i having recently joined the

mississippi festival board of directors, i had the pleasure of working with scott on the board. he's something of a lifer. he's been on the board since the very of the book festival in 2015. scott's also a member of the mississippi arts commission, the mississippi institute of arts and letters he's an ardent champion of arts. he's the co-owner of books and cat island coffee, house and pass christian and gulfport gulfport. thank you very much and welcome to our session this morning on nature and the environment for

of my life, my entry to america in history was through the biographies of our founding fathers, washington, jefferson, franklin, and then through to lincoln, frederick douglass, theodore martin luther king, chisholm, henrietta lacks, james baldwin, eisenhower, among many others. but then two years ago, i was fortunate enough to read jack davis as the bald eagle. and then a whole new world opened to me and missed the little earth upon which our country wased states of america. our natural resources, land, water flora and fauna, and how we struggled to tame and profit from it. the stories and the lives that. jack davis patrick dean, ryan fertel and dean king bring us are indispensable to an understanding of our society our culture and our future. the story of our natural

resource is recounted by these four authors. bring a heartbeat in a context to our american history in-depth, dramatic and deeply immersed world these books will discuss over the next hour. conservation and the heroes who have paved the way. please our panel discussion. i'll introduce our four authors first and i will hold up the books jack davis is the pulitzer prize winning author of the gulf, the making of an american sea and providence marjory stoneman douglas and the american environmental century professor of environmental history at the university of florida. he in florida and new hampshire and he is here today to discuss his book, his fine book, the bald eagle. patrick dean writes on the outdoors and, the environment. he has worked as a teacher a political media director and is

presently the executive director of a rail trail nonprofit as an avid trail runner, paddler and mountain biker. he lives with his wife and dogs. the cumberland plateau in tennessee is the author of when to head to heaven about the summit of denali. and he's also here to discuss his latest book, nature messenger. mark ksb and his adventures in the new world. ryan patel is a writer teacher who lives in new orleans. he's author of three previous books, drive by truckers, southern rock opera, the one true barbecue fire, smoke the pitmasters who cook the whole hog and imagining the creole city. the rise of literary in 19th century new orleans. ryan is here today to talk about his book on the brown pelican and fourth author is dean king. he's an winning author of ten nonfiction books, including on

the zahara unbound and patrick o'brien. brian a life revealed and the feud he's writing has appeared granta, garden and gun, national geographic adventure outside new york magazine in the new york times. he is the chief storyteller in two history channel document and a producer of a series hatfields and mccoys. white lightning is internationally known speaker. it's appeared on npr's talk of the nation. abc's world news tonight, pbs's american experience. bbc radio and. also at ten x dean is here today to speak about his book, guardians of the valley. john muir and the friendship

that saved yosemite. please welcome our four authors. i'd like to start start we'll have a discussion among the authors. and as we approach the end of this hour, we will take questions. and for those questions, there is a microphone and a podium and, the center of the room. so please, as we get closer or around the 40 minute mark, step up there and, wait patiently and we will take your question. first, though, i'd like to start and ask each of our guests to just give a three or four minute overview of their book, the premise of the book, and just talk in general a little bit about it. and ryan, like to start with you. tell us a bit about ryan pelican, how you found it, how you got into it. sure i think what will become over our short time together, it's not already compelling stt

nature and the environment require compelling characters. and by characters i mean people, we're all telling stories about people and how they have operated, how they have lived within what think of as nature and, the environment. and that's not to say the brown pelican, the subject. my new book is not a compelling character in and of itself. if you live along the gulf coast, if you live along the the more southerly ends of the atlantic or pacific, you likely love the brown pelican like i do. you love watching it dive bomb from 60 plus feet from on high catch fish. it's graceful. it's also so awkward that. goo la pouch, they call it. this kind of not only dangles. but, you know, it was gulls as it walks. it's an awesome bird.

but the story i tell is a story of of people's relationships with this bird. it's a human history of the brown pelican. the the the the character. that leaves off the book is. one who's probably known to a lot of us, i imagine, in this audience today, walter anderson, the famous who was originally born in new orleans, where i live now, of course, lived the majority of his life along coast of mississippi. and if we know him, we know him as as as the painter, the artist who whose works are highly valued on the art market. and i like to see him and i see him in this book is also a documentary. and he lived many years, many decades on several barrier islands. he would camp out on along the coast of first louisiana and mississippi, painting wildlife,

sketching wildlife. but also documenting in a series of journals what was seeing and his his his favorite thing, i would say his favorite was the brown pelican. loved to describe brown pelicans in all their glory. he talks about living like the brown pelicans, birds and sleeping among the brown pelicans and building nests like the brown pelicans andhe loved . he was also towards the end of his life, he witnessed the the end, the extinction of the brown pelican in the gulf of mexico, the brown pelican was extinct along the coasts of and the greater gulf coast, the upper gulf coast by 1960. we very soon, knew it was due to pesticides like. and so it's walter anderson that launches this book. i talk about why we have brown

in louisiana and along the gulf coast today. it's largely due to a crazy plan that was developed by it was almost hollywood it was you know, it was a plan so crazy it had to work. it came down to a pair of alligator or scientists who didn't. a thing about birds. and they were tasked with rescuing, bringing back the brown pelican to louisiana. this also involved a series many lines, learning the pinpointing the exact day to take to bird nap eight a baby pelican to the exact day to release the teenage pelican what to that baby turning into a teenage pelican over months wild scheme worked and i was i grew up in the 1980s talking to my parents and other people from older generations. now they see brown pelicans.

but as soon as i started understand, you know, what they could identify that bird was you know, i'm lucky to have brown pelicans in my life. now we have around 10,000 breeding pairs, estimated of brown pelicans in the upper gulf gulf of mexico, a very healthy population. and that's due to two things. one, that that strange plan that that worked. but also the interestingly enough, the bp oil and the bp oil spill left the state of louisiana and many the state and federal governments with a lot of money to restore the barrier islands of louisiana. these barrier islands were being washed away. many had already been washed under the seas, the gulf and through many, many millions of dollars. we have over the past decade plus, we have been restoring these islands which are major

bird habitats and i was able to visit many of these islands are off limits to tourists. i was able to go some pelicans, scientists and take in documenting the of of this bird species. and so that's my that's my book kind of bookended by these stories with with many i think compelling characters within. ryan thank you. patrick tell us about mark it speaks so as ryan said you know characters and interesting can definitely drive a narrative like the ones we're going to talk about today and mark kate's be 18th century artist explorer and naturalist certainly qualifies and it's it's definitely a fascinating time. you know, we're from from ryan at the present you know, with some extinctions and some and some resuscitations some recoveries to mark spear who

landed in charleston in 1722 at a time when almost no one in great britain had any idea what an ivory billed woodpecker looked like or a magnolia tree or an american bullfrog. and it could be largely responsible for the fact that many of them saw those images the first time this masterpiece, natural history of the carolinas, which was published between 1731 and 1746, is a is a natural history and the story of how we how he got to america. what he did while he was here and is going back and creating masterpieces. that's pretty much story of my book. he he he's a landmark prideaux ecologist. i think we'll have the time to talk about today. he was exceptional for reasons had many firsts to his name and i think he's he's definitely worth talking about especially since he has sort of found himself in the shadow of that that audubon guy so looking

forward to talking about him today. dean you have a wonderful give us the premise to tell us about it so guardians is i think, the essential story. john muir and by that i mean when i started looking into writing muir who immigrated to the united from scotland in 1838, well, i was born in 1838, immigrate in 1849. you're the gold rush to wisconsin and. he had a very sprawling, rich, interesting life. a lot of the details have sort of been forgotten. he was actually manufacturing. he made shovel out of wood and. we forget that he had this real practical side. but when i looked at the sprawling life, wanted to figure out what i thought the coroner of there was, why should we remember him? why is the important and that all was born out of a trip i had yosemite national park that view

from inspiration point that is just so magnificent. i realized i wanted to be there. i wanted to talk about it and. it turns out that so so muir, his editor, robert underwood johnson when you get into the muir story, you find out these two guys came together and i would arguably the maybe thein . they were they're able to johnson as the editor of century magazine was able to say to muir muir write me two articles about, yosemite valley and the national park. do you envision i'm going to publish them in century magazine and then i'm going to take them down to washington and put them on the desk of every congressman. and muir was a little skeptical politics at the time, but he he trusted his editor. he did it. and sure enough, johnson went down to d.c., put those stories on, those desks, and the national park was created that was the beginning of their

problem, really, because what they had done was they created a national park around the state park that abraham lincoln had formed with the valley during the civil war. but but it was the beginning of a very rich partnership where they would also help bring about the national forest system. they would create the sierra club, they would influence theodore roosevelt, who came camping with muir. so so you get this this is all against the backdrop of industrialization from the civil war up until the beginning of world war one when when muir died and you get mirror this sort of clarion voice in the sierra nevada trying to protect the mountains and also those giant sequoias that were really literally getting mowed down the states weren't even great buildg wood. but these thousand year old trees were getting down with no

realization that they wouldn't just pop back think that's a vag to remember today when when we have voices telling us we need to pay attention to environmental conditions. i also tried to not just cover the history. i try put you there with muir. he left great descriptions. he wrote some magnificent stories. and so there's a lot of detail. he had hundreds and hundreds of letters. robert underwood. johnson so i'm able really work into that relationship, try to bring that alive as well so that that's really the gist of my book is trying to take you there. make john muir come back alive to understand in his nuanced life, not just the father of the national parks, but a real living, breathing explorer, scientist and inspirational character, jack tell us about the bald eagle. sure first of all, i'd like to say that it's a great to be here

at the festival again and in mississippi as well. i lived in mississippi in the early nineties. my first two books were on and i still have very good friends that live here in jackson and. it's i just feel like coming home i live in gainesville, florida now and but it feels like coming home when i come to mississippi. it's just always such a delight and in really my my literary career began here in mississippi. this place has, as you know, don't have to tell you such a powerful of place. both you know, in the physical environment, but also, you know, the cultural environment. and so there's much that you can as a writer. there's so much that you can take away from from mississippi and its people in its natural surroundings. so but as far as the body go,

the book is a a a history of the american relationship with the bald eagle. both species and the symbol, as you know, a very powerful symbol in america and always has been since it was put on the front of the great seal of the united states, 1782. and and as ryan and my colleagues suggested, that environment and all writers see nature as a, you know, an animating in the course human affairs. as a historian, i would say an agent in the course of human history and in so it in our works nature or the non-human denizens of nature indeed become become character and but in in

so fun to write tell stories about those non-human denizens nature and the relationship with humans. but in with any great story there is conflict and. while all americans love the symbol, the bald eagle is a symbol of their time they hatede species and pushed it the brink of extinction twice. but this is a story that also includes is also a wonderful story of restoration and redemption and you know that 1015 years ago we didn't seem eagles that was a rare sight unless you lived in alaska or northern minnesota. bald eagles were a rare sight. now we see them all the time and we love this bird and we could

not imagine aging harming that bird now and every time we see that bird we are seeing that success story. we deserve a pat on our backs for doing something by nature. and so the bald eagle story also this great conservation success and as a as an environmental i'm part of genre that tends to focus on the doom, the gloom. i wanted to write a more positive uplifting story that might help guide us to some. in the 21st century we face some unprecedented environment challenges. and i should say, in writing this book, i not just simply fell in love. the bald eagle, as many of you know, many people have. but i really came to admire the this bird and his perseverance

recognize that it was indeed the right symbol for for the united states. jack, you, ron, i'd like to ask the first question and. if you could talk a bit about the establishment of pelican island and the the two pelican related murders. i'm referring to the game wardens. could you talk us through the establishment of pelican island what it is what it meant and then the dangerous duty that those game wardens had on that island. yeah. talking about conflict is this is kind of interesting in the history of of of not only the brown pelican the larger conservation stories in america pelican island is a is a very, very small island off the coast the atlantic coast of florida near cape and it had been a long time pelican colony brown colony as long as well some other

coastal bird species and the brown pelican throughout throughout florida was being hunted. around the turn of the century in the early 1900s for its feathers for for the plume trade out were brightly colored feathers like say the roseate spoonbill or various egrets, those beautiful white, stark white plumes that was out in fashion by the turn of the century in was a little more drab. and the kind of the brown gray and silvery feathers of the pelican, abundant and easy to to to accumulate and pelican island and many other spots in florida especially became hunting grounds and prison roosevelt teddy roosevelt was presented

with an idea by some early ottoman institute of higher ups and to create the first national wildlife reserve. and that is what pelican island it has since grown from the small island that it originally was. it was surrounded by citrus groves is now part of the larger pelican island. you can it's a it's a beautiful spot visit. you can really see most of it in the day and if you go you'll see placards telling the story of some of the original game wardens who worked there. it was very dangerous to be a protector of wildlife in early 20th century and. the men who were with living among birds and this is including in the everglades was especially a hotspot for violence. if you were there to protect birds often these men would be

hunted themselves because people just because the plume trade in various ways became illegal, it didn't mean people stopped collecting plumes. and so you you can read stories of the men who protected this site and other sites in florida. it's a it's a it's a beautiful, beautiful, i think, place to take a spot take a take a road trip to patrick one of the unique things that martin we did in his work was unlike audubon, who often killed his subjects, he drew them or painted them. mark hates be actually did it live? and he kept in and around the flora and fauna. so you not only saw the wildlife or the bird or whatever may be, but you also saw what were feeding or eating on you. explain that and talk about groundbreaking. that was.

sure. you know, when you when you you can fall prey to the biographer's cliche falling in love with your subject and wanting to send against all you know in other forces. and then there's always the case to be versus audubon. question and i'm not here to bury audubon, but i will say as scott pointed out, that unlike that you have that great phrase, what's there? i actually quoted it on social media. what how did you how did you describe about all that are perfect because it's it's worth saying for sure it's not i mean it's not nice. it's exactly it helps. my point, though, but as scott he did make a point of drawing from life whenever possible. and when you look at his artwork there's a wonderful color insert the book when you look at his artwork, you'll be amazed that he could do such such detailed, specific renderings of the animals. you saw operating in that way i call autumn and the exterminator

in chief. exterminator in chief. 's been well documented now. but he was a great slaughter of birds. he he only killed all the birds that he painted. but he he killed many, many thousands more birds that he would just toss aside right. so that that was, as scott mentioned, that's one distinctive thing about cage free. the other one is that he was one of the first to place the birds that he described. and that he painted on the plants with which they had a relationship, the seeds that they that sort of thing. so and in his book in the natural history he would have so the book is full color plates on the right side descriptions on the left side from his from his notes and from his travels. so he would often take pains to describe those relationships in in the descriptions on the left as he portrayed on the right. and so he's considered by many to be the precursor, the humboldt's and the darwins and

the and the other ecologists who who would bring that that ecological inter-relationship idea even further in the succeeding centuries that thank you deem of the things as we emphasize, the lives of the people in each of these stories. as i was reading your book, john muir became so i felt you had done such a great job in bringing him to in fact there are several sections in the book that found rather perilous where you were actually describing john muir with two or three inch bullet holes climbing down to get to the bottom of a waterfall or hanging on the side of an icy cliff to get to the top. how did you do that? how did you bring him to life? i wanted to imagine you also

climb down there of your precipices or you put his right there and you made him rich tell us about that. well, unlike john muir, i do have a fear gene. so didn't do some of the things he did. but early on i was really captivated when he goes to yosemite. it's not his first time, but it's his first time really thinking about staying there and being there. and he looks over yosemite falls, you know, down into the bottom of the valley. and it is the way he worked his way right out to the brink. then watch the water. come, come the stream come out. and he thought about how here it's dying at the edge of this cliff but it's being reborn in the air. and he's seeing the sunlight refracted through the through the. the water beads and finding god and in that moment, seeing, you know, the rebirth of it below.

so, you know, that was a moment i really wanted to on because i think you get a lot of john muir right there in that instant and you can feel it in relate to it. and other times, you know, he was kind of considered one of our first hippies. it john muir planet earth the universe that he wrote on his journal so he was definitely sort of had this mysticism and when he was climbing at one point he's going down into hetch valley and he doesn't see a way forward, but he also doesn't see a way back. and then his hands and his feet take over and help him get through. you know, i don't do that. i don't i have that. i love to hike in, be out in nature, but i don't love heights. the way he really seemed to relish them and to to to trust what he could do and and what the powers he had in. so, you know, that's a real part of making him come alive. and then later, you know, he there is something called muir gorge, which is the ascent from

1280 meadows in, yosemite national park down to hetch hetchy valley. and the after the sierra club was established and they did high trips up there, they also hiked down through there. so there's some wonderful accounts and i tried to extract all the information that i can from these various accounts. but focusing on muir's know when i'm with muir but but all those kinds of details help me you know kind of bring scenes alive very very effective. jack could you tell us a bit. as we were trying to discover the impacts of pesticides and ddt and what it was doing the not only the bald eagle population but the eggs and made

realizations about young bald eagles and why we weren't seeing eggs. yeah. let me just real quickly get on the jump on the ottoman trash wagon. he he never a bald eagle. he did not want to shoot. oh, and but anyhow, it so much that he discovered a a another eagle that he said should be the representative of our country. but it was a false identification. and really the joke on him when he identified it as a third eagle species for living in north america, was actually bald eagle and jack man erupted. i have the exact quote from

audubon audubon wrote, referring to the eagle as a lousy thieving, lazy, dishonest, immoral and craven feathered national representative. yeah. so so ddt. what's interesting is ddt was released to the general market. in august 1945 and and congress congress had five years earlier passed the bald eagle protection act and and to worried that that it would go the same way as the passenger pigeon in carolina parakeet both of which died in cincinnati zoo. so don't go live in the cincinnati. and so it's released in the

market in august 1945. and immediately there people saying experts are saying, oh, you got to be careful. this chemical pesticide, it can have a major impact on wildlife, but also on humans. but the industry, the camel industry is so powerful it's it's yeah, it's the publicity folks are so good, you know, it's public relations was so active that ddt soon became available in grocery stores many different forms for for for home use. it wasn't just used in agriculture, but it was i mean, we, we, we blanketed the the lower 48 with ddt. and during the late forties and on into. the 1950s and into the 1960s and there was particular man, charles brawley, who was a

retired banker from canada, who moved down to tampa with his family in the 1930s, and charles berlin, 60 years old. he had them. he needed something to do in retirement. he started climbing longleaf and loblolly pine trees to ban eaglets. nobody was doing it at the time. and he did this for 20 years until. age 79, never fell of a tree, climbed some 1100 trees and banded over 1200 eagle gliders. ultimately showing signs that these were birds and where bald eagles migrated. but he also, of course was eye witness to the decline of the and in brawley this bank retired from winnipeg was the first person to make a connection between the declining bald eagle population. of course you seeing brown pelicans disappearing too. he's doing this now, you know, on the gulf coast and tampa he's seeing brown pelicans and other

birds disappear, too. spring turning silent. and so he's the first person make a connection between ddt and, the diminishing bald eagle population. rachel carson talks about him in in silent spring as matter of fact. now, he didn't quite understand how was happening. he thought ddt was just simply poisoning the bald eagles. it was getting the food chain. bald eagles are fishing raptors. and so we often, you know, talk about how birds were affected, ddt, but fish were to estuarine environments were were just ruined in many places by ddt so ddt got into fish got into the food chain and bald eagles went up the food chain and the bald eagles are eating the fish within their bodies, metabolizing into ddt, getting

into the bloodstream of both male and females, having a greater impact on females because the ddt was the response symbol for them laying eggs with with very fragile shells or addled eggs, eggs that would not hatch or with deformed chicks in in in the eggs and and of course, we all know the story about rachel carson many scientists by the late fifties even as i said we're making this connection between the declining wildlife population and ddt but also linking it to human health. and there still are studies being done that have linked alzheimer's to ddt generation earlier and but but anyway,

thanks to by this time, charles burley, by rachel carson, publisher book. charles birmingham died and apparently of a heart attack like. aldo leopold trying to put out a brushfire and but in but in 1972 william ruckelshaus the first epa epa administrator appointed by richard nixon took the very brave move a lot of pressure on him not to do this and banned the sale of ddt. the united states really opening the way up for restoration of many bird populations such as the pelican and and the bald eagle and falcons and mermaids and others. patrick, in your book of was ab have a plethora of original sources or letters that mark left behind you do a splendid job researching and

putting context in and around that that period of in england and in early charleston. but talk a bit about, i guess, that struggle and how you overcame it in bringing your subject to life in the book and then walking through his life until his death believe at the age of 66. sure. before i do that, i do want to say i wanted to mention jack knows this pretty well, but his first plate in the natural history of carolina was the bald eagle. and speaking of ecological relationships he portrays the bald eagle having just apparently persuaded an osprey to gift the eagle fish that the osprey had caught. and so you have the offspring, the background looking. i'm not sure what the expression is, but anyway, that's that's one of the natural history. yeah, i love that. i love that image and but yes,

as scott said, the sources were a little thin on the ground. we no known image of k to be himself. we have no letters of his before he reaches south carolina at the age of 39. so i basically took it as an opportunity to just just nerd out on on history in great britain of of the intellectual ferment the just the the dazzling work the being done and the interest that so many british men and women had at that time in the natural history and the sciences, you know, it was a scientific revolution. isaac newton was the president of the royal society when when he landed in charleston. and so had this this ferment, you know, the coffeehouses were the places to be where you could for a penny, you get saucer of coffee and read all newspapers you wanted to. and so. oh, and also there were pirates so to be landed in the middle of

the golden age of piracy in the mediterranean and in the caribbean. and very important for talking about because he he was stymied his efforts by blackbeard. that's right well not directly but but so blackbeard had blockaded charleston just a couple of years before kate spear arrived there. and one of the fascinating things i really got to, understand, was, you know, we don't think how many obstacles there were to the safe passage of plants and animals, you know, collection specimens in that sort of thing from the new world back to the old when you had storms had pirates definitely an issue in his letters ksb mentions that certain shipments waylaid by pirates on the way back london so it really happened and then there was the the classic problem of the fact that many specimen was of the animal specimens that he was unfortunately forced to kill he would sometimes put them in rum, which didn't always make acrosso

thirsty sailors. so, so it was quite a it was quite an opportunity to learn about that entire world and so many things that were beginning in the great britain was beginning its rise to two imperial power. at this point, the royal navy was really the force that we would know it as in the following century, 50 years later, after ksb someone write for the first time that the sun never sets the british empire. so you had all of those historical forces that really went into making up the times which you lived and so i'm never unhappy when i get to do about stuff like that. so i use that to sort shape his story that interest. thanks you. in a moment, we begin taking questions so if you have any, please approach the podium and the microphone there. and we'll come we'll come to you in a moment. dean, i wanted to ask you with john muir, would the early environment, cattle movement have been so successful or as

successful as it was if john muir wasn't such a beautiful bull rider himself, then tell us about that and the persuasion of the ten and effective what he meant when he was writing the i think john muir did give voice to nature in a in a new through his relationship with century magazine certainly that was a very influential magazine by way of having an incredible civil war history that doubled their circulation, made it really one of the leading instruments of intellectual exchange. but in in muir was kind of their course that they would take anything that he could produce for them was not good at producing on demand. if they asked him for something, he'd often not get it done. and so that was a source of frustration at times. but when he was motivated, he would sit down to go to the to look at the sequoias or write about the the the sierra nevada,

various places. he was eloquent, beautiful, and seemed find himself and just magnificent, situate and there's flooding from all the edges of the mountain. it's pouring in. and, you know, your average person might be looking up for a tree to climb up, but he's weighed through it and trying to get to the, you know, the craziest points. and then trees, boulders are filling up the streams and then coming crashing down when the pressure builds up. and he describes all this and, you know, magnificent ways and famously, he went up in a tree during a storm. and so he made experiencing nature think very accessible to a lot of people and ultimately you know i think it's one of the misconceptions have about muir is that he wanted you know, the nature be pure and force to be pure was the opposite the sierra club was to bring people to nature. he wanted to bring to nature, to experience it because that's

where he felt you got spiritual redemption and found meaning in life. so i think his writings all that way, which trying to make nature accessible, bring people to nature. and ultimately when there was a big battle for hetch hetchy, san francisco wanted to dam it up, too, to create a reservoir. he was able to groups across the nation to defend it, to try to defend it lost that battle in the end, won the war when the national park system was created two years after his death. so i do think he had a big influence bringing a lot of people to be concerned for our natural world through the beautiful power. yeah. yes, i believe we do have a question if. you'll give us your name and tell us where you're from so. we know how far you traveled to be here. thanks for having me, tim virginia. we came here to watch minor league baseball and during pleased to learn. are you saying we're the minor

leagues? are you saying we're the minor leagues. all of our great promise. so, jack, i've got a question for you. as you have lived with the concept of the bald eagle for for so long, and i was unaware of audible disdain of the bald. but certainly many of us know the benjamin franklin was very opposed to the eagle. this scavenger bird being the national bird. and he, of course wanted the wild turkey and how would argumentation have been different if franklin succeeded and we had the turkey as our guests? so that's a myth. there are two myths you just stated he did not want the turkey for a representative in the states. he did compare the quote unquote

morality, the wild turkey with the bald eagle and he was offended by the bald eagles. behave of stealing fish from from osprey. he believed it was a craven cow or a craven thief and that he did state and he but he never advocated the the wild turkey represent the united states. now audubon did audubon's favorite bird the wild turkey and he wanted it to be his his the country's national representative now and the now the second myth here is you said national bird. we have no national bird. we have national mammal, which is the bison. we have a national which is don't we have a national flower which is a rose, but neither congress nor a presidential proclamation has is designee

dated the national bird. and so tomorrow congress could indeed appoint to the post and a sidewalk pigeong launched the te national center in wabasha, minnesota. anybody here from minnesota, by chance, are coming that far to try to get congress to designate bald eagle once and for all. the they, the official national bird. thank you. good question next, gentlemen here. tell who you are and how far you traveled to be here today. i live in madison, mississippi i kind of seven miles. yeah, not that long of a drive is not gentleman from virginia has beat you so far. yeah. i kind of have a question for all your and just a thought for

everyone in the room what do you guys think about the people in my that are fighting against climate and fighting against the people who wish to ignore it. are you a millennial or gen z z? okay, ryan, you want start. yeah you know so i teach at the university of florida and i've taught for 30 years now and charles reagan wilson in the back can probably attest to this you know it's been interesting to see students across the generations right are i actually i have hope for the gen z and people ask me you know what would and the historian they want to know about the future and i you know, i'm really depending on the gen zs to turn things around that you

know they recognize i think your generation recognizes that i'm a baby boomer, that my generation didn't leave you in such shape and in more ways than one. and and you recognize that it's foolish to destroy the value your own nest. and, you know,generation and b'y helpful and i've seen a change from the millennials to joneses and that sort of attitude. and i'm not knocking the millennials. i think many of them feel the same about the natural environment. yeah. there you go. okay. yeah, yeah. gentleman. and i'll say as, as an as an old millennial, i taken the lead of walter anderson, and i really

loved reading and his life and i begin my book thoughts about what it means to fall love and to fall in love with single creature and and i think we often talk about falling in love with, with a partner, but i think it's really interesting. think about falling in love with a with a with another kind of partner, one that's not human and both in our lives. walter fell in love with the brown pelican. certainly i did too. and if once fall in love with that one and learn everything you can it leads to so many other things, i became, you know, in the writing of this book, which was in the early two over two years, i became a big birder. so now i travel all over latin america birding my new hobby. i just got back from guatemala and it kind of started with this bird that was the symbol, my

home state of louisiana, which i always knew was there, but i never recognized as anything important. then being this flying creature, i didn't know its history. and so that's i encourage you know, i have i've been thinking about this a lot. i have a. i just became a father three weeks ago. exactly and three weeks in a day. and i can't for him to, like, find his first creature, his first thing that he loves or or plant, you know, what is that thing? or algae, whatever it is. and then and then see where that sea snails see where that leads him. i that's that's what it is. and that's, you know, any can do that. yeah. patrick your wisdom and thoughts and maybe the world's oldest genetics actually but that's what i claim that's why i that's why i put myself i guess i'm a a

realistic optimist. i, i think know pretty well how bad things are. but i, i'm, i'm just so let me tell you this. i believe that there are ivory woodpeckers in the swamps. i do believe that i grew up in the mississippi delta. you can't tell me they're not remote places in the south for an ivory billed woodpecker to be hanging out today. so that's optimism. i just i just believe in the resilience of nature, i believe in the ability of humans to in the final analysis figure out what has to be done and make the, you know, the very broad sacrifices and changes our lives that we're going to have to do to to really solve this problem going forward. and so i think for one reason or other, one cause or another will make us do that. and so i'm cautiously and i hope realistically optimistic about it. i don't i don't see sacrifice. i don't think we have to make sacrifices and i think that's one thing i think about the gems these many of the millennials as

they recognize that, too, that quality of life really depends upon a good, clean environment that's. that's where that's where we live. a huge difference, because i walk a field by my neighborhood and i started walking in covid years. so i took a of time walking and i've seen a huge difference. the decline of area. yeah, not even from particularly outside factors just yeah it's really dry it doesn't look the same as it was a few. yeah. yeah. that's really sad. i think you know we pride ourselves as a country of invented inventive i think is a really exciting for the millennials and the gen z you know to to be creative in turn things around and in and accomplish things and and so

don't see that as a sacrifice at i see that as actually see that is opportunity and know again we can rise to the occasion. i think we can. i think we're doing i think we've started doing it and i think the joneses, they really have a bright future in and, you know, a green economy and it's just bright and exciting that's just me. so i have my daughters a gen z so i've got to be optimistic. d your wisdom thoughts? yeah. you know, i think just reaching back into history with john at the end, you they said that he died of a broken that was the legend when he lost the hatch hetchy battle but he maintained this optimism through the end of his life he didn't die of a broken heart you couldn't break his heart. he believed people would ultimately do the right thing. but what i see is many people and the older generations are entrenched in their ways of life and, not flexible, not able to change, not able even to recycle

and do the basic things we need to do. and i think it is a combination of sacrifice and opportunity and and, and, and it's an exciting time, but it's going to be gen z, hopefully that comes in with a whole new mentality and understands that, that we need make big shifts in, in the way we live in probably is, you know for the better i think i think those we need a values certain quality the quality of life over material issues in a lot of way. and hopefully that shift will take place in your generation thank you for that question. yeah yeah. important. in charge ahead we have we have time for one final question so timings but could you give us your name and how where you're from, how far you traveled? i'm joy oaks and i'm from arlington. so i rode with this guy. i assume you knew one another before you got a is this a bogo

question maybe 40 years? i don't know. a question for dean. why do you reference john muir story about climbing up to the top of that pine tree in the storm and, yosemite and just that story was one of the first ones i read when i was getting involved in conservation advocacy and it spoke so to me of the connection that we can all have with the world around us. but here we are in mississippi. can you talk a little bit about his thousand mile walk to the gulf. oh, well, i'm also from virginia, but the the the thousand mile walk to the gulf was that one of the first things i read by muir? i was thinking about doing this and i was and i thought, this is incredible. right after the civil war, walking through, experiencing nature through florida, you know, in. facing alligators and mosquitoes

and, you know, getting malaria and all kinds of stuff. in the end, while he had all these amazing experiences and i touched on some of those and recreate some of thos's a parage book and i thought was going to be, you know, a big theme because it was so moving to me. but in trying to to to cut that that narrative and clean up what we, you know, that that what his vital history was that got left out of this book largely. but is it is a wonderful you know a good read book and it's beautiful description is actually taken out of his journals he never wrote that up in an account. it was done posthumously by his literary executor but but it iss life where he's pulling together a lot of his sort you know sorte throughout the rest of his writing and career. can it can i add to that real quick? i write about this in the in the gulf has thousand mile walk to the gulf and when he finishes

things up cedar key or cedar keys as it was known and i agree with he i think it really marks him as an easterner and we think of him as a westerner but he really, you know, sitting and recovering from apparent malaria on on the bank in you know on the shore in cedar key looking at the gulf, he really started to formulate those the concepts that that he took west with them and that really became the basis of of his environmental sensibility. so i think that's the east coast, i would say with some bias the gulf of mexico is a great contribution to this. greatest. thank you. before end, i want to remind each of you that these four gentlemen will be at the signing tents at 11 a.m., so you can continue your discussion with them, have a book signed, but please do visit them at 11 a.m. at the signing