|
|
 |
|
WOS Meetings are free and open to all. They are held the first Monday of each month at the Center for Urban Horticulture on the University of Washington campus, 3501 NE 41st St. in Seattle (directions below). Doors open at 7:00 PM and the program begins at 7:30 PM. For more information about meetings, contact Mike McKinstry.
March 1 Dr. Charles F. Wurster Winning the DDT Battle and Founding the Environmental Defense Fund
Dr. Charles Wurster will give a history of DDT and its use, explain why it's so deadly, and tell us where it is still being used. He will also share information on the development of the Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Wurster is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
April 5 Gene Hunn Ethno-ornithology
Ethno-ornithology is the comparative study of the traditional knowledge of birds among the world's cultures. Such studies begin with analysis of local systems of nomenclature and classification, the foundation of all scientific endeavors. Birds given such explicit recognition in the language of a community may then be the subjects of utilitarian, aesthetic, and/or symbolic appreciation. Hunn has studied ethno-ornithology as part of comprehensive ethno-zoological and ethno-biological projects in collaboration with Mexican (Tzeltal Mayan and Zapotec), Columbia Plateau (Sahaptin), and Alaskan (Huna Tlingit) Indian communities. Studies such as these demonstrate the empirical sophistication of traditional environmental knowledge of birds and the profound life meanings people may derive from their observations of birds.
Eugene (Gene) Hunn discovered as an anthropology graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, back in 1969 that he could "kill two birds with one stone" (pardon the expression) by combining his birding avocation with his academic focus on cognitive, linguistic, and environmental anthropology in the study of ethno-science. His dissertation involved a year's field research in a Tzeltal Mayan community in the highlands of Chiapas, back when Blake's Birds of Mexico was the only field guide. An expanded version was subsequently published as Tzeltal Folk Zoology: The Classification of Discontinuities in Nature (Academic Press, 1977). His next projects incorporated ethno-botany within a broader investigation of ethno-biology, first with Sahaptin Indian communities (Yakama, Warm Springs, and Umatilla), summarized in Nch'i-Wana "The Big River:" Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land (University of Washington Press, 1990), more recently with a Zapotec Indian community in Oaxaca, Mexico, detailed in A Zapotec Natural History: Trees, Herbs, and Flowers, Birds, Beasts, and Bugs in the Life of San Juan Gbee (University of Arizona Pres, 2008).
May 3 Brendan McGarry Birds of Oregon's Shrub/Steppe
Brendan is a graduate of the Evergreen State College, a local birder, and an environmental writer and photographer. As a three-year teaching assistant for an ongoing field ornithology class on Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, he has developed a deep appreciation for the high desert. He will present a slide-show of his photographs and discuss his experiences teaching bird-banding, birding, and exploring nature one month a year in Oregon's shrub/steppe.
Directions: From I-5, take SR 520 East. Take the Montlake Blvd. NE exit and turn north towards the University of Washington campus. Stay in right lane and go north on Montlake Blvd. over the bridge and past the stadium. The road will curve to the right around the Montlake Fill and merge with NE 45th St. You will quickly approach a five-way intersection. At the intersection, turn right onto Mary Gates Memorial Drive. The Center for Urban Horticulture is two long blocks down on the right. There is plenty of free parking at the facility. We use the main meeting room, the backside of which faces the road. Bus numbers 25, 65, and 75 all stop at NE 45th and Mary Gates Memorial Drive.
For a map, click
here.
|
