Do you recognize this face? You really should as it belongs to one of the most brilliant nature writers of the day. Mary Ellen Hanibal is the author of the well-embraced “Spine of the Continent”, and a major subject this month at the Bay Nature website. She is currently working on a book on the subject of citizen science and wildlife corridors. A lecture series is promoting it and it’s not due for release until the end of August. I know you’ll recognize some of it though.
Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction
Noted environmental author and Bay Nature contributing writer Mary Ellen Hannibal was moved to write about large-scale efforts to protect the planet after watching conservation scientists weep as they shared their fears that the species they were studying wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rapid pace of environmental change. Out of that experience came The Spine of the Continent, a description of the large-scale effort to promote biodiversity along the chain of mountain ranges from Canada to Mexico. Her next book hones in on a new hope for preserving biodiversity: groups of concerned citizens who faithfully count and study the animals and plants in their local parks, in the wild, and even virtually.
It’s a great interview, and you really should go read the whole thing. In the mean time, I think we should play a game. Let’s pretend that you were a bay area writer tackling the subject of citizen science for an important book. Who would you be sure to interview? Who are the major players in Bay Area wildlife? And before you even start suggesting those river otter people you keep hearing so much about, read this.
Hi Heidi — I’m a journalist and the author of The Spine of the Continent: The Race to Save America’s Last, Best Wilderness. I’ll paste a short review of it below.
I actually wrote quite a bit about beaver in the book — two chapters. One chapter is about Mary O’Brien and her work with the Grand Canyon Trust to bring beaver back to Utah. Just this month Mary has put out a notice to the hundreds of volunteers who over the years have helped her collect data with which to get the Forest Service to change their grazing rules so that beaver habitat can be maintained. It was working with Mary that I conceived the idea of the book I’m writing now, about citizen science, since this is such a fantastic way to get people galvanized and making change.
I’m focusing on California in my book and would love to feature Worth a Dam. I can’t find a list of volunteer activities on your website but I bet you have them. Any other citizen-related engagement, where people actually help gather data and/or restore habitat? Do you know of other volunteer or citizen science related work around beaver in California?
There’s a cool beaver dam app also in Utah and I’m going to write an update about Mary but would love to have a California connection. In any case I’m writing about how beaver were here historically and that in some cases the agencies persist in looking at them as invasive — I’m going to suggest, hopefully in a tactful way, that this is an outdated way of looking at things purely through the lens of agriculture, ranching, and business in general, and that we have to look beyond those interests to the functioning ecosystem.
Thank you for doing your wonderful work — did you write the “beaver pledge” on your site? I’d love to include it in the book.
best,
- Mary Ellen September 2014
p.s. I’d ask to come meet you but my deadline is crazily close and I really can’t leave my desk.
I’m sure part of what she was hoping our volunteers did was take fur samples or gather scat. Because that would be ‘science-y’. Just watching the beavers and observing what they do for 9 years apparently isn’t that science-y. Citizen science according to much of the world involves using cell phones to collect data that actual scientists would have gotten themselves if they had enough funding. It is not about observing a father beaver care for his kits when widowed or seeing him get remarried a 18 months later. It is not about noticing that one kit always used reeds when he built dams and his father tried on at least one occasion to show him that trees were more useful, and he ignored him.
That’s not ‘citizen science’. That’s ‘colorful science’.
But regardless, Mary wanted to include Worth A Dam in her book, and specifically asked to include this, which I’m dearly hoping made it past the final edits. I’m asking for an early copy for the silent auction, but you’ll have to come see for yourself whether its available.
