Counting Our Ducks Before They’re Gone: Building Biodiversity Inventories at Large National Parks
Tuesday, March 8, 7 p.m.
Museum of Northern Arizona, Branigar Hall
The National Park Service, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and Northern Arizona University are presenting this lecture to promote the establishment of an All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) program for the Colorado Plateau.
Keith Langdon, Ph.D., Biological Inventories Program Manager at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, will talk about efforts to inventory all species on the planet, one region at a time.
In North America, some of the best candidates for complete inventories are our national parks.
Current inventory efforts in the 849-square-mile Great Smoky Mountains National Park can serve as a model for ATBI efforts in other places like Grand Canyon National Park. By December 1, 2003 in Great Smokey National Park, a total of 410 species new to science had been discovered. An additional 2,955 species constituted new records for the park, bringing the total of new discoveries to 3,365.
This prototype inventory effort is accomplished through a nonprofit partner, Discover Life In America (www.dlia.org). All species, regardless of domain (i.e., Archaea, Bacteria, Eucarya) or kingdom (e.g., plant, animal), are targeted for inclusion in the inventory. The ATBI actively involves students and other members of the public.
The National Park Service and its partners in this project are hopeful that public awareness will lead to the recruitment of a new generation of scientists and nurture a science-oriented citizenry.
Apples, Coriander, and Watermelons: Spanish Plantways to Arizona
Sunday, April 3, 5 p.m., free
Museum of Northern Arizona, Branigar Hall
When plants, foods, and agriculture from the Old World made their way from Spain to Mexico and into Arizona, the Southwest was changed forever. Bill Dunmire, Associate in Biology at the University of New Mexico, will give an illustrated talk with insights into Southwest agriculture and cuisine. He focuses on positive contributions Spanish colonizers and missionaries made to Arizona’s agricultural heritage.
“Most of us know the story of how foods from America such as corn, beans, and chile traveled around the world after the arrival of the Spaniards, but the integration of Old World crops into O’odham and other Native American cultures and, eventually, into our own is an account that previously had been missing from the literature,” Dunmire stated. “This event represents nothing less than the most significant cultural fusion of agriculture and cuisine in human history.”
Dunmire’s book, Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America, was recently published by the University of Texas Press and will be available for purchase and signing by the author at the lecture. He has co-authored two other books on wild plants and their uses by Native peoples of our region.
Dunmire’s interest in plants and their human uses developed during a 28-year career with the National Park Service, most of which he spent as a park naturalist across the country. He retired as superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks in the mid-1980s, then served seven years as a field biologist in New Mexico for The Nature Conservancy.
Carlos Montezuma, M.D., A Yavapai American Hero, The Life and Times of an American Indian, 1866-1923
Thursday, April 14, 4 p.m., free
Museum of Northern Arizona, Branigar Hall
Impeccably researched and rich in detail, Carlos Montezuma, M.D. by Leon Speroff, Ph.D. documents the life of one of the first Native American doctors to seek and earn a medical degree. Taken from his family as a boy by Pima Indian warriors and sold to an itinerant Italian photographer, Montezuma found himself deposited into foreign surroundings at a very young age. In late nineteenth-century Chicago, he was presented with opportunities, both educational and social, that had previously been unavailable to his people.
Dr. Montezuma became a firm believer in the importance of Native American assimilation into white society and fiercely spoke out against the Bureau of Indian Affairs, claiming that it was responsible for keeping American Indians dependent on the Federal Government. In the last years of his life, his intense focus shifted from this assimilation philosophy to helping his tribe regain its land and water rights in the face of great adversity from the U.S. Government.
Speroff paints a full and well-rounded picture of the life and times of this remarkable man. The inclusion of Montezuma’s personal correspondence with numerous key players in the early American Indian movement lends this book the air of authority and authenticity that superbly re-creates this time in our history when a disenfranchised group of people stood up to take their rightful place in American society.
Speroff, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Oregon Health Sciences University, is known worldwide for his textbook, Clinical Gynecologic Endocrinology and Infertility, now in its sixth edition. After completing his specialty training and serving in the Air Force, Dr. Speroff was Director of the Gynecologic Endocrine Laboratory at the Yale University School of Medicine. He has served as President of the American Fertility Society (now the American Society of Reproductive Medicine) and was the founding President of the Society of Reproductive Endocrinologists.