Francis B. Sumner (1874-1945) — shown above lounging in the Mojave Desert in a 1914 photo by Joseph Grinnell — was a professor of biology at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He served as vice president of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Science, and a joint chair of the Ecological Society of America’s Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions in the United States. The paper from which the below passage is excerpted, published in the Scientific Monthly in 1920 under the title “The Need for a More Serious Effort to Rescue a Few Fragments of Vanishing Nature,” came from a speech Sumner presented to the California Academy of Sciences in 1919. The bulk of the speech exhorted biologists to work to preserve America’s wildlands.
“Even the desert, which has long furnished interesting problems to the naturalist, as well as inspiration to the poet and the painter, seems doomed to wholesale invasion and exploitation. To make the desert “blossom as the rose” has for ages been looked upon as typical of man’s conquest over nature, and the wonderful achievements in our own Southwest stand in the front rank of such efforts. But we can not overlook the tragic side of the picture. The limitless vistas of picturesque desolation lose much of their mystery when we find that they are threaded in all directions by automobile roads, and when the eye is everywhere confronted by scattered rectangular clearings, due to the fruitless efforts of would-be desert farmers. The highly interesting and picturesque plant associations in the western portion of the Mojave Desert are rapidly being destroyed by so-called “settlers” who are probably not getting enough out of the land, in most cases, to pay expenses. The weird and beautiful tree-yucca, a plant so typical of our California desert landscape, is now being largely used for various commercial purposes. I know of at least one company, organized with the particular object of exploiting these yucca products. As this is a tree of extremely slow growth, we may expect its practical extinction within large areas in the near future.”
“Practical” extinction?
I read that to mean that it would be practically extinct in large areas because of its exploitation and slow growth.
It’s nice to know humans have advanced so much in the last 100 years. Yep, the more things change…......
Bill:www.wildramblings.com
It would be interesting to locate the Joshua Tree in that photo—since the locality is “Victorville,” most likely that gigantic survivor was displaced by shopping centers or highways, just as Sumner feared
Howdy Shaun!
Given the apparent age of the tree in 1914, I’d guess it’s likely deceased even if it was carefully preserved. That tree’s a good 120 years old in that photo if it’s a day.
I like this article, ironic.