Author and history professor (Virginia Tech) Mark Barrow writes in his wonderful book Nature's Ghosts:
"The 1920s and 1930s marked a watershed in the evolution of policies and scientific practices related to endangered species in the United States. While naturalists had long shown a keen interest in the plight of vanishing wildlife, for the first time they possessed the training, conceptual tools, techniques, financial backing, and desire to begin more thorough investigations of those species in the field. The three studies chronicled in this chapter [Alfred O. Gross: heath hen, James T. Tanner: ivory-billed woodpecker and Carl Koford: California condor] were born of a optimistic belief that if enough could be learned about the life history, behavior, and ecology of vanishing animals, they might be snatched from the jaws of extinction.”
“In the cases of Tanner and Koford, the single most important proposal was to restrict human access to and modifications of areas known to be prime ivorybill and condor habitat. Yet, given the larger political, social, and economic climate of the time, even those modest recommendations faced stiff resistance from individuals who had prior claims on the landscapes on which these species depended to survive.”
“While Koford and his colleagues overcame much of that resistance, [indeed, the California condor unquestionably still flies today] the National Audubon Society failed to stop logging on the Singer Tract. Clearly, science alone could achieve only so much without a larger change in values.”
- From Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology, by Mark V. Barrow, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment