Ecology Hall of Fame: John Muir

by Kate Kaliner

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
-- My First Summer in the Sierra (John Muir, 1911)

John Muir was born in Dunbar Scotland on April 21st, 1838, before he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1849, where he became one of the earliest proponents for the preservation of our country’s wilderness. Muir saw man’s role as
playing a part of the larger whole of the natural world, not at its’ center, and he saw nature as a spiritual resource.
John Muir traveled across the world and the United States, including a thousand-mile walk from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico. His writings on his adventures and philosophy have been published in 300 articles and 10 books, and inspire readers even today.
Muir was most struck by California's Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, where his geological and ecological theories on the region earned him widespread recognition. His voice and work led to the establishment of the U.S. National Park System, (including, during his lifetime, Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and other parks). In efforts to protect Yosemite National Park, Muir and his supporters founded the Sierra Club in 1892, of which Muir served as president for the rest of his life, and which remains our country’s leading grassroots organization for protecting wilderness and the environment.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
- Travels in Alaska by John Muir, 1915, chapter 1, page 5.

Sources

Hoagland, Edward. (2002). John muir's alaskan rhapsody. The American Scholar v. 71 no. 2 (Spring 2002) p. 101-5

Muir, John. (1911). My First Summer in the Sierra. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company

Sierra Club. (2006). John muir: A brief biography. Retrieved March 29, 2007 from John Muir Exhibit: Sierra Club Web site: http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir
_exhibit/

Wood, Harold W., Jr. (2005). Earthkeeper hero: John muir. Retrieved March 29, 2007 from Earthkeeper Heros: My Hero Website: http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=
j_muir

Ecology Hall of Fame: Teddy Roosevelt

By Ginamarie Yacovelli

This Land Is Our Land: How Theodore Roosevelt Helped Make It That Way

One of the lasting legacies of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is the conservation effort he helped promote. He is credited with being the first president with the goals of environmental conservation. As he stated in his Seventh Annual Message on December 3, 1907, “To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. (Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907)”
He was very resolute in his plans for the procurement of natural spaces that would be free from the hands of developers. Even prior to becoming President of the United States, Roosevelt was adamant about the positive role that environmental awareness played. In 1887, Roosevelt founded a club with George Grinnell, the founder of “Forest and Stream” magazine. The Boone and Crockett Club had the intent of protecting the interests of environmental issues. The club stepped in when it was made aware that mining and railroad companies were interested in Yellowstone National Park. At the time there were no rules for the protection of parks. “With editorials, speaking engagements, and furious lobbying among Washington's rich and powerful, the B & C succeeded. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill protecting Yellowstone.”(PBS). Roosevelt would continue this type of protecting parks during his presidency. During his time in office, Roosevelt started the National Park Service with the intent of protecting the great expanses of nature so that Americans could enjoy them. “The forest reserves were renamed “National Forests” in token that their resources of all kinds, instead of being kept away from the people, were opened for use and made ever more and more accessible, as Roosevelt so fully and continuously advocated” (Lewis). The man was dedicated to seeing that the citizens of the United States would not be denied the protection of natural wonders like the Grand Canyon. He wanted to make sure that generations to come would have the same breathtaking scenes to marvel at and be inspired by. And he looked out for the people in other ways, too. “He pushed through the Pure Food and Meat Inspection laws of 1906, forcing Congress to acknowledge its responsibility as consumer protector” (Morriss, 1998). Theodore Roosevelt was a truly inspiring individual that was able to see with clarity the importance of environmental issues. Luckily for the citizens of the United States, we had Theodore Roosevelt looking out for our land.


References
Morriss, E (1998, 04 13). Leaders and revolutionaries. TIME Magazine

Lewis, W.D. (1919). The life of theodore roosevelt. John C. Winston Company

T.R.'s legacy - the environment. Retrieved April 1, 2007, from PBS.ORG Web site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/envir.html

Quotations about the environment. Retrieved April 1, 2007, from Quotegarden.com Web site: http://www.quotegarden.com/environment.html

Ecology Hall of Fame: Rachel Carson

Yadira Toledo
Soul of Eco-Art
Rachel Carson Hall Fame

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on
the wonders and realities of the universe about us,
the less taste we shall have for destruction."
-- Rachel Carson © 1954

Rachel Carson was born May 27,1907 and died in Silver Spring, Maryland on April 14,1964.

Her Background:
Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. As a scientist she was very keen to her surroundings. Although she was a scientist she really believed that nature was a force beyond mans hands. In 1952 after her first book, Silent Spring, hit bestseller, she left the Fish and Wildlife organization where she held a high position being as though she was a women to pursue her writing.
Her Accomplishments:
She also wrote several articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever-Changing Shore" (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.

Her Motivation:
Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long-term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Looking into what she did and how strong of a writer she was in just astonishing. The one important thing I admired from her is that she is a woman who was single minded in her purpose. She worked hard to get what she wanted and didn’t care if she got in trouble. She wanted to warn people of all the chemicals and toxins that were surrounding them. She stopped at nothing and that’s the type of inspiration and influence I want to give when I become a teacher.

References:

1. Carson, Rachel (2002). Silent spring. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.
2. Weiss, D.(2002). Rachel Carson. Retrieved May 1, 2007 from http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/carson/
3. Carson, Rachel. (1951) The sea around us. New York, Oxford University Press.
   

Ecology Hall of Fame: Terry Tempest Williams

By Christina Roberts

Terry Tempest Williams, born in 1955, is an American writer and environmentalist who focus is on the deserts of the American West. Besides being in the Ecology Hall of Fame, she is an accomplished author of several books (Pieces of White Shell, An Unspoken Hunger, Leap, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, and The Open Space of Democracy ). Williams writings, besides personal and educational, are reflective of current issues in our environment. Her passion to protect the desert and its wildlife is transcended to people who don’t necessarily think about the environment. Her article in Sports Illustrated relates to fans of wildlife, on the court and off. After reading some of her work, I have slowed myself down to appreciate and really look at the details as well as the big picture of the world around us. Williams writes of issues that would keep most conscientious people up at night. Without preservation of the earth and its inhabitants, our future is bleak. Williams brings hope and understanding to the health our future as well as the earth’s. Her essay, The Earth Stares Back, is accompanied with the aerial photography of Emmet Gowin. Without reading the essay, one would think some of the images are naturally evolved by time and weather. The erosion is not all natural and the wildlife is declining because of the drastic change in conditions (Gowin, 2002). Huge mining sites and test craters are scars in the Earth (Gowin, 2002). Together Williams and Gowin create a powerful message to encourage people to be responsible for their actions. Williams(2002) writes ”Emmet Gowin has made exposures of the Earth, a changed earth, an Earth we may not recognize because our eyes have been locked on the horizon. We live at eye level, which is its own conceit, a point of view that supports what we believe to be true- that the Earth is here simply to support us. We survey the land around us and dream of the ways it can serve us” (p.126).



Emmett Gowin, Copper Ore Tailing, Arizona 1988, split toned gelatin silver print


References:

Moonwater, R. (2007). www.coyoteclan.com. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.coyoteclan.com/index.html

Williams, T. (2002). The earth stares back. In Gowin, E. (Ed.), Changing the earth (pp. 125-131). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Williams, T. (2003). Big game, this naturalist's binoculars moved from deer to hawks to karl malone [Electronic version].Sports Illustrated, 10. Retrieved March 30,2007, from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/features/si50/states/utah/essay/

Williams, T. (2004a).Ground truthing [Electronic version]. Orion Magazine, 4(2). Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-3om/TempestWilliams.html

Williams, T. (2004b) Engagement [Electronic version]. Orion Magazine, 4(3). Retrieved April 4, 2007, from http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-4om/TempestWilliams.html

Ecology Hall of Fame: David Brower

By Jessica King

“I'd like to declare open season on developers. Not kill them, just tranquilize them” (ActivistCash.com, 2007). This is a quote used fairly often by David Brower. Other quotes, such as, “"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing" (ActivistCash.com, 2007) really made Brower’s position regarding humans in opposition to the environment appallingly clear. He was a passionate human being, who fought for the environment and against technology. His passion was translated into action, as he fought to preserve ecology both physically and verbally. In one of his lectures, Brower claimed that the U.S. has 6% of the world’s population, yet we use 60% of the world’s resources. Furthermore, only 1% of Americans use that 60% of resources. This information that he gathered came from a friend who figured it out in his head. Brower said he believed his friend because it felt true to him. It was said that Brower’s passion and devotion came from believing in things that you cannot necessarily see. Before he passed in 2000, he was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was involved in many environmental organizations, such as Sierra Club, which he was an active participant in from 1952-1969. In addition, he created many of his own organizations, including League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth, and Earth Island Institute. Brower had a tremendous global impact, and was an environmental leader of his time. He helped fight for some of the most significant natural wonders of our world, including The Grand Canyon. And although Brower did encounter many setbacks during his lifetime, he never lost sight of what was important to him, which was to fight to keep the world ecosystem alive.

I really enjoyed researching David Brower and his work. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that one person can really impact the world. His passion is what drove him to work hard and fight hard for what he believed in. David Brower was truly an inspiration to many, including me!

References:

Carmin, J., Balser, D. (2002). Selecting Repertoires of Action in Environmental Movement Organizations. Organization & Environment, 15(4), 365-388.

Newman, D. (2006). Sociology: Exploring the everyday architecture of life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Weiss, Don. (2002). Ecology Hall of Fame: David Brower. Retrieved March 22, 2007 from http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/brower/bio.html.

ActivistCash.com. (2007). David Brower: Biography. Retrieved March 22, 2007 from http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm.

Ecology Hall of Fame: Henry David Thoreau

By Jayme Miller

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, philosopher, and naturalist. He was born July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau graduated from Harvard College in 1837. He was an instrumental part of the Transcendentalist Movement., which was a search for reality through spiritual intuition. Thoreau is best known for his “Civil Disobedience” essay. He refused to pay the poll tax in protest over the United States invasion of Mexico. The result, he ended up spending a night in jail.

Thoreau is one of the most quoted authors. His writings appear in high school and college literature classes nationally, and even on shirts, mugs, and posters. His words have touched millions inspiring conversations and thought (The Thoreau Society 2006). Thoreau did not gain the fame he is acclaimed to during his lifetime, in fact he was not well known outside of his peers and friends. Thoreau mainstreamed the philosophy that humans are part of nature and humans function best individually and in society when they are aware of this reality (Weiss 2003).

Thoreau is considered to have earned his role in The Ecology Hall of Fame for the time he spent at Walden Pond. He moved to Walden Pond in 1845, a few years after his brother had passed away. Thoreau was in search of a quiet place to write a book about a canoe trip he and his brother had taken (Weiss 2003). Unbeknown to him, Walden Pond would influence the way he lives and his relationship with nature. Thoreau stated, “I seek acquaintance with nature, to know her moods and manners (Brower 29). Thoreau spent a great deal of time walking and thinking. He became lost in his thoughts and embraced all of the beauty around him. Thoreau studied the trees, plants, and seeds the forest bared. He read and kept journals of his days in the wilderness. Thoreau immersed himself in human experience and for that and his inspiring words we appreciate life more.

References

About Henry David Thoreau. (2006). The Thoreau Society. Concord, Massachusetts. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from http://thoreausociety.org/_news_abouthdt.htm

Bode, Carl. (1964). Thoreau. New York, NY: The Viking Inc.

Brower, David R. (1993/1994). Stop the Carnage. Earth Island Journal, 9(1), 29.

Weiss, Don. (2003). Ecology Hall of Fame Henry David Thoreau. Ecotopia. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/thoreau/bio.html

Ecology Hall of Fame: Aldo Leopold

By Nathan Reinhold

Aldo Leopold was an American ecologist, forester, environmentalist, and author. He was born January 11th, 1887 according to the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Leopold is credited with being the “father of wildlife management” (ALF, n.d.). He graduated from the Yale Forest School in 1909 and started a career in forestry, which eventually brought him to Baraboo, Wisconsin. It was at a nearby farm where he would write his famous book A Sand County Almanac. He went through a philosophical transformation during the time he lived on this farm that would shape his influential beliefs. He loved the natural world and he saw the protection and preservation of the environment as a philosophical dilemma.

In A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, Leopold collected a series of essays on conservation, which “set the stage for the modern conservation movement” (ALF). “In 1935, Leopold bought an abandoned farm in the sand counties along the Wisconsin River near Baraboo” (Frese, 2003). There he would write his essays on his philosophies and his nature observations as he and his family brought the dilapidated farm back to health (Frese, 2003). It was through his observation of geese during this time that started to change his beliefs from an appreciation of nature through a somewhat arrogant consumption to identification with nature and responsible participation (McCoy, n.d.). He learned to identify with geese as social animals that grieve over family members killed by hunters (McCoy, n.d.). After hunting and killing a mother wolf, he watched her life leave her eyes as her cubs limped away. A turning point in his life, he now saw that hunting and other reckless human behavior “disrupts the flow of an entire system of life” (McCoy, n.d.). Humans are only one part of a great natural cycle of symbiotic influence and interdependence (McCoy, n.d.). The almanac contained his concept of the “land ethic.” According to Leopold the land ethic states, “the individual [person] is a member of an [ecological] community of interdependent parts” (Leopold, 1966).

On April 21, 1948 while fighting a brush fire on neighbor’s farm in order to protect his own home, Aldo Leopold died from a heart attack (ALF, n.d.). At the very beginning of the Foreword to A Sand County Almanac, he wrote that there are “some who can live without wild tings, and some who cannot” (Leopold, 1966). The reality of Leopold’s writings and of the environmental movements he inspired is that none of us can live without the “wild things” of an interdependent global ecosystem. More than half a century after his death, his legacy of environmental ethics is even more important.


References

Leopold, A. (1966). A sand county almanac. New York: Oxford University Press.

Frese, S. J. (November 2003). Aldo Leopold: An American prophet. The History Teacher (Long Beach, Calif.), 37(1), 99-118.

McCoy, A. (n.d.). The transformation of Aldo Leopold. Retrieved April 1, 2007, from the Yale University Website: http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~thomast/essays/amy/

The Aldo Leopold Foundation. (n.d.). Aldo Leopold. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.aldoleopold.org

Ecology Hall of Fame: Julia Butterfly Hill

By Emily Neubert

Julia Butterfly Hill was born February 18th, 1974, and grew up in Jonesboro, Arkansas as the daughter of a preacher. In her early 20's, she was in a car accident that resulted in a minor brain injury and eventually propelled to her to seek a new spirituality through environmentalism. She gained international fame--and notoriety--at age 23 when she climbed a "180-foot-tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree" she named Luna (Wikipedia, 2007). Hill ended up living in the tree for an astounding 738 days, from December 10th, 1997 to December 18th, 1999. Her action saved Luna, as well as the surrounding three acres of forest.

After her well-publicized treesit ended, Hill decided to use her celebrity to advance the goals of the environmental movement. She founded the Circle of Life Foundation, which aims to "[activate] people through education, inspiration and connection to live in a way that honors the diversity and interdependence of all life" (Circle of Life Foundation, 2007). The organization's website, www.circleoflifefoundation.org, is a wonderful resource that not only features Julia Butterfly Hill's poems, blogs, and touring schedule, but also ideas and opportunities for individual activism. Of particular interest to educators might be the educational resource pages for kids and adults, and the "Crafty Projects" or "Solutions You Can Use" pages in the "Action" section of the website.

Hill has also maintained an active touring and writing schedule. She has been published in several books, most notably 2001's The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, A Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods. This memoir detailed the two years Hill spent living in Luna and the lessons she learned. Due to her religious upbringing, it is not surprising that much of Hill's work draws connections between ecology and spirituality. In a 2005 interview with Tikkun magazine, Hill speaks about her experiences doing outreach with Christians who argue that she should "worship the creator, not the creation..." (Awehali, p. 30). She responds by recalling their own religious texts, which effectively state that all of nature is, in effect, an aspect of God or the creator.

Another primary focus of Hill's theory is the necessity of personal responsibility to the larger ecological movement. In an interview from 2006, she admits that "the biggest challenge I face is not external at all, but internal. I am my own biggest challenge." (Emanoil, 2006). This attitude is evident in her work with the Circle of Life Foundation, which constantly strives to give people ideas, opportunities and support to overcome the personal struggles that keep them from living more consciously. Julia Butterfly Hill's humanity and accessibility have made her a worthy figurehead in the contemporary environmental movement.


Works Cited

Awehali, B. (2005). Interview with Julia Butterfly Hill. Tikkun, 20, no 2.

Circle of Life Foundation. (2007). Welcome to circle of life. Retrieved March 28, 2007, from http://www.circleoflifefoundation.org/index.html

Emanoil, P. (2006). The hardest part. Delic Living, 22, no 3.

Hill, J. B. (2001). The legacy of luna: the story of a tree, a woman and the struggle to save the redwoods. San Francisco: Harper.

Wikipedia. (2007). Julia Butterfly Hill. Retrieved March 21, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Butterfly_Hill

Ecology Hall of Fame: Gary Snyder

By Lauren Economou

Gary Snyder, born in 1930, is an internationally renowned poet and ecological philosopher who believes that “the post-human era begins as humanity realizes that we have created a self-destructive culture” (Blanchard, 1995). When a childhood accident laid up Snyder for several months, he constantly read books from the Seattle public library, and attributes this time in his life to sparking his interest in reading and writing. During the ten years he lived in Washington, Snyder “became aware of the presence of the Coast Salish people and developed an interest in the Native American peoples in general and their traditional relationship with nature” (Wikipedia).

Snyder published his first poem in a student journal while attending Reed College in the late-1940s. He graduated in 1951 with a degree in anthropology and literature. He spent his summers during college outdoors: as a camp counselor, a seaman, and a timber-scaler on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, “experiences which formed the basis for some of his earliest published poems.” He then worked as a fire-lookout in a national park, where he “encountered the basic ideas of Buddhism” that dealt with the appreciation of nature. He decided soon after college to return to San Francisco to either “sink or swim as a poet.”

While enrolled at UC Berkeley studying Oriental culture and language, Snyder continued to take summer jobs outdoors, such as one job as a trail-builder at Yosemite. In the 1950s, he briefly lived with Jack Kerouac in a cabin, and wrote his own work, also translating poems by Han Shan, the 9th-century Chinese recluse, which Snyder had made into a book called Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (Steuding, 1969). The following is a poem from the book:

“Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout”

Down valley a smoke haze

Three days heat, after five days rain

Pitch glows on the fir-cones

Across rocks and meadows

Swarms of new flies



I cannot remember things I once read

A few friends, but they are in cities.

Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup

Looking down for miles

Through high still air.

The ecological poet and social critic won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975. Many of Snyder’s later writings “focus on alternatives to city living and show a reverence for nature and a deep interest in the philosophies of the East. The latter is a characteristic that seems an almost ubiquitous attribute possessed by many other Beat writers” (The Beat Page). In 1985, he started teaching writing at UC Davis, focusing on the Far East. His teaching kept him away from poetry for several years, but he had more poems published in the mid-1990s. He currently teaches English at UC Davis and stays active in his interest of the natural environment.


Sources

Blanchard, Bob. (1995). A voice in wilderness. The Progressive, v. 59 (November 1995), 28-31.

Gary Snyder. Retrieved March 26, 2007, from The Beat Page. Web site: http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/snyder.html

Gary Snyder. Retrieved March 26, 2007, from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Snyder

Steuding, Bob. (c.1969). Gary Snyder: Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. Boston: Twayne.