So, dear friends, it has been suggested that I write for you, from time to time. As advertised, some of it will be about our efforts in the promotion and production of the Chagrin River Watershed Important Bird Area, but not all of it will be. I would like to share some thoughts about nature with you, and the changes in the seasons, and our lives with birds and their lives with us. It has been said by those wiser than me that if we are to save the Planet, it is too late to start with the children, our only hope for the future is to teach today’s adults about nature, for they – you and me and your friends and family – are the voters who can still influence political decisions that will make or break the future of the environment for all the years to come. Our time is now.
I come to you after serving thirty years as the last chief naturalist at a large park district to your west. I moved to Ohio specifically for that honor, knowing that our state had been the center of resource interpretation and nature education since the early 1930’s era, and knowing that position, and this state, offered the best opportunity to make a difference. In the years before that, I served as a professor at Michigan State University and at Vermont’s Johnson State College. My mentor was Dr. Gilbert W. Mouser, who studied ornithology from Dr. Arthur Allen at Cornell University. By the time I came to know and honor Dr. Mouser, he had already forgotten more about ornithology than I would ever learn.
In Vermont, I studied the home range and feeding strategies of the American Porcupine. It was not until I was presented with a newborn porcupine by the county Conservation Officer one spring that I came to begin to know wildlife. It is easy to be a “scientist” or a “researcher”, and be unencumbered by the realization that “lesser animals” have cognition, and feelings, and personalities. It is only when a person lives with them, and watches them, and bonds at one level or another with them, that one can say “I am beginning to understand that species”. And so, my friends, I admit my scientific heresy to you.
I cannot, and will not, ever say that I truly know a species of mammal, or bird, or any other living creature. If you like, I will share my observations with you, and write in awe of other forms of life who’ve come through millennia along with us, fellow travelers on our voyage though time. From time to time, I may stretch our mutual understanding of “the way things are” or “everybody knows that’s (right) or (wrong)”. You are free to accept or reject anything I write, my only request is that if you respond, kindly share your thoughts with mutual respect.
So come, let us discover and rejoice together. Our Earth is an amazing place, more amazing that we can ever understand. And we have been tasked as stewards. Let us be determined and diligent in our tasks.
I come to you after serving thirty years as the last chief naturalist at a large park district to your west. I moved to Ohio specifically for that honor, knowing that our state had been the center of resource interpretation and nature education since the early 1930’s era, and knowing that position, and this state, offered the best opportunity to make a difference. In the years before that, I served as a professor at Michigan State University and at Vermont’s Johnson State College. My mentor was Dr. Gilbert W. Mouser, who studied ornithology from Dr. Arthur Allen at Cornell University. By the time I came to know and honor Dr. Mouser, he had already forgotten more about ornithology than I would ever learn.
In Vermont, I studied the home range and feeding strategies of the American Porcupine. It was not until I was presented with a newborn porcupine by the county Conservation Officer one spring that I came to begin to know wildlife. It is easy to be a “scientist” or a “researcher”, and be unencumbered by the realization that “lesser animals” have cognition, and feelings, and personalities. It is only when a person lives with them, and watches them, and bonds at one level or another with them, that one can say “I am beginning to understand that species”. And so, my friends, I admit my scientific heresy to you.
I cannot, and will not, ever say that I truly know a species of mammal, or bird, or any other living creature. If you like, I will share my observations with you, and write in awe of other forms of life who’ve come through millennia along with us, fellow travelers on our voyage though time. From time to time, I may stretch our mutual understanding of “the way things are” or “everybody knows that’s (right) or (wrong)”. You are free to accept or reject anything I write, my only request is that if you respond, kindly share your thoughts with mutual respect.
So come, let us discover and rejoice together. Our Earth is an amazing place, more amazing that we can ever understand. And we have been tasked as stewards. Let us be determined and diligent in our tasks.