Announcing the 2008 John Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam ...research.amnh.org/burroughs/wakerobin_pdfs/WR-40-3-spring 08-3.pdf · Burroughs Association Literary Awards The 2008 Medalist

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Wake-Robin Volume 40, Number 3, Spring 2008

Spring, 2008Volume 40Number 3

Announcing the 2008 JohnBurroughs Association Literary

Awards

The 2008 Medalist

Julia Whitty, for TheFragileEdge:DivingandOther

Adventures in the South Pacific (Houghton Mifflin)

2007 Young Reader Books

BeingCaribou:FiveMonthsonFootwithaCaribouHerd, by Karsten Heuer (Walker Books)

It’s a Butterfly’s Life, by Irene Kelly (Holiday House)Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion, by Loree Griffin Burns (Houghton Mifflin Company)

Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed . . . and Revealed, by David M. Schwartz and Yael Schy, photographs by Dwight Kuhn (Tricycle Press)

2007 Nature Essay Award

“The Consolations of Extinction,” by Christopher Cokinos, in Orion magazine, May/June 2007

Highlights of last year’s JBA Awards Ceremony: Left: Mark Meloy (left) accepts the Medal Award on behalf of Ellen Meloy (1946-2004) from former JBA President Jack Padalino. Center: David Gessner accepts the Natural History Essay Award. Right: Gordon Morrison (left), one of the award winners in Nature Books for Young Readers, with board member Joan Burroughs (background) and JBA member Selma Wiener (1925-2007). Photos by Jackie Beckett

The Annual Awards Luncheon and Board Meeting is Monday, April 7. See Page 9 to Sign Up for the Luncheon and Renew Your Membership.

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October 6, 2007: Joan Burroughs, above right, a great-granddaughter of John Burroughs, serves wine in front of Slabsides, at a celebration marking comple-tion of the cabin’s exterior bark restoration. While the major part of the restoration is complete, there is still a minor restoration of the staircases on each side of the porch leading up into the cabin that remains to be undertaken as part of the National Park Service res-toration grant. We ask that you continue to make do-nations to complete work at Slabsides to restore and maintain this exceptional National Historic Landmark that forms a common bond between all Americans.

Robert Titus, the Spring Slabsides Day guest speaker, is a professor of geology at Hartwick Col-lege. He is a paleontologist with a professional re-search background in Ordovician fossils of the Black River Valley.

A New Web Feature

In the weeks to come our Web site will be making changes. The newest change features na-ture tour journals and essays from the field. Be-ginning in this issue of Wake~Robin (see opposite page) and on our Web site in color, you can find Jennifer Lane’s nature tour essay and photographs of the French Polynesian Islands.

Photo by Jackie Beckett

Photo by Jackie Beckett

John Burroughs Association

The John Burroughs Association was formed in 1921 shortly after the naturalist-writer died. Among the Association’s aims are fostering a love of nature as exemplified by Burroughs’s life and work and preserving the places associated with his life. The Association publicly recognizes well written and illustrated nature essay publications with literary awards that are given after the annual meeting on the first Monday of April.

The Association owns and maintains Slab-sides and the adjoining John Burroughs Sanctu-ary near West Park, New York. Open house at Slabsides is held the third Saturday in May and the first Saturday in October. A permanent exhibit about John Burroughs is in the American Museum of Natural History.

The membership year begins in April. Con-tact Secretary, John Burroughs Association, Inc., 15 West 77 Street, New York, NY 10024-5192, or e-mail: [email protected]. Telephone 212-769-5169. Web site:

http://research.amnh.org/burroughs/Wake-Robin is published in March, July, and

November. Vittorio Maestro, Richard Milner, and Steve Thurston, editors. Send submissions and editorial inquiries to Secretary, John Burroughs Association, Inc., 15 West 77th Street, New York, NY 10024-5192 or e-mail [email protected] drawing © 1996 Jim Arnosky. Wake-Robin © 2008 John Burroughs Association, Inc.

Directors: Robert Abrams, Jackie Beckett, Lisa Breslof, Joan Burroughs, Marcia Dworak, Jay Holmes, Paul Huth, Regina Kelly, David R. Lane, David Liddell (first vice president and acting presi-dent), Jack Padalino, Evelyn Rifenburg, Selden Spencer, H. R. Stoneback, Tim Walsh, Ann Zwinger.

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Travels in Tahiti

Text and Photos by Jennifer Lane

“In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings

and coral reefs lie bare”

—The Chambered Nautilus, Oliver Wendell Holmes

Charles Darwin once called Tahiti “The island to which every traveler has offered up his tribute of admiration.” It is difficult to disagree. Hailed for centuries as a place of legendary beauty, Tahiti’s verdant peaks and turquoise lagoons have inspired generations of visitors, from historical luminaries like Darwin and Captain James Cook to modern-day tourists and hon-eymooners. They have admired it not only for its sub-lime scenery, but also for its vibrant culture and fasci-nating natural history. Stories about Tahiti had long evoked my own curiosity. The thought of seeing the place where Cap-tain Cook observed the transit of Venus, the coral reefs and mountains of black volcanic rock that in-spired Darwin’s second-most-famous theory, piqued my interest. These were not only impressive natural icons, but landmarks in the history of science as well. I wanted to experience them for myself, and was lucky enough to have the opportunity when a friend suggest-ed a vacation there in the summer of 2006. Our arrival in Tahiti’s Faa’a airport was an opportunity to experience local culture. Despite the unlikely hour (4 A.M. local time), a band of ukulele players was there to greet us, as women with baskets handed out fragrant tiare blooms—a species of gar-denia—to all the passengers. Then, at the taxi stand outside the airport, leis were duly handed out, until every newly arrived visitor was covered in flowers. It all may seem a bit touristy in this day and age, but it expresses the genuine, unaffected friendliness of Tahi-tian culture. In some ways, modern-day Tahiti is rather industrialized and businesslike. There are shopping malls with fast-food restaurants and Carrefour super-markets, busy highways with trucks barreling back and forth, and on weekday mornings, traffic jams (es-

pecially in downtown Papeete, the capital). It’s sad to see signs of smog and pollution in this once-idyllic is-land paradise. Happily, measures are now being taken to protect the local environment, although progress has been slow. Most of the tourist infrastructure must now conform to strict guidelines to limit pollution of the lagoons, and many schools and other community programs sponsor cleanup efforts. Hopefully, growing awareness will help to turn around some of the dam-age that industrialization has caused. Environmental issues aside, downtown Pap-eete is a thriving urban center, and interesting to walk around. The most common businesses are pearl shops, reflecting the fact that, after tourism, pearl culture is the largest industry in French Polynesia. The biggest seller is (not surprisingly) the Tahitian black pearl, which comes from the oyster Pinctada margaritifera and is generally not black, but more often a luminous eggplant shade. The majority of pearls are farmed on outlying islands, especially the Tuamotus and the Gambier Archipelago, and then shipped to Tahiti, and internationally, for sale. One of the most interesting sights in the capi-tal is the Marché de Papeete (Papeete Market). Out-side, it’s not much to look at, but inside it’s a colorful place—large, airy, and somehow evocative of both a Victorian greenhouse and Paris’ Centre Pompidou (maybe it’s the glass ceiling and the many painted-iron staircases). The vast, warehouse-like interior is lined with tables full of all sorts of merchandise—flowers and myriad tropical fruits, straw baskets, perfumes and monoi (coconut oil scented with sandalwood or tiare), jewelry carved from pearl oyster shells. Toward

Scenicview,Moorea(The photos may be seen in color at http://research.amnh.org/burroughs/)

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the back of the building are the fishmongers, hefting the day’s catch for prospective buyers. The market has remained on its current site for 250 years, and was rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II. Despite urbanization, much of Tahiti’s former beauty still remains. In the interior of the island, tropi-cal forests ascend into the central mountains, and some of the forest trails end in lovely tall waterfalls, whose pools of clear, fresh water are surrounded by lush veg-etation. One of the best views on the island is from the overlook on Taharaa Point, which Captain Cook had once named “One-Tree Hill” for the large Banyan tree a few yards uphill from the lookout point. From here, the view across Matavai Bay toward Moorea (Tahi-ti’s sister island) is spectacular. Matavai Bay was the

place where the British explorer Samuel Wallis first anchored when he visited Tahiti in 1767, the first Eu-ropean to land on the island. The bay was also a favor-ite anchorage of Captain Cook, as famously depicted in a painting by William Hodges (ship’s artist during Cook’s second voyage of 1772-1775). Not far from Taharaa Point is Point Venus, named for Captain Cook’s observations of that planet during his first voyage of 1768-1771. Cook set out to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun (which astronomers at England’s Royal Observatory in Greenwich predicted would occur in 1769). The transit would be timed in three different parts of the world, and it was hoped that this information would allow the distance from the Earth to the Sun to be cal-culated. (Unfortunately, contemporary scientific in-struments were not accurate enough to achieve this, despite Cook’s efforts.) Today, Point Venus is a popu-

lar beach and picnic spot. There is a lighthouse (built in 1867), tree-lined paths to walk along, several sou-venir shops, and a (very un-Tahitian) hot-dog stand. A look around reminds one how much things can change in two and a half centuries. Another lovely spot on Tahiti is the Gauguin Museum, situated on the southeast of the island near the peninsula of Tahiti Iti (“Little Tahiti”). There is a scenic view over the bay toward the peninsula, whose green hills slope downward toward the coast. The art-ist Paul Gauguin lived and worked here in the �890s, and the Tahitian-themed images he painted during that time did much to influence Western views of this is-land. The museum’s buildings encircle a wide expanse of grass, on which sit several tiki (traditional carved

statues) and a memorial to Gauguin. Few of the artist’s original paintings are on display, but the exhibits pro-vide a good description of his life on Tahiti, including a reconstruction of the house in which he lived. Although only forty minutes by high-speed ferry (the spacious, air conditioned Arimiti 4, populat-ed mostly by Australian tourists), a visit to the neigh-boring island of Moorea is like a journey back in time, to what Tahiti once was like. Like Tahiti, Moorea is a high island, with volcanic peaks and a green carpet of vegetation, and fringing coral reefs. Now mainly geared toward tourism and agriculture, Moorea is a quiet island, where the pace of life is slow. The scenery here is even more breathtaking than on Tahiti. Stroll-ing down the nearly empty roads lined with coconut palms and frangipani, with the mist-covered moun-tains rising in the distance, you really do feel like you are in the midst of a tropical paradise. I was amazed

Cook’s Banyan tree at Taharaa Point, once known as“OneTreeHill”.

Scenic view from the Gaugin Museum, Tahiti.

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by the veritable picturesqueness of the landscape. It seemed that almost every view could have been a painting, a perfect harmony of colors and contrasts: the shadowed greens and browns of the volcanic hills, the intense blue of the sky with its patches of white clouds, the clear lagoon with its shades of green and turquoise. Flowers and fruit grow in abundance along the roadsides—bright red hibiscus, pale fragrant tiare and frangipani, bananas, pineapples, breadfruit. The breadfruit has an interesting history. This

large, round, light-green fruit is native to French Poly-nesia, where it is known as uru or maiore. The fruit, which has a grainy texture, is a staple of Tahitian cook-ing. It is not really sweet, and is more comparable to a starchy vegetable like a potato. The bark of the tree is used to make a thin cloth called tapa. The breadfruit was first described by Cook’s naturalist Joseph Banks, who suggested transporting it to the West Indies to feed the enslaved Africans on plantations there. Cap-tain William Bligh (who had accompanied Cook on his second voyage) set out to convey the plants, on his infamous voyage of �787 aboard HMS Bounty. That

ended rather badly (Bligh was set adrift in a small boat by his mutinying crew for forty-one days, until he fi-nally managed to make landfall in Timor), but Bligh made another attempt and successfully delivered the trees in �79�. Ironically, the slaves thought the fruit tasted bland, and it never really took off as a staple crop in the Caribbean. On the way back to the ferry terminal, my trav-el companion and I spotted a humorous contrast to the lush surrounding vegetation: a cell-phone tower dis-guised as—what else?—a palm tree. It was good for a laugh, but in a sense it also gives one pause, a sign that twenty-first-century life is fast encroaching in this region. There is at least one place in the Society Is-lands that still seems very far removed from the twen-ty-first century, and that is Tetiaroa. It is an atoll—a low-lying ring of coral islets (called motu) surround-ing a shallow central lagoon. Although only forty kil-meters from Tahiti, Tetiaroa seems about as remote as an island can be. The entire small atoll is twenty-two kilometers in circumference and was owned by the re-clusive actor Marlon Brando until his death in 2004, when the only hotel on the atoll was permanently closed. Regular transport to the island also ceased, and now the only way to get there is by chartered boat. We went by catamaran, leaving from Papeete harbor at 7 A.M. The two-and-a-half-hour sail was brisk and re-freshing, spent sipping black coffee and chatting with the mostly French crew, one or two of whom were casting fishing lines from the stern and reeling in the occasional catch. The harbor in Tetiaroa appeared deserted. Al-though there are a few residents (Brando’s son and the singer Michael Jackson are said to own homes here), and a new hotel is slated to open in 2008, the atoll is largely uninhabited. After a short ride from the cata-maran in a small inflatable Zodiac, we landed on the shore. The white sand beach was pristine, stretching unbroken (except for the occasional coconut palm) for what seemed like miles. I stood for a moment—lis-tening to the calm waves lapping the shore, looking out across the placid turquoise waters of the lagoon to where an islet of white sand and towering green palms rested like a mirage on the horizon—and could hardly believe that a place this beautiful could exist. It was like standing in the middle of a postcard. This was what the shore of a Pacific atoll would have looked

Breadfruit on Moorea

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like to the first European explorers, and the first Poly-nesian settlers before that—deserted and tranquil, in-habited only by wildlife. The wildlife in question were mostly seabirds and hermit crabs (some of which were actually ju-venile coconut crabs, which also appropriate gastro-pod shells as shelters, very much like their hermit crab cousins). Across the lagoon from Motu Rimatiai (the islet on which we landed) is Motu Tahuna Rahi, known as “the island of birds.” Joined by our fellow eco-tourists from the catamaran, we waded out across the waist-deep lagoon to view the bird colony. As our tour guide lectured on in rapid French, we gingerly tried to step around the numerous small gray sea cu-cumbers (concombresdumer), for which the shallow waters of the lagoon are a favorite hangout. Motu Tahuna Rahi is currently a nature reserve for seabirds, and is one of the few protected bird sanc-tuaries in the Society Islands. It is home to a variety of bird species, including brown and red-footed boobies, frigatebirds, gannets, noddies, long-tailed tropicbirds, and a number of species of terns. These migratory sea-birds use the motu as a nesting island, where they lay eggs and raise their young. Different species of birds nest in different parts of the islet. We saw mostly frigatebirds, noddies, and terns. The bird watching was spectacular—numerous species, and plenty of cute baby chicks to be seen. On one tree branch not far above ground level was the large nest of a red-footed booby, inhabited by a single fluffy white chick. The boobies apparently lay only

one or two eggs, and typically raise only a single off-spring to adulthood each season. The feisty little terns seemed to have the most personality, guarding their eggs and eyeing us intruders with what seemed like a disgruntled look. The very large, noisy flock of them,

flapping their wings at us to go away, was vaguely reminiscent of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s TheBirds (the thought passed fleetingly that perhaps I should have stayed on shore with the less wildlife-in-clined, but luckily the terns stayed put). On the other side of the islet the lagoon was calmer, and so transparent that several stingrays were clearly visible lolling on the sandy bottom. They may look lazy, but they can be lightning-fast—a fact at-tested to by my three lovely photos of sand clouds. After wading back to Motu Rimatiai from the bird is-land, we ate a picnic lunch under a shady palm tree, and stayed for the remainder of the afternoon, explor-ing the shoreline and the crystal-clear waters of the

lagoon. The sun beat down as it typically does in the tropics (despite the fact that this was June, the begin-ning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere), but a cool breeze kept the temperature pleasant. Part of the beach was composed of gray coral rock, a reminder of how the island was formed. When Charles Darwin arrived in French Polynesia in 1835 (during the voyage of HMS Beagle), similar atolls, as well as high islands like Tahiti, helped to crystallize his theory of how coral islands form. (Interestingly, he had never seen a coral island when he first formulated his theory, while still traveling in South America at the beginning of the voyage.) Darwin concluded that high islands and atolls were different stages in a single process, which begins with an undersea volcano that eventually emerges above sea level to form a volca-nic island. Eventually, the volcano becomes extinct, and the island begins to sink back into the ocean. As this occurs, the distance between the shoreline and the fringing reefs around the island increases, until the is-

Frigatebirdchick,MotutahunaRahi,Tetiaroa.

View of the lagoon, Motu Rimatiai, Tetiaroa.

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land disappears beneath the sea. Meanwhile, the reef itself eventually breaks the surface, forming a ring of land—an atoll—surrounding an empty lagoon where the central island formerly stood. Darwin’s theory has since been proven correct, and every now and then we get to see the process unfold (such as when the brand-new volcanic island of Surtsey broke the surface of the Atlantic near Iceland in �963, although it has since disappeared again beneath the waves). High islands like Tahiti and Moorea represent a later step in the process, while Bora Bora (with its wide lagoon and central high island) is still further along. Atolls like Tetiaroa and the Tuamotus form the last step. Returning to Tahiti aboard the catamaran, we sat on the deck, enjoying the breeze and the Polyne-sian sunset. Behind us, the towering peaks of Moorea were silhouetted against the sky, while ahead Tahiti stretched across the horizon, aglow in the last rays of sun. Just as it all must have looked, I thought to my-self, to the early European explorers, and the Polyne-sian settlers arriving in their war canoes, and the first living things that floated here, on rafts of vegetation, to a solitary rock of basalt newly emerged above the sea.

Jennifer A. Lane is currently working toward her doctoratein biology at City University of New York/The American Mu-seum of Natural History, study-ing evolutionary relationships of fossil sharks. She earned a mas-ter’s degree in geoscience from

Pennsylvania State University in 2001. Lane enjoys naturetravel,andwritingarticlesoneco-tourism.

The Little Things That Count

A Gathering Appreciation of Microbes

By Susan C. Scheuer

Microbes are minute, mostly single-celled or-ganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and protozoa that are usually invisible to the naked eye. Maybe because of their tiny size and because they are difficult to study, microbes have gone largely ignored, leading renowned biologist and author Edward O. Wilson to refer to mi-crobes as the “black hole of biological systematics.” Yet recent scientific and technological advancements tell us that microbes are the ancestors of all organisms, that they are the support for all ecosystems, and that without them, life on Earth would cease to exist. Last April 26th and 27th, The American Museum of Natu-ral History (AMNH) paid tribute to these essential, but much-overlooked creatures with its twelfth spring symposium, entitled “Small Matters: Microbes and Their Role in Conservation.” Microbiologists, conser-vation biologists, disease ecologists, and others gath-ered to discuss the wealth of roles that microbes play on the planet and the various ways in which microbial communities are impacted by the loss of biodiversity. The event included an evening panel discussion geared specifically towards a lay audience. Thinking about microbes, because of their tiny size, can present its own set of challenges, and may re-quire, on the part of the uninitiated, a certain stretch of the imagination. How big are they exactly? Columbia University ecologist Shahid Naeem told the audience that there are �00 million to a billion microbes in just one gram of soil. Oregon State microbiologist Stephen Giovannoni explained that if, lying beneath the blue whale replica in the AMNH’s Hall of Ocean Life, one imagined oneself as a microbe and the whale as an earthworm, then one might get an idea of a microbe’s proportions. In other words, it’s easy for those of us less “microbial” in orientation to overlook these min-ute organisms on our paths to school, to work, to the grocery store—or even to a natural history museum. The lay community is not alone in giving mi-crobes short shrift. Scientists have typically paid far more attention to “charismatic” megafauna (the larger animals, weighing ten kilograms or more such as bears, deer, and crocodiles) than they have paid to the micro-bial universe—that “other cosmos” as Naeem called it.

SunsetonMoorea.

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However, in the late �990s, the emerging technology of molecular biology and the advent of genetic analy-sis provided scientists with new tools for studying the structure and function of genes, and for understanding the genetic relationship among organisms, advance-ments that revolutionized the field of microbiology. To quote Eleanor Sterling, Director of the Center for Bio-diversity and Conservation at AMNH, “We have a bet-ter sense now of all we’ve been missing in food webs, in oceans, in mud, in soil, and even in our mouths.” Laura Katz, a biologist at Smith College, drew atten-tion to the pioneering discoveries of microbiologist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois, who in 1977 discovered a new domain of life called “Archaea”—a group of microbes differing both genetically and met-abolically from all other forms of life. Recognizing the enormous diversity of microbial lineages, Woese claimed that Archaea were more closely related to Eu-karyotes (plants, animals, and fungi) than to bacteria. The so-called Woesian Revolution teaches, among other things, that all of life is based on the same bio-chemistry, and no single organism outranks others in importance, or as Katz exclaimed, “You cannot be a ‘lower’ E.coli!” As the two-day symposium made clear, even with the aid of these new techniques and discoveries, microbial life to a large extent remains shrouded in mystery. It was estimated that while roughly 30 mil-lion microbial species exist, most of them have yet to be identified and studied. A complicating factor, as James Tiedje, Director of the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University explained, is that, within the microbial world, there is no set defini-tion of a species. Microbial lineages evolve not just vertically but also laterally through a process known as “horizontal gene transfer,” or the transfer of genetic material across species boundaries. As Tiedje further explained, two lineages are said to belong to the same species when purified DNA molecules show at least 70 percent re-association through hybridization, but that percentage is an arbitrary cut-off. All this is to say that the current system for defining species, while func-tional, remains inadequate, so that the vast majority of microbial species remain unidentified. Rita Colwell, Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, compared the degree of uncertainty and complexity in the field of microbiology to that of

astronomy: “We have very similar problems. We see many objects with very faint signals. We have to view them from a distance. Most of what we’re looking at is unknown to science.” What we also know, and this was a recurrent theme throughout the two-day symposium, is that mi-crobes exist everywhere and in enormous numbers. The various presenters guided their audience through the microbial worlds found in oceans and coral reefs, in caves and prairie marshes, in Antarctica, in Ban-gladesh, and within the human body. Indeed, in our co-evolutionary association with microbes there are perhaps 400 different microbial species living in ev-ery human being. One might have been surprised to learn that we are only one part human and ten parts microbe! David Relman, of the Veterans Adminis-tration Medical Center in Palo Alto and the Stanford School of Medicine, uses the human body as a “micro-bial observatory,” focusing his research on the roles that microbial communities play in oral and intestinal disease. But while some microbes make us sick, oth-ers are responsible for breaking down our food. Still others, Colwell explained, may produce compounds that influence behavior; and there is some speculation, said Susan Perkins, of the AMNH Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics and Division of Invertebrate Zoology, that an individual’s weight may be tied to the particular microbes present in their gut. We also have microbes to thank for turning grapes into wine, milk into cheese, malt into beer, and making dough rise. “If you love to eat,” Perkins reminded us, “you love microbes.” Off-white cotton T-shirts sold at the sympo-sium imprinted “Save the Microbes, Save the World!” served as simple reminders of the symposium’s un-derlying theme—that microbes are part of the huge interconnected fabric of the Earth. With this as the premise, what then is the relationship between the microbial world and general habitat loss? Oceanogra-pher Patricia Glibert talked about the global prolifera-tion of harmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by such factors as population increase, the industrialization of world meat production, nitrogen and phosphorous fer-tilizers, and climate change. Kurt Reinhart, a biologist at the University of Indiana, discussed plant-microbe interactions in native versus non-native ranges. Forest Rohwer, a molecular biologist at San Diego State Uni-versity, focused on viruses, microbes, and the decline

continued on page 11

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Dues, Annual Luncheon, and Proxy

Tax-deductible dues for the membership year March 31, 2008, through March 31, 2009 , are due. Please mark your choices and return this document.

Dues

______ Student $�5 ______ Patron $50 ______ Bequest ______ Senior$�5 ______ Benefactor $�00 ______ Gift Membership of______ Annual $25 ______ Life $500 $_____for (name and______ Family $35 ______ Additional Gifts address): Annual Luncheon

Reserve ____ place (s) at the annual luncheon Monday, April 7, Noon:

Member $85 Nonmember $��0Make checks payable to the John Burroughs Association and mail to: John Burroughs Association, Inc., Ameri-can Museum of Natural History, �5 West 77 Street, New York, NY �0024-5�92.

Proxy

KNOW ALL PEOPLE BY THESE PRESENTS, that I ___________________________, residing at _______________________________________________________________________, being a member of the John Burroughs Association, Inc., do hereby constitute and appoint Regina Kelly and Lisa Breslof as my proxy to attend the Annual Meeting of the members of said corporation to be held at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, April 7, 2008, or any continuation or adjournment thereof, with full power to vote and act for me and in my name, place and stead, in the same manner, to the same extent and with the same effect that I might were I personally present there at, giving to said Regina Kelly and Lisa Breslof full power of substitution and revocation, and I hereby revoke any other proxy heretofore given by me.

Date _____________________________2008

Signature ________________________________________________Member

Print ____________________________________________________Member

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Announcements:

National Environmental Education Week, April �3-�9, 2008. For more information go to the National Environmental Education Foundation at www.EEWeek.org

Ulster County Department of Tourism features Na-tional Historic Landmark Slabsides cabin in Ulster County Heritage Guide this spring.

*Wish List *Help support the purchase of a TV/DVD/VCR combo player for Slabsides Day events and educa-tion programs featuring “John Burroughs: A Nat-uralist in the Industrial Age” video produced by Wollman Video Productions, Ltd., New Paltz, NY, Fall 2007.

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degree from Swarthmore College, and a master’s from the Manhattan School of Music. She is a frequent visi-tor to the AMNH.

Slabsides Memento

This postcard was sent in �936 by the Marveggi family and has now been donated to the John Bur-roughs Association by Ken and Ann Thompson.

of coral reefs. Most types of habitat loss directly and danger-ously affect humans. To give some examples: Richard Ostfeld, a research scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, discussed his work on pathogen transmission, and his discov-ery of a strong negative correlation between bird spe-cies diversity and human West Nile Virus incidents. Rita Colwell discussed her work building predictive models of cholera outbreaks, and the relationship of these outbreaks to climate-driven factors such as sea-surface temperature, sea-surface height, and salinity. The good news, as explained by Peter Groffman, also of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is that mi-crobes carry out many positive geochemical processes in the environment, including the production of food and fiber, the degradation of organic matter, and the consumption of pollutants like DDT and PCBs, all of which help keep our planet safe. At the end of the symposium, scientists agreed on two critical points. First, if Earth is a living, breath-ing system, with all organisms connected in complex ways, then we must expand our thinking about bio-diversity to include not just charismatic megafauna but the trillions of microbes that make up 90 percent of the Earth’s biomass. In the words of Rita Colwell, “The sustainability of this wonderful blue planet rests unmistakably and irrevocably on the vast microbial diversity that we are appreciating and hopefully bet-ter understanding through this meeting.” Second, sci-entists agreed that along with protecting biodiversity comes the need for better communication about the multiplicity of roles played by microbes in the uni-verse, not just amongst themselves—with their many and diverse areas of expertise—but between the sci-entific community and the public at large. As Perkins remarked, “the relationship between our knowledge of microbes and our ability to engage in effective conser-vation efforts is likely to be the most important emerg-ing area in conservation biology.”

Susan Scheuer, a radio journalist, has produced nu-merous stories on music and the arts for NPR’s Perfor-mance TodayandPRI’sStudio 360.Susanhasworkedas a classical music announcer for WQXR. Most re-cently she received a certificate from CERC at Colum-bia University and is broadening her reporting to in-cludeenvironmentalissues.Susanholdsabachelor’s

Microbes continued from page 8

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INSIDE


John Burroughs AssociationLiterary Awards, Spring 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .�

Travels in TahitiBy Jennifer Lane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

The Little Things that CountBy Susan C. Scheuer.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Wake-Robin John Burroughs Association, Inc. American Museum of Natural History �5 West 77 Street New York, NY �0024 Forwarding and return postage guaranteed Address correction requested

First Class Postage

CalendarApril 5-26 —Ulster County Community College Course, “The Life & Writings of John Burroughs”April 7—JBA Awards LuncheonMay 17—Spring Slabsides Day with guest speaker (see page 2) and Open House followed by the first bird count (previous first bird count canceled due to inclement weather) led by Lin Fagan, President of the John Burroughs Natural History Society.June 15-19—The John Burroughs Nature Writing Conference and Seminar will be held at Vassar Col-lege, Poughkeepsie, New York. For more informa-tion see the previous issue of Wake-Robin

The John Burroughs Association informs mem-bers through Wake-Robin and the Web site http://research.amnh.org/burroughs. Occasionally, we reach out via e-mail with news alerts and remind-ers. Please send your e-mail address to the Secre-tary ([email protected]) so that we can better serve you. Members are encouraged to submit articles or news items for publication. Deadline for submis-sions to the Summer 2008 issue of Wake-Robin is June 1. Direct inquiries to the editors.

Documents

Announcing the 2008 John Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam ...research.amnh.org/burroughs/wakerobin_pdfs/WR-40-3-spring 08-3.pdf · Burroughs Association Literary Awards The 2008 Medalist