#conservaiton

What’s in a name?

Let’s take a voyage and learn the stories behind the names of some of the nation’s most important ocean places in our December signature series article, Storied Seas: The Names and Tales of Sanctuary Places.

Read it here: https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/50/storied-seas.html

A few weeks ago I watched Princess Mononoke for the first time and I’m so glad I did. It was beautiful, exciting, engaging and the best environmental movie I’ve ever seen.

Outside of documentaries, most environmental films I’ve seen have pretty one dimensional messages.

Unlike Princess Mononoke, there is always a clear villain. The amorphous pollution monster. The evil human corporation. The guy who likes dumping radioactive sludge in rivers for fun. Ferngully, Avatar, Happy Feet, Bambi, The Bee Movie, The Lorax, The Happening. Entertainment with underlying messages of environmentalism tends to fall flat. When movies do it right it can resonate with you. Yet, so many get it wrong. It’s destructive at its worst and whimsical at its best. While each of these films aims to educate, they do little to help environmentalism as a whole.

So, if these movies don’t represent environmentalism well, what does? A good representation of environmentalism encapsulates what environmentalism is. Of course, but, what is environmentalism?

According to Encyclopedia Britannica Environmentalism is a “[…] political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature. In various ways, environmentalism claims that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.”

TL: DR. Environmentalism is a movement that takes into consideration the natural world in societal actions, to prevent and stop harm towards the environment.

While this definition is my favorite “formal” definition of Environmentalism, there’s something missing. The same thing that makes most environmental messages fall flat. Environmental destruction is interconnected with all human issues. From racism to sexism to classism, environmental issues often overlap with civil rights. Simple solutions for complex problems often erase the issues minority populations face. Both in the natural and human world.

It’s well known that bees have been having a rough time, but what does that mean for the environment? Often when people think of bees they think of honey bees or on occasion bumble bees. Honey bees create honey sure, but they also pollinate. They’re important and according to Albert Einstein, “If the Bee disappears from the surface of the earth man would have no more than 4 years to live.” But, how much of it is true?

According to Greenpeace USA, honey bees perform 80% of all pollination worldwide [1]. They also represent a statistic that has been shared across the internet. That ⅓ of all the food you eat is in direct relation to the honey bee. However, there is a lot of detail they leave out. Honey Bees do pollinate 80 percent of all cultivated crops. [2] But to say all pollination worldwide is disingenuous. For the plants that honey bees carry lots of pollen and visit often. It is no doubt that honey bees do increase yields.[3] Yet, many plants are not visited by honey bees. It’s easy to forget that honey bees are an introduced species in various places around the world, for the sake of cultivation. This includes the Americas. There are also many places honey bees cannot live. Still, many plants do well without them. The reason why is because the honey bee is not the only pollinator. It seems like basic knowledge, but something that’s forgotten in the common mindscape. While the world panicked about Colony Collapse Disorder, pollinators worldwide continued to decline. [4] This tunnel vision left the general public unaware of a very dangerous problem. Important pollinators are disappearing right under our noses. [5]

Then there are people. Lately, environmental racism has gained popularity alongside social movements such as BLM. While not fully recognized until the ’70s and ’80s, its effects are felt around the world. [6] It shows itself in the violence that founded national parks and the correlation between landfill placement and low-income communities. [7] It is important to acknowledge people in their vulnerability and any proposed solutions. Environmental vulnerability affects the poorest people in the world the most. From pollution causing increased health crises to poor countries being the most affected by the heat of climate change. From lung issues, heart disease, and cancers. [8] Not to mention the heightened levels of obesity which can be attributed to Food Deserts. [9]

Our definition of the Environment and Environmentalism needs to change to incorporate all of its nuances. We need to change ideas of separation from the natural world, singular praise of a species, and protecting nature at the expense of others. If we want to make a lasting difference everything needs to be taken into consideration. Environmentalism is more than a movement. It is a guideline to move towards a future that is better for the planet and the humans that reside within it. Ecology as a whole is complex, so to treat the solutions to ecological problems as simple is dangerous.

“Environmentalism is really about seeing our place in the world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently — that we are part of nature — utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.” — David Suzuki

Sources

[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/save-the-bees/

[2] https://www.vafb.com/membershipwork/news-resources/honeybees

[3]https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.2140#d3e893

[4] https://www.scientia.global/pollinator-decline-implications-for-food-security-environment/

[5]https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/while-we-worry-about-honeybees-other-pollinators-are-disappearing

[6] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/fighting-environmental-racism-in-north-carolina

[7] https://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=plrlr

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/climate-change-enviromental-racism-america

[9] https://moveforhunger.org/harsh-reality-food-deserts-america#:~:text=In%20rural%20America%2C%20a%20food,%2C%20living%20in%20food%20deserts.%E2%80%9D

More Sources:

https://www.uaex.edu/farm-ranch/special-programs/beekeeping/pollinators.aspx

https://www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ocean-plastic-fishing-waste_n_5bc47dc9e4b0bd9ed55c1f60#:~:text=Each%20year%2C%20millions%20of%20tons,in%20the%20oceans%20and%20seas.

Imaging charred records in polyester sleeves

Uncovering the Past Every so often preservation technicians in the Preservation Programs, St. Louis will come across something special in the military records that they preserve. Recently, a technician was working on a World War II record when they found a small metal disc taped to the lower corner of a document. By using a Holbein spatula, the technician was able to loosen the tape from the paper and remove it from the document without any damage from the tape’s adhesive. On further inspection, the small metal disc was a dog tag! This was unexpected as round dog tags were rarely used during World War II, during which time the rounded rectangular tag we commonly see today was adopted.

This dog tag is even more special because it belonged to Nelson Apple, a Master Sergeant in the Coast Artillery Corps, who served in the Philippines during WWII.  He was captured in early 1942 and sent to the Cabanatuan POW camp, where he later died after being ill with malaria for 5 months.  The identification tag was found by a local Filipino approximately 3 years after the soldier’s death.  The tag was sent to the US War Department and filed with Apple’s record, which ultimately made its way to the NPRC in St. Louis.