Author: Site Owner

By Suah Cheong, American Forests

Did you know that March is Women’s History Month? American Forests is celebrating by recognizing some of the remarkable achievements of female conservationists. Often working in the shadows of their more well-known male counterparts, these women helped create the conservation movement we see today.

Recognizing these women’s accomplishments is not only deserved, but also necessary to reach our conservation goals. If it weren’t for their strong leadership and commitment to the planet, we wouldn’t see many of the environmental protection measures we have in place today. We hope to follow in their footsteps and create positive change for the generations to come!

Rosalie Edge (1877 – 1962)

Rosalie Edge was a suffragist and species preservation advocate. During her career, she urged her peers in the conservation world to take measures to protect a wider range of bird species. In 1934, she founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, the world’s first preserve for birds of prey. Edge also successfully led grassroots campaigns and lobbied congress to create national parks and purchase old-growth forest.

Margaret “Mardy” Murie (1902 – 2003)

Margaret “Mardy” Murie is considered the “grandmother of conservation.” A wildlife activist and ecologist, Murie worked to accomplish important wildness victories such as the establishment and expansion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1964. Just before her death in 2003, 101-year-old Murie was awarded a Conservationist of the Year award.

Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964)

Rachel Carson worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1943, but it was not until she resigned in 1952 to continue her writing career that she made groundbreaking changes to the conservation world. Her bestselling book, Silent Spring, brought the environmental movement to the mainstream by documenting the detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment and highlighting the need for regulations.

Wangari Maathai (1940 – 2011)

Wangari Maathai, an environmental and political activist from Nairobi, Kenya, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. This organization focuses on environmental conservation, tree planting and women’s rights. Maathai also became a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 2004 for her “contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”

Mollie Beattie (1947 – 1996)

Mollie Beattie was the first female director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She was integral in landmark environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. During her time there, Beattie oversaw the reintroduction of the grey wolf into the northern Rocky Mountains and the creation of 15 new wildlife refuges.

Find out the latest in forest news in this week’s Forest Digest!

Credit: Vincent Poulissen via Flickr.

• Quantum computer learns to ‘see’ trees — Sciencemag.org
  Scientists have trained a quantum computer to recognize trees, which bring researchers a step close to using such computers for complicated machine-learning problems in tree research like pattern recognition and computer vision.
• How nature creates forest diversity — Phys.org
  A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides a first model that elucidates the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying diversity in forests.
• Exclusive Look Into How Rare Elephants’ Forests Are Disappearing — National Geographic
  Palm oil, which is the basis of products like cosmetics and processed foods, is versatile and has a long shelf life. However, palm oil plantations devastate forests — and not always legally. A new report by the NGO Rainforest Action Network details the illegal razing of lowland forest, critical habitat for Sumatran elephants, by an oil palm grower.
• Trees’ ability to store carbon in doubt after groundbreaking Australian study — Phys.org
  The ability of trees to offset carbon emissions has been questioned after a Western Sydney University study found common Australian trees are unable to store as much carbon as previously thought. The findings have significant implications for models used by international climate agencies, many of which assume that rising carbon dioxide will fertilize trees and result in more growth and capture of CO2 from the air.

By Sydney Straschnov, American Forests

Photography has the power to inspire, influence and transport viewers to places they’ve never been before. But, what if you could accompany a photographer on their journey to capture the perfect photograph? Award winning and renowned photographers all over the world have taken it upon themselves to give fellow aspiring artists that chance. Here is a compilation of some of the best nature and wildlife photo tours that money can buy that take you on adventures that are truly priceless.

1. Greg Clure: United States

Living at the southern tip of California, Greg Clure, a nature and wildlife photographer, leads tours along California’s coastlines, specifically the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Big Sur. During the winter months, he spends time capturing tranquil beach shots and breathtaking sunsets. Why winter? Greg points out that the winter solstice places the sun in a prime position in its southernmost point to be photographed from Santa Monica. In spring he tours Big Sur, shooting the natural beauty of trickling streams, roaring waves and waterfalls falling from towering cliffs.

When he’s not leading tours he spends time traveling between California, Hawaii and the Mid-West, photographing the natural wonder that can be found in nature.

Credit: Stephen Oachs via Flickr.

2. Jeff Cremer: Peru

Jeff Cremer, after falling for the beauty and wildlife that reside in Latin America, has lived in Costa Rica and Columbia and is currently settled in Peru in a region called Tambopata. He now shares the love he has for his home with his fellow photographers, leading tours through some of the most remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon. He has been featured in National Geographic, NBC, Wired, as well as appeared on BBC’s “Weird World” for some of the discoveries he has made over the past six years of living in Peru.

Credit: Nguyen Ngoc Chinh via Flickr.

3. Andy Biggs: Africa, India

Travel all over the extraordinary continent of Africa with Andy Biggs, a conservationist wildlife photographer who’s photography truly displays his love for the African landscape and the diverse wildlife that live there. Tour members have the chance to experience the epic wildebeest migration, spy on the endangered mountain gorillas and travel through Botswana as the seasons change and new life enters the world. In addition, Andy has begun taking groups into the heart of India’s National Park to track the illusive wild tiger as well as visit the Taj Mahal.

4. Aaron Baggenstos: United States, Canada, Coasta Rica, Africa

An award-winning photographer and wildlife enthusiast, Aaron Baggenstos takes adventure seekers all over the world to track and photograph animals that most people may never have the chance to see in their lifetime. From grizzlies in Alaska to toucans in Costa Rica to lions in Kenya, this experienced explorer is well versed in the behavior and habits of the animals he has been capturing shots of for five years. Beyond his tour business, Aaron has been recognized by National Geographic and has been featured on the PBS television series “Wild Photo Adventure.”

Credit: Pauline Guilmot via Flickr.

5. Roy Toft: South America, Africa, Coasta Rica, North America, Madagascar, India, Galapagos Islands

Roy Toft, a wildlife expert and prestigious award-winning photographer, offers the chance to travel the globe to capture stunning professional-grade photographs of many different species, ranging from big cats to primates to birds. His work with the International League of Conservation Photography (ILCP) — which he assisted in founding — as well as National Geographic, Discovery, Smithsonian and the Wildlife Conservation has helped to advance worldwide conservation efforts. The love that he has for nature and the wildlife he photographs has spurred not only his work in photography, but also his passion for teaching other aspiring photographers.

Matt Hance via Flickr.

By Doyle Irvin, American Forests

The band of merry outlaws carousing their way through the Sherwood Forest is well known and well covered. It’s become a formula: stealing from the rich, giving to the poor; the pretty maid flirting with the bandit chief while joking with the big oaf they call ‘Little;’ the friar tucking away into dinner with more zeal than he has for Mass; and, of course, the ubiquitous forest hideout. We’re here to share with you the famous legends of other outlaws with forest hideouts, all of whom really existed. Seriously, these are real people, who lived and breathed and loved trees like the rest of us. Whether the deeds attributed to them are true or not — well, that’s up to you to decipher. The other disheartening news is that most of these outlaws weren’t actually Disney protagonists, and that not everyone got (or deserved) their ride off into the sunset.

Twm Sion Cati (Thomas Jones)

Close up of a carved statue of Twm Sion Cati in Wales. Credit: Veritas Vita via waymarking.com

Born somewhere near Tregaron, Wales, in the year 1530, Twm Sion Cati is revered in the United Kingdom for being far too clever. He stole from the rich, and, well, sometimes gave to the poor — when it seemed likely to amuse. Though he spent much of his time traveling from crime to crime, Twm was known to hide from his nemesis, the Sheriff of Carmarthen, in a cave in the thickly forested Dinas Hill.

One of the most repeated tales about him recounts when a peasant asked him for assistance with stealing from a nearby merchant. Twm’s job was to distract the merchant while the peasant pilfered pitchers. Tom waltzed right into the shop, and after a minute of inspections told the merchant that one of his pitchers had a hole in it. The merchant, incensed and unconvinced, denied this accusation, so Twm asked him to test it out by feeling the inside of the pitcher. The merchant felt inside and still denied Twm’s assertion. Our bandit then replied, “How, if there was no hole, could you put your hand inside?” By this time his partner had escaped with the goods stolen during the distraction.

Twm was well known for being “sensitive,” which at the time meant “non-violent.” He would shoot arrows at you, but make sure to only hit your clothes in a way that would pin you to your saddle.[i] He later (at daggerpoint) amicably convinced the heiress of Sir John Price to marry him, and, thus, became a respectable man, maintaining a position as Justice of the Peace in the local community until he died at the age of 79.

Juraj Jánošík

The statue of Juraj Janosik stands on a hill looking over the village.

Juraj Janosik, whose name translates to “George,” is still revered in Eastern Europe as a folk hero. Born sometime in 1688, in what is now Slovakia, Juraj was a rebel freedom fighter by the tender age of 15. Potentially confused, he is known to have then joined the imperial army. Perhaps simply gullible, he was then convinced by an inmate that he was guarding to abscond and join the inmate’s group of bandits.

There, Juraj found his true passion shortly after becoming the leader of the gang. Hiding in the forests of Slovakia, he and his gang actually did steal from aristocrats, giving the money to the poor. He also forbade bloodshed, and both of these aspects of his legend are the main reasons Slovakians love him to this day.

Juraj’s tagline became notorious throughout Slovakia, Poland and Moravia. “Stop! Your soul belongs to God and your money belongs to me!” would ring out shortly before the wealthy experienced alternative tax.[ii] In a turn towards the ludicrous, Juraj was supposedly captured in a pub, when, while on the run, he slipped on peas thrown under his feet by a malignant crone. Faced with the traditional punishment for bandit leaders, death by hook, Juraj was given the option of clemency in exchange for enlisting himself and others into the army. As the story has it, he refused, stating that “If you have baked me so you should also eat me!” — then jumping on the hook.[iii]

Salvatore Guiliano

Salvatore Guiliano. Credit: Marcela Palma via Flickr.

Handsome, Sicilian, notorious, and a black market philanthropist, Salvatore Guiliano pretty much had it made. He was born in the poverty-stricken town of Montelepre, Sicily, during 1922, and he got his start in banditry during World War II. Food supplies were dangerously short throughout the 1943 Allied invasion, so Salvatore smuggled grain to the starving peasants. Accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) killing a policeman while resisting arrest, Salvatore and his gang fled to the forested mountains near Sagano, Sicily, where he would pursue outlawry for the next seven years.

Salvatore was a hero to the local villagers, as he frequently shared his profits and procured medicine for the sick — he actually named his horse “Robin Hood.”[iv] At the same time, he was also feared, because of his penchant for killing informers. In the late 1940s, he had ascended to the rank of colonel in Sicily’s underground campaign for independence, writing two letters to U.S. President Harry Truman (proposing 51^st-statehood for Sicily). He is understood to be the inspiration for The Godfather.

Salvatore’s downfall happened in 1947, when he and his gang accidentally shot 17 innocents. This happened to turn public perception against him, and three years later a 2,000-man police force finally snagged the outlaw, who had been betrayed by his trusted confidante, Gaspare Pisciotta. A seemingly sad end for the 27 year old — though some maintain to this day that he faked his own death and survived.[v]

John Murrell

John Murrell. Credit: Wikimedia commons.

If all of our forested bandits were to be split among The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, John Murrell would be alone in the last category. There is very little of the spirit of Robin Hood about this man, if everything he is purported to have done actually happened. There are many conflicting narratives of truth that wrap around this figure. Robert E. Howard wrote about Murrell that:

“John A. Murrell was a hellbender, in Southwest vernacular. He planned no less than an outlaw empire on the Mississippi river, with New Orleans as his capital and himself as emperor. Son of a tavern woman and an aristocratic gentleman, he seemed to have inherited the instincts of both, together with a warped mind that made him as ruthless and dangerous as a striking rattler … surely in that man slept the seeds of greatness, overshadowed by the black petals of madness.”

At the same time, he was an outlaw, squirreling away in an authenticated forest hideout and bossing around a gang of followers with a silly name, so we wouldn’t be doing it justice if we neglected to mention John Murrell.

The boy that would become John Murrell was born in 1806, near Lunenburg County, Va. Then, he moved to Tennessee. His preacher father would travel frequently, and his mother would use her uncouth charms to distract male guests at their B’n’B while her sons rifled through their belongings. John would grow up to combine his parents’ professions, traveling as a pseudo-preacher who would entertain townspeople while his gang stole their horses. Shortly thereafter, he was known as the “Reverend Devil,” as well as the “Great Western Land Pirate.”

Murrell would soon outgrow horse-thieving, however. He moved on to slave-stealing, promising the slave his freedom if John could sell him and free him a few times along the way. If the slave survived all the way to freedom, we wouldn’t consider Murrell such a villain, but he is justly known for leaving no witnesses. Murrell organized a gang, one that Mark Twain claimed to be 1,000-men strong, and named them the “Mystic Clan.” They constructed numerous hideouts throughout the forested Natchez Trace, carving secret symbols on trees to mark the location of their treasures.

Murrell’s coup de grace was supposed to be a mass slave uprising all throughout the South, during the chaos of which he and the Mystic Clan would loot all that was worth looting, before installing him as despot of New Orleans. He was found out and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, during which he contracted a bunch of diseases and lost the last fragments of his sanity. He would die of tuberculosis shortly after being released. Murrell’s grave would be robbed, and his body dismembered, with his thumb to this day still being a centerpiece for the Tennessee State Museum.

It’s worth noting that many people believe that almost none of this is true — that Murrell was at most an average horse-thief, who had tall tales written about him by Virgil Stewart, a man who placed himself at the forefront of the effort to bust this “legendary” outlaw in a spectacularly self-congratulatory publication. The title of this story is in itself 78-words long. Despite the likely fictitiousness of the publication, it was taken seriously in many towns across the South, and 35 men were hung for supposedly being involved with the Mystic Clan, in what is known as the “Murrell Excitement.”

[i] BBC

[ii] Brandt Travel Guides — Slovakia

[iii] Stowarzyszenie Nauczycieli Internautow

[iv] Wikipedia

[v] Telegraph

By Lindsay Seventko, American Forests

Sometimes, it’s hard to appreciate where you are without recognizing where you’ve come from. Through these historic photos from the American Forests archives, we can see just how dramatically climate change has altered landscapes, how new knowledge has evolved wildfire policies and how carbon dating technology has changed our understanding of age-old trees. From when ancient giants were being felled like an assembly line to the evolution of the Smokey Bear wildfire awareness movement, American Forests has been advocating for the protection and restoration of forests through it all. Here are a few memories from the archives that illustrate just how dramatically our landscapes are changing and how far forest conservation has come.

Athabasca Glacier

“Tongue of Athabaska Glacier. Sunwapta Canyon in middle distance, headwater of Sunwapta river-route of highway along right of photograph and through canyon, looking north. Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. We can actually get out and walk on the ice of the glacier – grim, beautiful, awe inspiring in its slow, cruel strength. July 1941”

These photos of Athabasca Glacier vividly illustrate the effects of climate change on glaciers in North America. Athabasca Glacier has lost two kilometers of its length since 1840, and 200 meters have receded since 1992 alone, threatening to disappear completely within a generation. These photos from the American Forests archives illustrate how deeply the glacier filled the valley between the mountains and extended much further down towards the road. The grim trek across the expansive glacier described by American Forests’ explorers is even more dangerous now. As the glacier quickly melts, it creates even more treacherous chasms and crevasses.

The dramatic shrinking and receding of Athabasca Glacier is by no means unique. In fact, the IPCC believes that melting glaciers will account for a quarter of all sea level rise over the rest of the century.

Credit: Adam Foster via Flickr.

The Grizzly Giant

“Believed to be the oldest living thing – the Grizzly Giant in Mariposa Grove. Nearly 100 feet in circumference and 30 feet in diameter. It has a lean greater than that of the Tower of Pisa. Photo by Ansel Adams. 1941”

Back when the American Forests Champion Tree National Register was just getting started, this Grizzly Giant was not only crowned the Sequoia champion, but also believed to be the oldest living thing on earth, growing since around 200 C.E. This belief has since been overruled by new carbon-14 dating found that a Swedish spruce tree known as “Old Tjikko” has been growing for the past 9,500 years. Despite being overthrown for the title of oldest living tree, The Grizzly Giant has not yet been overthrown as the Champion Sequoia or as the overall largest tree in the register.

Oldest Swedish tree. Credit: Karl Brodowsky via wikimedia commons.

Smokey the Bear

The editor of American Forests in 1957 received this and several other advertisements from the Smokey the Bear campaign, accompanied by a letter requesting that the editor run Smokey the Bear ads because “a shortage of timber threatens your newsprint supply, or causes another dangerous rise in the cost of newsprint.”

Smokey the Bear has remained an Americana icon throughout most of the past century, but he has also changed over the decades to reflect new knowledge and policies on fire management. Now, the campaign features educational fact sheets and handouts about how wildfires can be beneficial within forests and ways to manage the blaze besides direct suppression.

Letter received by Smokey the Bear campaign.

Find out the latest in forest news in this week’s Forest Digest!

Credit: Develon Ackler via Flickr.

• What We Can Learn from Trees — National Geographic
  Every tree tells a story. They inspire us, comfort us and remind us how life moves on. Read about the rich histories and profound impacts of unique trees all around the globe.
• Get Out of Here: Scientists Examine the Benefits of Forests, Birdsong and Running Water — The New York Times
  Read this review of Florence Williams’ latest release, “The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative,” where she argues that we suffer from an “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors.” Learn how spending time in nature can positively impact both our mental and physical health.
• Study finds secret to diverse forests’ super success — Phys.org
  New research shows why diverse forests are successful. Thanks to their natural varying growth forms and ability to modify their shape to fit the available space, multiple species are able to fill in vertical gaps with branches and leaves. This maximizes their combined ability to soak up the sun falling on a particular plot of land and turn it into tree-absorbing, planet-warming carbon dioxide and producing wood in the process.
• Complete Guide to Yosemite — Liveoncelivewild.com
  The incredibly varied landscape of Yosemite National Park offers plenty of gorgeous views and exciting recreational activities for all of its visitors to enjoy! Discover the well-loved national park in this complete guide to Yosemite and learn what it has to offer.