I received a review copy of "Peregrine Quest", the autobiography of peregrine falcon expert Dr. Clayton White of Brigham Young University and am enjoying the book while gearing up to write a review in due course. These comments are probably related to something I might note in the review, but are preliminary, focused on one small issue, and will be related to my own experiences and observations about the state of affairs of the pursuit of study of natural history.
It is apparent that Dr. Clay White is a man who ponders things. He ponders nature itself, his own role in nature, his relationships to other people and to landscapes, and no doubt his professional posture in all of this. Thus, I don't believe it is an accident that Dr. White repeatedly referred to his own career in his autobiography as that of a "professional naturalist". Dr. White is a professor of zoology at BYU and probably could have correctly identified himself as a zoologist, a biologist, a raptor biologist, a peregrine falcon biologist, an ecologist, or some other similar description. But he chose to call himself a professional naturalist. I like that! It reeks of an "old school" mentality that is not seen very often any more. In fact, when I looked at the definition of "naturalist" in my home dictionary, I saw the connotation of that word with the amateur pursuit of natural history science; that is how unusual it is nowadays to think of a naturalist as a career professional. But it was not always that way. I argue that we need a return to the pursuit of natural history studies as a professional career choice and in recognition of the naturalist as a scientific endeavor. Steve Herman wrote a great invited paper in a Wildlife Society publication just a few years back urging the reunion of natural history with wildlife management, and Steve is another example of a person who values the role of the naturalist, including as a professional endeavor. My observation is that many careers in academia that relate to ecology, biology or wildlife management focus on the process of science first and foremost, with the data being somewhat secondary to the process of analysis and implemented into management. Another old-school naturalist who happens to be a raptor biologist as well commented to me recently that a major ornithological journal accepted a manuscript of his for publication, but admitted to him (the researcher) that the journal editor's view of the value was in the statistics used in analysis and not in the data. Clay White is a fellow who obviously cherished each data point in his study of peregrines of the world. That is the mentality of the naturalist. Gathering data is a labor of love for naturalists, and the professional naturalist gets the added benefit that it pays the bills. The analysis is a necessary component in the process of "doing science" (as Clay White called it). In some ways, Clay White has been the beneficiary of the fact that a worldwide species he so clearly is fascinated by (the peregrine falcon) became imperiled, thus opening an avenue for the professional pursuit of natural history research on this species. If he had wanted to study barn owls on a world-wide basis, he might have been able to do so within academia, but would have had a much more difficult time in obtaining funding. The imperilment of the peregrine falcon, plus the fact that the peregrine is a charasmatic species with intense value in the minds of afficianados, including falconers and peregrine lovers, meant that funding opportunities made this sort of career as a naturalist possible. Another interesting aspect of this situation as revealed by the passage of time is that the baseline records of peregrine falcon abundance in many parts of the world are sparce. The number and activities of professional (or amateur) naturalists in the decades prior to the career of Dr. White (say, before the 1950's) were inadequate to accurately document the abundance and even the distribution of peregrine falcons prior to the advent of DDT in many parts of the world. A real concern of mine (and perhaps others) is that the delisting of peregrine falcons after their recovery from DDT effects will once again reverse the level of monitoring over the long term. In California, we can estimate the number of peregrine falcon pairs based on the contributions of many amateur naturalists and falconers combined with the observations of agency personnel conducting research here and there, but the fact is that the post-delisting monitoring of peregrine falcons is woefully inadequate to document certain aspects of the population ecology. For instance, the very fact that all official, post-delisting monitoring of peregrine falcons in California is based on known territories means that population expansion cannot be officially detected by the monitoring scheme. Clay White notes that monitoring of peregrine falcons in Alaska during the listing period after recovery was underway revealed a much denser population of breeding peregrines in certain areas of Alaska than the experts had anticipated. Censusing by professionals made these findings possible, but the lack of funding to pay professionals in general mean that we may lose track of the dynamics of peregrine populations once again and will be in a position to respond to peregrine falcon needs if an undeniable emergency were to occur again (through some mechanism not now predictable with accuracy, such as through a newly-emerging avian virus, etc.) In my own case, I use banding and color banding to study common buteos in my area of northern California. There is no funding whatsoever for this sort of research, with the exception of another researcher who was willing to pay from his pocket to gather data (by banding) the same species for a PhD - level study of natal dispersal. Another minor funding opportunity came from another state when the same raptor species I study were suspected of impacting the breeding populations of an imperiled gamebird species, and thus I was paid to trap and band some raptors so that the movements of the raptors could be tracked through radio-telemetry to determine predation impacts on greater prairie chickens. One of the goals of conservation science should be to keep common birds common. One of the roles of the professional naturalist is to monitor the abundance, status and distribution of species, whether currently common, rare, imperiled, or unknown. If for no other reason than this alone, I argue that we need more professional naturalists and we need a good system for monitoring and recording the state of nature in our landscapes across this country and around the world. I am pleased that Dr. Clayton White chose to describe himself as a professional naturalist. It is clear that his bond with the wild is intense, his knowledge of nature is vast, and his passion is directly connected to his science. I have seen other scientists who seem to hop from gig to gig (project to project) with the seeming goal to gather just enough data to plug into their formulas to come up with some sort of conclusion, but often without the passion and especially without the background expertise to understand if their assumptions are correct or even to determine whether they are asking the right research questions. Clay White is a humble man, he admits making some oversights and even errors, but his faith in science is that it can be and should be self-correcting. That is, it can be and should be if it is allowed to be. A career naturalist working on a long-term project or series of projects is a vital component in the understanding and appropriate stewardship of our natural resources. Formulaic science certainly and absolutely has great value and I am not arguing about discarding it. I am arguing that it seems unwise to discard the component of long-term expertise gained as a naturalist who values those data and combines that passion with that technical expertise to gain the best of both worlds. Clay White is a career naturalist. And what an extraordinary career he is having! Hopefully I can share more of his book in due course. Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ PC Magazines 2007 editors choice for best Web mailaward-winning Windows Live Hotmail. http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_pcmag_0507
