Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey writing in a fire tower

 
It's the birthday of writer and environmentalist Edward Abbey, born in Indiana, Pennsylvania in 1927. He is one of the most colorful (and somewhat controversial) of the modern day environmentalists.

Meet Edward Paul Abbey, twentieth-century polemicist and desert anarchist, a character of elaborate contradictions and eccentricities whose words either infuriated or delighted his readers.

In a career spanning four decades, he wrote passionately in defense of the Southwest and its inhabitants, often mocking the mindless bureaucratic forces hell-bent on destroying it. "Resist much, obey little," from Walt Withman, was this warrior's motto.

While he was alive, attempts to label him in conventional terms nearly always fell short because he was neither left-wing nor right-wing, nor was he an outlaw. Abbey was a genuine rebel who simply did not believe in the moderns industrial way of life. He wrote against the grain, always choosing the path of the greatest resistance. Beginning in the 1950s, he depicted the Southwest not as a virgin utopia peopled by rugged individualists, but as a region under siege because of government and corporate greed, its people at risk of being cut off from the primary wellspring of their spiritual strength - the wild places. He's been dead for a while now, but the legend keeps in growing.

-- from Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist

He decided to hitch-hike cross-country, knowing that he might be drafted when he turned 18, and he fell in love with the West. He did get drafted, and spent a couple of years in Italy, then went to the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. He worked as a seasonal ranger in national parks, and he published his first few novels.

Abbey was working as a school bus driver in Death Valley when he decided to write down an account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah. It was published as Desert Solitaire in 1968.

In 1975, he published The Monkey Wrench Gang , the story of four irreverent, beer-drinking, gun-wielding, fun-loving characters who will do anything it takes to stop developers from coming in and destroying the West. The book was a best-seller, and its popularity made Desert Solitaire a best-seller, as well.

He became known for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau of the American West".

In July 1987, Abbey went to the Earth First! Rendezvous at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where he was involved in a heated debate with an anarchist communist group known as Alien Nation over immigration. The incident is a chapter in his book Hayduke Lives.

Controversy continued when in 1987 the Utne Reader published a letter claiming that Abbey, Garrett Hardin, and the members of Earth First! were racists and eco-terrorists. Abbey was extremely offended, and demanded a public apology, stating that he was neither racist nor a supporter of terrorism. Abbey said that  as far as "eco-terrorism," he supported tactics that were trying to defend against the terrorism he felt was committed by government and industry against living beings and the environment.

In 1984, Abbey went back to the University of Arizona to teach. 

Edward Abbey died on March 14, 1989, at the age of 62, in his home in Tucson, Arizona from complications from surgery.

He left a message for anyone who asked about his final words: "No comment." He also left instructions on what to do with his remains: Abbey wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck, and wished to be buried as soon as possible. He did not want to be embalmed or placed in a coffin. Instead, he preferred to be placed inside of an old sleeping bag, and requested that his friends disregard all state laws concerning burial.

"I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree. No formal speeches desired, though the deceased will not interfere if someone feels the urge. But keep it all simple and brief." 

He requested gunfire and bagpipe music, and "a flood of beer and booze! Lots of singing, dancing, talking, hollering, laughing, and lovemaking."  (You can read online what happened to his body after his death.)

More at http://www.abbeyweb.net 

NJ Native Fish Art and Writing Contest

One of the 2011 Winning entries

The Native Fish Art and Writing Contest is an annual contest, sponsored by Trout Unlimited. It is open to all New Jersey students in grades 4 through 7.

Teachers should know that participation can meet NJ Core Content Curriculum Standards Science 5.5: Grade 4 - A.1, C.1; Grade 6 - C.1; Science 5.10: Grade 6 - A.1 (as based on Trout Life Cycle (pdf, 96kb) (from Trout in the Classroom Activity Guide).

To enter the contest, participants need to research one of New Jersey's native fish. With the information gained from their research, students write a short story depicting one year in the life of that fish and submit an artistic depiction of the species featured in their story.

The story must be original and include correct biological and ecological information about the fish. Things to include in the story are habitat, food, habits, and any other ecological information that pertains to that fish. The fish species must be named in the story and the fish must be native to New Jersey. Stories must be 500 words or more and typed.

The drawing of the native New Jersey fish can be done in acrylics, pencils, watercolors, oil, oil pastels, crayons or ink. Art must be original and depict a scene from the story. The finished size of the artwork must be 8.5 x 11 inches.

Entries will be judged on both the artwork and the short story.

There are first and second place winners in each of the following categories: 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, and 7th grade. All winners will receive a certificate and fishing equipment. First place winners will also receive a youth membership in Trout Unlimited. In addition, each winner and their immediate family will be invited to the Pequest Trout Hatchery and Natural Resource Education Center in Warren County for a luncheon and awards ceremony on the morning of opening day of trout season (Saturday, April 7 in 2012). Winners will also be able to fish at the Pequest Fishing Education Pond.

Entries must be received by Friday, March 2, 2012. Entries must include the entrant's name, home address, home telephone number, grade and school name. Failure to include this information will lead to disqualification. All entries become the property of the Division of Fish and Wildlife and will not be returned.

Submit entries to:
Native Fish Art and Writing Contest
NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife
605 Pequest Rd.
Oxford, NJ 07863

Winners are notified within 2 weeks following the contest deadline. No other notifications are sent.

Note that this contest is not affiliated with Wildlife Forever's State Fish Art Contest. For information on their contest, see www.statefishart.com.

Follow these links for information on New Jersey Fish

• Freshwater Fish
• Saltwater Fish
• True New Jersey Natives (PDF)
• N.J. Fish Fact Sheets

Visiting Revolutionary War New Jersey

Hopefully, anyone who grew up in New Jersey knows that our state was pivotal in the American Revolution and played an important part in the American colonists's victory. NJ is often referred to as both the "Crossroads of the Revolution" and the "Military Capital of the Revolution".

Throughout the Revolutionary War, there were 296 clashes between the Americans and British within the colony of New Jersey. That is more than any other colony in the Revolutionary War.

I have written here earlier about a key battle that occurred January 3, 1777 in the town of Princeton, when the patriots were pushed back by a British charge General Washington with his staff took to the field to rally the retreating troops back into battle.

But there are many other historical locations that are less well known.

The Abraham Staats House is one of the finest surviving buildings from the Dutch Settlement of the Raritan Valley in the 18th century.The house was entered onto the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

It is located on the Delaware-Raritan Canal. There are a variety of birds which have been spotted on the property and on the canal.

Of course, not all Jersey colonists were in favor of breaking from the crown. Governor William Franklin was the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin and was a loyalist who supported the Stamp Act. Governor Franklin signed the charter for Queen's College, which would evolve into Rutgers University. He was like other colonists who had emigrated from England and still felt loyalty to England. On January 8, 1776, Governor Franklin was arrested for opposing the Revolution.

Morven

Another National Historic Landmark in Princeton is known as Morven. Now, it is a museum and public garden. The museum occupies the house called Morven, which was formerly the New Jersey Governor’s Mansion and 18th century home of Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Its restoration and conversion to a museum were completed in 2004. Morven Museum & Garden is administered by Historic Morven, Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 1987, in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of State. The state acquired Morven in 1954.

The Jacobus Vanderveer House is located in Bedminster Township, Somerset County, on part of the 218 acres that make up River Road Park. The oldest part of the Jacobus Vanderveer House was built in the early 1770s. It is typical of the Dutch frame houses that dotted the countryside before the American Revolution. Much of the original fabric of the house remains intact. It includes a wall in the west parlor that features raised wood paneling above the fireplace with a barrel-back cabinet to the side and the home has original flooring of wide pine boards. The house gained a Federal style addition in the early 1800s.

 Some Revolutionary War Links for New Jersey

1. Abraham Staats House
2. Bergen County Historical Society
3. Bravo - Battlefield Restoration and Archaeological Volunteer Organization
4. Burlington County Historian
5. The David Library of the American Revolution
6. Fort Lee Historic Park
7. Friends of the Hancock House
8. Jacobus Vanderveer House & Museum
9. Lawrence Historical Society
10. The Meadows Foundation
11. Monmouth Battlefield State Park
12. Morven
13. New Bridge Landing
14. Old Barracks Museum – Trenton
15. Princeton Battlefield Society
16. Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route

New Jersey's Newest National Park

Not far from downtown Paterson is is the Great Falls on the Passaic River which recently become America's 397th national park. The National Park designation makes the 35-acre site eligible for federal funds.

The 77-foot waterfall in downtown Paterson is second only to Niagara Falls in terms of water volume east of the Mississippi River.




Alexander Hamilton (lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution, confidant to George Washington, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and first Secretary of the Treasury) formed in 1792 an investment group called the Society of Useful Manufactures (the “SUM”) whose funds would be used to develop a planned industrial city that was later to be known as Paterson.

Hamilton believed that the United States needed to reduce its dependence on foreign goods and should instead develop its own industries. The industries developed in Paterson were powered by the 77-foot high Great Falls of the Passaic, and a system of water raceways that harnessed the power of the falls. The district originally included dozens of mill buildings and other manufacturing structures associated with the textile industry and later, the firearms, silk, and railroad locomotive manufacturing industries. In the latter half of the 1800’s, silk production became the dominant industry and formed the basis of Paterson’s most prosperous period, earning it the nickname “Silk City.”

 Take a look at the Great Falls from a webcam view via EarthCam and the City of Paterson.

Conservationist Aldo Leopold

Lately, I have written a number of posts about the various hunting and trapping seasons here in NJ. So, today, when I saw on an almanac that it was the birthday of Aldo Leopold, I thought I should post a bit on him to balance the scales.

Aldo Leopold is the author of a key book in the conservation movement, A Sand County Almanac.

He was one of those kids that was drawn to the outdoors. After college, he entered Yale's forestry graduate program (one of the first in the country - not something you'd expect from an Ivy school) and became one of the nation's first professional foresters.



One of his assignments was to hunt livestock predators in a New Mexico national forest. But as he observed the bears, wolves, and mountain lions, he concluded that removing them had a broader impact on the entire ecosystem.

He developed a philosophy that humans should not dominate the land.  He popularized a definition of "wilderness" that meant nature in its own, untended state, rather than the conventional idea that wilderness is land for outdoor activity.

Eventually, he developed the first management plan for the Grand Canyon. He wrote the Forest Service's first game and fish handbook. He formed The Wilderness Society with other conservationists in 1935.

His "sand county" farm (worn out land purchased for $8 an acre) near the Wisconsin River, became his real world experiment. He planted 40,000 pine trees and tried to tend the land with his own conservation ethic of peaceful coexistence with nature. He documented this in essays collected in A Sand County Almanac.

The book was published in 1948, one week before he died of a heart attack while battling a grass fire.

(via Amazon) ...A Sand County Almanac has enthralled generations of nature lovers and conservationists and is indeed revered by everyone seriously interested in protecting the natural world. Hailed for prose that is "full of beauty and vigor and bite" (The New York Times), it is perhaps the finest example of nature writing since Thoreau's Walden.

... the heart of the book remains Leopold's carefully rendered observations of nature. Here we follow Leopold throughout the year, from January to December, as he walks about the rural Wisconsin landscape, watching a woodcock dance skyward in golden afternoon light, or spying a rough-legged hawk dropping like a feathered bomb on its prey. And perhaps most important are Leopold's trenchant comments throughout the book on our abuse of the land and on what we must do to preserve this invaluable treasure... a new generation of readers can walk beside one of America's most respected naturalists as he conveys the beauty of a marsh before sunrise or the wealth of history to be found in an ancient oak.

Much more... www.AldoLeopold.org

Busy New Jersey Beavers

USFWS.gov photo

The beaver is the second largest rodent in the world. Even children are familiar for its wide, flat tail, trre-gnawing and for building dams.

Those tails are useful for slapping the surface of the water to warn other beavers of approaching danger. Although these critters are rather awkward on land, they can navigate quickly under water and can stay submerged if necessary for up to 20 minutes.

Trees (bark and leaves) are their favorite winter food, but in summer other vegetation, especially aquatic plants like water lilies, make up their diet.

Beavers are known for their engineering of dams on rivers and streams. Their intent is to build their lodges (homes) in their preferred pond setting. They ingeniously place vertical poles, and then fill in the spaces between the poles with horizontally placed branches. Then, they further fill in the gaps with a combination of weeds and mud to hold back the water around their lodge. They have even been known to create "canals" in order to float larger tree materials they need rather than dragging them over land.

Their powerful front teeth are cartoonish but they are effective for cutting trees and plants for building and for food.

Though beavers are found throughout New Jersey, it is likely that many residents have never actually encountered one in the wild. Children and adults might mistake a groundhog for a beaver.

NJ's beaver population is strong because they generally coexist well with humans and they have few natural predators. 

Not all cases of beaver building have been met with amazement by humans. There have been reports over the years of busy beavers encroaching on human activities.  In Camden County, beavers on Kirkwood Lake created dams that made the water rise so that homes that normally had about 100 feet of land between them and the lake wound up with only a few feet of land.

In Middlesex County, a beaver blocked a culvert on a road in the Jamesburg Park Conservation Area and built a dam between two cranberry bogs. The town wanted to avoid flooding that had occurred in previous years. In that case, the town got a permit to trap the beaver out of season. They snared a 31.5-pound, 40-inch-long female beaver in an underwater trap.

This past year, in Princeton Township, human intervention with beavers also made the news.
A pair of busy beavers killed by a local animal control officer activated animal lovers who wondered why the beavers were not relocated rather than killed.

The beaver pair were contributing to flooding at the Pettoranello Gardens section of Community Park North, which has a pond and several streams. Workers tried to dismantle the dams, but the beavers got busy and rebuilt.

It didn't help that the state Division of Fish and Wildlife said the Princeton animal control department had not gotten the proper permit prior to killing the beavers. It seems odd but, according to a spokesman for the department, beavers trapped either in conibear traps, which kill them, or in live traps, still must be euthanized and may not be relocated.

As said earlier, our state beaver population is healthy. The state regularly surveys the 30 hunting and trapping zones in the state. Permits obtained from the Division of Fish and Wildlife are required to trap beaver and/or otter.

During the 2009-2010 season, more than 600 beavers were trapped and killed. The beaver season runs from the end of December to early February. (The duration of the trapping season for beaver on 23 Wildlife Management Areas is January 1 through February 9, 2012, but if the anticipated harvest of beaver and/or otter has not been accomplished during this season, up to 14 additional days may be authorized by the Director.)


More on "Beavers as Master Builders of Wildlife Habitats"

North American beaver (Castor canadensis)

Coyote Hunting in NJ

Beginning today, a special night hunting season on coyotes will begin in New Jersey. Hunters have been allowed to use rifles to shoot coyotes during daylight hours since November, but by obtaining a special permit, hunters are able to shoot coyotes at night during the season that continues until mid-March. The state established its coyote hunting program in 1997.

Estimates from the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife say that there are more than 5000 coyotes in the state.

There were several reports of coyotes attacking pet dogs last year including one small dog that was walking unleashed with its owner that was killed in Sparta Glen Park in Sussex County.

Coyote attacks on humans are rare and they are wary of people and will avoid them. The rare cases include two separate attacks in NJ when in Monmouth County in 2007 coyotes attempted to drag off a child.

Coyotes' preferred prey is rabbits, mice, birds and other small animals. Coyotes play an important role in the ecosystem, helping to keep rodent populations under control. But, as with our Garden State bears, they have adapted to eating available sources like garbage, pet food and unattended domestic animals (especially cats and small dogs) and carrion.

Eastern coyotes in NJ can be up to 60 pounds, but average about 40 pounds. They are found in all NJ counties.

Eastern coyotes are larger than Western coyotes. Past interbreeding between gray wolves and coyotes may be responsible for the larger size and color variations in NJ coyotes. To the untrained eye, coyotes resemble German shepherd dogs. They can be seen in coats of blond, red and black, according to the state Division of Fish and Game.

Over 2,000 night hunting permits were issued, but because coyotes are extremely smart and difficult to find, the numbers are expected to be low.


http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/coyote_info.htm