USFWS/NCTC Public Lecture Series

Author William Souder discusses his new book on the life and legacy of Rachel Carson. William Souder’s work has appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Harper’s. He is the author of three books. A Plague of Frogs (2000) followed the investigation into outbreaks of deformed frogs across North America. Under a Wild Sky (2004), which told the story of John James Audubon, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson (2012) was published, on the 50th anniversary of Carson’s Silent Spring. Souder lives in Grant, Minnesota.

Eli Hopkins is a nationally-renowned sculptor who lives and works in Colorado. In 2002 Hopkins released his first bronze sculptures. His set of stylized horses was well received and, since that time, Hopkins has been able to move forward at a phenomenal rate in his sculpting and art career. His work is selling very successfully, and he has been rewarded with several corporate commissions, along with many articles and recognitions in prominent art publications and museums. Although he has concentrated mainly on wildlife themes thus far, Hopkins has a wide range of interests, which are reflected in an expanding line of varied and unique art works. The NCTC statue is Hopkins first full-sized human sculpture. The state was designed and installed by Hopkins. The dedication ceremony was May 2, 2012.

Randy Olson was a professor of marine biology at the University of New Hampshire. Despite his Harvard Ph.D., four years of post-doctoral research in Australia and Florida, and years of diving around the world from the Great Barrier Reef to Antarctica, he tossed it all in, resigned from his tenured professorship and moved to Hollywood to explore film as a medium for communicating science. His films include Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus and Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy. Today he is an independent filmmaker and author of the book Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style. Olson visited NCTC to screen his film Sizzle and to teach in the NCTC Course "Resource Management Implications of Global Climate Change." Olson discusses with Mark Madison the role of communication in climate change and the ways we can all better communicate science to the broader public.

Queen of The Sun is an in-depth investigation to discover the causes and solutions behind Colony Collapse Disorder; a phenomenon where honeybees vanish from their hives, never to return. Queen of The Sun follows the voices and visions of underrepresented beekeepers, philosophers, and scientists around the world, all struggling for the survival of the bees. The film unveils 10, 000 years of beekeeping, highlighting how our historic and sacred relationship with bees has been lost due to highly mechanized industrial practices. Featuring Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Gunther Hauk and beekeepers from around the world, this engaging, alarming and ultimately uplifting film weaves together a dramatic story that uncovers the problems and solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.

An independent filmmaker since the mid-1980's, Taggart Siegel is best known as the director of the 2006 grass-roots hit The Real Dirt on Farmer John. This critically acclaimed feature documentary about a maverick visionary farmer, won 31 international film festivals awards and was released theatrically around the world.

Lisa Mighetto is the Executive Director of the Amerian Society for Environmental History.

When Bill Weber and Amy Vedder arrived in Rwanda to study mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey, the gorilla population was teetering toward extinction. Poaching was rampant, but it was loss of habitat that most endangered the gorillas. Weber and Vedder realized that the gorillas were doomed unless something was done to save their forest home. Over Fossey's objections, they helped found the Mountain Gorilla Project, which would inform Rwandans about the gorillas and the importance of conservation, while at the same time establishing an ecotourism project -- one of the first anywhere in a rainforest -- to bring desperately needed revenue to Rwanda. Vedder’s book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas, introduces readers to entire families of gorillas, from powerful silverback patriarchs to helpless newborn infants. Vedder take us with them as they slog through the rain-soaked mountain forests, observing the gorillas at rest and at play.

An expert in conservation and ecology, Dr. Vedder is Senior Vice President for Conservation at The Wilderness Society (TWS) in Washington, DC. She has worked for more than 30 years in dedication to wildlife and wildland conservation, applying ecological and social science to save biologically rich and threatened places. Amy Vedder is widely known for her pioneering studies of mountain gorillas in Rwanda during the late 1970s and as co-founder, with her husband Dr. Bill Weber, of the Mountain Gorilla Project. She is the author of several books, including In the Kingdom of Gorillas, which she wrote with Bill Weber, and is the subject of a biography written for middle school students titled, Gorilla Mountain.

Craig Stihler is the Endangered Species Coordinator for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. He will discuss bats generally and then focus on their status in West Virginia and the region, with a special emphasis on the challenges different bat species (and those who are trying to conserve them) are facing. In particular he will review the problems now being posed by White Nose Syndrome, a fungal infection that is currently ravaging bat populations in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast and is continuing to spread to other regions.

Stihler, who is based in Elkins, has worked for WVDNR for more than 30 years and headed its endangered species conservation efforts since 1987. He is recognized as an expert on a number of species, including the West Virginia northern flying squirrel and flat-spired three-tooth land snail. However, he is best known for his work on bats. Working with landowners and cavers alike, he has been a leader in the effort to reduce human disturbance in bat caves, which is a major threat to certain bat species. In 2006, he received the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s prestigious National Recovery Champion award, which recognizes professionals for outstanding contributions toward recovering threatened and endangered species in the United States.

In 1869, John Wesley Powell led a small party down the Green and Colorado Rivers in a bold attempt to explore the Grand Canyon for the first time. After their monumental expedition, they told of raging rapids, constant danger, and breathtaking natural beauty of the American landscape at its most pristine.

Jon Waterman combines sheer adventure and environmental calamity in this trailblazing cautionary account of his 2008 trip down the overtaxed, drying Colorado. Dammed and tunneled, forced into countless canals, trapped in reservoirs and harnessed for electricity, what once was untamed and free is now humbled, parched, and so yoked to human purposes that in most years it trickles away 100 miles from its oceanic destination.

Waterman writes with informal immediacy in this eye-witness account of the many demands on the Colorado, from irrigating 3.5 million acres of farmland to watering the lawns of Los Angeles. He shows how our profligacy and inexorable climate change spark political conflict, and how we can avert this onrushing ecological crisis. As he follows Powell afloat and afoot, Waterman reaches out both to adventure travelers and to scientists, conservationists, environmentalists, and anyone interested in the fragile interplay between nature and humans.

Jonathan Waterman is the author of nine books, has made four television films, and works as a freelance author and filmmaker. In 2004, his writing about the Arctic won the prestigious National Endowment of the Arts Literary Fellowship.

Author, Professor at University of Wisconsin

In 1941 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic chemical to be marketed as an estrogen and one of the first to be identified as a hormone disruptor—a chemical that mimics hormones. Its residues, and those of other chemicals, in the American food supply are changing the internal ecosystems of human, livestock, and wildlife bodies in increasingly troubling ways. In this gripping exploration that forms her new book, Nancy Langston shows how these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems.

Nancy Langston, a professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology with a joint appointment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was president of the American Society for Environmental History in 2007–9.

Phil Pister retired in February 1990 following 38 years as a fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. He studied wildlife conservation and zoology under A. Starker Leopold at the University of California (Berkeley) and has spent virtually his entire career supervising aquatic management and research within an area encompassing approximately a thousand waters of the eastern Sierra/desert regions of California, ranging from the 14,000 foot crest of the Sierra Nevada to the floor of Death Valley lying below sea level. He founded and serves as executive secretary of the Desert Fishes Council and is involved in desert ecosystem preservation throughout the American Southwest and adjoining areas of Mexico. He holds special interest in the fields of conservation biology and environmental ethics and has served on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and Society for Conservation Biology. He also serves on the President's Advisory Committee of the University of California's system-wide White Mountain Research Station. He conducts environmental ethics workshops at the National Conservation Training Center (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) in West Virginia, has lectured at 81 universities in North America and the United Kingdom, and has authored more than 80 published papers and book chapters.