| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Reviews American Bison: A Natural History, by Dale F. Lott. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2002, 229 pp., $29.95 hardcover. Once blanketing a third of the United States between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, the Great Plains were home to wildlife in incomprehensible numbers. Explorers’ journals described prairie dog towns the size of West Virginia and herds of buffalo that passed by for days. But as early settlers pushed farther into the frontier, their plows would convert the vast “American Serengeti” into furrowed, cultivated fields, and the country would forever lose a large piece of its national character. In American Bison, Dale Lott relies on imagination and careful science to rebuild the world of the bison and bring back a piece of what was lost. Born on the National Bison Range in Montana, Lott has spent nearly his whole life studying buffalo. Merging a lifetime of biological research with his own quirky enthusiasm for the topic, Lott delivers an informative yet hugely entertaining story full of passion, humor, and deep personal knowledge. Lott starts off with a fascinating review of buffalo life history and evolution. After 250,000 years of evolutionary stability, bison species changed significantly during the last 10,000 years, just about the time humans arrived on the scene and modern buffalo made their first appearance. Lott hypothesizes that early human hunters bearing spears may have killed off one species at this time. The buffalo ancestor had horn structures suggesting it was a “stand and fight” defender, while the modern buffalo survived because it has a “turn and flee” strategy. With equal aplomb Lott dedicates later chapters to the physical prowess of buffalo, their digestion (“Grass to Gas and Chips”), their uncanny ability to thermoregulate in bitter cold or brutal heat, and their complex social structures. The story broadens with chapters about pronghorn antelope, prairie dogs, and other wildlife that share the grassland ecosystem with buffalo. This leads to a stirring account of the industrial hide hunt known as “the Great Slaughter,” a ten-year massacre that reduced 30 million buffalo to a single wild herd of 25 individuals hiding in the wilderness of Yellowstone National Park. Since the 1880s, breeding by private ranches and recent protection of fledgling wild populations has brought numbers back up to around 200,000. While the author seems to harbor little anger over the horrific slaughter or the plowing of once mighty prairies, he rails strongly against the trend of breeding buffalo to death by selecting for placid, cooperative behaviors. Lott laments that the American bison “is the only wild animal in the United States that is not allowed to live as a wild animal...anywhere in its original range.” As a final plea in the conclusion
of the book, Lott resurrects a 150-year-old proposal to form a “Great
Plains Park,” a 5,000-square-mile wilderness where buffalo can once again
flow over the prairies like ancient rivers. David Lukas Tales of the Himalaya: Adventures of a Naturalist, by Lawrence W. Swan. Mountain N’ Air Books, La Crescenta, CA, 2000, 228 pp., $19.00 paper. The late Larry Swan, a world-renowned
authority on high-altitude ecology, spent his life in a state of wonder.
An enthusiastic observer, he analyzed and understood his surroundings
while reveling in them. He also demonstrated the rare gift of the true
teacher—the ability to impart and encourage wonder in others. In Tales
of the Himalaya, Swan provides an intimate account of a life spent among
the highest peaks on Earth, and evokes the many experiences and observations
that guided his work as a naturalist and beloved Born and raised in Darjeeling, India, Swan developed an early love for the plant and animal life of the Himalaya. Like Charles Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, Swan’s later trips to the high Himalaya were seminal events from which his fertile mind drew order and inspiration. For him, the treks became both mother lodes and lodestones for his life’s work. Although he spent more than 30 years teaching at San Francisco State University and conducted research around the world, from Mexico to Madagascar to Trinidad, he would dedicate most of his studies to the Himalaya. He defined the Aeolian Biome, a windswept ecosystem above the harsh alpine and tundra zones, documented the bar-headed goose’s five-mile-high migration, and worked out the ecology of the abominable snowman, now known as the rare Tibetan blue bear. Through his chronicles of his Himalayan experiences, we see the making of a naturalist, teacher, and Renaissance man. His tales are an ode to sacred life, in its many struggling forms throughout the world. As he describes slogging up a valley to look for butterflies, frogs, or leeches, or collecting bacteria near the summit of Mount Everest, or taking notes under a flapping tent in the snow, Swan not only explains the natural history of the surroundings, but expresses his wonder in arias to the beauty of it all. Joe Brennan Called by the Wild: The Autobiography of a Conservationist, by Raymond F. Dasmann. Forward by Paul R. Ehrlich. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 287 pp., 2002, $27.50 hardcover. As in all professions, wildlife biology and the field of conservation have their larger-than-life figures. While a few become famous, many others work equally hard, but remain less visible. The late Ray Dasmann was one of these quiet heroes. Called by the Wild is not only the autobiography of a local boy who did well, but a story of the post-World War II conservation movement in California and overseas. Dasmann starts the story of his lifelong journey with his childhood in San Francisco and the surrounding rural and farm life of the 1920s and 1930s. Moving swiftly through his combat role during the defense of New Guinea, which thwarted the Japanese invasion of Australia, he delves into the experiences that put him on the front lines of the environmental conservation movement. Dasmann had the uncanny tendency to be at the right place at the right time to do good things for the planet. He was there at the University of California at Berkeley when wildlife ecology was just emerging as a field separate from zoology. Under the capable guidance of scholars such as A. Starker Leopold, son of legendary naturalist Aldo Leopold, Dasmann was among the early biologists to be formally trained in this specialty. And he was there in Washington, D.C., during the early days of the Conservation Foundation, perhaps the most prestigious conservation organization of its time. And so it was with the founding of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the U.N. Environment Programme, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Biosphere Reserves program. Along the way, Dasmann introduced the world to key concepts such as eco-tourism and eco-development, while continuing to shape policies in wildlife and land management both locally and abroad. For example, in California he encouraged doe hunts to bring the state’s overabundant deer population, which in some places was spilling into crop fields, back into balance with its natural food resources. In Africa, he was part of a team of scientists who experimented with game ranching, and concluded that it could replace the conventional and destructive practice of converting land to cattle ranching. Both strategies are still commonly used today. It was along this path that he accumulated the life lessons which would enrich his writing and teaching at Humboldt State University and, later, the University of California at Santa Cruz. His ideas and insights, preserved in landmark texts such as Environmental Conservation, helped shape today’s thriving environmental movement. While the writings of Aldo Leopold set the scene for the conservation ethic, Ray Dasmann, as Called by the Wild so intimately shows, helped bring this ethic to the cutting edge of conservation and the trenches of wildlife ecology. Dan Cheatham The Micron Microscope, Enhelion Limited. Cambridge, United Kingdom, www.enhelion.com , $100. After years of frustration in the field lugging around a full-size microscope, then not having a good light source, then making do with a handlens, I finally stumbled across the Micron microscope. Combining the power of a lab bench scope with convenient palmtop design, the Micron is bound to be popular with scientists in many walks of life. The feather-light scope fits comfortably into one hand, while its operating controls are located on the underside of the apparatus for thumb-operation. A magnetic ring holds slides firmly in place. The lighting arm folds down into the body of the scope, while the light itself is powered by two AA batteries, making work on cloudy days a breeze. The scope can be connected to both digital and 35mm cameras, allowing images to be preserved on film or downloaded onto a computer. Additionally the whole device can be mounted on a tripod, freeing up one’s hands for manipulating specimens, sketching fine details, or taking notes. During rigorous field tests, I discovered that the Micron’s impressive 80x and 160x magnification is both a blessing and a curse. While the Micron was overpowered for grass seeds and a live Argentine ant in a well slide, smaller items such as onion skins, slivers of plant leaves and stems, and spider webs were dramatically clear and beautiful. A live paramecium in pond water swam by like a Loch Ness monster: never all in view, but showing an exciting view of the bits! And a discarded jay feather looked tremendous, its tiny barbules clear as a textbook drawing. Slide-mounted specimens under a cover slip gave the best results. So while the Micron Pro 160 is a great tool for veterinarians, doctors in isolated areas, and scientists biologists who work on slide-mountable organisms, it’s too powerful for the field entomologist. But Enhelion Ltd has now released the “Trekker,” a lower-powered product with optics permitting 40x magnification, while retaining the excellent ergonomics and rugged design of its predecessor. The Trekker also has ring lighting around the stage aperture, a field of view of 1/4” x 1/4”, and a clear specimen cup for restraining live critters for examination. This should be a better instrument for the field naturalist and interested layman. Technical specifications Suzanne Ubick Recommended Reading from the Editors’ Desks An Odyssey in Print:
Adventures in the Smithsonian Libraries,
by Mary Augusta Thomas. Smithsonian Institution Press, Imagine what it would be like to choose from a 1.5-million-strong collection of printed artifacts strung between 23 libraries and disciplines that range from aeronautics to zoology, with stops at postal history and textile design along the way. This was the perhaps unenviable task of Mary Augusta Thomas, editor of An Odyssey in Print. Thomas has chosen an enticing selection of images that includes seventeenth century German lithographs of fishes, explorers’ journals, jazz-age posters, medieval herbals, late nineteenth century rainwear advertisments, a children’s book in German on the joys of a trans-Atlantic Zeppelin flight, and another signed by just about every major figure in early twentieth century aviation. Each beautifully photographed item is accompanied by a brief explanation of its social, historic, or scientific importance. This magnificent collection is accompanied by a series of highly informative essays on the history of the Smithsonian Institution and the role of museum libraries in academic research, public education, and artifact conservation. The volume is an informative tribute to the deftness and variety of human creativity. |