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Profile of Harold Jefferson Coolidge
Interview
Harold Jefferson Coolidge
Profile of Harold Jefferson Coolidge This interview with Harold Jefferson Coolidge, distinguished scientist and international conser. vationist, and David Hughes.Evans, joint-editor of The Environmentalist, took place at Square Lake, Holderness, New Hampshire, USA, during August 1980. Harold Jefferson Coolidge was born on 15 January 1904, and was educated at the Universities of Arizona, Harvard, and Cambridge (England). He has honorary doctorates of science from the George Washington University and the Seoul National and Brandeis Universities. He started his professional life as Assistant Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, specialising in primates, especially the genus Gorilla. He has maintained this interest throughout his life. His work in the field is still a source of reference. He has held many professional positions in the conservation field: Vice-President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1948-54); President of IUCN (1966-72), and Honorary President since. He was the Founding Chairman of the Union's Survival Service Commission and the Commission on National Parks. During the period 1946-70, he was Executive Director of the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Coolidge is a member of various Societies and Foundations, including: The African Wildlife Leadership Foundation (Founding Director); American Committee for International Wildlife
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Protection (Founder); American Society of Mammologists (Life Member); Charles Darwin Foundation (Founding Trustee); Fauna Preservation Society (Vice President); Charles A. Lindbergh Fund (Science-Aeronautics Committee); L. S. B. Leakey Foundation (Director); New York Zoological Society (Fellow); Pacific Science Association (Former US Council Member); Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden Foundation; William P. Wharton Conservation Trust (Trustee); World Wildlife Fund (International and USA). Among the numerous awards and prizes Dr Coolidge has received over the years, are noted the following: US Legion of Merit (Military), 1945; Garden Clubs Hutchinson Medal, 1963; Albright Medal, 1968; Gold Medal, New York Zoological Society, 1969; Commander Order of Golden Ark, 1972; Silver Medal of International Achievement Award, US National Park Service, 1972; Edward W. Browning Conservation Award: Smithsonian, 1978; John C. Phillips Medal: IUCN, 1978; Member of Honour, World Wildlife Fund International, 1979; J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, 1979. It is impossible to think of conservation, without at the same time thinking of Harold Jefferson Coolidge, not only of his own immense contribution, but also of the assistance and encouragement he has given to others. His citation, when he was awarded the J. Paul Getty Prize in 1980, states: "Indomitable proponent of conservation for over forty years, you have taken a leading role in promoting international understanding and cooperation. Throughout a noteworthy career in the National Research Council and subsequently in the founding of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, you have, with magnificent persistence, maintained that the planet is all one, despite the sound and fury of world and national events. World Wildlife Fund, USA salutes your endeavors and recognizes your pioneering leadership in international conser-
© Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne Printedin The Netherlands
vation by awarding y o u the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for 1979." In a message to the gathering, US President Carter had this to say: "As the first American recipient of the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, y o u exemplify the American tradition of seeing a need and organizing the means to respond to it. You gave very early warning o f the plight of many endangered species when few could even comprehend this concept ... I congratulate y o u for the well-deserved recognition that your life has meant a better life and future for all of us. As an ardent conservationist, I am very proud o f y o u . "
INTERVIEW D.H.E.: Going back 40 to 60 years, what do you think were the pressing demands at that time for the formation o f conservation organizations and societies ? H. J. C.: I know that in my own case the whole concept of trying to do something that would save endangered species had a great deal of influence in my own thinking about conservation and the direction which it should take. But historically one o f the things that helped to get me started was Major Burnham, the well-known American outdoorsman, who made a trip to Africa about 1929. He was terribly shocked at the slaughter of g a m e a n d what was happening in Africa. He came back to the United States and met with Madison Grant, Kermit Roosevelt, and myself, and others who belonged to the Boone and Crockett c l u b - a club that was founded b y Theodore Roosevelt and George Grinnell. It was made up of sportsmen who liked to hunt, b u t they were also at heart conservationists, and they wanted to see that no species became endangered or extinct through any of their hunting activities. We had a meeting at the Boone and Crockett Club where we decided that there were enough people in the United States who were interested in conservation and enough organizations to band together and speak with one voice when problems in the international field emerged. And actually as a result of Major Burnham's visit to Africa, we became aware o f emerging problems that called for some competent scientist to go out to Africa, become familiar with the situation and come back with the information. Thus we could use our weight with appropriate governments to try and set up some kind of international agreement which would help to try to save some o f the greatly endangered species. It was really out of that basic need that Madison Grant, then President o f the Boone and Crockett 66
Club, decided with the rest o f us to establish the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection. That Committee has as its first Chairman Dr. John C. Phillips. He was then a neighbour o f mine. He had written many books relating to conservation subjects and had a pretty strong interest in international conservation. He made one trip to Africa with his wife and young son and was disturbed about what was happening in Africa. The American Committee invited organizations such as the National A u d u b o n Society and the various wildlife protection g r o u p s - - I z a a k Walton League and some o t h e r s - - t o name someone to represent them on the Committee. We held a meeting once a year and sometimes more often to go over some o f the problems which were cropping up increasingly in this field. It was really quite amazing that the leading American organizations at the time, like the Wildlife Management Institute, seemed to take no great interest in international problems. They wanted most of all to deal with North American problems and mainly United States problems, and we had great difficulty even raising a small fund to maintain the Secretariat of the American Committee. I was the Secretary of the American Committee and established its ofrice at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where I was then Assistant Curator of Mammals. Out of my office came a letter which we used to interest people in the problems that were arising, and as I mentioned, one of the problems that clearly was arising was what to do about endangered species. Now, the best way then to deal with that subject was to have a really competent mammalogist do research on endangered species as represented in scientific publications but most often in sporting literature, travel, and hunting b o o k s of one kind or another. We set aside a few thousand dollars from the American Committee which we decided to devote to preparing a study of endangered and vanishing mammals o f the world. We chose as our researcher Dr. Francis Harper, a well-known zoologist, and he undertook this t a s k - - h e was to do it within two y e a r s - - b u t four years later the work was still not completed. Even after two years we realized that he would not get around to doing the marine mammals and the North American mammals because he was working mainly on Africa and Asia. So we asked my boss, Dr. Glover Allen, Curator of mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, to help. He said he would be glad to undertake getting the material together on the North American mammals and also the marine mammals. It took him a couple o f years to accomplish this, and then we published the Harper book on "Extinct and Vanishing MareThe Environmentalist
mals of the Old World ( 1 9 4 5 ) " and the Glover Allen volume o f the New World ( 1 9 4 9 ) - - t h e "Mammals in North and South American and the Marine Mammals". But we still had the birds to do. Jim Greenway (1958) who was Assistant Curator of B i r d s - - t h e same kind of job I had in the mammal department at H a r v a r d - - u n d e r t o o k to draw up a list of birds, and it t o o k a couple of years to get that ready. The American Committee also published that work. So with these publications, we had the basic information that y o u need to know if y o u are going to develop an action programme to do something about endangered species. Then when the call came for establishing some kind o f organization to look after this problem a great deal of the work had been done. The Swiss had already had a couple of conferences at Brunnen, and had made everyone aware of the need for doing something for endangered species and for pulling the interest o f conservation people in the various countries together in some unified way. Then with great stimulus from Julian Huxley, Director-General o f UNESCO, who was keen about the idea, and with the help o f the French government, which Huxley more or less arranged, we set up this conference at Fontainebleau in 1948. There were official invitations from the French government which went to the governments of the colonial powers and also a number o f other countries. We all gathered at Fontainebleau and had about two weeks of meetings in which we decided that it was important to establish a Union of Conservation Organizations. Dr. O. H. J. Bernard, President of the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature, was very active and he and the other Swiss wanted to make it more of a popular organization. Some o f the rest o f us, including the UK delegation, wanted to make it more of a scientific organization, and we ended up with a basic constitution for the IUCN. It is interesting that in the case of the United States, we were a government delegation with government credentials, and we were supposed to have been carefully briefed and instructed as to what we could or could not do, but the State Department was so slow in getting this information out to the delegation that it did not reach us until after the meeting was over. Dr. Ira N. Gabrielson, who had formerly been head o f the US Fish and Game Department, under Secretary Ickes of tile Interior, and was one of our greatest conservationists, was leader of the delegation. He, in consultation with Phillips, George E. Brewer and myself and the other key delegates went ahead and gave full American support to the newly declared Union constitution and by-laws, although we were Vol. 1 (1981)
later told b y our government that we were not authorized to do this ! But happily we went ahead and did it. Then we were faced with the serious problem of how to fund the new organization. Each country was asked to put up a certain amount of m o n e y and there were pledges from some o f the American organizations for, I think it was a total of $5000 or $6000, which would not carry us very far, b u t it would get us started. The Secretariat, was established in Brussels, where Dr. Victor Van Straelen, Director of The Royal Institute o f Natural Sciences o f Belgium, and his Institute offered us the facilities at the National Museum. Jean-Paul Harroy, who was then the Secretary of IRSAC which was a Belgian research organization in the Congo, agreed to be Executive Secretary. For a number o f years he held the organization together, with help from Dr. Van Straelen, and we held meetings from time to time. D.H.E.: What was the situation in other countries? Was it similar to that in the United States? H. J. C.: Well, I feel that in Europe, probably the leading countries were Switzerland, Poland and Germany. Denmark, Norway and Sweden had a basic interest in their local conservation problems and game laws which put them in almost a special category. In Belgium, we had Dr. Derscheid and Dr. Van Straelen, who were the leaders, and in Holland there was Dr. P. G. van Tienhoven, who was really one of the founders of our international conservation movement. He was pushing in all directions, even saving Dutch windmills, and helping to save migratory birds that were captured in traps, to sell to the English market. He was active and extremely effective and put a lot of his personal m o n e y into the Office. The International Office for the Protection of Nature was founded in 1928 in Brussels, and run by Dr. J. M. Derscheid. It u n d e r t o o k the task of gathering copies of game laws of all the countries that had them. It is quite surprising how many of the laws in the colonial areas had been drawn up especially for nature protection purposes. These appeared in the publications o f the International Office. When Dr. Derscheid left in 1935, Kirs Tordis Grain of Norway took over until 1940. Funding of the Office was paid for by international funds. I raised a certain amount of m o n e y - - a b o u t $5000 a year as I r e c a l l - - t o contribute to that Office, and the British Fauna Society, which had been very active in this field, continued to be active and used to contribute funds. Eventually the Office moved to the Netherlands and the Dutch conservation organizations contributed funds; then the Germans came in, and then the Swiss. Dr. van Tienhoven became President and 67
Professor Van Straelen Vice-President, and this Office was really the nucleus group from which the IUCN developed. I must also mention the invaluable contribution o f the late Sir Frank Fraser Darling to many aspects of the Union from its founding. D.H.E.: From what y o u have said, Africa seems to have been an important focus. Why was this more than, say, South America or parts o f Asia? H. J. C.: Because the prime movers in this activity were Englishmen who were particularly keen about hunting and shooting, and big-game shooting in Africa was a very real sport. But, people like Theodore Roosevelt and Max Fleishman and other rich Americans also went hunting in Africa, and as soon as they did, they became interested in these preservation problems which "hit you between the eyes." The situation in Africa was really what sparked this international development, and in 1933, Lord Willingdon and a number of other prominent Britishers got these countries together, and they drew up the London Convention for African Wildlife Protection, which we used as a p r o t o t y p e later on for a similar convention which our Committee organized for the New World. So we had a Western Hemisphere Convention that was started in 1940, which helped define national parks and habitat protection, and desirable game laws which protected migratory species and so forth, and most of it stemmed from the first London convention. D.H.E.: What about IUCN? H. J. C.: IUCN was founded in 1948. Thirteen years later, in 1961, the World Wildlife Fund was established. The World Wildlife F u n d - - t h e r e has been a certain amount o f controversy over t h i s - but it was founded without question for the purpose of raising funds to finance the budget of IUCN, because we were having a great struggle getting money from conservation organizations and we needed s o m e b o d y to handle the business end and the advertising and all that sort of thing. So the World Wildlife Fund was formed with the help o f Sir Peter Scott, and the suggestion o f Max Nicholson, who was then head of the British Nature Conservancy. He was the one who thought up the idea of having a separate organization mainly for money-raising purposes, because we were primarily scientists and research people, and you had to have a different kind of person for this PR job. That was what the WWF undertook. However, when they started raising money, they got so enamored with the idea o f "international conservation" that they wondered why it should have to 68
be done just through IUCN? Why should they not put money they were raising into projects that they themselves would choose, that they would like to see financed? So we had two groups that were thinking up projects. At that time we were in the same building at Morges, Switzerland, and we had a c o m m o n library. However, there was a certain amount of rivalry between the two organizations. We were always in a deficit situation in the Union and WWF, chaired b y Prince Bernard and directed by Fritz Vollmar and Luc Hoffman had quite a lot of success raising money. Instead o f taking care of us first, they stated we were the highest priority, but they had to take care o f their own administrative expenses and then they also had certain projects they wanted to fund. So by the time it came down to what they were going to give to IUCN, we had a very hard time for a good many years, which was a pretty difficult situation. We always had to end the year with a deficit o f many thou: sands of dollars, with the hope that the WWF would come to our rescue by providing a grant. They had enough m o n e y to do so. A lot o f people were confused; they thought when they were giving money to the WWF, they were giving to IUCN, but they were not, they were giving it to quite a number of projects of which IUCN was only one. Eventually they outgrew us. They got a larger staff, and finally we could not fit them into the building, so the Swiss government gave them some buildings on the other side of town. Then they had their own headquarters, and we had ours. That made working together even more difficult. This went on for some considerable time, and the budget was getting higher and higher every year. Then at an annual meeting some people brought up the fact that the Third World c o u n t r i e s - - t h e developing c o u n t r i e s - - w e r e not sufficiently represented by IUCN, and yet IUCN and the WWF gave the impression that they were doing this for everybody. Actually they had n o b o d y from Brazil, and other countries were not on the Board. Finally the principle was adopted of dividing the world up into sectors and having so many representatives from each region. And in that way it made for a better representation. However, we never had enough money to pay the way in order to bring to our annual meeting the conservation people from these different countries. If people like Dr. Zafir Futehau of India, could find a firm that he was working with as a consultant which said it would fund his trip, then he could come and participate in on our meetings and be very valuable. Once ill a while the Union had a little money that could pay his way, since it was obviously important to have India represented at The Environmentalist
our meetings, and yet we were plagued b y this financial problem. Even in Australia, they were very slow in getting started in conservation, and they did not feel they could afford to send their representative. Dr. Boonsong Lekagul, who later was awarded the Getty Prize as the most outstanding conservationist in Thailand, was the first Asian that I helped to get onto the Board of the International Union. I do not think that he came to more than two meetings in a period o f about eight or ten years, because he could not afford it, and we did not have the m o n e y to bring him. We could correspond with him and have people look in on him when they visited Asia. We had lots of problems one way or another. D.H.E.: How did you resolve these problems? H. J. C.: The United Nations organizations gradually became increasingly aware of the fact that they should do something about conservation. Therefore, a conference was called together in 1949 at Lake Success. At the Lake Success Conference, we had an IUCN Conference ahead of the UN Conference. At the time of the UN Lake Success Conference, I launched the idea of setting up some kind of Survival Service which would list the gravely endangered species and which would take the responsibility for funding the Document Centre at the Headquarters of the Union that was keeping track o f the information about these species coming in from different parts o f the world. They kept up a sort o f card file, and used the three books o f the American C o m m i t t e e - - t h e Harper, Allen, and Greenway v o l u m e s - - a s their baseline. From then on Dr. Peter of the Paris Museum was very active in maintaining this listing as were curators o f different mammals and birds in various museums who sent information in to our headquarters in Belgium. I thought it would be a particularly good idea to focus world attention on gravely endangered species because when y o u are talking about the Philippian Money-eating Eagle, people would be much more interested in them than if y o u said y o u were interested in eagles. By pinpointing dramatic cases and even sending investigators out to check into the situation, y o u would stir up a money-raising potential which is very helpful when y o u are trying to get funds for this kind of activity. We did form the Survival Service Commission (SSC), and I was told that as long as it was my baby, I could set it up, which I did in Brussels. The SSC has had a very active history which has continued for the past thirteen years under the leadership of Sir Peter Scott. It was several years after its founding that we really got going and had all the file cards from Harper and Allen, and had Vol. 1 (1981)
all the accumulated information. Dr. Lee M. Talbot, then of the Smithsonian and now DirectorGeneral o f IUCN, carried out several field missions to check on the status of endangered species. As time passed, I became aware of the fact that it was all very well to have a survival service with all the information y o u can get about species, but what good does it do? You cannot save species just b y bringing them into zoos; y o u have to take strenuous measures to protect their native habitat. So at the time o f the IUCN General Assembly in Athens in 1954, Dr. Tamura* and I decided that we definitely should establish a Commission for the Union which would stimulate the establishment o f National Parks all over the world. So I resigned from being the Director of the Survival Service Commission of the IUCN and t o o k on the Parks Commission, which, in order to make it even more effective, I called the International Commission on National Parks, rather than just one o f the six commissions of the Union. That name stuck until quite recently. The principal goal o f the International Commission on National Parks was to prepare a "World List" of existing parks and reserves and then have this serve as an honor list which would give prestige to the countries that had parks and reserves. We thought that this could be most effective if it was established at a high level under the United Nations organization, but UNESCO was a little jealous at that point; they thought that it ought to be a UNESCO activity. The F o o d and Agricultural Organization was waking up at this time and had the feeling that parks ought to be a matter of their concern, so they wanted it under FAO. I went down to the United Nations ECOSOC Conference in Mexico City (1959) where the subject was on the agenda. I felt very strongly that this UN list would have more prestige with lots of Third World countries if it were not UNESCO, not FAO, b u t if it were under ECOSOC, with IUCN doing the work, and ECOSOC getting the credit. We had no m o n e y to fund this operation, b u t nevertheless, I got it accepted by the Conference. Both UNESCO and FAO agreed, but would not provide any m o n e y for it; we would have to raise m o n e y elsewhere and work it out. 1 think that it was a wise decision in the long run, but we had a tough time with funding the first two or three years. As for the publication of the l i s t - - w e drew up this preliminary list after corresponding with all *Dr. Toshio Tamura had been so impressed with the National Park Service in the United States that when he went back to Japan from one of his Western trips, he made up his mind that Japan had to have a national park system too. He got together with a group of scientists, and they selected appropriate a r e a s - - m a i n l y areas with magnificent scenery and wild natural conditions and set up a very effective park system.
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the different UN c o u n t r i e s - - t o get this published, even ECOSOC said that they-did not feel they had funds to pay for it. I had to raise the m o n e y privately to fund the "First World List of National Parks and Equivalent Areas." But we did get it out, and then, just as I had hoped, some of the developing countries were embarrassed to find that they had no areas to include in the UN list. We wrote to them and urged them to get busy. Sometimes we sent an expert to advise and help them. Before we knew it, they decided to set aside more and more areas. We did not put in any tough criteria because we knew that that would scare them away. So the first thing to do was to get the area set aside, and then reinforce the legislation and shame them into making it more meaningful. The African countries came along quite nicely on this, and I knew o f several instances where parks or reserves would not have existed had it not been that they wished to be on the World List. In one case, in Indonesia, when I ran across one o f the Rajas, he said, "We had such a beautiful area near where I five, and now it is going to be destroyed by some development planning; and it was called a park, but it was just in name and now it is being abolished." I said, "Abolished? We have a list from Indonesia o f y o u r parks and reserves, it is printed and it is in the UN official list. You cannot abolish an area like that! . . . . You say its on the. UN list?" he asked in amazement. I agreed and produced the Official UN list I had with me. He took it back to his Javanese palace and raised such a row that they reestablished the park area and even enlarged it. And it was all because they did not want to be criticized because it was already on the World List. There were several other cases where the prestige o f being already in the World List helped to safeguard the areas that were set up, and also helped to shame other countries that did not have any parks or reserves. We had a certain number of American tourists and other people traveling around, so I got them to inquire, to say, " T h e y had come especially to see a park or reserve." This could be embarrassing to the government concerned, and I would often give them a copy of the World List so they had something to refer to. They would look up under a specific country and see that they had nothing, or perhaps one tiny little area, and then they would talk the officials into it. So this activity grew, and Jean-Paul Harroy, who was a most active Parks Authority, took over from me as Chairman when I became not only Vice-President but later President of IUCN. He did a splendid job of corresponding with various 70
countries and getting experts to go out and advise them, and raised m o n e y to carry on this activity. One o f the things I am most proud of, in my contribution to the development o f the International Union, is that the two commissions with which I was associated--being the first chairman of the Survival Service Commission and also o f the International Parks C o m m i s s i o n - - b e c a m e the two most significant activities o f the Union. The Parks Commission was greatly helped by the fact that we organized in Seattle in 1962, the First World Conference on National Parks, and we drew up all kinds of resolutions and action programs and educational programs inside the parks of the different countries. We had a lot of useful discussions, and from among the officials they sent to the meetings, we appointed 25 vicepresidents and seated them up on the podium where they were pleased to be. The whole First Conference turned out so well that they decided they would have another, but because there were too m a n y conferences, they agreed to wait for ten years. Then, ten years later, the US Government on the centennial of the Yellowstone National Park, decided to host a conference, and that became the Second World Conference on National Parks where we published reports o f what had been accomplished. Another outcome was that we recommended the establishment o f underwater parks, and Dr. Tamura later helped us to organize the first World Conference on Underwater Parks in Japan in 1975. We had field trips to visit quite a number of underwater parks that he had established in and around the inland sea and other places. Now I can safely say that there are about 30 new National Parks being created every single year in one or another country, and this stems from a desire to get on the park bandwagon, because of the increased awareness of the importance of such areas. Then UNESCO had their World Biosphere Conference in 1968 and there was the International Biological Program; all these played into the picture. I think that the World Biosphere Reserve areas that UNESCO has set up under its MAB program are very important, as y o u do not have to be as rigid in the specification as you do with national parks. You can take several areas and put them into one of these biological preserves with UNESCO's blessing; they are going to do that in the Antarctic as well, and that is a very healthy development. Dr. Kenton Miller is now a very active chairman of the Parks Commission currently called the Commission on National Parks and Reserved Areas, so the work continues. Dr. Kai Curry-Lindahl of Sweden has played a key role on World Park development for many years. The Environmentalist
D.H.E.: What about conservation education? Have the goals been achieved? H. J. C.: It was clear from the start that the whole subject of Conservation Education was basic to the development of IUCN, because, after all, the problem of getting people to understand the need for conservation of the natural environment is essentially an educational process and it is the baseline to which we should adjust our efforts. Unfortunately, in the early days, we had no education officer and so the only educational work done was really the spreading of public information and making available to different countries the publications in the educational field that had been put out by certain places like the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain and others. The dissemination of information on education went on but nothing much more was programmed. After many years, in the early seventies, we acquired the services of Dr. Jan ~efovsk9 from Czechoslovakia, who was a keen education officer. He established and organized a number of education conferences in Switzerland, Ontario and Eastern Europe where groups of people from adjoining countries got together and developed educational objectives and programs for their particular area. These were constructive actions, and the Educational Commission increased in importance until the government o f Czechoslovakia called ~ei'ovsk9 back. At that time we had no further funding for taking on a full-time educational ofricer in Morges, and so education was again mainly involved with public information, just spreading the word about what should be done. A planning officer from IUCN devoted half his time to keeping in touch with people in different countries who were on the Educational Commission, but it was a great disappointment to me that we were able to do so little in this educational field for quite a while. Actually many o f us felt that we ought to develop environmental education at all levels from elementary school right through high school and college level, and to help develop appropriate curricula and also appropriate training programs. Even in the United States there was relatively little development in this field in the early days of IUCN. So, I would say that this has been one o f the disappointing IUCN activities up to the present time. It is only because we have had people like Jim Aldrich who is so interested in this field, carrying out effective programs in the United States and Africa, and others working in the U.K., Europe and elsewhere, that we were able to keep action alive in this area, up to the present time. A wide open field is to include conservation subjects on the tape recordings so popular on intercontinental flights such as those from Mot. 1 (1981)
Europe to Africa or to the Far East. Now IUCN has again a full-time education officer, Naseeb Dajani, and we hope that the Commission will take o f f again and do a great deal more. D.H.E.: What conservation-related actions should have been done by IUCN and others? H. J. C.: I would say that one of the most important things we should have been doing is to place much more emphasis on getting governments to develop their Planning Commissions. These really did not take off until the time of the Stockholm Conference and there was a great ferment developed at the time of this conference which led to the establishment o f - - s o m e t i m e s temporary, sometimes p e r m a n e n t - - P l a n n i n g Conservation Commissions in a great many countries, and this development was gratifying. Now what are the most critical remaining conservation issues? There are a great many issues as we all know. But perhaps the most important is to involve appropriate government developments in conservation activities that are essential to every country, and these cover a wide range. For instance, anything relating to Pollution Control that is handled by governments, anything related to Soil Conservation, to Land Use, to Fish and Wildlife, to National Parks; these are all extremely important areas which need to be strengthened in most governments, and given more funding. Then Education, which has already been mentioned, is a particularily important field, and I would like to hope that in the next decade or so education will become the principal function of IUCN, or at least that it will play a definitely leading role. In addition, it is important that governments should develop their treaty-making structure. Some of the most effective things our Union has done has been setting up International Agreements under the leadership o f Wolfgang Burhenne and his wife, which have led to long-range cooperative development between governments. As chairman of the Commission on Law, he has made a special point of assembling laws from as many countries as possible, and advising governments on legal aspects of what they could and should not do in dealing with conservation matters. D.H.E.: How does IUCN and its activities relate to other environmental concerns such as energy, or water supply, or hazardous toxic waste management ? H. J. C.: I would say that energy development is very much involved with such public effects as the building of dams and roads and pipelines which may be harmful to the environment, but 71
the conservation aspects of preserving the biotic environment while pursuing energy development has too low a priority. On Water Supply needs, we know that the wrong kind of forestry such as clear-cutting leads to curtailing of water supplies. Particularly on steep slopes, the cutting is extremely unfortunate, as it leads to washing away o f soil, and in many cases nothing is left but bare rock. The Climate then changes so that there is less rain. The island of New Caledonia is a horrible example o f the way a beautiful mountain forest can be destroyed, leaving nothing b u t bare slopes, because no thought was given to reseeding or planting or holding the soil after it has been broken down for mining purposes. The cutting of Forests in many Caribbean Islands and in Africa has also led to water shortages. The IUCN is interested in helping to save forests and other natural areas which will preserve watersheds. Then the Toxic Waste management is something that needs very much to be included in a development plan because otherwise y o u get not only erosion but concentrations o f waste materials. As we know, the unwise use of areas for dumping polluting materials poisons the soil, the groundwater, and this has very bad consequences for people who depend on these resources; the damage often lasts much longer than we realize. We have situations such as the Love Canal and many other dump areas in our country which we are just beginning to wake up about. The IUCN works in cooperation with other organizations more centrally concerned with such matters. D.H.E.: What needs to be done by I U C N and others over the n e x t two decades? H. J. C.: I would say that a great deal needs to be done and I think that we want to build up state or government support for the concept of conservation and the ecological approach to Development Planning. I also feel that we have got to make an effort to develop Religious support of conservation. I feel that the influence o f churches and o f different religions could be focused very much more on our objectives than they have been in the past. With the right kind of stimulation, religion and philosophy could bring in a whole new force which is not being tapped at the present time. Expeditions, I think, have a definite value in conservation. Expeditions which take scientific people to remote parts of the world like the Antarctic help us to learn about the environment and know how it is being damaged b y pollution. Scientific Research is very much needed so we can learn more about the biotic environment and threatened species. 72
The IUCN and WWF need to be strengthened in every way, and also the interest o f other foundations in the whole conservation concept must be made stronger. It is useful for people who are working on these subjects to carry out extensive travel and report on visits that they made to areas o f the world which we know little about. Such activities as the administration o f Pacific areas, with which I have been concerned need to become infused with the requirements for the right kind o f conservation efforts in the islands. Perhaps the most important thing that we can do in the next 20 years is to make every effort to strengthen the newly established World Conservation Strategy---the Global S t r a t e g y - - t h a t has been drawn up by IUCN, WWF and UNEP, and develop a respect for this strategy in all nations. The concepts that are contained in it should be taught and used in environmental education. We should strengthen Conservation Education at all levels, but, in particular, the school curricula. You asked me earlier why education had failed or not succeeded as well as it should, and the reason for that in my mind is that there is such a hardened established educational structure in every single country. We found even in the United States that it is awfully difficult to break into the long-standing educational practices to have them modified; they seem to be some of the most conservative parts of our public services. My wife and I tried to do something in Western Samoa to get the schools more conservation minded, but we had very little success, because of the stubbornness o f the teachers who wanted to stick to what they had been doing for a long time. I do think, though, that in educational efforts we can do a lot by developing schools like Mweka in Tanzania for training wardens to look after parks and reserves. We also, thanks to Lee Talbot, had the concept of what we call "floating faculties." The idea was to have a good ecologist, an agricultural specialist, a social anthropologist, and perhaps an economist, associated together and willing to go to forestry schools in different countries to give courses in conservation education. A school like Deradun in India, where they train some of their young foresters, would be a perfect place for such a team to present the basic concepts that we want to have widely adapted. There is another operation that we have to improve, we must multiply the news items in the field of the environment, and increase the quality of the public information that is given out on television programs. We should use this form of education to strengthen people's knowledge about endangered species. This is an area in which the The Environmentalist
Survival Service of the Union is extremely active with many interesting specialized committees devoted to different animals that are threatened with extinction for one reason or another. We should also strengthen understanding o f land use. We should strengthen ecology as an important science and have it taught much more widely than at the present time. We should encourage the study of ethology, which enables us to interpret better the behaviours of various forms of animal life and particularly in the primate field. There are field studies which were initiated by Louis S. B. Leakey and carried out on gorillas b y Diane Fossey, on orangutan behaviour by Birute Galdikas, and on chimpanzee behaviour by Jane Goodall. These are unique efforts and unique subjects for study of matters which we know very little about, and which have important bearing on understanding human development and behaviour. We need to have ecological studies made on more than 100 species of primates that we know are gravely endangered, and if they become extinct, what we can learn from them would be totally lost. Therefore, we ought to have teams of students who are qualified in this field to go out and make these studies before it's t o o late. We need to support the University Centers where this field study is put into useful research. In addition, we ought to make efforts to strengthen International Cooperation between countries in conservation matters, and also between the UN agencies like UNESCO, FAO and UNEP. They have much improved their cooperation b u t it is far from what it really could be. We have to greatly strengthen intergovernmental cooperation in these various fields. In order to strengthen specific conservation segments in UN agencies, Governmental activities such as the Aid Program and the Peace Corps can be very important and very helpful to Third World countries. Some of the Youth Programs carried on extensively in the United States and Great Britain have to help young people at a very impressionable age to get the kind o f hands-on exposure to conservation problems which will help to develop environmental interest in later years. Explorations of new places and New Scientific Research on biotic systems and on various organisms, several of which have never been studied up to the present time, should naturally be stimulated and could play an important role in our future activities. Another important area is that of the development of Parks, Habitat Reserves and Biosphere reserves, and in this field we should include Human Ecology. One of the things that has disturbed me over the years is the fact that so little Vol. 1 (1981)
effort has been made to try to cultivate an understanding of the importance of natural areas to native tribes and to local people who live in, or alongside, areas that have been set aside to preserve wildlife and forests. There is a growing need for cultural survival in collaboration with conservation. Another neglected area is the whole field o f the Arts and Humanities. There has been relatively tittle effort to bring the biologist into closer touch with those disciplines, but bridges can and should be built; we can find ways to do this. One example was Fleur Cowles's success in getting about 30 museums in different parts of the world to exhibit in a given week animal paintings and sculptures. This has attracted a great deal of popular interest, and the same could be done with landscape paintings, or in several different ways. The well-known painter Jeanne Leger, is keenly interested in the field o f art and nature appreciation brought about through Dr. Oscar Forel's inimitable synchromies derived from photographing the bark o f trees. Then there is the important field of Music. We have Peggy Stuart's composition, "The Blue Planet" which is the official theme of the World Wildlife Fund, and which was very much appreciated. There is a great possibility that musical composers could devote more time and thought to ways of stirring up the kind of conservational interest that can be beneficial to future generations, as this area has been t o o long neglected. If y o u could get together some of the scientific disciplines and the humanities, it would be wonderful. For example, if s o m e b o d y would make an effort to have young Writers create poems about nature, and to take existing ones and sort them out to show which ones have environmental interest and influence, it would be helpful and enjoyable. I think there is a whole untapped area here that could be developed. Then take the subject of Environmental Law, which Burhenne has initiated, and which is so important in developing international treaties like the Law of the Sea under the leadership o f Elliot Richardson, and the international conventions like the one we have for the South Pacific which served as guidelines to the island countries out there. This legal area is vital. Another subject I have mentioned earlier is that we ought to establish a "World Institute for Parks and Natural Areas" and this would be alongside of, or in association with IUCN. The information about parks and habitat areas from the 141 countries of the world could be established in such an institute, and they could send experts out to advise the countries that want to expand their 73
parks systems and start the right kind of environmental education in connection with those areas. Some thought should be given to subjects such as the anticipated dangers from the effect on the environment of war, and the short- and long-term effects o f habitat destruction and the effects of overpopulation, which is our greatest problem. Finally there is the matter o f Natural D i s a s t e r s - some of the effects can be anticipated if y o u have an erupting volcano or earthquakes, and plans should be developed to handle the way natural disasters affect conservation needs for given areas. For instance, one could restrict people building their homes on large natural faults, as they do in California. A final point is that we have much that needs to be taken care of. For example, remote areas about which we know little or nothing, such as the Deep Sea and the Antarctic need to be explored. I think that the Antarctic Treaty is a model for what we would hope might be applied to some of the islands of the world, and other areas such as the seas. We should stimulate research. As for space, there is a lot that has to be learned from space exploration, especially from the technology that has been spurred by the development of weapons, rockets, and air transportation. At the time o f the International Biological Program which UNESCO was developing for the International Biological Year, we had a small group in Washington who were asked to develop new ideas that could be applicable on a worldwide basis, and three of us: the Hon. Russell E. Train, now President of WWF-US, Dr. Joseph L. Fisher, Former Head o f Resources for the Future, and myself drew up the idea of the World Heritage Foundation. We three developed the outline for a World Heritage Trust, the purpose of which was to help safeguard cultural and natural Monuments all over the world, so as to give them extra-protection because of their well-recognized international importance. We had in mind particularly the fact that in Cambodia, the Angkor Temples were endangered by local fighting that was and still is going on. If the temples were protected by a World Heritage Foundation, and recognized by leading statesmen and countries as being of great world significance, then every effort would be made to preserve them for the future o f mankind. We might even develop an instrumentality to
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bring this about. The same would apply to the Rome Coliseum and Machu Pichu and the Burobadour, to mention a few Archaeological Monuments that come immediately to mind. Then we wanted to involve natural areas such as the African Serengeti National Parks, the Grand Canyon o f Colorado and the summit of Mount Everest, and other areas which are of international and world significance. When needed, especially Third World countries that administer these areas might be financially helped in order to maintain them from being degraded one way or another. This treaty was drawn up and has happily now been signed b y 52 countries and has its Secretariat at UNESCO. It has two Screening Committees, one for cultural and natural monuments, the other for natural areas like parks and reserves. It maintains a register that member countries apply to in order to get their outstanding areas included. They also have some funds that governments have contributed, separate from regular UN funds which can be applied to help especially Third World countries to preserve these outstanding, sometime manmade, sometimes God-made monuments that otherwise would be destroyed or allowed to disintegrate. Therefore, I feel that this World Heritage Trust if properly administered can have an increasing world importance and can help to preserve values that otherwise might well be lost forever. It is a source of great personal satisfaction to me that my close friend Dr. Lee Talbot is the new Director-General of IUCN. I look forward to our making important progress under his guidance. "Our challenge is to harmonize man with nature for the benefit of future generations o f mankind as well as plant and animal life" D. H. E.: Thank you Dr. Coolidge for a most interesting and significant interview. To me it has been a great pleasure and honour to have had the opportunity of speaking to you, and recording the views and ideas of, to quote the words of Russell Train, one of the world's greatest conservation leaders. Thank you. REFERENCES Allen, Glover M. (1942). Extinct and Vanishing Mammals o f the Western Hemisphere.
Greenway, James C. (1958). Extinct and Vanishing Birds o f the World.
Harper, Francis (1945). Extinct and Vanishing Mammals o f the Old World.
The Environmentalist
Harold Jefferson Coolidge
Profile of Harold Jefferson Coolidge This interview with Harold Jefferson Coolidge, distinguished scientist and international conser. vationist, and David Hughes.Evans, joint-editor of The Environmentalist, took place at Square Lake, Holderness, New Hampshire, USA, during August 1980. Harold Jefferson Coolidge was born on 15 January 1904, and was educated at the Universities of Arizona, Harvard, and Cambridge (England). He has honorary doctorates of science from the George Washington University and the Seoul National and Brandeis Universities. He started his professional life as Assistant Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, specialising in primates, especially the genus Gorilla. He has maintained this interest throughout his life. His work in the field is still a source of reference. He has held many professional positions in the conservation field: Vice-President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1948-54); President of IUCN (1966-72), and Honorary President since. He was the Founding Chairman of the Union's Survival Service Commission and the Commission on National Parks. During the period 1946-70, he was Executive Director of the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Coolidge is a member of various Societies and Foundations, including: The African Wildlife Leadership Foundation (Founding Director); American Committee for International Wildlife
The Environmentalist, 1 (1981) 65-74
Protection (Founder); American Society of Mammologists (Life Member); Charles Darwin Foundation (Founding Trustee); Fauna Preservation Society (Vice President); Charles A. Lindbergh Fund (Science-Aeronautics Committee); L. S. B. Leakey Foundation (Director); New York Zoological Society (Fellow); Pacific Science Association (Former US Council Member); Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden Foundation; William P. Wharton Conservation Trust (Trustee); World Wildlife Fund (International and USA). Among the numerous awards and prizes Dr Coolidge has received over the years, are noted the following: US Legion of Merit (Military), 1945; Garden Clubs Hutchinson Medal, 1963; Albright Medal, 1968; Gold Medal, New York Zoological Society, 1969; Commander Order of Golden Ark, 1972; Silver Medal of International Achievement Award, US National Park Service, 1972; Edward W. Browning Conservation Award: Smithsonian, 1978; John C. Phillips Medal: IUCN, 1978; Member of Honour, World Wildlife Fund International, 1979; J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, 1979. It is impossible to think of conservation, without at the same time thinking of Harold Jefferson Coolidge, not only of his own immense contribution, but also of the assistance and encouragement he has given to others. His citation, when he was awarded the J. Paul Getty Prize in 1980, states: "Indomitable proponent of conservation for over forty years, you have taken a leading role in promoting international understanding and cooperation. Throughout a noteworthy career in the National Research Council and subsequently in the founding of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, you have, with magnificent persistence, maintained that the planet is all one, despite the sound and fury of world and national events. World Wildlife Fund, USA salutes your endeavors and recognizes your pioneering leadership in international conser-
© Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne Printedin The Netherlands
vation by awarding y o u the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for 1979." In a message to the gathering, US President Carter had this to say: "As the first American recipient of the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, y o u exemplify the American tradition of seeing a need and organizing the means to respond to it. You gave very early warning o f the plight of many endangered species when few could even comprehend this concept ... I congratulate y o u for the well-deserved recognition that your life has meant a better life and future for all of us. As an ardent conservationist, I am very proud o f y o u . "
INTERVIEW D.H.E.: Going back 40 to 60 years, what do you think were the pressing demands at that time for the formation o f conservation organizations and societies ? H. J. C.: I know that in my own case the whole concept of trying to do something that would save endangered species had a great deal of influence in my own thinking about conservation and the direction which it should take. But historically one o f the things that helped to get me started was Major Burnham, the well-known American outdoorsman, who made a trip to Africa about 1929. He was terribly shocked at the slaughter of g a m e a n d what was happening in Africa. He came back to the United States and met with Madison Grant, Kermit Roosevelt, and myself, and others who belonged to the Boone and Crockett c l u b - a club that was founded b y Theodore Roosevelt and George Grinnell. It was made up of sportsmen who liked to hunt, b u t they were also at heart conservationists, and they wanted to see that no species became endangered or extinct through any of their hunting activities. We had a meeting at the Boone and Crockett Club where we decided that there were enough people in the United States who were interested in conservation and enough organizations to band together and speak with one voice when problems in the international field emerged. And actually as a result of Major Burnham's visit to Africa, we became aware o f emerging problems that called for some competent scientist to go out to Africa, become familiar with the situation and come back with the information. Thus we could use our weight with appropriate governments to try and set up some kind of international agreement which would help to try to save some o f the greatly endangered species. It was really out of that basic need that Madison Grant, then President o f the Boone and Crockett 66
Club, decided with the rest o f us to establish the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection. That Committee has as its first Chairman Dr. John C. Phillips. He was then a neighbour o f mine. He had written many books relating to conservation subjects and had a pretty strong interest in international conservation. He made one trip to Africa with his wife and young son and was disturbed about what was happening in Africa. The American Committee invited organizations such as the National A u d u b o n Society and the various wildlife protection g r o u p s - - I z a a k Walton League and some o t h e r s - - t o name someone to represent them on the Committee. We held a meeting once a year and sometimes more often to go over some o f the problems which were cropping up increasingly in this field. It was really quite amazing that the leading American organizations at the time, like the Wildlife Management Institute, seemed to take no great interest in international problems. They wanted most of all to deal with North American problems and mainly United States problems, and we had great difficulty even raising a small fund to maintain the Secretariat of the American Committee. I was the Secretary of the American Committee and established its ofrice at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where I was then Assistant Curator of Mammals. Out of my office came a letter which we used to interest people in the problems that were arising, and as I mentioned, one of the problems that clearly was arising was what to do about endangered species. Now, the best way then to deal with that subject was to have a really competent mammalogist do research on endangered species as represented in scientific publications but most often in sporting literature, travel, and hunting b o o k s of one kind or another. We set aside a few thousand dollars from the American Committee which we decided to devote to preparing a study of endangered and vanishing mammals o f the world. We chose as our researcher Dr. Francis Harper, a well-known zoologist, and he undertook this t a s k - - h e was to do it within two y e a r s - - b u t four years later the work was still not completed. Even after two years we realized that he would not get around to doing the marine mammals and the North American mammals because he was working mainly on Africa and Asia. So we asked my boss, Dr. Glover Allen, Curator of mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, to help. He said he would be glad to undertake getting the material together on the North American mammals and also the marine mammals. It took him a couple o f years to accomplish this, and then we published the Harper book on "Extinct and Vanishing MareThe Environmentalist
mals of the Old World ( 1 9 4 5 ) " and the Glover Allen volume o f the New World ( 1 9 4 9 ) - - t h e "Mammals in North and South American and the Marine Mammals". But we still had the birds to do. Jim Greenway (1958) who was Assistant Curator of B i r d s - - t h e same kind of job I had in the mammal department at H a r v a r d - - u n d e r t o o k to draw up a list of birds, and it t o o k a couple of years to get that ready. The American Committee also published that work. So with these publications, we had the basic information that y o u need to know if y o u are going to develop an action programme to do something about endangered species. Then when the call came for establishing some kind o f organization to look after this problem a great deal of the work had been done. The Swiss had already had a couple of conferences at Brunnen, and had made everyone aware of the need for doing something for endangered species and for pulling the interest o f conservation people in the various countries together in some unified way. Then with great stimulus from Julian Huxley, Director-General o f UNESCO, who was keen about the idea, and with the help o f the French government, which Huxley more or less arranged, we set up this conference at Fontainebleau in 1948. There were official invitations from the French government which went to the governments of the colonial powers and also a number o f other countries. We all gathered at Fontainebleau and had about two weeks of meetings in which we decided that it was important to establish a Union of Conservation Organizations. Dr. O. H. J. Bernard, President of the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature, was very active and he and the other Swiss wanted to make it more of a popular organization. Some o f the rest o f us, including the UK delegation, wanted to make it more of a scientific organization, and we ended up with a basic constitution for the IUCN. It is interesting that in the case of the United States, we were a government delegation with government credentials, and we were supposed to have been carefully briefed and instructed as to what we could or could not do, but the State Department was so slow in getting this information out to the delegation that it did not reach us until after the meeting was over. Dr. Ira N. Gabrielson, who had formerly been head o f the US Fish and Game Department, under Secretary Ickes of tile Interior, and was one of our greatest conservationists, was leader of the delegation. He, in consultation with Phillips, George E. Brewer and myself and the other key delegates went ahead and gave full American support to the newly declared Union constitution and by-laws, although we were Vol. 1 (1981)
later told b y our government that we were not authorized to do this ! But happily we went ahead and did it. Then we were faced with the serious problem of how to fund the new organization. Each country was asked to put up a certain amount of m o n e y and there were pledges from some o f the American organizations for, I think it was a total of $5000 or $6000, which would not carry us very far, b u t it would get us started. The Secretariat, was established in Brussels, where Dr. Victor Van Straelen, Director of The Royal Institute o f Natural Sciences o f Belgium, and his Institute offered us the facilities at the National Museum. Jean-Paul Harroy, who was then the Secretary of IRSAC which was a Belgian research organization in the Congo, agreed to be Executive Secretary. For a number o f years he held the organization together, with help from Dr. Van Straelen, and we held meetings from time to time. D.H.E.: What was the situation in other countries? Was it similar to that in the United States? H. J. C.: Well, I feel that in Europe, probably the leading countries were Switzerland, Poland and Germany. Denmark, Norway and Sweden had a basic interest in their local conservation problems and game laws which put them in almost a special category. In Belgium, we had Dr. Derscheid and Dr. Van Straelen, who were the leaders, and in Holland there was Dr. P. G. van Tienhoven, who was really one of the founders of our international conservation movement. He was pushing in all directions, even saving Dutch windmills, and helping to save migratory birds that were captured in traps, to sell to the English market. He was active and extremely effective and put a lot of his personal m o n e y into the Office. The International Office for the Protection of Nature was founded in 1928 in Brussels, and run by Dr. J. M. Derscheid. It u n d e r t o o k the task of gathering copies of game laws of all the countries that had them. It is quite surprising how many of the laws in the colonial areas had been drawn up especially for nature protection purposes. These appeared in the publications o f the International Office. When Dr. Derscheid left in 1935, Kirs Tordis Grain of Norway took over until 1940. Funding of the Office was paid for by international funds. I raised a certain amount of m o n e y - - a b o u t $5000 a year as I r e c a l l - - t o contribute to that Office, and the British Fauna Society, which had been very active in this field, continued to be active and used to contribute funds. Eventually the Office moved to the Netherlands and the Dutch conservation organizations contributed funds; then the Germans came in, and then the Swiss. Dr. van Tienhoven became President and 67
Professor Van Straelen Vice-President, and this Office was really the nucleus group from which the IUCN developed. I must also mention the invaluable contribution o f the late Sir Frank Fraser Darling to many aspects of the Union from its founding. D.H.E.: From what y o u have said, Africa seems to have been an important focus. Why was this more than, say, South America or parts o f Asia? H. J. C.: Because the prime movers in this activity were Englishmen who were particularly keen about hunting and shooting, and big-game shooting in Africa was a very real sport. But, people like Theodore Roosevelt and Max Fleishman and other rich Americans also went hunting in Africa, and as soon as they did, they became interested in these preservation problems which "hit you between the eyes." The situation in Africa was really what sparked this international development, and in 1933, Lord Willingdon and a number of other prominent Britishers got these countries together, and they drew up the London Convention for African Wildlife Protection, which we used as a p r o t o t y p e later on for a similar convention which our Committee organized for the New World. So we had a Western Hemisphere Convention that was started in 1940, which helped define national parks and habitat protection, and desirable game laws which protected migratory species and so forth, and most of it stemmed from the first London convention. D.H.E.: What about IUCN? H. J. C.: IUCN was founded in 1948. Thirteen years later, in 1961, the World Wildlife Fund was established. The World Wildlife F u n d - - t h e r e has been a certain amount o f controversy over t h i s - but it was founded without question for the purpose of raising funds to finance the budget of IUCN, because we were having a great struggle getting money from conservation organizations and we needed s o m e b o d y to handle the business end and the advertising and all that sort of thing. So the World Wildlife Fund was formed with the help o f Sir Peter Scott, and the suggestion o f Max Nicholson, who was then head of the British Nature Conservancy. He was the one who thought up the idea of having a separate organization mainly for money-raising purposes, because we were primarily scientists and research people, and you had to have a different kind of person for this PR job. That was what the WWF undertook. However, when they started raising money, they got so enamored with the idea o f "international conservation" that they wondered why it should have to 68
be done just through IUCN? Why should they not put money they were raising into projects that they themselves would choose, that they would like to see financed? So we had two groups that were thinking up projects. At that time we were in the same building at Morges, Switzerland, and we had a c o m m o n library. However, there was a certain amount of rivalry between the two organizations. We were always in a deficit situation in the Union and WWF, chaired b y Prince Bernard and directed by Fritz Vollmar and Luc Hoffman had quite a lot of success raising money. Instead o f taking care of us first, they stated we were the highest priority, but they had to take care o f their own administrative expenses and then they also had certain projects they wanted to fund. So by the time it came down to what they were going to give to IUCN, we had a very hard time for a good many years, which was a pretty difficult situation. We always had to end the year with a deficit o f many thou: sands of dollars, with the hope that the WWF would come to our rescue by providing a grant. They had enough m o n e y to do so. A lot o f people were confused; they thought when they were giving money to the WWF, they were giving to IUCN, but they were not, they were giving it to quite a number of projects of which IUCN was only one. Eventually they outgrew us. They got a larger staff, and finally we could not fit them into the building, so the Swiss government gave them some buildings on the other side of town. Then they had their own headquarters, and we had ours. That made working together even more difficult. This went on for some considerable time, and the budget was getting higher and higher every year. Then at an annual meeting some people brought up the fact that the Third World c o u n t r i e s - - t h e developing c o u n t r i e s - - w e r e not sufficiently represented by IUCN, and yet IUCN and the WWF gave the impression that they were doing this for everybody. Actually they had n o b o d y from Brazil, and other countries were not on the Board. Finally the principle was adopted of dividing the world up into sectors and having so many representatives from each region. And in that way it made for a better representation. However, we never had enough money to pay the way in order to bring to our annual meeting the conservation people from these different countries. If people like Dr. Zafir Futehau of India, could find a firm that he was working with as a consultant which said it would fund his trip, then he could come and participate in on our meetings and be very valuable. Once ill a while the Union had a little money that could pay his way, since it was obviously important to have India represented at The Environmentalist
our meetings, and yet we were plagued b y this financial problem. Even in Australia, they were very slow in getting started in conservation, and they did not feel they could afford to send their representative. Dr. Boonsong Lekagul, who later was awarded the Getty Prize as the most outstanding conservationist in Thailand, was the first Asian that I helped to get onto the Board of the International Union. I do not think that he came to more than two meetings in a period o f about eight or ten years, because he could not afford it, and we did not have the m o n e y to bring him. We could correspond with him and have people look in on him when they visited Asia. We had lots of problems one way or another. D.H.E.: How did you resolve these problems? H. J. C.: The United Nations organizations gradually became increasingly aware of the fact that they should do something about conservation. Therefore, a conference was called together in 1949 at Lake Success. At the Lake Success Conference, we had an IUCN Conference ahead of the UN Conference. At the time of the UN Lake Success Conference, I launched the idea of setting up some kind of Survival Service which would list the gravely endangered species and which would take the responsibility for funding the Document Centre at the Headquarters of the Union that was keeping track o f the information about these species coming in from different parts o f the world. They kept up a sort o f card file, and used the three books o f the American C o m m i t t e e - - t h e Harper, Allen, and Greenway v o l u m e s - - a s their baseline. From then on Dr. Peter of the Paris Museum was very active in maintaining this listing as were curators o f different mammals and birds in various museums who sent information in to our headquarters in Belgium. I thought it would be a particularly good idea to focus world attention on gravely endangered species because when y o u are talking about the Philippian Money-eating Eagle, people would be much more interested in them than if y o u said y o u were interested in eagles. By pinpointing dramatic cases and even sending investigators out to check into the situation, y o u would stir up a money-raising potential which is very helpful when y o u are trying to get funds for this kind of activity. We did form the Survival Service Commission (SSC), and I was told that as long as it was my baby, I could set it up, which I did in Brussels. The SSC has had a very active history which has continued for the past thirteen years under the leadership of Sir Peter Scott. It was several years after its founding that we really got going and had all the file cards from Harper and Allen, and had Vol. 1 (1981)
all the accumulated information. Dr. Lee M. Talbot, then of the Smithsonian and now DirectorGeneral o f IUCN, carried out several field missions to check on the status of endangered species. As time passed, I became aware of the fact that it was all very well to have a survival service with all the information y o u can get about species, but what good does it do? You cannot save species just b y bringing them into zoos; y o u have to take strenuous measures to protect their native habitat. So at the time o f the IUCN General Assembly in Athens in 1954, Dr. Tamura* and I decided that we definitely should establish a Commission for the Union which would stimulate the establishment o f National Parks all over the world. So I resigned from being the Director of the Survival Service Commission of the IUCN and t o o k on the Parks Commission, which, in order to make it even more effective, I called the International Commission on National Parks, rather than just one o f the six commissions of the Union. That name stuck until quite recently. The principal goal o f the International Commission on National Parks was to prepare a "World List" of existing parks and reserves and then have this serve as an honor list which would give prestige to the countries that had parks and reserves. We thought that this could be most effective if it was established at a high level under the United Nations organization, but UNESCO was a little jealous at that point; they thought that it ought to be a UNESCO activity. The F o o d and Agricultural Organization was waking up at this time and had the feeling that parks ought to be a matter of their concern, so they wanted it under FAO. I went down to the United Nations ECOSOC Conference in Mexico City (1959) where the subject was on the agenda. I felt very strongly that this UN list would have more prestige with lots of Third World countries if it were not UNESCO, not FAO, b u t if it were under ECOSOC, with IUCN doing the work, and ECOSOC getting the credit. We had no m o n e y to fund this operation, b u t nevertheless, I got it accepted by the Conference. Both UNESCO and FAO agreed, but would not provide any m o n e y for it; we would have to raise m o n e y elsewhere and work it out. 1 think that it was a wise decision in the long run, but we had a tough time with funding the first two or three years. As for the publication of the l i s t - - w e drew up this preliminary list after corresponding with all *Dr. Toshio Tamura had been so impressed with the National Park Service in the United States that when he went back to Japan from one of his Western trips, he made up his mind that Japan had to have a national park system too. He got together with a group of scientists, and they selected appropriate a r e a s - - m a i n l y areas with magnificent scenery and wild natural conditions and set up a very effective park system.
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the different UN c o u n t r i e s - - t o get this published, even ECOSOC said that they-did not feel they had funds to pay for it. I had to raise the m o n e y privately to fund the "First World List of National Parks and Equivalent Areas." But we did get it out, and then, just as I had hoped, some of the developing countries were embarrassed to find that they had no areas to include in the UN list. We wrote to them and urged them to get busy. Sometimes we sent an expert to advise and help them. Before we knew it, they decided to set aside more and more areas. We did not put in any tough criteria because we knew that that would scare them away. So the first thing to do was to get the area set aside, and then reinforce the legislation and shame them into making it more meaningful. The African countries came along quite nicely on this, and I knew o f several instances where parks or reserves would not have existed had it not been that they wished to be on the World List. In one case, in Indonesia, when I ran across one o f the Rajas, he said, "We had such a beautiful area near where I five, and now it is going to be destroyed by some development planning; and it was called a park, but it was just in name and now it is being abolished." I said, "Abolished? We have a list from Indonesia o f y o u r parks and reserves, it is printed and it is in the UN official list. You cannot abolish an area like that! . . . . You say its on the. UN list?" he asked in amazement. I agreed and produced the Official UN list I had with me. He took it back to his Javanese palace and raised such a row that they reestablished the park area and even enlarged it. And it was all because they did not want to be criticized because it was already on the World List. There were several other cases where the prestige o f being already in the World List helped to safeguard the areas that were set up, and also helped to shame other countries that did not have any parks or reserves. We had a certain number of American tourists and other people traveling around, so I got them to inquire, to say, " T h e y had come especially to see a park or reserve." This could be embarrassing to the government concerned, and I would often give them a copy of the World List so they had something to refer to. They would look up under a specific country and see that they had nothing, or perhaps one tiny little area, and then they would talk the officials into it. So this activity grew, and Jean-Paul Harroy, who was a most active Parks Authority, took over from me as Chairman when I became not only Vice-President but later President of IUCN. He did a splendid job of corresponding with various 70
countries and getting experts to go out and advise them, and raised m o n e y to carry on this activity. One o f the things I am most proud of, in my contribution to the development o f the International Union, is that the two commissions with which I was associated--being the first chairman of the Survival Service Commission and also o f the International Parks C o m m i s s i o n - - b e c a m e the two most significant activities o f the Union. The Parks Commission was greatly helped by the fact that we organized in Seattle in 1962, the First World Conference on National Parks, and we drew up all kinds of resolutions and action programs and educational programs inside the parks of the different countries. We had a lot of useful discussions, and from among the officials they sent to the meetings, we appointed 25 vicepresidents and seated them up on the podium where they were pleased to be. The whole First Conference turned out so well that they decided they would have another, but because there were too m a n y conferences, they agreed to wait for ten years. Then, ten years later, the US Government on the centennial of the Yellowstone National Park, decided to host a conference, and that became the Second World Conference on National Parks where we published reports o f what had been accomplished. Another outcome was that we recommended the establishment o f underwater parks, and Dr. Tamura later helped us to organize the first World Conference on Underwater Parks in Japan in 1975. We had field trips to visit quite a number of underwater parks that he had established in and around the inland sea and other places. Now I can safely say that there are about 30 new National Parks being created every single year in one or another country, and this stems from a desire to get on the park bandwagon, because of the increased awareness of the importance of such areas. Then UNESCO had their World Biosphere Conference in 1968 and there was the International Biological Program; all these played into the picture. I think that the World Biosphere Reserve areas that UNESCO has set up under its MAB program are very important, as y o u do not have to be as rigid in the specification as you do with national parks. You can take several areas and put them into one of these biological preserves with UNESCO's blessing; they are going to do that in the Antarctic as well, and that is a very healthy development. Dr. Kenton Miller is now a very active chairman of the Parks Commission currently called the Commission on National Parks and Reserved Areas, so the work continues. Dr. Kai Curry-Lindahl of Sweden has played a key role on World Park development for many years. The Environmentalist
D.H.E.: What about conservation education? Have the goals been achieved? H. J. C.: It was clear from the start that the whole subject of Conservation Education was basic to the development of IUCN, because, after all, the problem of getting people to understand the need for conservation of the natural environment is essentially an educational process and it is the baseline to which we should adjust our efforts. Unfortunately, in the early days, we had no education officer and so the only educational work done was really the spreading of public information and making available to different countries the publications in the educational field that had been put out by certain places like the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain and others. The dissemination of information on education went on but nothing much more was programmed. After many years, in the early seventies, we acquired the services of Dr. Jan ~efovsk9 from Czechoslovakia, who was a keen education officer. He established and organized a number of education conferences in Switzerland, Ontario and Eastern Europe where groups of people from adjoining countries got together and developed educational objectives and programs for their particular area. These were constructive actions, and the Educational Commission increased in importance until the government o f Czechoslovakia called ~ei'ovsk9 back. At that time we had no further funding for taking on a full-time educational ofricer in Morges, and so education was again mainly involved with public information, just spreading the word about what should be done. A planning officer from IUCN devoted half his time to keeping in touch with people in different countries who were on the Educational Commission, but it was a great disappointment to me that we were able to do so little in this educational field for quite a while. Actually many o f us felt that we ought to develop environmental education at all levels from elementary school right through high school and college level, and to help develop appropriate curricula and also appropriate training programs. Even in the United States there was relatively little development in this field in the early days of IUCN. So, I would say that this has been one o f the disappointing IUCN activities up to the present time. It is only because we have had people like Jim Aldrich who is so interested in this field, carrying out effective programs in the United States and Africa, and others working in the U.K., Europe and elsewhere, that we were able to keep action alive in this area, up to the present time. A wide open field is to include conservation subjects on the tape recordings so popular on intercontinental flights such as those from Mot. 1 (1981)
Europe to Africa or to the Far East. Now IUCN has again a full-time education officer, Naseeb Dajani, and we hope that the Commission will take o f f again and do a great deal more. D.H.E.: What conservation-related actions should have been done by IUCN and others? H. J. C.: I would say that one of the most important things we should have been doing is to place much more emphasis on getting governments to develop their Planning Commissions. These really did not take off until the time of the Stockholm Conference and there was a great ferment developed at the time of this conference which led to the establishment o f - - s o m e t i m e s temporary, sometimes p e r m a n e n t - - P l a n n i n g Conservation Commissions in a great many countries, and this development was gratifying. Now what are the most critical remaining conservation issues? There are a great many issues as we all know. But perhaps the most important is to involve appropriate government developments in conservation activities that are essential to every country, and these cover a wide range. For instance, anything relating to Pollution Control that is handled by governments, anything related to Soil Conservation, to Land Use, to Fish and Wildlife, to National Parks; these are all extremely important areas which need to be strengthened in most governments, and given more funding. Then Education, which has already been mentioned, is a particularily important field, and I would like to hope that in the next decade or so education will become the principal function of IUCN, or at least that it will play a definitely leading role. In addition, it is important that governments should develop their treaty-making structure. Some of the most effective things our Union has done has been setting up International Agreements under the leadership o f Wolfgang Burhenne and his wife, which have led to long-range cooperative development between governments. As chairman of the Commission on Law, he has made a special point of assembling laws from as many countries as possible, and advising governments on legal aspects of what they could and should not do in dealing with conservation matters. D.H.E.: How does IUCN and its activities relate to other environmental concerns such as energy, or water supply, or hazardous toxic waste management ? H. J. C.: I would say that energy development is very much involved with such public effects as the building of dams and roads and pipelines which may be harmful to the environment, but 71
the conservation aspects of preserving the biotic environment while pursuing energy development has too low a priority. On Water Supply needs, we know that the wrong kind of forestry such as clear-cutting leads to curtailing of water supplies. Particularly on steep slopes, the cutting is extremely unfortunate, as it leads to washing away o f soil, and in many cases nothing is left but bare rock. The Climate then changes so that there is less rain. The island of New Caledonia is a horrible example o f the way a beautiful mountain forest can be destroyed, leaving nothing b u t bare slopes, because no thought was given to reseeding or planting or holding the soil after it has been broken down for mining purposes. The cutting of Forests in many Caribbean Islands and in Africa has also led to water shortages. The IUCN is interested in helping to save forests and other natural areas which will preserve watersheds. Then the Toxic Waste management is something that needs very much to be included in a development plan because otherwise y o u get not only erosion but concentrations o f waste materials. As we know, the unwise use of areas for dumping polluting materials poisons the soil, the groundwater, and this has very bad consequences for people who depend on these resources; the damage often lasts much longer than we realize. We have situations such as the Love Canal and many other dump areas in our country which we are just beginning to wake up about. The IUCN works in cooperation with other organizations more centrally concerned with such matters. D.H.E.: What needs to be done by I U C N and others over the n e x t two decades? H. J. C.: I would say that a great deal needs to be done and I think that we want to build up state or government support for the concept of conservation and the ecological approach to Development Planning. I also feel that we have got to make an effort to develop Religious support of conservation. I feel that the influence o f churches and o f different religions could be focused very much more on our objectives than they have been in the past. With the right kind of stimulation, religion and philosophy could bring in a whole new force which is not being tapped at the present time. Expeditions, I think, have a definite value in conservation. Expeditions which take scientific people to remote parts of the world like the Antarctic help us to learn about the environment and know how it is being damaged b y pollution. Scientific Research is very much needed so we can learn more about the biotic environment and threatened species. 72
The IUCN and WWF need to be strengthened in every way, and also the interest o f other foundations in the whole conservation concept must be made stronger. It is useful for people who are working on these subjects to carry out extensive travel and report on visits that they made to areas o f the world which we know little about. Such activities as the administration o f Pacific areas, with which I have been concerned need to become infused with the requirements for the right kind o f conservation efforts in the islands. Perhaps the most important thing that we can do in the next 20 years is to make every effort to strengthen the newly established World Conservation Strategy---the Global S t r a t e g y - - t h a t has been drawn up by IUCN, WWF and UNEP, and develop a respect for this strategy in all nations. The concepts that are contained in it should be taught and used in environmental education. We should strengthen Conservation Education at all levels, but, in particular, the school curricula. You asked me earlier why education had failed or not succeeded as well as it should, and the reason for that in my mind is that there is such a hardened established educational structure in every single country. We found even in the United States that it is awfully difficult to break into the long-standing educational practices to have them modified; they seem to be some of the most conservative parts of our public services. My wife and I tried to do something in Western Samoa to get the schools more conservation minded, but we had very little success, because of the stubbornness o f the teachers who wanted to stick to what they had been doing for a long time. I do think, though, that in educational efforts we can do a lot by developing schools like Mweka in Tanzania for training wardens to look after parks and reserves. We also, thanks to Lee Talbot, had the concept of what we call "floating faculties." The idea was to have a good ecologist, an agricultural specialist, a social anthropologist, and perhaps an economist, associated together and willing to go to forestry schools in different countries to give courses in conservation education. A school like Deradun in India, where they train some of their young foresters, would be a perfect place for such a team to present the basic concepts that we want to have widely adapted. There is another operation that we have to improve, we must multiply the news items in the field of the environment, and increase the quality of the public information that is given out on television programs. We should use this form of education to strengthen people's knowledge about endangered species. This is an area in which the The Environmentalist
Survival Service of the Union is extremely active with many interesting specialized committees devoted to different animals that are threatened with extinction for one reason or another. We should also strengthen understanding o f land use. We should strengthen ecology as an important science and have it taught much more widely than at the present time. We should encourage the study of ethology, which enables us to interpret better the behaviours of various forms of animal life and particularly in the primate field. There are field studies which were initiated by Louis S. B. Leakey and carried out on gorillas b y Diane Fossey, on orangutan behaviour by Birute Galdikas, and on chimpanzee behaviour by Jane Goodall. These are unique efforts and unique subjects for study of matters which we know very little about, and which have important bearing on understanding human development and behaviour. We need to have ecological studies made on more than 100 species of primates that we know are gravely endangered, and if they become extinct, what we can learn from them would be totally lost. Therefore, we ought to have teams of students who are qualified in this field to go out and make these studies before it's t o o late. We need to support the University Centers where this field study is put into useful research. In addition, we ought to make efforts to strengthen International Cooperation between countries in conservation matters, and also between the UN agencies like UNESCO, FAO and UNEP. They have much improved their cooperation b u t it is far from what it really could be. We have to greatly strengthen intergovernmental cooperation in these various fields. In order to strengthen specific conservation segments in UN agencies, Governmental activities such as the Aid Program and the Peace Corps can be very important and very helpful to Third World countries. Some of the Youth Programs carried on extensively in the United States and Great Britain have to help young people at a very impressionable age to get the kind o f hands-on exposure to conservation problems which will help to develop environmental interest in later years. Explorations of new places and New Scientific Research on biotic systems and on various organisms, several of which have never been studied up to the present time, should naturally be stimulated and could play an important role in our future activities. Another important area is that of the development of Parks, Habitat Reserves and Biosphere reserves, and in this field we should include Human Ecology. One of the things that has disturbed me over the years is the fact that so little Vol. 1 (1981)
effort has been made to try to cultivate an understanding of the importance of natural areas to native tribes and to local people who live in, or alongside, areas that have been set aside to preserve wildlife and forests. There is a growing need for cultural survival in collaboration with conservation. Another neglected area is the whole field o f the Arts and Humanities. There has been relatively tittle effort to bring the biologist into closer touch with those disciplines, but bridges can and should be built; we can find ways to do this. One example was Fleur Cowles's success in getting about 30 museums in different parts of the world to exhibit in a given week animal paintings and sculptures. This has attracted a great deal of popular interest, and the same could be done with landscape paintings, or in several different ways. The well-known painter Jeanne Leger, is keenly interested in the field o f art and nature appreciation brought about through Dr. Oscar Forel's inimitable synchromies derived from photographing the bark o f trees. Then there is the important field of Music. We have Peggy Stuart's composition, "The Blue Planet" which is the official theme of the World Wildlife Fund, and which was very much appreciated. There is a great possibility that musical composers could devote more time and thought to ways of stirring up the kind of conservational interest that can be beneficial to future generations, as this area has been t o o long neglected. If y o u could get together some of the scientific disciplines and the humanities, it would be wonderful. For example, if s o m e b o d y would make an effort to have young Writers create poems about nature, and to take existing ones and sort them out to show which ones have environmental interest and influence, it would be helpful and enjoyable. I think there is a whole untapped area here that could be developed. Then take the subject of Environmental Law, which Burhenne has initiated, and which is so important in developing international treaties like the Law of the Sea under the leadership o f Elliot Richardson, and the international conventions like the one we have for the South Pacific which served as guidelines to the island countries out there. This legal area is vital. Another subject I have mentioned earlier is that we ought to establish a "World Institute for Parks and Natural Areas" and this would be alongside of, or in association with IUCN. The information about parks and habitat areas from the 141 countries of the world could be established in such an institute, and they could send experts out to advise the countries that want to expand their 73
parks systems and start the right kind of environmental education in connection with those areas. Some thought should be given to subjects such as the anticipated dangers from the effect on the environment of war, and the short- and long-term effects o f habitat destruction and the effects of overpopulation, which is our greatest problem. Finally there is the matter o f Natural D i s a s t e r s - some of the effects can be anticipated if y o u have an erupting volcano or earthquakes, and plans should be developed to handle the way natural disasters affect conservation needs for given areas. For instance, one could restrict people building their homes on large natural faults, as they do in California. A final point is that we have much that needs to be taken care of. For example, remote areas about which we know little or nothing, such as the Deep Sea and the Antarctic need to be explored. I think that the Antarctic Treaty is a model for what we would hope might be applied to some of the islands of the world, and other areas such as the seas. We should stimulate research. As for space, there is a lot that has to be learned from space exploration, especially from the technology that has been spurred by the development of weapons, rockets, and air transportation. At the time o f the International Biological Program which UNESCO was developing for the International Biological Year, we had a small group in Washington who were asked to develop new ideas that could be applicable on a worldwide basis, and three of us: the Hon. Russell E. Train, now President of WWF-US, Dr. Joseph L. Fisher, Former Head o f Resources for the Future, and myself drew up the idea of the World Heritage Foundation. We three developed the outline for a World Heritage Trust, the purpose of which was to help safeguard cultural and natural Monuments all over the world, so as to give them extra-protection because of their well-recognized international importance. We had in mind particularly the fact that in Cambodia, the Angkor Temples were endangered by local fighting that was and still is going on. If the temples were protected by a World Heritage Foundation, and recognized by leading statesmen and countries as being of great world significance, then every effort would be made to preserve them for the future o f mankind. We might even develop an instrumentality to
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bring this about. The same would apply to the Rome Coliseum and Machu Pichu and the Burobadour, to mention a few Archaeological Monuments that come immediately to mind. Then we wanted to involve natural areas such as the African Serengeti National Parks, the Grand Canyon o f Colorado and the summit of Mount Everest, and other areas which are of international and world significance. When needed, especially Third World countries that administer these areas might be financially helped in order to maintain them from being degraded one way or another. This treaty was drawn up and has happily now been signed b y 52 countries and has its Secretariat at UNESCO. It has two Screening Committees, one for cultural and natural monuments, the other for natural areas like parks and reserves. It maintains a register that member countries apply to in order to get their outstanding areas included. They also have some funds that governments have contributed, separate from regular UN funds which can be applied to help especially Third World countries to preserve these outstanding, sometime manmade, sometimes God-made monuments that otherwise would be destroyed or allowed to disintegrate. Therefore, I feel that this World Heritage Trust if properly administered can have an increasing world importance and can help to preserve values that otherwise might well be lost forever. It is a source of great personal satisfaction to me that my close friend Dr. Lee Talbot is the new Director-General of IUCN. I look forward to our making important progress under his guidance. "Our challenge is to harmonize man with nature for the benefit of future generations o f mankind as well as plant and animal life" D. H. E.: Thank you Dr. Coolidge for a most interesting and significant interview. To me it has been a great pleasure and honour to have had the opportunity of speaking to you, and recording the views and ideas of, to quote the words of Russell Train, one of the world's greatest conservation leaders. Thank you. REFERENCES Allen, Glover M. (1942). Extinct and Vanishing Mammals o f the Western Hemisphere.
Greenway, James C. (1958). Extinct and Vanishing Birds o f the World.
Harper, Francis (1945). Extinct and Vanishing Mammals o f the Old World.
The Environmentalist