Environmental History Timeline September 3, 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law The Wilderness Act of 1964

Next year, September 3, 2014 is the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964. The Wilderness Bill was first introduced to the Senate by Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey in 1956. Post war American growth had made new inroads deep into wild spaces. Concern grew as careless use and exploitation spread through America's remaining pristine wilderness areas.

The 88th Congress, the "conservation congress," passed the Wilderness Act establishing a Wilderness Preservation System with an initial 9 million acres set aside to secure the ecological and social benefits of an enduring wilderness resource for the American people.

benefits of an enduring wilderness resource to the American people. - See more at: http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/other-resources/signing-ceremony-kicks-off-celebration-of-50th-anniversary-of-wilderness-act-85899413025#sthash.TSVhqsI2.dpubenefits of  for future generations a continuing resource of wilderness.

LBJ signs Wilderness Act of 1964 into law concluding an eight year debate, credits 88th Congress, labeled "conservation congress".

Excerpt from Remarks Upon Signing the Wilderness Bill and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Bill.

"Anyone that objectively studies the record of the 88th Congress I think would have to conclude that another historic era has begun this year. If the 88th had not earned already so many honorable titles, such as the education Congress, the health Congress, the full prosperity Congress, it would be remembered as the conservation Congress, because in addition to the measures before me this morning, Congress has wisely this year passed the Ozark Rivers National Riverway bill, which I signed last week; the Fire Island National Seashore bill, which is awaiting action; the Canyonlands National Park legislation, which I expect to sign shortly, creating our first new national park on this continent in 17 years. But Congress has done even more. Action has been taken to keep our air pure and our water safe and our food free from pesticides; to protect our wildlife; to conserve our precious water resources. No single Congress in my memory has done so much to keep America as a good and wholesome and beautiful place to live. I think it is significant that these steps have broad support not just from the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party, both parties in the Congress. For example, the wilderness bill has been before the Congress since 1957, but it passed this year 73 to 12 in the Senate, and 373 to 1 in the House. So it seems to me that this reflects a new and a strong national consensus to look ahead, and, more than that, to plan ahead; better still, to move ahead. We know that America cannot be made strong by leadership which reacts only to the needs or the irritations or the frustrations of the moment. True leadership must provide for the next decade and not merely the next day. That is the kind of leadership that this Congress is providing."

Lyndon B. Johnson: "Remarks Upon Signing the Wilderness Bill and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Bill.," September 3, 1964. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26481.

Freshwater wonders, Pectinatella

Moss animals adrift.

Magnificent bryozoan Pectinatella magnifica Hoover Reservoir

A quiet stroll and careful observing along the suspended boardwalk over the shallow north extremity of Hoover Reservoir at Galena, Ohio on a calm-water day allows discovery of water life below the surface. More than Asian carp and bluegill ripple the mirrored surface. Periscoping softshelled turtles break the surface with the just the tips of their pointy snouts. Swimming water snakes spread serpentine ripples. And, most interesting, magnificent bryozoans, moss animals, bob near the shoreline and are seen attached to debris under the surface.

Magnificent bryozoan Pectinatella magnifica is native to North America east of the Mississippi River. They spread mysteriously, probably hitching rides on ducks' feet and on other waterfowl. They appear following warm weather as their plankton food, tiny free floating plants and animals, become abundant in the water column.

Magnificent bryozoans are colonial moss animals forming gelatinous masses attached to rooted plants and heavy debris under water, but larger masses break loose and bob in ripples as they move with the wind, collecting along leeward shores. The surface of a mass supports multitudes of tiny filter feeding animals called zooids. Clusters of animals can be seen in closeup images, a microscope is needed to see an individual zooid.

Pectinatella mass found forming on a holdfast, a flooded sapling.

Pectinatella closeup

Environmental History Timeline, December 3, 1960

The "Wilderness Letter" and America's "Geography of Hope"

Writer, conservationist, Wallace Stegner submits the "Wilderness Letter," written to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, and later reproduced in his "Wilderness Idea," in The Sound of Mountain Water (1969).  Stegner's argument for wilderness as a natural resource and more is often credited with inspiring passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. A wilderness bill had been before Congress for eight years. Stegner's words were timely and struck a cord with the 88th Congress. Stegner's letter was used to introduce the Wilderness Act which establishes the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Minnesota wilderness, Boundary Waters 2008

West Virginia Wilderness 2005

Stegner's inspiration resulted in preservation of what Stegner called, America's "Geography of Hope," America's wilderness.

Stegner wrote,

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it."

The full letter is reproduced at the Wilderness Society website.

Forest values, more than dollars makes sense

Is a mature public forest a savings bond at maturation, ready to cash out for spending money? Is a public forest more valuable than its present cash value?  Do we need intact mature public forest lands held inviolate?

Shawnee State Forest, Ohio's "Little Smokies"

Consider the following typology of forest values definitions. You decide.

Forest values:

Aesthetic value--Valuing forest for enjoying scenery, sights, sounds, smells, etc.

Recreation value--Valuing forest because it provides a place for enjoyable outdoor recreation activities.

Learning value--Valuing forest because in forest we learn about the environment through scientific observation or experimentation.

Life sustaining value--Valuing forest because it helps produce, preserve, clean, and renew air, soil, and water.

Climate mitigation value--Valuing forest because it helps mitigate climate change by removing and sequestering atmospheric carbon.

Biological diversity value--Valuing forest because it conserves genetic diversity, species diversity, and biological community diversity.

Wildlife conservation value--Valuing forest because it provides a variety of fish, game and non-game wildlife, insect life, and plant life, etc.

Economic value--Valuing forest because it provides timber, alternative forest products, fisheries, minerals, or tourism opportunities such as amenities and services including outfitting and guiding services.

Spiritual value--Valuing forest because it is a sacred, religious, or spiritually special place, or inspires feelings of reverence and respect for nature.

Intrinsic value--Valuing forest in and of itself for its existence, no matter what other people think about forest.

Historic value--Valuing forest because it holds places and things of human and natural history that matter to individuals, peoples, or nations.

Future value--Valuing forest because it will allow future generations to know and experience forest as it is at present.

Subsistence value--Valuing forest because it provides necessary food and supplies to sustain subsisting families.

Therapeutic value--Valuing forest because it inspires physical and mental renewal contributing to happiness.

Cultural value--Valuing forest because it is a place to continue and pass down to future generations wisdom and knowledge, traditions, and a way of life sustained by ancestors to the present generation.

The typology presented is modified from Brown, Gregory and Patrick Reed 2000. Validation of a Forest Values Typology for use in National Forest Planning. Forest Science 46(2).

Environmental History Timeline November, 1902

The Birthday of the Teddy Bear, November, 16 1902.

The Teddy Bear, early icon of wildlife conservation that has lost its historical identity and is fading from familiarity, was launched by a turn of the century cartoon. Teddy Roosevelt is illustrated eschewing taking a tethered bear, asserting sportsmanship, a fair chase offering wildlife a fair chance.

Drawing the line in Mississippi, a cartoon by Clifford Berryman, Washington Post. A jaunty T. R. eschews shooting a tethered bear cub. Berryman exaggerated an incident reported during a celebrity bear hunt held for Roosevelt in Mississippi. The first issue of same illustrated a large old bear, the cute cub is a redo. T. R. championed conservation, critics labeled his ilk "kit-gloved sportsmen."

Teddy Roosevelt, sportsman President, championed conservation of wildlife, forests and soil from his bully pulpit and launched a new era of federal conservation progress. Roosevelt rose to prominence in a muscular era of heavy industrialization and increasing urbanization. A growing U.S. population, disconnected from wilderness and even from rural experience, suffered under the overwhelming demands of unregulated robber-baron ruled heavy industry. Common experience surrounded urban workers in cacophonous industrial clatter and a haze of gagging coal and oil smoke. Hours were very long for adult and children workers in sweat shops; sanitation, health care, recreation were non-existent: a living hell. Advantaged families and social leaders watched suffering and loss from the side-lines as wild America was carried away by rail and consumed under inky smoke belched by industry. A modern lyric refrain repeats continuing American experience: "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Progressive social movements and a nostalgia for wilderness and pioneer experience related by still-living witnesses coalesced in a Progressive Era in politics, improvements in the workplace,  and the expanding federalism of resources conservation and of the growing sportsman conservationist movements ending widespread commercial slaughter of wildlife. The Teddy Bear was a warm fuzzy feeling for wildlife in the experience of advantaged youth in the United States and beyond.

The story of the Teddy Bear's founder entrepreneur is detailed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Environmental History Timeline May 9, 2013

First record of average daily CO2 concentration exceeding 400 PPM

May 9, 2013, NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory recorded an average daily CO2 concentration in the atmosphere above 400 parts per million. This is not a surprise but nevertheless it's a milestone moment in atmospheric science. Charles Keeling first began measuring CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 1958, measurement continues. Graphical representation of the data, known as the Keeling Curve, illustrates seasonal variation and the global trend. Many climate scientists suggest that we must find ways to reduce CO2 to 350 PPM, the 1990 level, to avoid catastrophic ecological, social and economic outcomes during the mid 21st Century.

Keeling Curve illustration from the keepers of the data, UC San Diego

Small amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere wield disproportionate impact on surface temperatures. This phenomenon is known as the greenhouse effect. Like window glass covering a greenhouse, CO2, methane, and other heat holding compounds known as greenhouse gases allow light to pass through to earth's surface, heating things up, but capture and hold the heat in; as CO2 and other greenhouse gases increase, more heat, long-wave energy emanated from the surface, is held in the lower atmosphere by the greenhouse gases.

Proxy data from ice core and ocean sediment core chemistry tells us surface temperature has changed in the past. Oxygen isotope ratios, CO2 and other measures indicate past temperatures. The last time CO2 PPM was this high was three to five million years ago during the Pliocene Epoch, before the advent of the current Ice House Climate and its big ice sheets that recently reshaped the earth's surface. The present global C02 increase is destabilizing global climate and ecosystems due to the unprecedented rate of increase. The rate at which temperature is changing is outpacing the capacity of human and ecological systems to adapt. The current trend suggests global CO2 concentration will reach 450 PPM in the not so distant future. Atmospheric warming is expected to continue to parallel this increase. Global warming occurs most rapidly at the poles where ice is melting at unprecedented rates. More than polar bears are at risk, many are concerned that melting of permafrost is releasing trapped methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. Permafrost areas are methane generators on ice. As the ice melts, methane frozen in the permafrost, and generated by increased decay of long accumulated organic materials, is liberated. Possible serious consequences are rarely discussed openly outside of knowledgeable circles and professional journals.

Regrettably, scientists who are willing to share their results and predict outcomes based on climate modelling are attacked both personally and professionally for coming out with their data and concerns. A small number of well funded conservative political groups defending fossil fuel subsidies successfully sustain a political climate of doubt around the issue. Dedicated scientists are portrayed as fear mongers and nefarious actors in grand schemes to divert public resources to their laboratories, ridiculous notions. If only climate modellers were subsidized as generously as energy producers! The press and special interest groups too often shoot the messengers. The press gives "equal time" to both sides of an artificial controversy. A tiny number of climate change deniers' voices are aired whenever new research brings the problem into focus. Just a few spokespersons associated with a handful of organizations are able to sustain doubt and controversy, though consensus opinion among science groups contradicts both doubt and controversy. It's kind of like giving equal time to a witch doctor when a new medical paper is published by researchers.

Return to Ohio's "Little Smokies"

American Woodcock bathing in Upper Twin Creek, Shawnee State Forest Wilderness Area. Image by Julie Davis.

Golden ragwort, blooming abundantly along roadsides and creeks.

Lousewort, another fairly common roadside flower.

Eastern redbud mingles lavender highlights with the white highlights painted by flowering dogwoods along roadsides and edges of forest openings

Flowering dogwood, common roadside highlights.

Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio is a traditional birding hotspot, a forest full of diverse breeding birds and a stopover magnet for weary migrants bound for points north. The botany is beautiful, too. Spring wildflowers are worth the trip to Ohio's Little Smokies even if you forgot your bino's. We time our annual birder migration to deep southern Ohio to coincide with that of early warbler waves surging north into Ohio during late April, while shorebirds are still on the move, making our travels a combo trip, an opportunity to see a lot of avian diversity in one packed weekend in beautiful wild landscapes of Ohio's southern Allegheny Plateau. At least that used to be so.

These days, the trip seems a little like Forest Gump's metaphorical box of chocolates, you just don't know what you're going to get during the last of April--it's the weird weather. Two years ago, 2011 was a record wet spring, and migrating warblers were few and far between. The next year, 2012, was a record warm spring, and dry, like visiting the forest weeks later in the season. This weekend, the last of April 2013 was much cooler than usual, and very few northbound migrants were passing through on their way to Canada. Even so, the locals, the local breeding birds by themselves, are an avian adventure in song and color animating the hilly landscape among fresh greens of trees' delicate new leaves and the flowery forest floor.

We found many local breeding birds and a few migrants, too. Colorful Yellow-rumped Warblers and American Redstarts were abundant. Emphatic singing Ovenbirds were the most common territorial defenders. We found them working hard as night approached, too. We enjoyed a walk through several territories as darkness dissolved the shadows and Thoreau's Night-birds delivered their ecstatic crepuscular displays.  The American Woodcock pictured above was using our favorite mid-day lunch spot. We stopped short to wait for it to complete its ablutions but it was rudely interrupted by an ATV splashing through the stream ford that served as its bath pool.

Delicate fresh leaves of red maple, an abundant tree species.

Red maple samaras, flowers and fruit precede fully emerged leaves.

Chestnut oak, common along ridges and upper hill slopes.