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COMMENTS FROM THE 2000 LAROE AWARD WINNER

BY PHILIP PISTER

I guess it's only normal to ask oneself, upon receiving such a commendation as the LaRoe Award, "Why me?" This is especially true within an organization such as SCB, which is fraught with individuals who have made enormous contributions to the conservation of biodiversity, in my mind far greater than anything I may have done. Much of this, I am sure, is nothing more than being in the right place at the right time, and therefore in a position to do a few good things.

My career covered a most interesting period in the history of the United States. Beginning in the early 1950s, when I was a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley, I witnessed massive applications of DDT following World War II. Rachel Carson's startling alert in Silent Spring (1962) led to an environmental awakening reflected in enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), Endangered Species Act (1973), and other environmental laws of that era, which grow ever stronger as we enter a new century and millennium.

One of my favorite sayings is that even the most inadequate mind may ultimately grasp the obvious. In my own case, as a state agency biologist entrusted with maintaining the biological integrity of approximately a thousand lakes, streams, and desert springs ranging from the crest of the Sierra Nevada eastward to the Nevada state line and beyond, I had learned that aquatic systems (including fishes) require water to survive. Unfortunately, water is ordinarily in short supply in desert areas, and even in those habitats where water was adequate, the existence of non-native species was pushing many native taxa toward extinction.

However, state (and to a lesser extent federal) fish and wildlife agencies were ill-equipped, both financially and philosophically, to engage in recovery programs for non-economic species. It therefore became necessary to turn 180 from my agency's management direction and to employ basic principles of conservation biology in protecting these precious biological resources, which continue to transcend our absolute comprehension. It became a matter of digging in and holding our ground for a few years until societal values began to catch up with values intuitive to, and inherent within, the scientific community.

During this period, in 1969, a handful of colleagues from other agencies and universities and I decided we needed to move outside of government. We established the Desert Fishes Council to allow government adequate time to structure, budget for, and accept the philosophical changes required to implement the necessary recovery efforts. In the case of the Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis), this led us successfully to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not long after Kathy Ralls informed me that I was to receive the 2000 LaRoe Award, I read of a Los Angeles fireman who was honored for his heroism in rescuing an injured passenger from a burning vehicle. He commented that he simply could not stand idly by and watch an innocent person die. This is exactly the rationale that prompted us to form the Desert Fishes Council. We simply could not stand idly by and watch this marvelous aquatic fauna die.

Following academic seminars, or lectures to government agency biologists, I inevitably am asked, "Working for a government agency and doing what you did, how did you keep your job?" My answer is simple and direct. There is great strength inherent in doing what one knows is right. This concept will, in the long run, withstand any test. I feel what saved me during that dark period of the 1960s and 1970s was the fact that, deep down, my superiors also knew that I was right. What I was doing simply was not politically expedient. Anglers do not buy licenses (a major revenue source) to catch pupfish and snails, and any Department of Fish and Game effort directed otherwise was therefore not to be tolerated.

Right? Wrong? How can one make such judgments in a field as complex as conservation biology? Aldo Leopold's land ethic, taught to me by his son, Starker, more than 50 years ago, was all I needed to know: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." This is a guideline upon which any biologist may hang his or her career.

As a fishery biologist who has spent the majority of his life peering into bodies of water, the first thing I look for in assessing the health of a fish population is the status of the younger year classes. We may apply this metaphor to the profession of conservation biology as well, and what I observe within SCB pleases me greatly. The participation and enthusiasm of our students, and the quality and dedication of our faculties, give me much cause for optimism. For it is from within our universities that we will win our conservation battles, both through the information derived from the research community and the quality of workers going forth from our universities to apply it. The future is bright!

Let me conclude by offering a word of comfort and hope for those who might otherwise become discouraged and impatient by a seemingly intransigent bureaucracy, whether in government or academe. Max Planck put it this way: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." May you take comfort in this wisdom, as I often have. Bless you all! Fiat Lux!

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