UC Santa Cruz Other Recent Work Title Raymond F. Dasmann : A Life in Conservation Biology Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4j9397s9 Authors Regional History Project, UCSC Library Dasmann, Raymond F. Jarrell, Randall Publication Date 2000 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4j9397s9#supplemental eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 1 Raymond F. Dasmann: A Life in Conservation Biology Interviewed and Edited by Randall Jarrell Regional History Project University Library University of California, Santa Cruz 2000 2 Copyright 2000 by the Regents of the University of California. All uses of this manuscript, including electronic publishing, are covered by an agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Raymond F. Dasmann. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the permission of the University Librarian of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Cover Illustration: The cover illustration is a painting by Elizabeth Dasmann inspired by a Bushman wall painting from the Nawatugi cave in the Matopos hills of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The original wall painting was done several centuries ago when these animals were hunted by the Bushmen in this area. The Bushmen are now long gone, as are the giraffes and zebras; only the kudu (in the bottom left of the picture) still remain. Copies of this book may be ordered for $16.00 (trade paperback) and $25.00 (hardback) direct from Xlibris at http://www.xlibris.com/bookstore, 888- 7XLIBRIS, [email protected]. 3 In the middle 1970s the human race is being forced to some critical decisions. We can try to continue with business as usual, to pursue goals of economic growth and material progress without concern for long-term consequences, or we can change direction. If we go on as before we will have at most a few more decades before serious breakdowns of civilization take place. Before that time there will be recurring and increasing catastrophes affecting great numbers of people. These have already begun. However, if we start now to change our course, while we still have relatively abundant supplies of energy and raw materials, we can develop ways of living on this planet that can be sustained, not just for decades but for thousands of years. The coming years are totally without precedent in human history. Within the lifetimes of those who are still young decisions must be made that will determine whether civilized humanity will have a future. There is no option left to postpone the day of reckoning, or pass today’s problems on to posterity. If the wrong direction is taken there may well be no posterity. —The Conservation Alternative (1975, pp. 1-2) 4 Foreword 7 Introduction 10 Early Family Life 13 Marriage 17 A. Starker Leopold 21 Carl O. Sauer 24 Early Environmentalists 25 Humboldt State University 27 Southern Rhodesia 30 Frank Fraser Darling 31 African Game Ranching 32 The Conservation Foundation 35 UNESCO 40 Man and the Biosphere 42 Stockholm Conference of 1972 44 Jimoh Omo-Fadaka 46 5 Environmental Studies as an Interdisciplinary Field 47 Ecodevelopment and Sustainable Development 48 South Pacific 50 Sri Lanka 51 Intellectual Influences 51 Society for Conservation Biology 53 Garrett J. Hardin 55 International Union for the Conservation of Nature 56 World Wildlife Fund 58 Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz 63 College Eight 73 California Fish and Game Commission 78 Environmental Organizations 84 Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve 93 Assessment of the Environmental Movement 98 Assessment of the Environmental Movement in 1999 106 Publications 115 6 The Next Generation of Environmentalists 123 Appendix I: Dialogue with Ecology Students 126 Appendix II: Ending the War Against the Planet 135 Appendix III: The Threatened World of Nature 137 Appendix IV: Concluding Remarks, Symposium on Biodiversity of the Central California Coast 147 Appendix V: Raymond F. Dasmann: Selected Publications 153 7 Foreword The floors of the old World Conservation Union headquarters at Morges, Switzerland, creaked and the sloping roof window in the third floor, closet-like office where I worked let in both needed air and, when I forgot to close it, also the rain. But it was a friendly place to compose, and that is what I was there to do three decades ago. Outlines for marine conservation, often a bit damp, shuffled to and from the Deputy Director’s office, until finally one seemed to offer promise. I was summoned and so was Senior Scientist Ray Dasmann. He was a legend to me, due to my having studied his work on deer at UC Berkeley under Starker Leopold, also Ray’s mentor. So, I thought I heard my knees creak in harmony with the stairs as I descended. But there opposite the Deputy Director sat a friendly face, somewhat slumped in a chair. The former spoke at some length, as I recall, then turned to Ray for an opinion. A brief discussion, then simply a nod: Sounds good. Let’s do it, he said, launching IUCN’s Marine Programme and more, a friendship that lasts to this day. Insightful, laconic wisdom, I soon learned, was the gift of this different kind of person. I spent many an evening with him and his equally impressive and expressive wife, Beth, talking, always laughing, as we sipped old fashions and nibbled on peanuts, and then had dinner. I always came away with thoughts ringing in my head, but also a bit too much good food and wine to recall all the stories and laughter with precision. The conversations seemed to search for the big things that count. And Ray constantly reminded us of those, and invented more than a few. The International Biological Programme was busy developing modern ecosystem ecology in the 1960s to early 1970s, in the early days of computers and satellite imagery. A portion of the IBP was the conservation of ecosystems program. That program might have stopped right there, and were it not for Ray, the biosphere reserve concept might not have been conceived or flourished. Those were also the days when protectionist conservation, the setting aside of landscapes and species that people particularly valued, was being recognized as deficient. Ecosystems with humans included became the target. The eventual outcome was the debatable concept of sustainable development. Ray had foreseen this problem well before, leading him to innovate the more lucid, non-political, and universally applicable idea expressed simply by 8 ecodevelopment. He envisaged human societies as having evolved from locally dependent ecosystem people to urbanized biosphere people. The inevitable result has been that humans have become divorced from their immediate environment, as the footprint of urban centers continues to extend worldwide, and as perceptions of nature have become values derived more from marketing than experience. The impact on conservation has been fundamental, but not always fruitful. Ray recognized the conflict that emerges when people are divorced from their source, and has expressed it in his writings over five decades. He retains faith in native peoples, and although modern anthropology is showing that humans have always tended to over-exploit their world, the fundamentals of connected ecosystem people, not some technological fix, remain as our best hope for an enlightened and sustainable future. The Easter Island story may be a microcosm of the human future on this Earth, but if we would listen to Ray, this inevitability may yet have a chance to be avoided. So many eminent persons are credited with inventing new wheels, only to find that their predecessors were the originals. Ray is surely one of those, way ahead, even sometimes too far ahead, of his time. While seeking the big things that count, his perception of the little things has been as significant. Diversity, social or bio-, is a hot topic nowadays, and that is where a lot of little things really count. Ray saw the emerging debate clearly in his 1968 classic, A Different Kind of County, my personal favorite, which has profoundly influenced me. Ray would not like excessive flattery or too many bells and whistles. But in this day of cloning, how wonderful it would be if we could all have a little piece of him placed in our genotype! Almost effortlessly, it seems, he has innovated things that are the envy of so many who have been in his presence at meetings, in the field, or in print. He has thought deeply, but written clearly, about the fundamentals of our relationships with, and dependency on, nature. And, he has acted accordingly. —G. Carleton Ray, September 2000 9 Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge Lawrence D. Ford for the enthusiasm and initiative he brought to this oral history project. His hard work, advice, and fundraising efforts helped to bring this volume to fruition. As a former student of Raymond F. Dasmann at UC Santa Cruz, and a conservationist who has followed in his footsteps, Ford has an unusual appreciation of the history of conservation biology and has worked to see that it is documented for future students and researchers. I am also indebted to David R. Brower, Russell E. Train, Huey Johnson, Joshua Whetzel, Jr., Thomas Lovejoy, Stephen R. Gliessman, and Lawrence D. Ford, who made themselves available for background interviews prior to my discussions with Dasmann and shared their insights with me about his work as a conservation biologist and how his thinking on global conservation has evolved over the last 50 years. Although Dasmann’s work is well known among his peers in the United States, I learned that his international reputation has a singularly high profile in global environmental organizations.