| First part of a two-part
article. The extensive references, including those cited here, will appear with the remaining text, in April. At that time, too, the significance of the italic line in the title will be more strongly apparent. Walking the crowded streets of Chicago on the first morning of the NABT convention, I picked one of Mayor Daly's plastic flowers and wished for a few real ones. I also wished for fewer people and cars. After all, the topic of my address to the con- vention, and one of the main concerns of NABT, as it ought to be for all men, was the people - environ- ment equation. And there is no better place in the world to perceive the staggering imbalance so typi- cal of modern civilization than downtown Chicago. I was reminded of a comment by Marston Bates (1955), to this effect: Human population growth is like cancer. The yearly annual increase is now about ________________________________________ This paper is adapted from the keynote ad- dress to the annual convention of Biology Teachers, 14 October, 1971, in Chicago. Hugh H. Iltis is professor of botany and director of the herbarium, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706. A 1948 graduate of the University of Tennessee, he did graduate work at Wash- ington University and the Missouri Botanical Garden (M.A. 1950, Ph. D. 1952). He has taught at Wisconsin since 1955. Iltis's field work has taken him to Costa Rica, Mexico (maize studies), Hawaii, and Peru (potato studies). His special interests are biogeography, evolution, and the preservation of biotic communities. A devotee of back- packing and camping, with a deep concern for the "optimum human environment and human adaptations, especially as they relate to children and the family," he has been active in Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness So- ciety, and other preservation groups. |
70 million, or 6
million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago. And whatever one may think of Chicago, a new one every month seems a little excessive. Excessive, too, is the general unawareness of the significance of all the environmental turmoil: the popular view that, on the one hand, man can some- how adapt to pollution and crowding and, on the other hand, that he can solve his environmental problems solely by relying on technological advances. In a cartoon in Look magazine (Flagler, 1971) two businessmen are walking down Fifth Avenue with their attache cases; one is saying to the other: "The way I look at it, there's a price tag on everything. You want a higher standard of living, you settle for a lower quality of life." The irony here may not be lost on you, but it seems to have been missed by many economists and sociologists. Indeed, even Philip Hauser, the eminent demographer at the University of Chicago, seems to see nothing particularly incon- gruous about giving up a biologically rich and hu- manly decent environment for one with increased urbanization and all that that implies - and using almost the identical language of that cartoon to do so ! He said, in an interview: The romantic nostalgia that some town and country planners have espoused is utter nonsense. Ferdinand the Bull sitting under the trees and smelling the pretty flowers just won't work in the modern world of the present or the future. This could be accomplished only at the expense of lower productivity and lower levels of living. (Hess, 1971) But the problem of man and nature cannot be so cavalierly and sarcastically dismissed. Like so many |
| physicists, chemists, and
sociologists, Hauser shows an unfortunate misunderstanding of the nature of human biologic conditions (cf. Etzioni, 1970). It is this kind of misunderstanding that allows, for ex- ample, the construction, in Chicago, of a nine-storey high school building for 3,000 students - without any windows. It is this kind of misunderstanding that urges irrigation of the Sahara and destruction of the Amazonian rain forest (Tobin, 1970). It is this kind of misunderstanding that points up the modern prob- lem of man's inescapable genetic needs, frustrated to madness in the giant city, and of man's optimum environment being destroyed before his very eyes (Iltis, 1966, 1968; Iltis, Loucks, and Andrews, 1970). The French sociologist - theologian Jacques Ellul put it well in his masterpiece, The Technological Society (1954, p. 325) : The milieu in which man now lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, into a universe for which he was not created . . . . He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. A Special Responsibility Exacerbated by the population explosion, the tech- nologic revolution has produced and inevitable and unprecedented environmental crisis, which thrusts the biology teacher, especially, into a position of crucial responsibility and fateful power. Who among you would have dreamed, not so many years ago, when you were catching your first frog or picking your first flower, that the very survival of beast and flower, as well as of man and civilization as we know it, would depend on the biology teachers the world over ? For no chemist or sociologist, no senator or president, can understand biology as well as you do or is able to defend the living world as effectively. Look at it as one may, there is no technologic fix, no political panacea, that will extricate us from the environmental crisis - but your insights from biology, together with the acceptance of evolution and ecology by your students and by the population at large, just possibly might. Indeed, only the biologists can lead a sick, con- fused world back to health. Take just one example: the training of medical doctors. Biologists are the ones who will teach evolution and ecology to the medical students, who are the very ones who will be acting as human ecologists all over the world. Not only that: your presentation will be the only one in which these future M.D.s will ever hear of evolution, of diversity - and of the long and tortuous winnowing and sifting of natural selection, which produced man and mouse alike. If medical students have a good under- standing of evolution, they will become a potent force for human good; if they lack it, they will continue to prepare the world for disaster. (Allow me an aside. The moral obligation of biol- ogy teachers is to teach biology, to teach of the fabric of life. And more and more it becomes apparent that |
every teacher has an obligation
to spend a summer at a field station to learn what to teach youngsters about this fabric of life and to be able to answer the searching questions of the young. If you don't un- derstand why this is so crucial, then either quit - or else go forth and learn field biology ! ) Politics and the Environment With all the concern for environmental teaching in American Biology Teacher, two topics are covered by thunderous silence; namely, politics and extinc- tion. Concerning politics, two things must be obvious to anyone who is sensitive to the environment: 1. Continued development and economic growth are one thing; preservation of the environment and steady-state ecology are another. It should be quite clear that, for the most part, preservation and devel- opment are two mutually exclusive concepts. You can't eat your cake and have it too; you cannot get something for nothing. These are two cliches, to be sure, but they represent the most fundamental of ecologic laws. Prudence, therefore, would dictate that choices today be immediately redirected toward long- range aims: more outright preservation and strictest restraint in using resources. This is what Earth Day is all about. This is what ecologists and everyone must expect from intelligent and responsible leaders. 2. The present leadership of the United States refuses to accept this or any other ecologic law. Lip service notwithstanding, the political, financial, and military power structure, including the present ad- ministration, is primarily committed to those ex- ploitative industrial interests that wish to make big money at all costs, and not to those that wish to pro- tect the environment and its ecosystems. Consider the evidence: We are still at war - 80 billion dollars' worth a year - and not at peace. We are still waiting for the five-year birth-control program demanded of HEW by Congress, and we still do not have, nationwide, liberal abortion and birth-control laws. We are still dragging our feet on pollution, and the 20 billion dollars a year it will take in each of the next five years merely to clean up past messes is not forthcoming. We are still, as a nation, not committed to the absolute necessity of recycling. We are still squandering resources as if they had no end, are destroying large and magnificent parts of the earth to get or grow them, and are encouraging and even bribing other nations, especially the underdeveloped, to copy our en- vironmental insanities. And the administration does not really care. It shows no signs of earnestly committing itself to the solution of the overwhelmingly serious ecologic and social problems of today. In fact, the antienviron- mental mood in the administration is becoming |
| stronger. It was most clearly
reflected by the Presi- dent himself in his appearance before the 5,000 mem- bers of the Detroit Economic Club, on 23 September 1971. The industrialists there loved him, particularly when he talked reverently about profits. They loved him even more when he promised them, in brazen sincerity, that "We are not going to allow the en- vironment issue to be used in a demagogic way to destroy the industrial system that made this great country" (Nixon, 1971). No wonder they applauded wildly! Free license to continue to exploit, to develop: how nice for them! But how bad for us - and for them and their families too, in the not-so-remote future. Subverters of the Movement The President's comments are only too typical of an insidiously innocent but dangerous tendency gain- ing momentum: the current counterrevolution against the environmental movement. The cynical denigration of the ecologist, the continual bombard- ment of the public by misleading advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the deliberate circum- vention of laws by managers and officials, the naive cornucopic pronouncements of the technologic bamboozlers such as Buckminster Fuller (1971) and Constantinos Doxiadis, of many, often well-meaning, scientific experts such as Philip Handler (1971) of the National Academy, Alvin Weinberg (1970) of AEC, Athelstan Spilhaus of AAAS, and Nobel laure- ate Norman Borlaug, and of such agencies as FAO (Tobin, 1971) - all these and, unfortunately, many others have contributed towards a simplistic assessment of the crisis. All these are pushing "prog- ress," "growth," "food production," and the sweet nonsense that we can have both unlimited develop- ment and adequate preservation. For how long can we afford to be this innocent? What if this madness lures us out on the slender limb of biotic simplicity from which there is no retreat, but only the inevitable collapse of the eco- system? For how long can we afford to listen to so many biologically innocent "experts," whose ponti- fications will cost us the extinction of biotic diversity? What if the diversity of life continues to become less and less and the options for sound ecomanagement thus become fewer? What if, in fact, these experts are all wrong? It is indeed no accident that "experts" tend to be the butt of many a joke, and for good reason: they are so wrong so often. The definitions alone (and they are legion) of what an expert is are not only humorous but are often very revealing. What is an expert? He is a man from out-of-town with slides. He is a man whose ignorance is superbly organized. In Marshall McLuhan's definition, he is a man who does not make the slightest error on the road to the grand delusion. What if unlimited energy, unlimited wealth, un- limited growth, unlimited development, and unlimited |
human adaptability prove to be
grand delusions, which every ecologist knows they are? What then? Indeed, there are only two things that are unlimited, Einstein said: the universe and human stupidity. What then, if, as a society, we stumble and make a grand mistake? What if Mr. Nixon is wrong? And what if, in fact, the environment does come first and the industrialist's profit second (Iltis, 1970a) ? What if the only viable course left to this country is a decrease in the GNP and an enforced limitation of its economic growth? The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the few federal organizations that tend to take exception to the officially sanctioned policy of economic laissez- faire. Its embattled administrators Russell Train, Wil- liam Ruckelshaus, and Lee Talbot have attempted to do a fine job, but more often than not they are being sabotaged by the White House or the State Depart- ment. Thus, in the present administration these men are almost accidental anomalies; and where they have succeeded it was because of public backing- not because of the administration, but in spite of it. This is to these men's great credit; their agency was in part created as an administrative smoke screen for business-as-usual exploitation. It is good also that we have the courts, where citizens and organizations alike can sue, and are now suing in ever-increasing numbers, as they attempt to insure that both government and industry do the environmentally right, the humanly moral, thing. The decision of Judge J. Skelly Wright and his asso- ciates in Calvert Cliff's Coordinating Committee, Inc., v. Atomic Energy Commission (Wright, 1971) shook that blindly power-mad organization to its very foun- dations by demanding that it behave responsibly toward the environment. Yet, all in all, there is little to be optimistic about. Therefore it is of paramount importance for biology teachers to be able to explain to their students pre- cisely why, in spite of efforts and laws to the con- trary, the environment is continuing to deteriorate; why we continue to permit short-term profit and long-term disaster; and why solutions are not forth- coming. The answer can be simply stated: the powers that be are not very bright, either in their short- sighted, essentially selfish view of economic gain or in their superficial attitude toward the environment. Nixon's Men-at-Arms Other factors must be considered, by biologists and citizens alike. What of the character of the men whom we delegate to represent us in government? Biolo- gists, who are supposed to know something of the determinants of behavior, should be concerned when they discover that Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans enjoys playing the part of a Great White Hunter in Africa. He not only slaughters animals belonging to species that are on the shadow line of extinction but has himself photographed with his |
| dead quarry as well. Stans,
speaking to business leaders attending the Financial Executives Institute held in Houston, Texas, suggested that we must not act in the face of "ecological hysteria" and that en- vironmental risks must be weighed against the na- tional interest (Stans, 1971). The problem, of course, is this: precisely what does he mean by national interest? Does he mean the preservation of an ancient assemblage of natural things, which gives joy and meaning to life? Or, perhaps, does he mean the preservation of laissez-faire and a suicidal plunge into materialistic expansionism, which will end only when the last iota of matter has been transformed by economic man into money? Secretary of the Treasury John Connally is also a great hunter. His African safari after he left the Texas governorship was well covered in all the Texas newspapers, complete with photographs of Connally amid mountains of bleeding flesh. Is this sort of behavior appropriate today? Should people wih en- vironmentally destructive hang-ups run the economy of this great country? We could barely put up with this butchery in Teddy Roosevelt's day, when there was much game and fewer people; today, to blast away at sable antelopes or African leopards reflects a moral callousness, an elegant corruptness, or, at best, a blind foolishness that is not lost on our stu- dents. To hunt, yes - satisfying, as it does, some very basic and primeval human urges (Tiger, 1970); but to hunt, with such a pathologically acquisitive drive, the rare and vanishing members of this ancient fauna indicates, in the Connally case, that we are being led in the delicate field of international economics by a man whose pattern of existence shows him to be dangerously ignorant. The question, then, is: should such men, who lack any environmental or social com- mittment except to their own power, be our leaders? Small wonder, then, that our leaders in govern- ment are still talking about putting "economic im- pact" ahead of "ecologic impact." Says Stans (1971) : "Isn't it time for someone to say 'Wait a minute?' " He chides the "vocal" and "impatient" eco-alarmists that jobs are at stake, that plants will be shut down if we enforce the laws too rigidly. He says we need a slowdown on the banning of DDT, of phosphate de- tergents, of polluting automobile emmissions. He says we need to encourage the building of new power plants and off-shore oil-drilling. Would anyone who knows Stans' propensities in Africa be surprised at these and similar sentiments? And again, should this kind of man have the power that he has? The one ray of hope in Nixon's cabinet was Walter Hickel, a tough, outspoken, and honest man, who got fired, ostensibly for writing a letter - a thoughtful, courageous letter defending today's disenchanted col- lege students. Hickel is a self-made Alaskan, who grew in his job almost from the day he arrived in Washington and who threatened to become one of the best secretaries of the Interior and defenders of the public trust since Stewart Udall and Harold Ickes. |
That fact alone was intolerable
to the President and, especially, to the oil industry. Hickel had to go if exploitation was to stay. I wish to apologize to Hickel. I fought his appoint- ment bitterly, for he looked like a run-of-the-mill environmental exploiter. But most of his actions as Secretary of the Interior were courageous and re- flected a deep concern for nature, a love for the land and its people. When a man can say, as in the case of the California condor controversy, "it was a choice between rare birds and pumping oil, and I chose for the birds" - that is quite something! Alaskan Oil : Whose Is It ? Unfortunately, both Hickel and his successor, Rogers Morton, support the Alaskan ol pipeline, a project that is clearly an environmental and aesthetic monstrosity. May I suggest to both of these men and to the President, who are all so anxious to have the oil come out of the ground and produce profits, that there is a simple alternate solution to the Alaskan oil problem - a solution that is both ecologically sound and environmentally prudent. What clearly needs to be done is to nationalize the Alaskan oilfields and keep them locked up for 100 years. This action makes sense for the following reasons: 1. We do not need the oil now. But, given our chemical (especially the plastic) industries and our whole technologic civilization, so utterly de- pendent on oil, in 100 years man will be deperately oil-hungry and glad to have this rich field available. The locking-up of these oil reserves is the best kind of wisdom and foresight. It will insure energy and chemical supplies for our grandchildren. 2. The immediate pollution of the Arctic Ocean and of the Alaskan ecosystem is certain to occur if the pipeline is built now. In 100 years, however, we might have the technology to remove the oil without damage. 3. The moratorium will prevent us from sending the oil to Japan, for which most of Alaska's oil is in fact slated. The denial of oil to the booming economy of Japan might, in turn, slow down its insane yet deliberate economic growth and avoid the collision course with the United States on which Japan is in- escapably set. We might thus help to prevent World War III. It is time to defend ecologic right over financial might. The erstwhile Secretary of the Interior has written a most interesting book, Who Owns America? (Hickel, 1971). The title impels me to ask: who owns Alaska's Arctic oil? This oil is beneath publicly owned land - a public resource in the public domain. Why then should not the oil be under public owner- ship and administration for public long-range benefit and use? Surely the oil can wait, safe in the frozen Alaskan ground. Nationalization - the creation of a National Oil Resource Park, if you will - is the answer that makes eminent ecologic sense. |
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War on Nature Despite his misguided stand on Alaskan oil, Hickel is a man who has shown great capacity to learn. I wish him well. I hope that he will learn all the ecology and biology that he must; for his is an important voice, which has given both students and biologists, as well as the public, faith that even this government might possibly work or might even change, given an honest man. Abraham Lincoln was made of similar rough stuff, and he became a great President. We will never get to the root of our environmental crisis by picking up tin cans. Only by changing the very institutions that have allowed our crisis to de- velop, by placing in high government office men who have an honest concern for ecology, is there hope for plants and animals, and for us, to survive. Let us quickly dismiss from positions of power those who do not understand the ecologic limitations of the earth. Let us replace them with people as environmentally concerned as Ralph Nader, William Ruckelshaus, Gaylord Nelson, Walter Hickel, and Robert Pack- wood. And let us, as individual biologists, do our ut- most to make sure that such men are elected to the highest positions in government. Let the biology teacher become politically active. Let him join with the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Wilderness Society, the National Parks Association, and any other organization willing to hire lawyers and fight the smoke screen of the antienvironment campaigns. The National Association of Biology Teachers must speak out, too. It should hire representatives in Washington - eco-lobbyist lawyers who would repre sent its members' wishes (Iltis, 1969, 1970b) . The issues are not only questions of politics or biology; they are issues of simple human decency. The biology teacher, more than any other professional, has the answers to many of today's problems. You must not remain silent. (To be concluded in the April issue) |
| Second part of a
two-part article. The first part (with biographic footnote) appeared in the March issue. The widespread and catastrophic extinction of species and ecosystems occurring on all continents but especially in regions previously untouched by technology - the tropics and the oceans - is the second concern I wish to discuss. To stop this im- mense calamity has acquired an urgency absolutely beyond belief. If you pick up Vincenz Ziswiler's Extinct and Vanishing Animals (1967), Fisher, Simon, and Vincent's The Red Book: Wildlife in Danger (1969), or any of the many similar studies you will find pages and pages with nothing but lists of animal species and subspecies close to extinction. Here are some figures for surviving individuals: blue whale (including the pygmy blue whale) about 6,400 in the Antarctic, 1,000 to 2,500 in the North Pacific (Gambell and Brown, 1971); mountain gorilla 1,000 to perhaps 5,000; tamarau ( a water buffalo of the Philippines) 200; Florida Key deer 235; giant sable antelope 500; Sumatran rhinoceros 150; Indian rhi- noceros 600; Indian tiger 1,700; and on and on into the night of everlasting extinction. Plants are equally vulnerable, and, as a forthcoming book edited by R. Melville of the International Union for the Conserva- tion of Nature and Natural Resources shows, there is no time to loose. Not only are species by the thou- sands threatened with a fate as irrevocable as that of the marvellous dodo, but whole ecosystems of ___________ This paper (in its entirety) is adapted from the keynote address to the annual convention of the National Association of Biology Teachers, 14 October, 1971, in Chicago. Author's address: Botany Dept., University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706 |
great ecologic and economic
value are being "devel- oped" - a euphemism for exploitation with hardly a thought to the future. The Forests of the Amazon One can only shudder at the devastation of tens of millions of acres in western Australia, heavily subsi- dized by a major American bank; at the destruction of parts of Africa by the ill-conceived British peanut- sunflower scheme; of Russia's disastrous plowing of the virgin prairies; and especially of the devastation of the vast Amazonian rainforests, recently described in Time and Newsweek magazines (1971). Amazonia may be Brazil's last frontier, but it is as well the world's richest ecosystem: it contains fully 30,000 species of flowering plants, of which over 5,000 are trees (!), and about 200,000 insects - a diversity that staggers the imagination. It is estimated that a very large number of species (in some animal groups 80%) are yet to be described. Yet Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil, with urging from the United States, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and private exploiters are all at work, blindly and rapaciously obliterating the Amazonian rain forest from the face of God's good earth. Said a Brazilian minister: "We have to conquer Brazil completely and [building roads and cutting the forest] will do it" (Time, 1971, p. 36). With U.S. support, and no doubt much industrial interest from U.S. Steel - the world's largest deposit of iron ore is here - Amazonia may cease to exist (Time, 1971). Unbelievable? Read what William Denevan, a Uni- versity of Wisconsin geographer, recently wrote in a paper (in press) entitled "Development and the Im- minent Demise of the Amazon Rain Forest": |
| Within one hundred years,
probably less, the Amazon rain forest will have ceased to exist. It will have been replaced, for the most part, by grassland and scrub savanna, with some second growth forest. The prospect seems inconceivable to those of us who have flown over the endless vastness of Amazonia, but I believe it is just a matter of time given current and projected trends in Amazonian development. Equally inconceivable is the recent report that one man, the multibillionaire Daniel K. Ludwig, has pur- chased 10,000 km2 (3,750 square miles, or 2.4 million acres! ) of Amazonian forest, which he plans to cut and plant with trees of the Asiatic genus Gmelina (Verbenaceae). THe United Press International story (Pope, 1971) called this devastator the "most creative of the billionaires." But the enormity of this crime against humanity speaks for itself. Where is the In- ternational Environmental Crimes Tribunal that will convict a man who controls three billion dollars? Where is the ecologically responsible government that will restrain such men for the good of man? No matter if a Brazilian geographer (quoted by Denevan) warns that "a disaster of enormous pro- portions" is imminent; no matter if the lateritic soils are miserably poor for agriculture and will lose nearly all their fertility in a few years (as has been shown again and again in the tropics of both the Old and the New World); no matter if mankind will lose an incalculable biologic resource (Richards, 1952; Aulie, 1965) - there has been no voice raised in pro- test in the biology establishment, nor in NABT, nor in AAAS. Certainly no voice has been raised against such blind exploitation in high government circles or in the liberal establishment of enlightened human- ism, which more often than not combines genuine goodwill with stupidity in these matters. A prime example is the glowing editorial "Jungle, Deserts, Icebergs - and Hunger" in Saturday Review (Tobin, 1971) - an editorial that not only accepts the demo- graphic prediction of 36 billion people a century from now but accepts them as a manageable inevitability for which solutions are available. Said this editorial- ist: "Scientists at the Food and Agriculture Organi- zation of the United Nations have forecast that 100 years from now the earth will be able to sustain a population of thirty-six billion people and feed them well on a diet similar to that now prevailing in North America and Western Europe, without recourse to synthetic food." This is to be accomplished by means of such "practical" solutions as "steamy tropical jungles [ Congo, Amazon] made into controlled year- around farmland, arid desert country [ Sahara] artifi- cially watered into a new Garden of Eden, icebergs towed up from Antarctica to furnish irrigation for Death Valley." There is no point in refuting these utterly irresponsible views nor in asking where the energy is going to come from, where the wastes are going to go, and what scraps of ecosystems, if any, will be permitted to exist for man in the future. Surely even to promise the possibility of such com- pelling insanity will hasten the death of many a but- |
terfly and wildflower at the
hand of technocratic be- lievers. But, just as surely, may not man need butter- flies and flowers, mountain lions and caribou, blue whales and pelicans, prairies and deserts, and Ama- zonian forests with parrots, monkeys and Morpho butterflies - all that blooms and flies and crawls - not only to give biologic stability to the ecosystem but in order to be happy and healthy and to have some per- spective? Our grandchildren will need them too! Not the destruction but the preservation of nature must be the prime concern of mankind, from now until the end of time. The Genetic Landscape of Cultivated Plants Extinctions are of many sorts: biotic, cultural, and economic. One that combines all three factors, one of great immediate importance to man, is the subtle disappearance of diversity in cultivated plants and their wild and weedy relatives, especially among technologically undeveloped peoples. Natural selection, and thus the continuation of evolution, is dependent on the amount of variability present in a population. Variability in cultivated plants allows selection for valuable goals, such as disease resistance and high yield; therefore, consider- ing man's absolute dependence on his food plants, variability needs absolute protection. In a cultivated plant, or cultigen, variability is usually greatest in its evolutionary "cradle region," where wild, weedy, and primitive cultivated forms tend to mingle in very heterozygous hybridizing populations, which have great scientific and practical value. They are in fact irreplaceable. In primitive societies and out-of-the- way places these nodes and webs of variability have persisted unimpaired for millenia, even after a crop had become highly evolved elsewhere. Today, "pro- gressive" agriculture, the "Green Revolution," and massive technology, often blindly conspiring with greed, hunger, population pressures, and ignorance, deliberately replace this low-yielding primitive di- versity with high-yielding inbred uniformity. The corn blight of 1970 in the U.S. was an omen of the disasters such crop uniformity may bring to man in the future (Chedd, 1970; Frankel, 1970). Biologists must counteract this ill-advised trend, not only by doing sound work on the origin of culti- vated plants but by explaining the biologic issues of preservation to the scientific and lay public and by urging drastically new approaches to the preserva- tion of genetic variability. The widely supported storage of diversity in gene banks, where the seeds are literally frozen, as in the government seed collec- tion at Fort Collins, Colo., has short-term utility for research but is easily susceptible to accidents, such as power failures, and to loss of seed viability (Frankel, 1970). The only way we can save the dynamic evolutionary potential of a crop is to pro- tect the diverse "ancestral" genotypes in their cradle region. This means protection as well from modern agricultural interference. As in the case of truly wild |
| "ancestral" species, we can
preserve then by protect- ing, and in some cases by manipulating, their habitats, as in a wildlife preserve. Only by such deliberate and permanent local preservation - that is, by the "freezing" of selected genetic landscapes - is there any hope for long-range success in continuing the evolution of our crops. This protection is scientifically justified and politically negotiable, and it should be internationally subsi- |
dized. By placing specific crops
in specific geographic regions "off limits" to agricultural improvement, the slow processes of primitive cultigen evolution could continue without marked loss of variability. Examples: Potatoes and Corn Potato and corn crops are in dire need of exactly this sort of genotypic protection. |
| The introduction of
modern potato varieties and clean cultivation methods to the Andean potato fields may someday have a deleterious effect upon the future devel- opment of our own varieties. If the primitive Andean potato stocks are lost, our modern, artificially produced varieties will become completely isolated from their an- cestral base, and it may then require extraordinary efforts to keep our higher-yielding but more inbred clones free from extinction. Although it is inevitable perhaps that some native potato populations will be lost in future years, it is vital that we at least preserve the more critical or ancient centers of potato variability, and guard these against the encroachment of the modern varieties. (Ugent, 1970a; cf. 1967, 1968, 1970b) That such potato-genotype preservation would be of immense human value is beyond question. The protein content of potatoes, for example, varies tre- mendously. European and American domestic pota- toes average 1.89% crude protein of fresh weight, with values up to 3.26%. Solanum andigenum, the common Peruvian-Bolivian cultivated form, averages 3.24% with the highest value 5.83%. There is, in addition, a great deal of variability among the named native varieties, of which there are fully 500 just in the Lake Titicaca basin (Hawkes, 1945). How can we preserve these cultivars? One could, for example, set aside the whole of the Lake Titicaca basin of Peru and Bolivia as an International Potato Diversity Preserve. Protected here would be not only the potato fields of the Indians, containing innumer- able cultivars, but the adjoining weedy and wild populations as well. Agricultural experts who push the introduction of high-yielding strains would here be excluded. This does not mean that one would be condemning the local population to poverty. It simply means that only this one crop - the potato - will here be deliberately retained in its primitive condition. In the case of corn (maize) there is need to protect several local regions of high diversity from improve- ment and from hybrid corn. The most important regions are in Mexico and Peru. According to Paul Mangelsdorf (1951) the indegenous varieties, from which all inbred strains are ultimately derived, may . . . become extinct. Already more than 99 percent of the corn acreage in several of the [U.S. ] Corn Belt states is in hybrid corn; in Iowa it is 100 percent hybrid. The loss of original source of breeding material would mean not only that improvement of the present strains would be restricted but that new types of hybrid corn could not be developed to cope with new diseases or insect pests suddenly become rampant. Even more eloquent is the plea of Paul Weatherwax (1950) to preserve the vast genetic pool of the indi- genous corn of Latin America: Another chapter in the history of corn is just now in the making, and, unless steps are soon taken to turn it in a new direction, the ending may be something of a tragedy. The entire complex of maize varieties now grown in various parts of the world comprises a vast pool of characteristics, and basically of genes, from which the individual corn plants of the future will be built. As long as selection in open-pollinated lines was the only method of corn breeding, the chances of actually losing any specific gene were not very great. But in developing |
the inbred lines
from which hybrid corn is produced, we ruthlessly eliminate any gene which, for the moment, does not fit our purpose. Some of these might have economic values in some other setting, and all of them are of such biological interest that none should be lost. So far the loss has not been great. In modern agriculture there is still enough open-pollinated seed produced to insure the preservation of practically all of these varia- tions; and primitive Indian races are still carrying along a great wealth of unexplored genetic material of corn. As the economic advantages of hybrid corn become better known, however, and as undeveloped areas are opened by better means of travel, much of this primitive material will be discarded in favor of more useful stocks. It is not too soon for large research organizations to be giving serious thought to measures for conserving this great heritage. In corn there is not only the necessity to preserve the hundreds of cultivated races; in addition, Wilkes (1967) has pointed out the urgent need to protect the five major forms of Zea mays L. ssp. mexicana (Schrad.) Iltis (= Euchlaena mexicana Schrad.) - the teosinte of the Mexicans. According to Darlington (1956), one or several of these taxa, over the past 10,000 years, gave rise to the cultivated Z. mays ssp. mays. The only congener, Z. perennis, of Jalisco, Mexico, is already extinct in the wild; like the ginkgo it exists only in cultivation. In the case of the annual Z. mays mexicana, erroneous taxonomic doctrine produced a veritable "maize mystique" (Iltis, 1969), which so confused evolutionists' understanding that the wild ancestral taxa were considered for the past 30 years to be nothing but rather inconsequential weedy hybrids. Many local populations are now close to extinction and none is under protection; in fact, these immensely interesting wild grasses are some- times considered harmful weeds to be gotten rid of. Yet we cannot even measure their eventual (and probably immense) value, for the genetic potential of the populations may well be the key to successful corn-breeding of the future (Wilkes, 1971). It is not significant here that botanists made errors in inter- pretation of morphology and genetics; what matters is that by making these errors a group of very valu- able species or subspecies was placed in peril of ex- tinction. Experience has shown again and again that taxa once considered worthless to man may become cru- cial to the understanding of the evolution of a crop - crucial not only to its improvement but to its very survival. We will never reach a point where we shall know which organisms are going to be of value to man and which are not. We cannot even predict the future value of museum collections, whether living or dead (Hailman, 1971). The only alternative for intelligent planning is to save all the pieces; that is, to preserve sufficient diversity of species and of eco- systems in their purest states, so that we will never have to be regretful of their loss. Let us always re- member Aldo Leopold's (1953, p. 147) wise admoni- tion: "To keep every cog and wheel is the first pre- caution of intelligent tinkering." Whether the crop be corn or rice, potatoes or |
| wheat, it is clear that to
neglect the genetic gold mine, which the unassuming wild or weedy relatives of cultivated plants represent, would be a great mis- take. Here again we must change our values and our ways, especially in our well-intentioned but short- sighted foreign-aid programs in agriculture (whether carried out by governments or by private research organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation) - the Green Revolution notwithstanding. The protection of specific regional genetic land- scapes (or World Genetic Resource Areas, in Wilkes' sense) should get top priority in international agri- cultural and environmental planning. Only by the prudent protection of all the earth's biotic resources may man be able to preserve the vast array of po- tentially valuable genotypes and phenotypes and give crop-breeding a solid future. To make sure that na- ture's diversity survives, its protection and preserva- tion must become sanctified and codified in law. The biology teacher as well as the researcher has here a crucial and indispensable role. Loving and Caring It is appropriate to end with a quote from NABT's eminent past-president Bentley Glass, who in Science and Ethical Values (1965, p. 33-34) pleaded for our concern and social responsibility: In the second and third chapters of Genesis is the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Too much dust has already been stirred by debates about its his- toricity, for in such controversy the deeper moral truths the story reveals usually lie forgotten. The tree whose fruit Man was forbidden to eat was not the Tree of Life. It was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. For indeed, in his ignorance, man was once innocent. Yet when, in the agelong evolutionary ascent, man came to foresee the consequences of at least some of his actions, when he could distinguish the good from the evil and the better from the worse, then it became to him sin to choose the evil, to do the worse . . . One thing is certain. We cannot turn the clock back. We cannot regain the Garden of Eden or recapture our lost innocence. From now on we are responsible for the welfare of all living things, and what we do will mold or shatter our own heart's desire. You, who are teachers of biology - loving plants and animals and caring about your students - have the tremendous reponsibility of leading a sick and insane world back to health. The watershed is here, now. It is now or never! And the problem is specially yours, because it is so largely biologic. It is yours also because of your love of nature - the love affair that led most of you into biology in the first place. By making students instruments of your love and your wisdom and by teaching them the implications of evolution and diversity, by showing them the evil and greed as well as the good of technologic and agri- cultural power, you will give them the judgement they will need if they are to preserve diversity and beauty on this earth. But I say to you clearly and loudly: if you and |
your professional organizations
insist on being polly- annas, if you continue to ignore the touchy subjects of politics and agricultural stupidity, of war and the anonymous monster of the technologic corporate state; if you neglect to inform your students - the very students who care and who are our only hope - of the price we pay for our affluence and of the price the rest of mankind pays for our greed and our un- willingness to change our culture and values . . . then may all the fates help us and you! For then you will be guilty - guilty of being sheperds leading inno- cent sheep to slaughter. Acknowledgements.- James L. Sawyer, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and George Van Schaack, of the Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Ill., provided much help and stimulation in the writing of this paper. REFERENCES AULIE, R.P. 1965. Biological problems of tropical vegetation. American Biology Teacher 27 (5) : 331-353. BATES, M. 1955. The prevalence of people. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. CHEDD, G. 1970. Hidden Peril of the Green Revolution. New Scientist 50 (725) : 171-173. DARLINGTON, C. D. 1956. Chromosome botany. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. , London. DENEVAN, W. (In press.) Development and the imminent de- mise of the Amazon rain forest. Proceedings of the Second Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers [Syracuse, N.Y. , 1971] . ELLUL, J. 1964. The technological society. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , New York. ETZIONI, A. 1970. The wrong top priority. Science 168 (3934): 921. FISHER, J., N. SIMON, and J. VINCENT. 1969. The red book: wildlife in danger. Viking Press, New York. FLAGER, J.M., ed. 1971. Look on the light side. Look 35 (20): 27. Cartoon by Handelsman. FRANKEL, O.H.1970. Variation: the essence of life. Proceed- ings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales. 95 (2): 158-169. FULLER, R. B. 1969. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. GAMBELL, R., and S.G. Brown. 1971. Status and conservation of the great whales. IUCN Bulletin. [International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources] new series 2 (21) : 185-189. GLASS, B. 1965. Science and ethical values. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. HAILMAN, J.P. 1971. The museum as iceberg. BioScience 21 (18) : 935. HANDLER, P. 1971. The federal government and the scientific community. Science 171 (3968) : 144-151. HAWKES, J.G. 1945. The indigenous American potatoes and their value in plant-breeding. Empire Journal of Experi- mental Agriculture 13: 11-40. HESS, J. 1971. How many people are enough? [ Interview with Philip M. Hauser.] International Wildlife 1 (2): 15-17. HICKEL, W. 1971. Who owns America ? Prentice-Hall, Inc., Engelwood Cliffs, N. J. ILTIS, H. 1966. The meaning of human evolution to conserva- tion. Wisconsin Academic Review 13 (2) : 18-23. ________. 1967. To the taxonomist and ecologist: whose fight is the preservation of nature? BioScience 17 (12): 886-890. ________. 1968. The optimum human environment and its relation to modern agricultural preoccupations. Biologist 50 (3-4): 114-125. ________. 1969. The maize mystique: a reappraisal of the origin of corn. [Lecture, Iowa State University, Ames, 18 |
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