Raymond Dasmann
November 6, 2002 – I just learned that Raymond Dasmann died yesterday. He was a major influence on my life, as I started reading his books over 30 years ago when I was in college. He was always able to make the point advocating environmentalism from a strictly scientific point of view. That’s right; Ray understood and communicated that environmentalism is not a mere political philosophy, but is rooted in scientific understanding. Scientific popularizers are not always popular among other scientists, so I always greatly appreciated what he wrote. So though I never knew him personally, I will mourn him. His words will live on – – age does not diminish his classic works!
Ray Dasmann was a San Francisco native son who got his PhD at Berkeley and taught at Humboldt State University before moving to Washington, DC, to work for the Conservation Foundation, and then to Switzerland to work for IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, where he played a catalytic role in creating the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program in the early 1970s.
His book The Destruction of California (1965) outlined the damage done to that amazingly biodiverse state starting with the Spanish missionaries and the Gold Rush. His 1972 book No Further Retreat: The Fight to Save Florida was equally helpful in understanding the massive ecological crises of that state. His pathbreaking essay co-written with Peter Berg “Reinhabiting California” sketched the prescription for undoing the damage and coming back to live sustainably in that bioregion again.
Ecologist Bruce Byers gives an excellent assessment of Raymond Dasmann from the perspective of 2023:
“What I discovered about Dasmann that is so inspiring for me is his motivation for action even without hopefulness about the results. He was not at all hopeful about the future of humans on the planet. He is credited with a maxim that he called ‘the first law of the environment’: “No matter how bad you think things are, the total reality is much worse” But, after retiring from UC Santa Cruz in 1989 at the age of 70, he served as president of the board of the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve Association for seven years, working to support a biosphere reserve in his home bioregion that was part of the international program he had worked to establish twenty years earlier. Ray Dasmann clearly didn’t need “hope” as his motivation. That’s why he is a model for me now.”
- Called by the
Wild – Dasmann’s 2002 autobiography, press release from University of California Press
Resources
- Interview with Raymond Dasmann – January 30, 2001
- Ecologist Ray Dasmann’s memoir Called by the Wild traces birth of environmentalism, By Jennifer McNulty
- Environmental Visionary Raymond F. Dasmann Dies at 83 – from Faultline Magazine, November 7 , 2002.
Recommended Books by Raymond Dasmann
A Different Kind of Country (1968)
The Destruction of California (1965)
No Further Retreat: The Fight to Save Florida (1971)
Environmental Conservation (fifth edition 1984),
Wildlife Biology (second edition 1981),
The Conservation Alternative (1975)
California’s Changing Environment (1981)
Called by the Wild (2002)
Favorite Quotes
“There is a trend toward uniformity in environment, people, and ways of life over all the earth. This trend is in the long run inimical to life, including human life. It will do us little good to conquer nature or even pacify mankind if the world we create is bland and uniform, one where life passes quickly because nothing new can happen again anywhere.”
* * *
“Diversity has always characterized the biosphere to which man belonged. In living systems, complexity brings stability and ability to withstand change. The future survival of man may well depend on the continuing complexity of the biosphere.”
* * *
“If we create in California a world with no space left for wild animals, it will prove to be a world with little space for human freedom.”
* * *
“The concepts of ‘private’ land and the ‘rights of land ownership’ as they are now interpreted form a dangerous myth. Far from being long established in Western Tradition, they are of relatively recent origin.
The expression of the rights of land ownership in the feudal estates of Europe was tempered by the concept of the duties of landowners…
The modern anonymous system of land ownership places a maximum emphasis on rights and a minimum on duties. Public interference with such property rights has been severely resented and has usually been effectively prevented. Yet, in a real sense, there can be no moral right of an individual to hold exclusive power over land. At best, he has a lifetime trusteeship over a property upon which others must ultimately depend. This implies a moral duty to pass land down unimpaired or even enhanced in its value. The land of America must support or enrich the lives of all Americans now and in the centuries to come. No person can claim the right to impair the livelihood or well-being of future generations through his misuse of the land. This is the moral situation. The legal situation is of a different order.”
“We are already fighting World War III and I am sorry to say we are winning it. It is the war against the earth.”
“Reinhabitation means learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation. Simply stated it involves becoming fully alive in and with a place. It involves applying for membership in a biotic community and ceasing to be its exploiter.”
– Raymond Dasmann with Peter Berg, in “Reinhabiting California,” 1977