlines” owed itself to Agassiz, either directly or through his inspiration of other researchers.

His father was a founder of the National Academy of Sciences, and Alexander revered the institution, serving as president from 1901 to 1907.  An extensive tribute to him, published by the academy, begins this way:

“An exhaustive memoir of Alexander Agassiz should consider his achievements in three distinct fields, namely, mining engineering and administration, oceanographic research, and zoological investigation. His power of mental concentration and his economy of time enabled him to accomplish results which might fairly be regarded as full measure of activity for three men.”

References:

Goodale, George Lincoln.  1912.  Alexander Agassiz, 1835-1910.  National Academy of Sciences, September 1912.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/agassiz-alexander.pdf.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Smithsonian Institution Archives.  Alexander Agassiz (photograph and accompanying text).  Available at:  https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_11390.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Snow, Richard F.  1983.  Alexander Agassiz:  A Reluctant Millionaire.  American Heritage, Volume 34, Issue 3.  Available at:  https://www.americanheritage.com/content/alexander-agassiz-reluctant-millionaire.  Accessed December 3, 2018.

Perhaps this is the best thing that can be said of an environmental leader:  “…Browner was an in-your-face, if you will, environmental activist, and she could cut right through the fluff of any discussions and want to get to the core of what could be done for the environment.”  Sweet!

That in-your-face conservationist is Carol Browner.  She was born on December 16, 1955, on the edge of the Everglades.  Her parents, both college professors, gave her a love of nature.  She would often ride her bike to the swamp and hike there—she and nature were linked at the hip.  But unlike many nature lovers, she wasn’t educated in biology or ecology, rather taking degrees in political science and law from the University of Miami.

Browner entered politics soon after leaving college, serving as general counsel to a Florida legislative committee.  She moved on to DC, working for Citizen Action on grassroots efforts that often included environmental issues; a special interest was the effect of pollution on children.  She became the chief environmental aide for a Florida senator and then for Tennessee Senator Al Goe (learn more about him here).

Browner returned to Florida to become Secretary of Environmental Regulation (1991-1993).  There she initiated the ongoing restoration of the Florida Everglades—the largest environmental restoration project in U.S. history—including the dismantling of extensive drainage systems that had interrupted crucial flows of freshwater into the swamplands.  She said of her approach in Florida, “We started looking broadly at ecosystem protection, which helped us get beyond some of the kinds of problems we’re seeing all over the country in a lot of the applications of environmental regulation.”

She seemed able to broker deals that moved environmental sustainability along while at the same time allowing economic development.  For example, she convinced the state of Florida and the Walt Disney Corporation to allow Disney to develop 400 acres of wetlands the company owned in exchange for protecting nearly 8000 acres of other wetlands as a wildlife refuge—a form of mitigation that is commonplace today.  A Disney executive said that “Browner was a ‘visionary with integrity,’ who could…reach accommodations without compromising Florida’s environmental review process.”

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1993, his vice-president, Al Gore, convinced Clinton to name Browner as EPA Administrator.  At 37 years of age, she became the 8^th—and youngest—EPA leader.  She remained in office for the full two terms of Clinton’s presidential tenure, leaving in 2001 as the longest serving EPA Administrator in history.

At EPA, Browner found both favor and disfavor with both the environmental and business communities (perhaps a reason for her longevity).  She championed strengthening air and water quality standards, raising requirements to the most stringent thus far in the country’s history.  At the same time, she recognized that the regulatory apparatus was too complex and re-organized EPA to make it more efficient and user-friendly.  She believed in common sense as a touchstone for environmental protection.

At the end of her EPA appointment, she returned to the private sector.  But President Barack Obama called her back to the White House to be his energy and climate-change “czar.”  She served for two years.  During that time, she was the principal face of the White House during the BP oil spill in April, 2000, earning kudos for her calm, professional and determined approach.

She is reminiscent of another great conservationist, Gro Harlem Brundtland (learn more about her here), the former Norwegian Prime Minister who coined the definition of sustainability universally used today.  Both leaders were practical, but principled.  Both made decisions based on logic rather than politics, sometimes angering business but sometimes also angering the environmental community.  Both believe that we can have a sound economy along with a high-quality environment; in fact, they believe, both are necessary to achieve either.  At her swearing-in ceremony in January, 1993, she said:

“I want my son to be able to grow up and enjoy the natural wonders of the United States in the same way that I have.  I believe that we will now be able to make the investment in our economy that we so desperately need, yet preserve the air, land, and water.”

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Carol Browner, American Attorney and Politician.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carol-Browner.  Accessed December 2, 2018.

Environmental Protection Agency.  1999.  Carol M. Browner.  EPA History.  Available at:  https://web.archive.org/web/20081219170524/http://www.epa.gov:80/history/admin/agency/browner.htm.  Accessed December 2, 2018.

Van Oss, Alex.  1993.  New EPA Chief.  Living on Earth, PRI’s Environmental News Magazine, January 8, 1993.  Available at:  http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=93-P13-00002&segmentID=1.  Accessed December 2, 2018.

In 2005, Peter Jackson released his movie, King Kong, on December 14.  Wanna know why?  Because it was World Monkey Day!  At least that’s what Wikipedia says—and they don’t monkey around.

World Monkey Day was first celebrated on December 14, 2000.  Why that day?  Michigan State University student Casey Sorrow was monkeying (!) around and wrote “Monkey Day” on an unoccupied date on a friend’s calendar.  When the day came around, they felt obligated to celebrate—costumes, grunting, jumping around, drinking beer (recognize that December 14 is near the end of finals at most universities, and students are no doubt in need of some reason to go ape!). The traditional continued, as Sorrow and another friend began drawing a college-based comic strip and promoted Monkey Day each year when the calendar rolled around to December 14^th again.

What clearly began as a college stunt has continued, but still in an unofficial status.  Despite Sorrow’s attempt to get the U.S. Congress and the world as a whole interested in endorsing the day, it remains an underground affair.  But it has spread around the world—chimps off the old block—with celebrations in many countries.  The World Monkey Day website (at least that is official) sums up the situation:

“Monkey Day is an annual celebration of all things simian, a festival of primates, a chance to scream like a monkey and throw feces at whomever you choose. Or perhaps just a reason to hang out with your friends while grunting and picking fleas off each other.”

(The official website and just about everyone else who writes about monkey day issues a caveat that they don’t actually endorse throwing feces around—and neither do I.)

There is a serious side to all this monkey business.  Primates, other than humans, are in great peril in today’s world.  Primates include four major groups—monkeys themselves, along with the great apes, lemurs and tarseirs.  According to the IUCN Primate Special Group, about 500 species exist today, distributed across Asia, Africa and the Neo-tropics (Central and South America).  But the total number of known primate species continues to rise—91 new species have been discovered since 2000!  At the same time, taxonomists are constantly revising primate taxonomy, often splitting or lumping species.

These species are imperiled across their range.  Again according to IUCN, approximately 70% of Asian species are endangered (IUCN categories of critically endangered, endangered and near endangered), as are about 50% of African species and 40% of neo-tropical species.  Two dozen species in Asai are critically endangered, meaning that the species will probably disappear from the earth.  The biggest issue for primates is habitat loss, as their forest habitats are cleared for human use (logging, agriculture and other developments).  However, poaching and hunting for bush meat are constant threats as well.

The humane treatment of primates is also a universal issue.  The large primates—monkeys and great apes—have fascinated people in zoos and circuses and on street corners for hundreds of years.  Their evolutionary ties to humans have made them useful for research of many kinds (from science to space travel).  According to the Animal Welfare Institute, more than 70,000 primates are being held captive in research facilities.  Today, however, with increasing knowledge about the complex social communities of primates, calls for eliminating use of non-human primates are continuous and widespread, particularly in Europe.

Along with global feelings about the exploitation of elephants and marine mammals, it is clear that the capture, breeding and use of primates in research and for entertainment is destined to disappear.  Let’s hope that wild species don’t do the same.

References:

Animal Welfare Institute.  Non-human Primates.  Available at:  https://awionline.org/content/non-human-primates.  Accessed November 30, 2018.

IUCN Primate Specialist Group.  An Assessment of Endangered Primates.  Available at:  http://www.primate-sg.org/red_list_threat_status/.  Accessed November 30, 2018.

Klein, Sarah.  2003.  Monkeying around with the holidays.  Detroit Metro Times, December 10, 2003.  Available at:  https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/monkeying-around-with-the-holidays/Content?oid=2177616.  Accessed November 30, 2018.

Marshall, Lindsay.  2017.  It’s time to stop monkeying around with harmful primate experiments.  Humane Society International.  Available at:  https://humanesociety.scienceblog.com/97/its-time-to-stop-monkeying-around-with-harmful-primate-experiments/.  Accessed November 30, 2018.

Monkeyday.com.  Happy Monkey Day 2017!  Available at:  https://monkeyday.com/.  Accessed November 30, 2018.

She was first at many things—first woman admitted to MIT, founder and first president of the American Home Economics Association, first water quality chemist for the state of Massachusetts.  She also was the first person to introduce the word “ecology” and its central concept into the scientific establishment of the United States.

Ellen Henrietta Swallow was born in Massachusetts on December 3, 1842 (died 1911).  Her family was poor, and so Swallow did not attend school as a girl.  Eventually she attended a teaching academy for two years and became a school teacher.  But science and research intrigued her, and she entered Vassar College in 1868, at the age of 26.  She received a degree in two years and then started breaking barriers.

She sought admission to what we call today the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), then an all-male school.  They admitted her on her birthday, 1870, with the understanding that this was not the start of a new policy, but as an experiment to see if women could succeed at a scientific school.  She was, thus, the first female student to attend MIT and the first to attend a science-based university in the U.S.

She handled it just fine, graduating in two years with another bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Vassar (MIT refused to issue advanced degrees to women for several more years).  She immediately went to work as an unpaid instructor in chemistry—again the first (or perhaps the second) female chemistry teacher in the land.  Within a few years, she raised the funds and the backing to open the Women’s Laboratory at MIT, a mechanism to allow women to study science without being fully admitted into the school, bypassing the men-only admission policy.

During the 1880s she began working on water pollution issues in Massachusetts, again among the early leaders of sanitary chemistry.  Now under her married name of Ellen Richards, she implemented a comprehensive survey of water quality across the state, testing water samples from more than 20,000 sites (some sources say 30,000 or even 40,000)—a first in both scope and organization.  She established a natural baseline for chlorine in water, graduated from coastal to inland locations, to use as a standard for judging the amount of local water contamination.  Her work led to the first Massachusetts statewide water quality standards and the state’s first modern water treatment plant (and, of course, the first of both in the nation).

Richards was committed to the idea that science was useful—essential, really—in organizing normal life so that it was healthy and efficient.  The concept was based in the ideas of ecology, then being developed in Germany.  She introduced both the concept of ecology and the term into English (she first spelled it “oekology”), the first in the country to do so.  Hence, it is appropriate to consider her as one of the founders of the science of ecology.  Her viewpoint that a healthy environment created healthy people and a healthy economy is an early representation of the modern concept of sustainability.

Richards is remembered today mostly as the founder of the science of home economics, which she termed “euthenics.”  Although her term never caught on (it was too easily confused with eugenics), her principles have remained and grown into the science, teaching and extension of food safety, nutrition, and sanitary practices to the general public.  She co-founded the American Home Economics Association and served as its first president until her death in 1911.

She was always, by example and leadership, an advocate for women in science.  In the year she died, she addressed her fellow alumnae of Vassar, saying:

“We have won our standing, an acknowledged place. Now that we have influence how shall we use it? Woman’s outlook will be different ten years from now. Is she still to be behind in the race? Or from her new standpoint shall she lead? The question is not woman, but ability and women.”

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Ellen Swallow Richards, American chemist.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ellen-Swallow-Richards.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Ellen Swallow Richards:  Biography.  Available at:  https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/esr/esr-biography.html.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Science History Institute.  Ellen H. Swallow Richards.  Available at:  https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/ellen-h-swallow-richards.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Vassar Encyclopedia.  Ellen Swallow Richards.  Available at:  http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/alumni/ellen-swallow-richards.html.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

When John Muir embarked on his one-thousand-mile walk from Indiana to Florida in 1867, most of the space in his pack was taken up by a single book—Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania inclusive.  That manual generally goes by a shorter title, Gray’s Manual, written by Asa Gray.  Through eight editions and to the present day, Gray’s Manual continues to be an essential resource for American botanists, well earning Asa Gray recognition as the “Father of American Botany.”

Asa Gray was born on November 18, 1810 (died in 1888), in Oneida County, New York.  With seven younger siblings, Gray grew up working on the family’s farm and becoming an avid naturalist, especially interested in minerals. His interest in botany began while at school, causing his father to enroll him in a local medical school.  He graduated in 1831 and opened a medical office—but that was the beginning and end of his medical career.

While in medical school, he had spent his spare time exploring the countryside and collecting plants, developing a sizable herbarium.  He became acquainted with John Torrey, a chemistry professor and botanist at Columbia University.  Shunning medical practice, he joined Torrey as his chemistry assistant—but they both pursued botany as their true avocations.  When Torrey’s funds ran out, Gray drifted among various teaching positions over the next 15 years, but never stopped exploring the northeastern United States, gathering plant specimens, developing his herbarium, classifying new species and publishing papers on his findings.

In 1848, Gray was appointed to Harvard University as the first full-time professor of botany in the nation.  He virtually created a botanical presence at Harvard, building a herbarium (now named for him), accumulating a botanical library and planting botanical gardens.  He traveled widely throughout the United States and Europe (there he investigated specimens of American plants in European collections).  In 1848, he published the monumental work mentioned above, the 800-page Gray’s Manual.  That book was accompanied by many more, both fundamental science and more popularized works for the educated public.

His Manual became instantly popular (and remains so) for the clarity of its presentation, the accuracy of its taxonomic organization and the completeness of the treatment.  As his 1889 obituary in the National Academy of Sciences read in part:

“Botanists themselves needed some one who could bring together the scattered materials of the early explorers and harmonize the writings of earlier botanists into a compact and comprehensive whole; one who could settle authoritatively doubtful points of nomenclature; who could describe species tersely and clearly so that there might be a good general account of the flora of North America comparable with similar floras of Europe. The public needed some one to tell them what botany itself was and what botanists were doing…. Combining the power of original research with a talent for popular exposition, he was just the man for the time.”

Gray became so popular and authoritative that he wielded substantial influence in philosophy, politics and religion.  This became important when Charles Darwin’s work on natural selection and evolution started a scientific and cultural revolution (learn more about Darwin’s work here).  Gray and Darwin were constant correspondents during this time, exchanging more than 300 letters.  Darwin shared with Gray more than with any other scientists or friends.  Gray was a devout Christian, but he held the belief that Darwin’s discoveries were wonderful and instructive—they showed the mechanisms that his Creator had put into place to organize the world.  Gray had much to do with the eventual acceptance of Darwin’s ideas in the United States.

And Gray has had much to do with the development of botany and biodiversity coonservation in the country.  He discovered and named hundreds of species.  He published the first comprehensive treatment of the distribution of plants, establishing an understanding of how habitat conditions affect an area’s flora.  He explored California with John Muir (learn more about Muir here).  He bequeathed all his materials—herbarium and library—and all his royalties to Harvard University; today Harvard’s botanical collections remain one of the world’s largest and best.  He was an original member of the National Academy of Sciences and other prominent scientific organizations.  His nickname as Father of American Botany is well earned, but wouldn’t it be simpler to just call him “The Stamen”?

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Asa Gray, American Botanist.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Asa-Gray.  Accessed October 30, 2018.

Farlow, W. G.  1889.  Memoir of Asa Gray.  National Academy of Sciences, April 17, 1889.  Available at:  http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/gray-asa.pdf.  Accessed October 30, 2018.

NNDB.  Asa Gray.  Available at:  http://www.nndb.com/people/269/000102960/.  Accessed October 30, 2018.

Sierra Club.  Asa Gray.  Available at:  https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/people/gray.aspx.  Accessed October 30, 2018.

University of Cambridge.  Asa Gray.  Darwin Correspondence Project.  Available at:  https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/asa-gray.  Accessed October 30, 2018.

If people remember David Livingstone at all, it is as the intrepid African explorer made famous by his meeting with journalist Henry Stanley, at which Mr. Stanley presumably just said, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”  Livingstone had been exploring Africa for three decades, penetrating farther into the African interior than any other European.  And on November 17, 1855, he became the first non-African to observe Mosi-oa-Tunya, the amazing waterfall on the Zambezi River.

Livingstone was born in 1813 (died in 1873) to a poor Scottish family.  Growing up with six siblings in a one-room attic apartment, he started work at age 10.  Hard work, intelligence and devout Christianity gave him the physical, mental and spiritual strength to answer the call to become a medical missionary in Africa.  After several years of study, he arrived in Cape Town in 1841, at the age of 28.

He explored throughout southern Africa for 15 years, traveling across the continent from west to east and back again and venturing farther north into what we now call the Congo than any previous European explorer.  He provided medical care and taught Christianity, while also fighting against slavery and poor treatment of native Africans.  He especially sought a river route across the continent, hoping that it would open legitimate commercial trade on the Atlantic coast to replace slave trading.

Consequently, he explored the Zambezi River, from its mid-continent source to its Indian Ocean mouth in Mozambique.  His explorations took him to the area native Africans called Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means “the smoke that thunders.”  The smoke was mist and the thunder was the sound of one of the world’s most unique landscapes—what we now call Victoria Falls and its surrounding ecosystem.

Victoria Falls lies on the Zambezi River, which forms a border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.  The river is 1.2 miles wide at the falls.  A precipice forms a narrow gash in the landscape perpendicular to the water flow.  Nine cascades flow over the basaltic lip, extending almost as wide as the river and crashing on the rocks 350 feet below.  By both length and height, Victoria Falls is much larger than Niagara Falls.  The large flow and long drop create massive spouts of mist that can be viewed from a dozen miles away.  The mist also creates a local rainforest-like ecosystem that supports a number of rare and endangered species including several raptors that nest on the cliffs.

When Livingstone arrived at the falls (either on November 16 or 17—accounts vary, but we’ll use the latter), he was awed by the splendor around him.  He approached the falls on an island perched on the lip of the gorge:

“In looking down into the fissure on the right of the island, one sees nothing but a dense white cloud, which, at the time we visited the spot, had two bright rainbows on it. From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapour exactly like steam, and it mounted 200 or 300 feet high; there condensing, it changed its hue to that of dark smoke, and came back in a constant shower, which soon wetted us to the skin….”

            Long considered one of the natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls is among Africa’s biggest tourist attractions.  Nearly 500,000 people visited during 2016, and visitation took big jumps in both 2017 and 2018.  A new airport, capable of accommodating large jets, and modern hotels are making travel more convenient and affordable.

The falls are protected through two national parks that contain the falls and the lands above and below them.  One is in Zambia (Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park) and one in Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls National Park).  UNESCO placed the Victoria Falls region on its World Heritage List in 1989, noting that the Victoria Falls is  “the world’s greatest sheet of falling water and significant worldwide for its exceptional geological and geomorphological features and active land formations processes with outstanding beauty attributed to the falls i.e. the spray, mist and rainbows.”

The world today agrees with Livingston’s appraisal, when he called the falls “the most wonderful sight I had seen in Africa” and named them in honor of Queen Victoria.  Or call it Mosi-oa-Tunya, your choice.

References:

Africa Albida Tourism.  2017.  A tourism survey of the Victoria Falls region.  Available at:  https://gallery.mailchimp.com/44d89d6770f14113ea889729c/files/040c7db8-4834-44c0-9de4-7a6b786341ff/Africa_s_Living_Soul_2016_low_res_.pdf.  Accessed October 28, 2018.

Roberts, Peter.  To The Victoria Falls.  Available at:  https://www.tothevictoriafalls.com/vfpages/discovery/discfalls.html.  Accessed October 28, 2018.

Shepperson, George Albert.  David Livingstone, Scottish Explorer and Missionary.  Encyclopedia Britannica.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone.  Accessed October 28, 2018.

UNESCO.  Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls.  World Heritage Centre List.  Available at:  https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/509.  Accessed October 28, 2018.