Whither, ‘midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye Might mark thy distant flight, to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chaféd ocean side?
There is a Power, whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— The desert and illimitable air Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere; Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end, Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must trace alone, Will lead my steps aright.
William Cullen Bryant, American poet, was born November 3, 1794 (died 1854). Bryant is considered among the greatest romantic poets, and his poem, To A Waterfowl, is recognized as among the most beautiful of all poems, American or not. He wrote the poem in December of 1815, as he walked the countryside in rural Massachusetts.
Romanticism as a literary form looked to nature for inspiration and beauty. In nature, the artist found lessons that related daily existence and spirituality. For Bryant, walking the seven-mile trek between his home and law office daily, the lone waterfowl seemed to represent his own solitude. But, as the poem continues, Bryant recognizes that the animal’s journey is not random, but guided by an invisible force—the same force that will guide him on his life’s journey.
The American bison became our “national mammal” when President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act into law in 2016. The designation is appropriate, recognizing the parallel paths followed by this magnificent animal and the American approach to conservation.
The first Saturday in November has been recognized as National Bison Day since 2013. I’ve listed it on November 2 because—well, the history of conservation is a little light for this day.
But American bison aren’t light. They are heavy! The bison (Bison bison) is the largest land animal in North America. Males stand up to 6.5 feet tall at the hump on their shoulders and reach 12.5 feet in length; females are a bit smaller. Large males can weigh well over one ton. The front of the bison body is well insulated, with heavy fur and thick fat deposits, allowing it to withstand low temperatures, roaring winds and blizzard snows. In a seeming defiance of the weather, it faces into any storm—what better symbol for the American spirit!
In the 1500s, bison lived throughout North America, east to west and from Alaska to northern Mexico. Their large herds were synonymous with the Great Plains. As Walter Prescott Webb wrote in The Great Plains, “Historically the buffalo had more influence on man that all other Plains animals combined. It was life, food, raiment, and shelter to the Indians. The buffalo and the Plains Indians lived together, and together passed away.”
That passing away occurred in the Great Plains after the closing of the frontier in 1869, when railroads first reached in a continuous track from coast to coast. Bison hunting became big business. Techniques were developed for tanning bison skins into high-quality leather. Bison bones were identified as excellent raw materials for fine-bone china, and bones also were used in sugar refining and as mineral supplements in fertilizer. Bison meat was harvested to feed railroad-building crews, and massive amounts were wasted. From the comfort of luxury railroad cars, wealthy adventurers took up bison hunting. A railway engineer in 1873 said that one could walk 100 miles along the Santa Fe railroad by stepping from one bison carcass to the next, never touching the ground.
Enormous pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground into fertilizer in the 1870s.
By 1883, the bison was nearly gone from the United States. The few remaining herds numbered only a hundred or so animals, and all existed only in protected areas like Yellowstone National Park. The loss of bison was dramatic, but the circumstance was being repeated for species after species. The Passenger Pigeon, once the most common bird on the continent, was gone from the wild. White-tailed deer and Wild Turkeys were similarly hunted to near extinction.
Many bills were introduced toward the end of the 19th Century to protect bison, at both state and federal levels. Few made it into law and those that did were mostly ignored. Bison, like other aspects of the environment, were low priorities to a country bent on conquering nature.
Things began to improve in 1900, when the federal government passed the Lacey Act (learn more about the Lacey Act here). This law prohibits trade in fish, wildlife and plants across state lines if they have been illegally taken. When state laws began to make commercial harvest of wild animals illegal, the Lacey Act effectively ended market hunting.
And the good news, as we know, is that the American bison has made a dramatic recovery (and so have many other wild species). Today, about 20,000 wild bison live in the U.S. and Canada. Almost all are in protected areas like national parks and bison preserves. The IUCN Red List categorizes bison as “near threatened” (just one click above “least concern”) with stable populations, but dependent on the continued care of conservation organizations and government agencies . Moreover, about 160,000 bison now live on private farms, where they are raised for food and other products.
As the National Bison Legacy Act states, “Bison are considered a historical symbol of the United States; bison are integrally linked with the economic and spiritual lives of many Indian tribes…; bison can play an important role in improving the types of grasses found in landscapes to the benefit of grasslands”—and much more.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Time Line of the American Bison. National Bison Range Wildlife Refuge Complex. Available at: https://www.fws.gov/bisonrange/timeline.htm. Accessed November 1, 2017.
The most famous landscape photograph in history, taken by the greatest landscape photographer in history, was shot in the early evening of November 1, 1941. Both the photograph and the effort to date its creation are remarkable stories.
The life of Ansel Adams is chronicled on his birthday, February 20 (learn more about Adams here), but this day is special for the photographic event that occurred then. Ansel Adams was 39 years old and photographing in the countryside north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He’d spent a disappointing day in the Chama Valley area on the state border with Colorado, unable to get the right combination of subject matter and light to satisfy his demanding standards. As the light began to fade, he, his son and assistants climbed into his well-used Pontiac station wagon and headed for home.
Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico by Ansel Adams
Adams drove fast—always—but he knew the roads well on the way back to Santa Fe. As he drove south on U.S. 84, he would have been watching the sky, the clouds and the light, perhaps picturing in his mind the possibilities for a photograph. Then, as he rounded a bend in the road, he saw the small village of Hernandez to the west. The moon had risen and was illuminated by the setting sun over his left shoulder. Below the moon lay banks of white clouds along the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and below the mountains lay Hernandez. In the foreground, the white crosses of a cemetery glowed brightly from the reflected sunshine.
Adams slammed on the brakes, swerved to the shoulder and, in a storm of gravel and dust, jumped from the driver’s seat. He began throwing equipment from the car, ordering his assistants to bring the camera, tripod, film and light meter. Knowing that the light might disappear at any second, Adams rushed to assemble the equipment—but the light meter could not be found. Remembering that the moon reflected 250 foot-candles of light, he estimated the right setting for the shot—a one-second exposure at an aperture of f/32.
He took the shot. He prepared to take another shot—but stopped. In the seconds required to reverse the film, the light had disappeared. He’d had just one chance to expose the film.
But one exposure was all that was needed. He had captured Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico for all time. If there is such a thing, Moonrise is the perfect environmental photograph. The broad expanse of sky, mountains and land demonstrate the overpowering strength of nature. The village in the foreground illustrates the essential interaction between humans and nature, which provides the resources needed for life. And the white crosses remind us that the life of the individual is fleeting, but the population and species continues.
And, of course, the photograph is a masterpiece of composition, beauty and technical skill. Over his life, Adams made about 1300 prints of Moonrise. Today a print can bring more than $500,000 at auction. One estimate puts the total value of Moonrise prints at $25 million.
A photograph of such beauty, fame and value begged another question: When was it taken? Ansel Adams, who had frequently frustrated his publishers by not recording or remembering when he had taken a photo, could only shrug. During the fall in the early 1940s, he guessed.
The photograph, however, offered many clues to its birthdate, given the right expertise and equipment to interpret the data. The definitive answer came from a 1980 analysis by a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado. Based on the position of the moon, lighting of various mountain peaks and other clues from topographic maps and surveyor’s instruments, all filtered through a computer, he pinpointed the exact date and time: 4:03 PM on October 31, 1941. Adams, who was still alive at the time, was delighted to have the mystery solved. “Yippee!” he wrote to the scientist.
Only one problem—he was wrong. When an amateur astronomer, Dennis di Cicco, grew interested in the dating process, he tried to reproduce the results—and failed. Upon further analysis, it seems the computer used in the original analysis had distorted the image. The scientist was embarrassed and admitted the error. Dennis di Cicco stayed on the trail, and eventually corrected for the distortion.
The real birthday of the photograph was about a day later, exactly 4:49:20 PM on November 1, 1941.
Haederle, Mike. 1991. It is Ansel Adams’ single most popular picture. And no one, not even the photographer, was sure when it was made. Until now. ‘Moonrise’ Mystery. Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1991. Available at: http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-31/news/vw-757_1_ansel-adams. Accessed October 31, 2017.
Most historians consider the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 to be the end of the frontier era in America. The country had become tied together coast-to-coast, with citizens able to travel in relative ease and safety across the nation in a short time. A similar event—the dedication of the Lincoln Highway—occurred on October 31, 1913, paving the way for reliable automobile travel and ushering in the American love affair with cars.
The automobile was gaining popularity and reliability in the early 1900s, but travel was restricted primarily to local use. The cause? Bad roads, or no roads, extending for long distances. Carl G. Fisher, an Indianapolis entrepreneur and car enthusiast, understood the problem: “The automobile won’t get anywhere until it has good roads to run on.” And he had a solution: Establish a roadway from New York City to San Francisco that would be paved from end to end. And to give it an All-American flavor, name that road the “Lincoln Highway” after the nation’s most popular president.
Fisher formed the Lincoln Highway Association and began the work of raising friends and funds. His idea was to build the road with private money, but that soon gave way to using private funds for marketing and encouraging local and state governments and civic groups to pay the construction costs. The next task was to pick a route. Fisher and his friends set out on a “Trail-Blazer” tour in the summer of 1913, crisscrossing the country for 34 days. They were greeted everywhere as celebrities by local dignitaries hoping the road would pass through their communities.
The chosen route was 3,389 miles long, following a hodge-podge of historical pathways once used by Native Americans, westward pioneers, the Pony Express and others. When the route was announced and the highway dedicated on October 31, 1913, cities along the route held celebrations with bonfires, fireworks, parades and speeches.
Gradually—very gradually—the goal of paving the entire length of the route gained ground and a “highway” emerged. By the time of the road’s formal opening in 1928, all but 42 miles of the route had been paved, and that section was under construction. Eventually, the highway received the designation as U.S. Route 30 along most of its length, and the name Lincoln Highway fell out of use. For those of us who grew up in and around Chicago, the radio ads for “the beautiful U.S. 30 Dragstrip” were a constant reminder of the importance of the route.
As a symbol and, perhaps, driver of American car culture, the Lincoln Highway’s start provides a useful milepost. When the project began, the U.S. had 190,000 miles of paved roads (that is, covered with something other than dirt); today, the country has 2.7 million paved miles, a 14-fold increase. In 1913, the U.S. had 13 vehicles per 1000 people; today, the country has 830 vehicles per 1000 people, a 64-fold increase. The U.S. has more vehicles per capita than any country in the world, except Monaco (go figure…). With 4.5% of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes 20.7% of the world’s petroleum, a rate nearly 5 times the average for the rest of the world. We do love our cars!
When my wife and I visit her hometown in central Illinois, we sometimes drive the back roads along what is known as the “Lincoln Heritage Trail.” Signs resembling the Lincoln penny mark the routes that Lincoln traversed through Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. I wonder what Lincoln would think about our addiction to cars and travel today.
Two of Lincoln’s quotes seem apropos. First, he said, “I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.” Undoubtedly, Lincoln would envy our ability to get around efficiently, comfortably and quickly. He would probably also encourage us sometimes to move a little more slowly, to smell those roses, to take the back roads.
Second, he said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Undoubtedly, Lincoln would also admire the ingenuity and capability of the American people to invent a transportation system so remarkable. But, he would also drive us not to rest on our past accomplishments, but aim for a better future. He’d worry over issues of climate change caused by gas-burning vehicles, habitat losses to road building and the stresses and inefficiency of traffic congestion.
Today, I’m sure, he would tell us that the future we should be creating is a future of sustainable, carbon-neutral transportation.
References:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 2016. Transportation Energy Data Book. 35th Edition, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Available at: http://cta.ornl.gov/data/index.shtml. Accessed October 30, 2017.
Weingroff, Richard F. 2017. The Lincoln Highway. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway History. Available at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/lincoln.cfm. Accessed October 30, 2017.
What is the most visited National Park Service property? No, not Grand Canyon, not Yosemite, not even Great Smoky National Park. The most visited property—and the fifth most visited property, as well—are “urban parks” in the San Francisco and New York City areas. Golden Gate National Recreation Area (NRA) and Gateway NRA were created on October 27, 1972, representing a revolution in our national park philosophy.
Without question, our national parks and related properties—national monuments, national seashores and rivers, battlefields, historic parks and others—are treasures. After World War 2, however, the National Park Service began to examine their mission in light of a growing and diversifying population. They created “Mission 66,” a new program to guide a coming era of park expansion and changing operations. Their analysis showed they were only servicing some Americans, not all. To enjoy the most spectacular parks in the rural West, one needed a car, a long vacation and considerable cash. Outdoor recreation was predominantly white recreation.
During the 1960s, a number of chronic social issues bubbled to the surface, including civil rights and environmental quality. Embedded in those issues was the separation of urban populations, including the working poor and ethnic minorities, from the nation’s public resources. In a major strategic adjustment to its mission, the National Park Service began to add urban parks to its inventory.
The crown jewel of that strategy is Golden Gate NRA. Golden Gate emerged from two post-WW2 trends. First, the military had excess lands in many places, including large holdings around San Francisco Bay. Second, the growing population, especially in the West, was putting development pressure on open lands adjacent to major cities, like San Francisco. When a major project was proposed to sell military lands to private developers for housing subdivisions around the bay, civic groups rose in unison to propose an alternative—a new park for the urban residents of San Francisco.
California Congressman Phillip Burton became the champion for the idea. Burton believed that the nation should have “parks for the people, where the people are.” Known as a fighter for the “little guy,” he crusaded for local outdoor recreation for all people, regardless of wealth, status or ethnicity. On October 27, 1972, he achieved his signature success when President Nixon signed the law creating Golden Gate. On the same day, the President created a companion park on the opposite coast to serve the people of the New York City metropolitan area—Gateway NRA.
Golden Gate NRA is huge—covering more than 80,000 acres, it is the largest urban park in the world. In 2016, it received 15.6 million visits, the most of any National Park Service property, averaging 42,000 visits per day. The park includes 19 distinct ecosystems distributed among 7 watersheds and is part of the UNESCO Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve. It is home to the 3rd largest number of federally protected species among the 400+ units of the National Park Service. But it is also an important historical and cultural site, encompassing 1200 historic structures and Alcatraz Island.
Gateway NRA is similar. It exists as a series of peninsulas and coastal stretches surrounding New York harbor, covering 26,000 acres in all. In 2016, it was the fifth most visited NPS unit, with 8.7 million visits. Within the park lies the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a major stopping point for birds migrating along the Atlantic flyway. It has been a “flyway” for humans as well, with several historic airfields within the park. Most of the nation’s daredevil aviators of the 1920s and 1930s, including Wiley Post, Howard Hughes, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and “Wrongway” Corrigan, flew in and out of the park’s airfields.
The distinctive feature of these parks, however, is much less the elements within them than where they are located. The resources are spectacular, of course, with beaches, marshes and forests, but the reality that these areas have been preserved for the enjoyment of urban Americans makes them true natural resource treasures.
I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal She’s a good old worker and a good old pal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal We’ve hauled some barges in our day Filled with lumber, coal, and hay And every inch of the way we know From Albany to Buffalo
So go the lyrics to the folksong, “Low Bridge, Everybody Down,” written in 1905 by Thomas Allen. From the time the Erie Canal was completed and opened, on October 26, 1825, to today, the Erie Canal represents the epitome of American vision, ingenuity and practical capability.
The Erie Canal was the brainchild of DeWitt Clinton, a lawyer and politician who served as a New York legislator, senator and governor. Because of his dogged determination to build the canal, the project was called “Clinton’s Ditch” during his day.
The project was massive, the biggest public works initiative in the history of the new nation. When completed, it ran 363 miles from the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. Along the way, 83 locks raised the waterway 571 feet from East to West, and 18 aquaducts carried the canal over rivers. The original canal was 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, accompanied by tow-paths on both shores that allowed teams of mules and horses to pull canal boats along their journeys. Construction began on July 4, 1817 and ended eight years later, as Clinton poured a bucket of Lake Erie water into the ocean at New York.
When completed, it was often called the Eighth Wonder of the World. The canal became a symbol of American can-do spirit. The canal had immediate positive results for the nation, and former skeptics shrank into the background. The trip by stagecoach from Albany to Buffalo had taken two weeks of back-breaking travel; by canal, it took five days in relative comfort. More importantly, it opened markets from the Midwest to the country’s eastern seaboard, assuring inexpensive and healthy food supplies and a stable economy for farmers. As each section of the canal opened, expansion of commerce followed, mile after mile from Albany westward.
Within a few years, the canal reached capacity and needed to be expanded. Between 1836 and 1862, the width was increased to 70 feet and the depth to 7 feet. From 1903 to 1918, the canal was enlarged again and became known as the Erie Barge Canal. The locks were reduced to 36, much deeper and wider than earlier, speeding travel. The canal still operates today, but mostly for recreational boats.
What is the conservation message? First, of course, the ability of humans and nature to work together to accomplish meaningful improvements in civilization is the essence of conservation. Second, however and more specifically, the Erie Canal illustrates the importance of water-borne transportation. Moving materials, especially heavy and bulky products like coal, oil, rock and concrete, by water remains the most efficient and safest form of transportation. In terms of greenhouse gases produced per ton of cargo, barge transportation is a bargain compared to railroad and, especially, truck transportation.
The US Army Corps of Engineers maintains 12,000 miles of navigable waterways, mostly along the coasts and through the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. These waterways transport 60% of total grain exports, 22% of petroleum production and 20% of coal used for electricity production.
The Erie Canal and its various branches are now featured in a unique National Park Service unit called the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. The corridor, created in 2000, encompasses the entire upstate New York region, specifically highlighting 524 miles of navigable waterways.
References:
Erie Canalway. Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. National Park Service. Available at: https://eriecanalway.org/. Accessed October 25, 2017.
Albert B. Fall, Secretary of Interior under President Warren G. Harding, was convicted on October 25, 1929, of accepting bribes from oil executives to lease federal oil reserves to their companies. Three properties were involved, but the resulting scandal—considered the worst in U.S. history until Watergate—carries the name of one of them, Teapot Dome.
Albert Fall (born in 1861) was a Kentuckian, but moved to the West as a young man to relieve an ongoing respiratory condition (his or his wife’s is not clear). He worked in mining and studied law independently, entering the New Mexico Territory bar in 1889 and eventually practicing law in El Paso, Texas.
He entered politics, serving first in the New Mexico Territorial House, then as a judge and finally as one of New Mexico’s first two U.S. Senators, elected in 1912. He served in the senate until 1921, when President Harding appointed him Secretary of the Interior. Many were skeptical of Fall’s appointment, knowing of his bias for commercial development of natural resources and his close friendship with oil executives. Gifford Pinchot, who had founded the U.S. Forest Service, was particularly suspicious of Fall. Fall proposed moving the Forest Service from Agriculture to Interior, a move that Pinchot fought aggressively—and which never occurred.
During the Taft administration, the government had created a series of naval oil reserves in western states, administered by the Secretary of the Navy. The reserves were established as protection for the fuel needs of the Navy, but the administrative language gave great latitude to the Secretary for their operation.
Fall realized the great financial opportunity associated with the oil reserves. While the public’s attention was focused on the question of the transfer of the Forest Service, Fall quietly convinced the Secretary of the Navy to transfer the management of the reserves to the Department of the Interior, citing his experience in the industry. Together, they acquired President Harding’s approval, as he noted he had heard no public outcry about this, as he had for the Forest Service.
Two reserves were in California, and a third, the Teapot Dome, was in Wyoming. Teapot Dome was named for a geological formation in the reserve. Almost immediately, in early 1922, Fall made deals with two oil companies to lease them the oil reserves in exchange for bribes, gifts and loans (never intended to be repaid). Fall received over $400,000 in illegal payments. The oil companies got exclusive rights to the oil, which has been estimated as a $100 million windfall. Estimates also show that the U.S. government could have received $10-50 million in additional revenue had the leases gone through a competitive bidding process.
Pinchot immediately began lobbying for an investigation. Within a few months, the Congress appointed a special counsel to investigate the accusations of bribery and illegal leasing. Fall resigned as Secretary of the Interior in early 1923, and he was indicted in 1924 along with several others. The trials dragged on for years, but Fall was eventually convicted of bribery on October 25, 1929, and sentenced to one year in prison. The reserves were returned to the Secretary of the Navy, and the leases were cancelled.
For the next fifty years, Teapot Dome was the epitome of federal mis-management of federal resources, both natural and fiscal. At the time, one senator called the scandal “the slimiest of slimy trails beaten by privilege.” President Harding has gone down in history as a poor manager, allowing a cabinet of disreputable scoundrels to run the government. The revelations associated with Teapot Dome and other scandals is considered a contributing factor to the unexpected death of President Harding in August, 1923.
Antoni von Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist known as the “father of microbiology” was born on October 24, 1632. Leeuwenhoek was the first person to identify the small “animalcules” that we now know as bacteria and other forms of microscopic life.
Leeuwenhoek was anything but a classical biologist. Born in Delft, Holland, to working class parents, he had little formal education. He became an apprentice to a fabric-maker in Amsterdam and returned later to Delft to take up the textile trade. Textile makers and buyers often used magnifying glasses to inspect their wares, and Leeuwenhoek acquired his first lens in 1653. Soon after, he began to grind his own lenses.
He was quite talented at grinding lenses and polishing glass, and, accompanied by a naturally acute sense of vision, he began making his own versions of microscopes (he is sometimes credited with inventing the microscope, but that isn’t true). Over his lifetime, he made more than 500 microscopes. He made tiny pin-hole lenses, which he imbedded between sheets of copper. Behind the lens, he fashioned a tiny pin that could hold specimens and a pair of screws that moved the specimen into focus. While the early compound microscopes of the day could achieve only about 20-power magnification, Leeuwenhoek’s single-lens devices could produce 200-power magnification. His skill at glass-making, lighting and delicate movements made him able to use the devices much more effectively than others.
Then the fun started! He began to examine unlikely bits of the biosphere—water drops from a lake, deposits scraped from between his teeth, blood. Then he went on to virtually anything he could get behind a lens. He found an abundance of simple living organisms and other biological structures, like blood cells and tiny hairs on microorganisms that we now call cilia. He demonstrated how blood flows through blood vessels. He was the first to describe bacteria, considered his most important accomplishment. But he also discovered nematodes and rotifers, and described green algae Spirogyra and Vorticella.
From 1673 on, he wrote regular letters to the Royal Society of London. Although he wrote in his native Dutch and had no academic credentials, the society translated his letters and published them. Slowly he gained credibility as his discoveries were confirmed one after the other. He was awarded membership in the Royal Society in 1680 and continued writing about his observations until the very end of his life in 1723.
Although naturalists tend to focus on big things—the so-called “charismatic megafauna”—we now know that the actions of microorganisms are essential to the ecological processes that support ecosystems and civilizations. Water is cleaned, soil is created, materials 32are cycled, all as part of the life-cycles of microorganisms. For that reason, Antoni von Leeuwenhoek, who first opened our eyes to the lives of tiny things, deserves a place in the annals of great conservationists!
President Richard Nixon signed into law the creation of Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia, on October 23, 1972. His action punctuated a 400-year-old journey of human and natural change that continues to this day.
Cumberland Island is the southernmost barrier island on Georgia’s Atlantic coast, between Jekyll Island on the north and Florida’s Amelia Island on the south. The island is 17.5 miles long, and between 0.5-miles and 3.0-miles wide. A large part of the National Seashore’s 36,415 acres are marshes and shallow-water flats.
The island has been inhabited and modified since pre-history. First Native American Indians lived on the island, using fire to control their environment. Then, in the 1560s, Spanish settlers came to the island, introducing horses, hogs and cattle and many European crops. Feral hogs—unpopular and being controlled—and wild horses—wildly popular and virtually untouchable—remain on the island. Later, plantations staffed by slaves grew cotton that became a famous product of the island. In the 1900s, the island became popular as a recreational area for industrial barons, with the Carnegie family owning up to 90% of the island at one time.
But as the Carnegie family lost interest in the island, they offered the property to the National Park Service. With the National Seashore proclaimed in 1972, the National Park Service began buying tracts from the Carnegies and others, creating the park. Although most of the island lies within the park boundaries, a substantial portion of the lands are still owned by private individuals, some outright and others with a life-time rights of use.
Overall, the park is minimally developed for recreation. Access is only by boat, and no facilities are provided. Visitors are limited to 300 per day; annual visitation is less than 100,000. A significant portion (about 9,000 acres) of the northern part of the island is now a federally designated wilderness area.
The park has three goals—recreation, historic preservation and nature protection. As with many National Park Service properties, these goals can come into conflict. That is particularly true for Cumberland Island, with its long history of human habitation and modification. The biological resources are not unique, but nesting by loggerhead turtles and more than 300 bird species make it a particularly rich biodiversity site. Hunting to control deer and feral hogs occurs through several specialized hunts (bow-and-arrow, primitive weapons, adult/child) annually. A total of 87 historic structures remain on the island, but most are ruins. Private development is proposed regularly for the private lands on the island and sometimes within the park, but little has been done in recent decades. Hurricane Irma in August 2017 caused sufficient damage that the park was closed for several months.
Torres, Louis. 1977. Historic Resource Study, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia, and Historic Structure Report, Historical Data Section of the Dungeness Area. National Park Service. Available at: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/cuis/hrs_hsr.pdf. Accessed October 23, 2017.
Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling was born on October 21, 1876 (died 1962). Darling became one of the nation’s foremost editorial cartoonists, but his real love was for conservation. He became known as “the best friend a duck ever had.”
Darling was raised on the edge of the Iowa prairie frontier, learning to ride, shoot and love nature as a boy. He witnessed first-hand, throughout his life, the changes that occurred as the growing U.S. population pushed West, often converting the naturally productive landscape into a wasteland. Reversing that trend would be a life-long passion.
But Darling had another passion and talent—he could draw, with meaning and humor. That talent often landed him in hot water—he was tossed from college for drawing unflattering pictures of the university’s president. But it also led to a career as an editorial cartoonist, working for most of a half-century for the Des Moines Register. In those days, the editorial cartoons often appeared on the front page of the newspaper, making Darling’s contributions one of the first things readers saw when they picked up the paper. His prominence grew steadily, with his cartoons eventually gracing more than 100 papers across the nation and earning two Pulitzer Prizes.
But he was also a conservationist, and he used his editorial privilege to bring that message to the front pages of the nation’s newspapers as well. He was particularly concerned about soils, wetlands and the animals they produced—ducks. Because of land clearing and draining for row crops, the wetlands where waterfowl reproduced were disappearing. And because of excess hunting, ducks were in double jeopardy.
Always willing to “speak truth to power,” he made himself such a nuisance to President Franklin Roosevelt complaining about the woeful condition of wildlife that the president finally called him into Washington to run the U.S. Biological Survey (now the Fish and Wildlife Service). Despite his dislike of Roosevelt and most of his policies, Darling accepted the position as his duty to conservation. In a short 20 months, Darling brought new life and professionalism to the agency. From a few ignored properties, he made the National Wildlife Refuge System into the powerful conservation tool it is today.
He is most famous for his development of the Duck Stamp program. Passed just as Darling was coming to Washington, the Duck Stamp Act required that all hunters of migratory waterfowl purchase an annual “stamp.” The first stamps, issued in 1935, cost one dollar; today the stamp costs $25. Darling drew the picture of two mallard ducks landing in a marsh that appeared on the first stamp. Today, an annual art contest decides the image to appear on the stamp. The Duck Stamp program is one of the most successful conservation funding ideas in history. It has generated nearly $1 billion for buying and improving wildlife refuges, using an amazing 96 cents of every dollar for direct conservation work. The concept has been copied in many nations around the world, in all U.S. states and for various other forms of wildlife.
Darling went on to found the organization that has become the National Wildlife Federation. He believed that education was the most important tool for conservation—so much so that he personally co-funded the first Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at Iowa State University. Today more than fifty similar units operate at universities across the United States.
References:
Nielsen, Larry A. 2017. Nature’s Allies—Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World. Island Press, Washington, DC. 255 pages.
But one exposure was all that was needed. He had captured Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico for all time. If there is such a thing, Moonrise is the perfect environmental photograph. The broad expanse of sky, mountains and land demonstrate the overpowering strength of nature. The village in the foreground illustrates the essential interaction between humans and nature, which provides the resources needed for life. And the white crosses remind us that the life of the individual is fleeting, but the population and species continues.
