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RICHMOND, Ind. – As respected
researchers in their fields and senior faculty members at Earlham
College, Bill Buskirk and John Iverson already have done much
to secure their reputations within the scientific and academic
communities. Just recently, though, the biology department
colleagues have acknowledged that the most enduring of their
contributions to science and education may, in the end, have
very little to do with the field studies they’ve conducted
or the courses they’ve taught. |
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Biology Professor Bill Buskirk leads a group
attending his April 15 Earlham Forum through an early
morning birding tour of back campus. A member of
the science faculty for 30 years, Buskirk’s
commitment to nature and the environment extends
well beyond his teaching. He presently is taking
steps toward designating for conservation 40 acres
of land he owns south of the College.
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Instead, they could have everything to do with what Buskirk
and Iverson have done as “private citizens” or,
more precisely, as private land owners: extend a little known
Earlham tradition that during the past half-century has,
among other things, created the largest continuous tract
of native Indiana forest in Wayne County.
“This is something that started long before
George W. Bush,“ says Buskirk, taking note of official
Washington’s recent retreats on a whole list of environmental
protections, the latest being a decision by the U.S. Park Service
in March to ease logging restrictions in old-growth forests
in the Pacific Northwest.
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It started even before James Watt,” Buskirk adds wryly,
remembering the former Secretary of the Interior who during
the presidency of Ronald Reagan sparked the ire of natural
scientists and environmentalists with his, shall we say, “unorthodox” views
on commercial exploitation of public lands. Public pressure
eventually chased Watt from office.
“We see development taking land at a
pretty fast pace, not just here in Richmond but everywhere,” says
Buskirk, preparing yet this year to sign away his claims
on a 40-acre parcel of land he owns southwest of campus. “It’s
disturbing to consider the potential that unless something
is done there might be only a few pieces of land left without
major interference. So we’re doing something. Really,
we don’t see this as being anything radical.”
Or even as anything necessarily Quaker, despite
the fact that Buskirk and Iverson have been members of the
science faculty at Quaker-founded Earlham for a combined
56 years. Buskirk is senior, having joined the teaching ranks
on campus in 1974, though his association with the College
actually dates back to his undergraduate days in the 1960s.
And it was then, says Buskirk ’66, that he first gained
exposure to the Earlham ethos of “practice what you
teach” established by legendary professors like “Lucky” Ward,
Ernest Wildman, Carrolle and Millard Markle, and Jim Cope.
How to Build a Forest
Many people at Earlham and in the surrounding
community know Jim Cope (1920-2002), professor of biology
at the College for 40 years and namesake of the independently
managed Cope Environmental Center. Created in 1992 out of
a benefaction by Jim and Helen Cope of 29 acres of land near
neighboring Centerville, Ind., the reserve today includes
another 72 acres donated in 1997 by Gertrude Luckhardt Ward — affectionately
known as “Lucky” during her 44 years (1949-93)
as a member of Earlham’s biology department. It serves
as a wildlife sanctuary and environmental study site. It
also anchors the northwest end of the continuous, high-quality
ravine forest currently being assembled by Buskirk, Iverson
and others, with the assistance of several Indiana-based
land conservation trusts and the Indiana Department of Natural
Resources.
Continued
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