George H. Harrison

GEORGE H. HARRISON knew he was on to something. While serving as managing editor of National Wildlife in 1972, he heard about two U.S. Forest Service researchers in Massachusetts who were studying ways to convert suburban yards into mini-habitats for birds and other wild creatures. “Their study showed that the same basic principles wildlife managers had been using for decades—providing food, water, cover and places to raise young—worked beautifully on a smaller scale in backyards,” says Harrison.

He convinced the two researchers, Richard DeGraaf and Jack Ward Thomas, to write an article describing the steps homeowners could take to create such habitats. That article, “Invite Wildlife to Your Backyard” in the April/May 1973 issue of National Wildlife, helped provide the basis for NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat^® program, which celebrates its 38th anniversary this year.

Kelly: John Strohm, then editor of National Wildlife, called the article “one of the most significant articles we’ve ever published.” Why do you think the article was important?

George: The whole concept that suburbanites and urbanites could have a backyard filled with birds and other wildlife awakened people’s need to be closer to nature. It was a timely article because in the 1970s the American public had realized that our planet was in trouble (the first Earth Day, etc.) and that nature was no longer a part of their world. “Invite Wildlife to Your Backyard” opened a whole new opportunity for people, especially families, to interact with wildlife at close range, just outside their windows. For most people, it was—and still is—the one and only way to see nature and relate to wildlife.

Kelly: How did the article change the way you garden?

George: Though I had been feeding birds in my backyard since I was a child (we were a nature family), the concepts of increasing the kinds and volume of birds and animals in my environment by providing food, cover and water caused me to design my own model backyard wildlife habitat. I am Certified Wildlife Habitat^® #604. I have since designed backyard habitats in private and institutional locations.

Redpoll at feeder

George: The easiest way to get started learning and appreciating wildlife is to establish your own backyard wildlife habitat. You can start small with a couple of bird feeders, a bird bath and some potted evergreens. If you group those three items outside a favorite window in your house, birds and other wildlife will come, I promise you.

Kelly: Why do you think the Certified Wildlife Habitat^® program remains relevant today?

George: With each passing year, young people are removed farther and farther from the natural world. In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv documents how children are living lives that are more distant from nature than ever before in our history. Involving kids in the process of creating habitat is a way to reverse this trend.

George H. Harrison is an award-winning nature writer and photographer whose accomplishments include authoring 13 books, hosting six PBS television specials and helping to start Birds & Blooms magazine. While working at National Wildlife Federation, he served as both managing editor and field editor of National Wildlife.

Ruby-throated hummingbird

After Pat Neuhaus read in the December/January issue of National Wildlife that out-of-range-and-season sightings of hummingbirds are becoming increasingly common, he put out his sugar-water feeders. The next day, a hummingbird arrived in his South Carolina yard.

“I hope to go by his house this weekend to try to band this hummer,” says Doreen Cubie, a licensed bander and author of the feature that inspired Neuhaus to take action. Bob Sargent of the Hummer/Bird Study Group put the two in touch after the homeowner reported his sighting. Both Cubie and Sargent are part of a coalition studying the apparent shifts in the cold-weather ranges of several hummingbird species.

“Bob Sargent emailed me to say he has received nearly 700 replies so far from people who read the hummingbird article and have hummingbirds in their yards now,” reports Cubie. “Pretty amazing, really. Because of these contacts from National Wildlife readers, wintering hummingbirds have been banded in Pennsylvania, Michigan and in several places in the Southeast.”

Report winter hummingbirds: If you have a sugar-water feeder out and spot a hummingbird, the Hummer/Bird Study Group would like hear from you. Contact the group at rubythroat@aol.com.

Find out more: Read “The Hummingbirds of Winter” by Doreen Cubie, then check out her tips for attracting these avian pollinators to your garden.

I know how much calmer I feel when I’m surrounded by the natural world, but now there is really good science to explain why.

New research published in the journal NeuroImage used brain scanning to monitor neural activity in people who were shown two types of images: Tranquil beach scenes and non-tranquil highway scenes. The sound track behind both types of images was the same: A constant roar.

The results were astounding: Tranquil scenes caused distinct brain areas to become connected to one another, indicating that these regions were working in sync. In contrast, the non-tranquil highway scenes disrupted connections within the brain. In short: Images of nature caused a positive physical reaction in the brain!

The National Wildlife Federation’s Be Out There campaign is all about getting kids and families outside. And now, you can help us inspire people to go outside. So I guess you can say this campaign is all about getting kids’ brains in sync so they are healthier and happier!

Many of you wrote letters and placed phone calls to your members of Congress in support of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to protect wildlife from global warming, create clean-energy jobs and improve the nation’s energy security. As a result, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill on the eve of the 4th of July weekend. It was a close fight, and every letter and call counted.

While letters were pouring in from real voters like you who want a new energy future, a surprising number of calls and faxes were being sent to undecided lawmakers from phone numbers outside of their districts urging a vote against the bill. Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello received a letter that supposedly was sent from a local chapter of the NAACP, asking him to oppose the measure. On further investigation, Perriello discovered that this letter along with five others purportedly sent from different organizations were all forgeries. It was a fraud that corrupted the very heart of America’s democracy—the connection between members of Congress and their constituents.

In reality, the NAACP recently joined in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation to support passage of the legislation. During their Centennial Convention in July, NAACP delegates recognized the economic opportunities that will flow from global warming solutions, stating in a resolution that “solving the climate crisis can create 5 million ‘green’ jobs that will be in places where they are needed most.”

The fake NAACP letter and other phony messages sent to lawmakers were products of outright deception created by companies such as Bonner & Associates, a lobbying group known to create “strategic grassroots”—an artificial version of grassroots lobbying known in Washington, D.C., as “Astroturf.”

In recent years, large corporate interests have successfully deceived Congress and the public by paying for such Astroturf campaigns. Here is how it’s done: Corporations hire firms like Bonner & Associates, which in turn make up fake organizational names or borrow real organizations’ letterheads, hire professional callers who improperly identify themselves with made-up groups and urge unsuspecting residents to call their members of Congress to oppose important reform legislation that they misrepresent as bad. Bonner & Associates refused to reveal its corporate clients that funded their deception, but the firm has represented a number of big energy companies in the past. Congress is now investigating their activities.

This is merely the latest fraud by the major energy companies to mislead the public. On a recent visit to Prince William Sound in Alaska, I saw scientifically-collected samples that demonstrate much of the oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill remains where it went when it was washed off the surface of the rocks. It continues to damage fish and wildlife habitat and contaminate our food chain. The oiled sound is no longer the pristine place it once was and most of the canneries in the town of Cordova are gone.

When the pipeline and port in Prince William Sound were built, the oil industry promised President Nixon they would have a response team, oil booms and other equipment ready to address any spill that might occur. They didn’t.

In the days after the accident, as the oil spread more than 800 miles through the sound and along the Alaska Coast, Exxon promised to clean it up and make the 30,000 people living in the region’s fishing villages “whole.” They did neither. Instead, Exxon cheated innocent people of their livelihoods. For the next 20 years, the company fought bankrupt fishermen, cannery owners and other innocent victims all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, Exxon paid only pennies on the dollars lost. Many of the original victims died waiting; others lost everything dear to them.

There is an often-repeated quote, first attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, that says, “You may fool all of the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Well, the executives of big oil along with the dirty coal industry believe they can fool all Americans all the time.

Oil companies will do everything they can to stop the clean energy and climate legislation passed in the House from advancing in the Senate. Once again, we expect a close vote. Call your two U.S. Senators, tell them that you are a real constituent and urge them to pass the bill to protect our world, create millions of new jobs and restore a strong economy built on a domestic energy future. Let’s work together to prove President Lincoln right.

Long recorded in numerous science journals that are accessible only to a few, the fast-emerging impacts of climate change in the United States are now clear. Physical evidence is now overwhelming and made more accessible for all to see thanks to a new report entitled Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. The report describes an enemy that will wreak havoc on our coastal communities, damage thousands of miles of interstate highways and key commercial ports and energy sources; an enemy that will harm our food production and limit our water supplies. It is an enemy that will cause increased deaths.

As with any enemy that threatens our national security, we must mobilize our best forces to combat this threat. The enemy is global warming, and it has infiltrated every region of our country. How dramatic the impacts will be depends on how swiftly and decisively we act.

The report, authored by a team of 31 U.S. climate experts from 13 federal agencies, provides the best available synthesis of climate impacts in the United States. It is available at www.globalchange.gov/usimpacts.

The report makes clear that something momentous has already been taking place in the polar regions, in circumpolar forests and on glaciated mountaintops throughout the planet. Yet most Americans have little inkling of the enormous risks we are taking by ignoring dangerous climate changes.

When a pot on the stove is boiling over, who would propose turning the heat up further? Yet the earth is clearly “boiling over” with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 387 parts per million—36 percent higher than preindustrial levels. The accepted thinking among policy makers, based more on political expediency than on scientific considerations, is that we can continue to allow atmospheric CO2 concentrations to creep up to 450 ppm or even to 550 ppm before we slowly begin to reduce atmospheric concentrations 30 to 40 years from now.

Wishful thinking is dangerous. Yet because of difficult and entrenched fossil fuel politics, this is exactly where policymakers are heading with pending plans that allow the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to continue to climb.

Until more Americans demand bolder actions, we will be stuck with slow reductions while the planet is clearly picking up its pace of change.

This is currently true of even the best legislative policies advanced in Washington, D.C., as well as the discussions underway for the upcoming Copenhagen international treaty negotiations to update and replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The choice we now face is to accept legislation that by every measurement will get us started but will not in itself end global warming fast enough, or to oppose its passage as some environmentalists have suggested and continue to do nothing to address this urgent threat. At the time of this writing, the National Wildlife Federation has chosen to support the American Clean Energy and Security Act as a first-step bill over continued delay. We need legislation that will help America build a clean energy economy with stronger clean energy goals that will create millions of jobs, and we need to protect EPA’s authority to cut pollution from dirty old coal plants faster. But at the end of the day, we need to pass energy and climate legislation so we can work towards a new international agreement to cut carbon pollution.

In ancient times, when cities were the protectorate, watchmen were posted in strategic towers along the outer walls, where they could see great distances and give early warning of an invading army. In this modern world, scientists in the fields of climate, health, and ecology are our watchmen. They have an important purpose: looking out as far as they can see and reporting any danger that may be on our horizon. Our watchmen have been alert and they have spoken clearly about global warming—repeatedly, for decades.

Our duty is to listen to scientists and to take action to avoid the greatest planetary challenge that has ever confronted humankind. A failure to heed warnings today will lead to major tragedies tomorrow. History is bound to repeat itself if we do not change course. You can be the change we need. Go to http://www.nwf.org/globalwarming and sign up to help NWF persuade our lawmakers to act. Together, we must find the courage and determination to confront the malignancy of climate change.

This text is excerpted from Larry Schweiger’s new book Last Chance: Saving Life on Earth, to be released in September by Fulcrum Publishing. All proceeds will go to NWF conservation work.

We can’t say enough about the unbelievably inspiring and beautiful photos–and can’t wait to judge the 2009 contest, which comes to a close July 20th (11 DAYS!).

We recently read through some of the great stories that were submitted with the photos, and noticed some fun trends.

10 Lessons Learned About Wildlife and Nature Photography from the National Wildlife Photo Contest:

1. Family members both help and hinder in the creative process.
2. Photographers love the thrill of the perfect moment and rare sights.
3. Photography can be a long-term commitment.
4. Photographers push themselves physically.
5. Photography teaches about nature.
6. Animals sometimes respond to photographers.
7. Photographers make us want to travel to amazing places.
8. Photography is not always glamorous.
9. Photography can be therapeutic.
10. Photography can be poetic and moving.

Read some of the stories we dug up, as well as the photos that inspired them…

Think you have a photo and story to match? Enter the 2009 Photo Contest by July 20, 2009!

Cash prizes total $25,000. You can submit up to 20 images in seven categories in professional, amateur and youth divisions. Winning images will be published online in NWF’s PhotoZone and a selection of the winners will also be published in the December 2009 issue of National Wildlife® magazine.

Raptors are birds of prey that hunt while in flight and use their feet to capture prey. The most famous raptor is the bald eagle, and for the continental United States, winter is the best season for viewing this majestic creature.  During the summer, bald eagles live and breed in Alaska and Canada. As the temperatures drop, bald eagles migrate south to hunt over large lakes and river for their primary prey, fish. They can be seen in every state except Hawaii, and are most commonly spotted over lakes in the Mississippi Valley, Pacific Northwest, Hudson River Valley and the Mid-Atlantic.

If you spot bald eagles or any other winter wildlife, visit the National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Watch website to report your sightings. Wildlife Watch is a free educational program where participants can upload photos of wildlife, share stories and map the locations of their wildlife watching. Visit to learn more about citizen wildlife monitoring with NWF.

To learn more about watching for bald eagles, read Where the Eagles Are from National Wildlife magazine.

Now, more than 40 years later, these recipes do more than give us great eats. They show us the simple, enriching qualities of camping are timeless. Served up here with more than a bit of nostalgia, whether you’re cooking on top of a fire, a griddle or a gas grill, these foods are sure to please. (But don’t forget the fruits and veggies.) Enjoy!

You can also check out more recipes and camping tips on NWF’s Great American Backyard Campout website.

Eight Classic Recipes Every Camp Cook Should Know
By Bradford Angier

“Most of us go camping to have a good time,” Colonel Townsend Whelen, for years the dean of the outdoor writers, was telling me just a few months ago. “If the food is poor, unwholesome, or not what we crave, we have a continual grouch. If it is excellent and there is plenty of it, everything is rosy. Good food even makes up for rain and hard beds. Good fellowship is at its best around good meals.

“The best thing about all this,” Colonel Whelen went on to say, “is that knowing how to cook eight basic foods well will make anyone a better than passable camp cook.” The eight? Fish, steak, eggs, bacon, potatoes, frypan bread, flapjacks, and coffee.

Like the late colonel, I’ve also made these the mainstays of my outdoor cookery in the silent corners of this continent. It would be difficult to name eight other staples whose mastery could so enhance the friendly
flicker of open flames and the added relish of boon companionship under open skies.

About the only cooking odors that even approach the fresh aroma of fish frying outdoors are the sizzling smell of good grilled bacon, coffee bubbling in the heat of a campfire, and frypan bread browning over the evening’s apple-red coals. This is a fine thing, for all fish are eminently suitable for frying.

1. FISH

To keep the catch moist and tender, and to bring out its delicate flavor, cook only until the flesh is no longer translucent. Once the fish is easily flaked, it is done. The taste will be further enhanced if the fish is salted, inside and out, an hour in advance of frying. Or sprinkle the inside with pepper and lemon juice just before it goes on the heat. Best final topping? Good fresh butter.

Lightly fried fish is hard to beat when it comes to fillets, steaks and small catches. Open and clean the latter soon after landing. Unless you object, leave on the head and certainly the tail where, in that order, lie the sweetest meats. Keep dry, cool, and well ventilated.

Get the frypan or griddle just hot enough that its enrichment of butter or margarine barely begins to tan. Roll the fish in crumbs, flour, or corn meal if you want, although many of us prefer the rich crispy skin unadorned. Brown on both sides, only until flaky. Then add any desired salt, butter, and perhaps a few drops of lemon juice. When one ridge after another is lifting in front of the water-reflected sun as you eat, and a breeze is starting to trumpet a cool blue note, this is camp food you’re never going to forget.

2. STEAK

Steak, for my money, is the best and most traditional outdoor food America has to provide. If you can, cook a one-pound boneless sirloin, two inches thick, for each member of the party. Porter-house and T-bones are tops this way, too, especially if also corn-fed and aged about a month. But almost any steak when most advantageously prepared and cooked tastes delicious out of doors.

Wipe the steaks well with a clean damp cloth. Then rub with a mixture composed of four parts of salt and one-half part of black pepper.

A good trick at the start is to get a glowing bed of coals, then to scatter on a few hardwood chips or shavings. These will flare up enough both to help seal in the juices and to assure that flavorsome char relished by so many.

In any event, if you’re using a grill, get this hot and rub it with suet. If you are using a frypan, let this also get hot, but do not add any grease and tip out any sputtering from the meat. Sear the steaks quickly on both sides. Then cook to individual tastes.

Lean meat cooks more quickly than fat meat. Aging also progressively shortens the cooking time. Then there are such factors as size, shape, and the amount of bone. Outdoor fires add another variable. A practical way to test is to prick the steak with a pointed knife. If red juice wells out, the meat is rare; pink, medium rare; colorless, overdone unless that’s the way you want it.

3. EGGS

Too much heat for too long a period is also the most common enemy of eggs. To illustrate, here’s a foolproof recipe for fried eggs that are a far cry from the leathery objects that assail digestions from coast to coast. Get one tablespoon of fat just hot enough to sizzle a test drop of water. Break in the eggs. Take the frypan immediately off the fire. Baste the eggs with the hot fat for three or four minutes, and that’s that. Salt, pep-per, and serve on a warm plate. In any event, keep the heat low so that the whites won’t get tough, and then just baste the yolks until they are well filmed. It’s easier to get them up mornings for breakfasts like this.

Scrambled eggs also go particularly well when you are cooking in the ruddy glowing warmth of wild wood back of beyond. There is a simple trick in connection with these that will make all the difference. The usual adding of milk has a tendency to toughen scrambled eggs. Instead, try putting in a tablespoon of cold water for each egg. Mix the eggs and water with salt and pepper to taste. Then heat a tablespoon of fat in a fry-pan just warm enough to sizzle a drop of water. After tipping in the egg mixture, reduce even this heat. Stir the eggs constantly with a fork once they have begun to harden. Remove them while they are still creamy and soft.

In connection with eggs, here is a nourishing and easily digestible dish, with a mild and provocatively elusive flavor, that is unusually good when someone hauls into camp late, especially as its preparation is both simple and swift. Proportions, which are flexible, may be varied in ratio to appetites. For two late arrivals, for example, brown a couple of diced onions with a little grease in a fry-pan. When these have cooked to a dark blandness, add a small can of tomatoes. Let them begin to bubble. Then break in six eggs. Season with salt and pepper.

Keep scrambling over low heat until fairly dry.

4. BACON

Too ardent heat is also the great ruiner of bacon. How often have you seen a frypan become a leaping mass of flames? The commonsense solution? Start bacon in a cold pan. Fry the bacon slowly over a few coals poked to one side of the campfire. Turn the slices occasionally. If you like them crisp, keep tipping the fat into a handy container where it can be kept for future camp use. You can almost hear the laughter of old fur brigade voyageurs when you sit down to grub like this.

5. POTATOES

Camp potatoes? A good way to cook this Native American vegetable is to bake the large ones in their skins in hot ashes, not glowing coals, until they become pretty well blackened on the outside. They’re done when a thin, sharp stick will shove easily through their middles. Rake out, break in half, and serve at once with salt and butter.

A more complicated way to go about this on occasion is to cut well scrubbed potatoes lengthwise into three slabs. Lay thin slices of onion, salted and peppered, between these sections. Then reassemble each potato, wrap in a sheet of heavy foil or several thicknesses of lightweight foil, and bake in a nest of ashes among hot coals for about a half hour or until done, turning once.

6. BREAD

Fresh frypan bread is a simple thing to cook on the trail. The handiest method is to mix the dry ingredients before leaving the base of supplies. The following basic mix, given here in one-man proportions which may be expanded to any reasonable amount, will stay fresh six weeks or more in camp if kept sealed, dry, and reasonably cool:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon double action baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons of oleomargarine

If this mix is being readied at home, sift the flour before measuring it. Then sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in the margarine with two knives, with an electric mixer at low speed, or with a pastry blender, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. For increased food value, add two tablespoons of powdered skim milk for every cup of flour.

Place in plastic bags. Seal with a hot iron or with one of the plastic tapes. A large quantity can be made at once, of course, and divided into smaller portions. Before using, it is a good idea to stir the mixture lightly.

If compounding this mix in camp, do it with the ingredients at hand and in the simplest way possible. Any solid shortening may be utilized if the mix is to be used within a short time. Such mix may be carried, if you want, in a glass jar or just folded in wax paper.

When the fire is going and everything else is ready, quickly add enough cold water (about 1/3 cup) to the mix to make a firm dough. Shape this rapidly into a cake about an inch thick. Lay this in a warm frypan. Hold it over moderate heat until a crust forms on the bottom, rotating the pan a bit so that the loaf will move enough not to become stuck. Once the dough has hardened enough to hold together, turn the loaf. Do this several times until the bread has baked to an appetizing brown on both sides. The frypan bread should be done in anything from fifteen minutes to a half-hour, depending on the heat which should continue to be moderate. When a twig shoved into the loaf returns without any dough adhering to it, the moment for eating hot has arrived.

7. FLAPJACKS

A lot of campers don’t reckon they’ve begun the day right until they have stoked up with a stack of moist, hot, tender flapjacks. These are so easy to prepare that there is no reason for even the lowliest greenhorn to be dependent on store mixes. They can be so wholesome and tasty, in addition, that many a vacationist will be looking ardently for more when hemmed in again by asphalt and concrete.

All you need to begin with is the same basic mix that made such delicious fry-pan bread. Again speaking in terms of the same one-man proportions, add 1/2 cup of milk, with which a whole or dried egg has been mixed, to the homemade dry mix. This milk can be diluted evaporated milk, reconstituted dry milk, etc. Stir only enough to moisten the flour.

If the flapjack batter seems a trifle too thick to pour easily, thin it with just enough milk. On the other hand, a little extra flour will provide stiffening. But if the batter is on the thin side, the flapjacks will be tenderer.

Let the frypan become hot and then wipe it sparingly with bacon rind. Do not let the metal reach smoking temperatures. Turn each hot cake only once, when it begins showing tiny bubbles. The second side will take only about half as long to cook. Serve steaming hot with your favorite topping.

8. COFFEE

What remains most vividly in the memories of many campers are those unforgettable first campfires at dawn. Because of the air currents set into motion by the blending of night and day, it’s cooler now than it was during total darkness. The cook maybe deposits an old pine stump, saved for the purpose, in the center of the fading overnight embers.

This gives him a blaze like the light of a pressure lantern, and it also helps him to get some warmth into his extended fingers. Pretty soon he’s thawed out enough to shove the coffee pot grumpily into the heat. He then begins banging pans around, a little more expressively than necessary. Further sleep soon becomes impossible. The coffee smells too good, anyway, particularly when joined by the aromas of flapjacks and bacon.

That first cup of coffee can make all the difference. The way I like to make coffee in the woods is to drop a rather coarse blend into cold fresh water. Two level tablespoons for every cup of water is just right for me, although this proportion can be varied for the weaker and stronger brews preferred by some others.

Suspend or set this over the fire. Keep a close eye on it. Once it has boiled up, lift it to a warm place where no one will be apt to stumble over it and let it take on body for five minutes. Then settle the grounds if you want with several tablespoons of cold water and let everyone know it’s time to, “Come and get it!”

As I agreed with Colonel Townsend Whelen years ago, none of us is going vacationing to spend our time cooking and eating. On the other hand, the right kind of meals will never taste better than when appetites are sharpened to a wonderful edge by healthful outdoor living. Warm your coffee, anyone?