SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD The Pacific Seabird Group occasionally honors outstanding contributors to seabird science and conservation with a Special Achievement Award. At the 41st Annual Meeting in Juneau, Alaska, in February 2014, PSG presented the Special Achievement Award to Vivian Mendenhall. The transcript of Pat Baird’s tribute to Vivian in Juneau appears, in slightly edited form, below.

VIVIAN MENDENHALL Pat Baird

Vivian has been a member of PSG THUS IT WAS 1925 since 1986, was PSG secretary for four I am being driven forward years, and served as editor of Pacific Into an unknown land. Seabirds for 14 years. She continued the The pass grows steeper, work started by her predecessor, Steve The air colder and sharper. Speich, to raise the publication from A wind from my unknown goal a newsletter and summary of summer Stirs the strings research into a refereed journal that Of expectation. was carried by about 30 libraries at Still the question: the height of the hard-copy journal era. Shall I ever get there? Vivian has been an ex-officio member of There where life resounds, PSG’s Board, the Executive Council, or A clear pure note EXCO, for 14 years, contributing much In the silence. via rewrites of the bylaws, archiving various documents, and of course, Who is Vivian Mendenhall? being our Parliamentarian. She has also I think of her as the mild- conducted research on seabirds since mannered Clark Kent who the 1970s through the present, often dressed in conservative clothes volunteering on projects worldwide. and who was always diligently She was Marine Birds Coordinator working in the background as for the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s the “mild-mannered reporter,” Alaska Region. She was manager of the but who also was the complete USFWS Seabird Colony Database from opposite and who did amazing 1986 to 1998, during which time she things. You all may think of actively sought updated colony data and Vivian as Clark Kent too— initiated new surveys. She also was on diligently editing all the draft a planning team for the North Pacific reports and manuscripts that Fisheries Management Council, and came her way as editor of Vivian Mendenhall checking Ancient Murrelet burrows conducted cooperative research with Pacific Seabirds: stuck behind on Talan Island, Russia, in 1994. colleagues in Russia. Although she a computer with her red has not been presenting her research markers, cutting and pasting. However, the thankless job of editor of Pacific on seabirds since her retirement from there is a different side. I have had the Seabirds. However, in her other life she USFWS in 1998, in previous years she pleasure, as Associate Editor of Pacific is a Beryl Markham, a Vita Sackville- was a regular contributor to the papers Seabirds in 2012 and 2013, to get to West, a Liz Robbins, or a Claire O’Hara, sessions of PSG’s annual meeting. I know Vivian. Within our usual editorial perennially pushing the limits, testing would like to begin this presentation by back and forth emails or phone calls, herself, living life to the fullest. A first reading a poem by Dag Hammarskjöld. would occasionally pop up a throw-away child, born in Birmingham Alabama, This poem was the first poem he wrote, comment from her such as “when I was she moved to Pasadena California and was found after his death, along with white-water kayaking,” or “when I was before she was two years old. Vivian many others. These were later published rock climbing,” or “when I was flying was no ordinary stay-at-home-with- posthumously under the title Markings. airplanes…” dolls girl, and her joy in nature began Dag, for those of you who are younger, Yes, that is our Vivian: tirelessly at an early age. She was lucky to have was the second Secretary General of the working in a bland government cubicle, parents who were climbers and back- United Nations and held this position data crunching, or as most of you country skiers. This was unusual in the from 1953- 1961. know her, cryptically slogging away at 1940s, and as Vivian said, “they were

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rejected because her brain had flat- lined as she incorrectly answered the yes/no questions on the Standard Form 171 (“Are you a US citizen,” “Are you a member of the Communist party,” and “Have you ever been convicted of a crime”). She remedied that and was put to work in the contaminant section and later in the Brown Pelican project where she monitored their success in South Carolina and Florida. She also conducted experiments on Barn Owls using DDT, dieldrin, and rodenticides. Happily, Vivian found that the east coast also had an outdoors, and she continued climbing and skiing, although she returned to the west to continue mountaineering. After a brief stint in Four-wheelin’! St. Paul Island, Alaska, 1995. Australia, in 1980 she landed a job with the USFWS Refuge System in Alaska where she was on a planning team for the probably considered exotic and crazy.” things to the max, and so she went on a Alaska Maritime Refuges, and where she Vivian adopted climbing at six years week’s ski expedition in the Brooks was thrown together again with seabirds. of age – without a harness. She also Range during this time. She also had her From there she moved on to a new skied at an early age, and often fished first experience in the bush between Nome position of Marine Bird Coordinator, and contemplated nature. She climbed and Point Hope during this time. In her unfortunately mostly desk work and trees or played Huck Finn when she spare time, Vivian kayaked down the Alsek editing. Always restless to return to the found an abandoned raft (her first at-sea River from Haines Junction, Yukon field, she convinced her bosses that she experience). She climbed in the Sierras territory, to the Alaska coast (140 miles). needed to help in monitoring studies so with her sister, or backpacked in the The Alsek is rated as one of the most she would know what the biologists were Sierras and the Cascades with her family celebrated whitewater rivers in the world, talking about. So she went to St. George in the years before light internal frame and is part of the legendary Triple Crown of and St. Paul Island, where she worked packs. Vivian had an early interest in birds North American Whitewater class V+ big- on shearwaters and kittiwakes. Vivian and science. She started birding at age water runs. On this trip, Vivian portaged 10 eventually took over Art Sowl’s Seabird 11. She also was an early adopter of good miles across a glacier. This is the Vivian Colony Database. During this time, she editing skills. Her mother was a journalism that most PSG members do not know: served on a planning team for the North major, had her kids diagram sentences, and adventurer, climber, mountaineer, kayaker. Pacific Fisheries Management Council often corrected their English. Vivian decided to go on for her Ph.D., and taught classes for fisheries observers Vivian went on to college at UCLA and this time she chose the University on identifying seabirds. Some of those where she produced an honours thesis on of Aberdeen in Scotland, where she students went on to study seabirds. An spermatogenesis in the House Finch worked at the Culterty Field Station especially rewarding part of her job while she continued to hike, climb, and and studied the fledging success of was cooperating with colleagues in the occasionally cave. After her junior year Common Eiders on the River Eyethen Russian Far East in Magadan in 1989 she went to Austria where she discovered estuary. Her dissertation was titled and on Talan Island in 1994. kayaking. It was at the University of “Growth and mortality factors of Eider In 1998, the USFWS offered early California, Berkeley where her ties with ducklings in north-east Scotland.” Even retirement, and Vivian took it. This gave marine birds started, and her thesis was in Scotland Vivian still found time to her time to accept (in 2000) the volunteer on the Feeding Ecology and Behavior of hike during the summer and winter. job of editor of Pacific Seabirds and to the Willet. Vivian moved to Alaska in Since her life was not filled enough, bring that publication up to her mom’s 1969, keeping in line with her spirit of she learned Gaelic and Scottish history journalism standards. She has loved adventure, and worked at the University during her time there. Then the job the job because she has been able to of Alaska, Fairbanks where she lived in search started, and she finally found a interact with seabirders from all over the a 12-foot square cabin and got into cross position at Patuxent Wildlife Research planet. She learned desk-top publishing, country skiing. Vivian always does Center—after her application was first graphic arts, copy-editing and executive

Pacific Seabirds • Volume 41, Numbers 1 and 2 • 2014 • Page 22 SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD • Vivian Mendenhall editing while editor, all of which skills have greatly improved our society. I years isn’t bad. Sincere and heartfelt helped to launch the journal into another am encouraging her to become our first thanks to her for her service to PSG, league. Besides that job, she served as appointed Archivist. Vivian has been contributions to seabird biology, and her Secretary on PSG’s ExCo for four years. active in the natural world from the time friendship. Vivian found volunteering for PSG very she was a toddler, and we are lucky to rewarding. Vivian has been instrumental have had someone with so much in helping to write new bylaws for PSG, knowledge and experience be and has been the much-needed PSG a part of our group all of these Parliamentarian (really: who else can years. remember all those Roberts Rules of I started with the first Order?). She has also been a life-saver poem ever written by Dag for the archival memory of PSG. Hammarskjöld, and I will close In retirement, Vivian has kept busy with his final poem, written volunteering for other organizations in August 24th, 1961 (his plane addition to PSG. She is on the board of was shot down over Africa on 18 Anchorage Audubon as well as other September 1961). NGOs, has commented on draft EISs, and has testified on habitat conservation [UNTITLED] before municipal governments. Always Is this a new land, eager to get back out into the field, Vivian in a different reality has volunteered on a number of seabird from today’s? surveys. Vivian was the staff seabird Or have I lived there expert on the “Harriman Revisited before this day? Expedition” in 2001 from Homer along Woke up, the Alaskan peninsula, into the Bering an ordinary day with grey light Sea, and over to Far East Russia. Never reflected from the street, one to rest on her laurels, she started woke up – a local research project in Anchorage from a sombre blue night In the Anchorage Opera Chorus for the performance of recently on incubation behavior in above the tree line Eugene Onegin, 2010. Sandhill Cranes and their responses to moonlight on the moor disturbance in the Coastal Wildlife State the mountain ridge in shadow. Refuge. Remembered Vivian still hikes and does eco-tours different dreams, with her husband in places like China remembered and Tanzania, Galapagos, the Amazon, the same mountain landscape: Antarctica, and the Falkland Islands. Her twice did I climb the ridges, most rewarding bird experiences have I lived by the inmost lake been not just with seabirds like penguins and followed the river but also finding the Black Woodpecker towards its source. in France and Snow’s Guillemot in the The seasons have passed Kurile Islands. In recent years, Vivian and the light also has indulged her love of music and and the weather joined the Anchorage Opera. But that and the hour. was not enough. She has always liked But it is the same land. folk dancing, and so now she leads a And I am beginning to know the map Scottish Country Dancing group. She and the points of the compass. and her husband Jim still visit their It’s been a good run for Vivian—28 salmon set net site in southwestern Alaska (Nushagak Bay) but they no longer fish there. Vivian has always believed in volunteering, whether for PSG or for other groups, and her many contributions to PSG over the years

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