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WORK TITLE: Nature’s Allies
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Raleigh
STATE: NC
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://cnr.ncsu.edu/directory/larry-a-nielsen/ * http://www.newsobserver.com/living/home-garden/article152794654.html * https://islandpress.org/author/larry-nielsen
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Sharon.
EDUCATION:University of Illinois, B.S., 1970; University of Missouri, M.S., 1974; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1978.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. North Carolina State University, provost, professor, 2009—.
MEMBER:National Council for Science (board of directors), American Fisheries Society (former president).
AWARDS:American Fisheries Society fellow.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Toxic Contamination in Large Lakes, Future of Fisheries: Perspectives for Emerging Professionals, Biodiversity of the Southeastern United States: Aquatic Communities, The Business of Sustainable Forestry: Case Studies, Inland Fisheries Management in North America, Developing and Sustaining World Fisheries Resources: The State of Science and Management, and Public Policy Issues in Wildlife Management.
Also contributor to periodicals, including Farm Pond Harvest, Journal of Forestry, Marine Fisheries Review, Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Transactions of the Missouri Academy of Science, Wildlife Society Bulletin, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Society & Natural Resources, Fisheries, and Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy.
SIDELIGHTS
College professor Larry A. Nielsen has devoted the entirety of his academic career to the study of environmentalism and conservation. Prior to his career in academia, Nielsen obtained his doctorate from Cornell University. He is professionally affiliated with North Carolina State University, working under their Natural Resources department. Prior to his time there, he worked with Pennsylvania State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He also has close ties to the National Council for Science and the Environment, participating on its board of directors, as well as the American Fisheries Society, having served as its president.
Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World is an extension of Nielsen’s past studies. In an article featured on the News & Observer website, Nielsen was quoted as saying the book’s inspiration came partially from Profiles in Courage, a book that left its mark on him in his youth. The book’s concept involved profiling different United States politicians, each of whom shaped American politics through their steadfast adherence to the ideas that mattered to them. When it came time to write a book of his own, Nielsen decided future conservationists needed the same kind of resource: a book detailing all of the most important contributors to the field in an easily digestible and motivational format.
As a result, Nature’s Allies offers the biographies and major contributions of eight professionals who made great strides in the field of environmental conservation. The conservationists featured in the work include Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan activist whose work focused not only on social issues, but ways to help society reorient toward a more sustainable lifestyle; Chico Mendes, an Amazon preservationist from Brazil; John Muir, who originally paved the way for modern conservationists; Rachel Carson, an American conservationist and author of Silent Spring, a book that spoke out against chemical pesticide use; and many others. In underlining the achievements of these environmentalists, Nielsen illustrates just how important they are to the overall cause, while also trying to encourage current and later conservationists to continue the cause through their own efforts. A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “Paying tribute to their battles and accomplishments, Nielsen effectively showcases the passion and persistence of a remarkable group of individuals.” On the GreenSpirit website, Marian Van Eyk McCain stated: “I found it an interesting, heart-warming book.” Foreword Reviews writer Anna Call commented: “Students would take well to Nature’s Allies, especially teenagers and college freshmen considering entry into environmental studies.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Reference & Research Book News, October, 2013, review of Provost: Experiences, Reflections and Advice From a Former “Number Two” on Campus.
ONLINE
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com (October 19, 2017), Anna Call, review of Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World.
GreenSpirit, http://greenspirit.org.uk/ (June 30, 2017), Marian Van Eyk McCain, review of Nature’s Allies.
Island Press Website, https://islandpress.org/ (October 19, 2017), author profile.
NC State University Website, https://cnr.ncsu.edu/ (October 19, 2017), author profile.
News & Observer, http://www.newsobserver.com/ (May 26, 2017), Corbie Hill, “‘Follow your heart’: NC State professor says we can all be one of Nature’s Allies.”
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (October 19, 2017), review of Nature’s Allies.
Larry Nielsen
Larry A. Nielsen is Professor of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University. He has worked in land grant universities—including earlier tenures Virginia Tech and Penn State—for forty years, as a faculty member and administrator, eventually becoming provost of North Carolina State University before returning to teaching and writing in 2009. He is a Fellow and Past President of the American Fisheries Society. He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of six books, including Ecosystem Management, published by Island Press, and Provost, a memoir and an analysis of university administration. Among many professional service roles, he served on the board of directors of the National Council for Science and the Environment for more than a decade. With Sharon, his wife of forty-seven years, he lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
‘Follow your heart’: NC State professor says we can all be one of ‘Nature’s Allies’
BY CORBIE HILL
Correspondent
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MAY 26, 2017 10:00 AM
“Profiles in Courage,” the 1957 book by John F. Kennedy and Ted Sorenson, hit Larry Nielsen at just the right time. He’s a Baby Boomer, he explains, and when he read it as a teenager, he was inspired by its bullet biographies of senators who stood up for their principles – even when it went against the party line.
It stuck with him, and decades later he wanted to do the same for conservationists. He even nearly called the resulting book “Profiles in Conservation,” but the name wasn’t an exact enough fit. Nielsen instead settled on what he felt was a more meaningful title: “Nature’s Allies.”
“I thought specifically about students studying natural resources and it would be good for them to learn a little bit more about the giants upon whose shoulders they stood,” he says.
Nielsen is a professor of natural resources at N.C. State University (where he was provost for a time), and in “Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World” (Island Press, $28), he presents bite-sized bios of conservationists from diverse backgrounds. A few of these eight – coincidentally, he laughs, the same number as in Kennedy’s book – are the usual suspects: “Silent Spring” author Rachel Carson, say, or archetypal naturalist John Muir. Nielsen was also sure to include conservationists without the same household name recognition, such as Native American fishing rights activist Billy Frank Jr. or Kenyan Green Belt Movement founder Wangari Maathai.
“The first thing I wanted to do was to make sure that the book covered a diversity of people from a diversity of backgrounds and different places in the world in order to reinforce the idea that anyone and everyone is important in sustaining our earth,” he explains. “It’s not just professionals, it’s not just college-educated people, it’s not just Americans.”
As the book took shape, he realized these conservationists had three traits in common. One was a passion, or something they believed in. The second was persistence, often lasting a lifetime. The third was cooperation. Each person made an important change to the world, but none did it alone.
“Sometimes these ideas are more popular and sometimes they’re less popular,” Nielsen says. Being one of nature’s allies isn’t always fun, and the conservationists in his book faced scrutiny – or worse. Frank was arrested 50 times, while Brazilian environmentalist Chico Mendes was assassinated.
Yet Nielsen is an optimist. The world is a better place today than it was yesterday, he believes, and will be a better place tomorrow than it is today. And if there’s anyone in “Nature’s Allies” with whom he identifies, it would be Frank.
“He never got bitter, he never got angry, he never walked away,” Nielsen says. “It’s my own personality to try to get along and try to work within the system to make things better rather than be a rebel, so I really identify with Billy Frank Jr. as the kind of person that can overcome all sorts of obstacles and do something great.”
HOW TO BE NATURE’S ALLY
Nielsen maintains that anyone can be a conservationist, so we asked him for some tips on how to be one of nature’s allies.
1. Follow your heart. “It doesn’t matter if you like trees or you like animals or you like earthworms. To get involved in some way, to follow your personal interests and work in that direction. As we think about the sustainability of our earth in the future, we’re going to have to work on all fronts. I think that dozens, hundreds, millions of people – what they feel strongly about is really the best base for us to try to make a sustainable world for the future.”
2. It’s about habitat. “You look at the people that I profile in the book, most of them were about trying to put some protection around land so that it remained in good shape for the future. They were essentially concerned and interested in protecting lands so that they remained productive into the future. Those of us who work in wildlife, for example, fully understand that without habitat, that without places for these animals to live and these plants to live, they’re not going to be there.”
3. Find some people like you and join with them in their pursuits. “There are many organizations out there that are committed to sustainability in one way or another, and I like to use sustainability as a general term for being interested in wildlife, being interested in endangered species, whatever the case may be. That’s what it’s about – how do we live today so that future generations may live as they wish?
“Being an effective partner means that sometimes you take the lead, sometimes you join in with the ideas that others have. Supporting organizations that you feel good about is an important way to do things.”
4. Stick with it. “It’s great to do something one time and be involved, but it’s even better to keep at it for a lifetime. I think that one of the strong lessons from these conservationists is you don’t change the world in a day, but if you stick with it, you have chance to change the world in big ways. Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan woman in the book, started planting trees. I don’t think when she started her first group to plant some trees that she had the idea that over her lifetime she was going to lead the effort that resulted in planting 50 million trees, but that’s the way it happened.”
5. Think about the chronic issues. “Acute problems tend to get the attention. We just passed the seventh anniversary of the BP oil spill, and that was such a dramatic event that had everyone so concerned and such, but often the real problems are the chronic problems that drip, drip, drip into life on a daily basis.
“The huge problem in terms of oil pollution is not a big mistake like that that happens every once in awhile, but it’s the chronic pollution that comes from oil leaking into the environment from all sorts of places.”
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Larry Nielsen
Professor of Natural Resources
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources
Jordan Hall 3118A
lanielse@ncsu.edu
919-515-5314
Area(s) of Expertise
Sustainable Natural Resource Management
Education
B.S. University of Illinois (1970)
M.S. University of Missouri (1974)
Ph.D. Cornell University (1978)
Scholarly Interests
Higher education administration and management; Sustainable natural resource management; History and philosophy of natural resource management; Ecosystem management
Courses
FW221 – Conservation of Natural Resources
Publications
Let's play two: Optimism makes all things possible (2014)
Ecosystem management adaptive, community-based conservation (2002)
The Problem at Pebble Beach and how to play a great round of forestry (2002)
Ecosystem management: Adaptive, community-based conservation (2002)
Science and advocacy are different?and we need to keep them that way (2001)
People for people: education for the human dimension (2001)
Forest stewardship education: Fostering positive attitudes in urban youth (2001)
Three little words (1999)
Leading like a stained glass window (1999)
Diversity rising: golden opportunity, golden arches, golden rule (1999)
Provost; experiences, reflections, and advice from a former "number two" on campus
Reference & Research Book News. 28.5 (Oct. 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
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Full Text:
9781579229696
Provost; experiences, reflections, and advice from a former "number two" on campus.
Nielsen, Larry A.
Stylus Publishing
2013
372 pages
$35.00
Hardcover
LB2341
Now a professor of natural resources at the university, Nielsen documents his tenure as provost at North Carolina State U. and shares what he learned in the position. He begins with the story of becoming interim provost and his resignation four years later, then explains what the job entails, including its daily schedule; dealing with budgets, working with the university's chief financial officer, and strategic planning; academic aspects like working with student-athletes, being a champion for students, and academic support services; facilities management; faculty and tenure issues; working with people; and other responsibilities. He then details his life as an ex-provost, provides a review of literature on the job, and offers advice for becoming a provost.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World
Larry A. Nielsen. Island, $28 (248p) ISBN 978-1-61091-795-7
Nielsen, a fisheries biologist and dean of the College of Natural Resources at N.C. State, celebrates the work of eight conservationists in the U.S. and abroad in this engaging series of biographical sketches. The work, which is “loosely patterned after” John F. Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Profiles in Courage, aims to inspire readers through work done “on behalf of the sustainability of our world.” Nielsen unsurprisingly focuses on Rachel Carson, whose 1962 classic Silent Spring “awakened the country—and the world—to the dangers of broadcast pesticides,” and John Muir, long considered the father of the environmental movement. But he also highlights lesser-known people such as Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling, an editorial cartoonist for Iowa’s Des Moines Register who helped to form and lead the National Wildlife Federation, and Billy Frank Jr., who fought tirelessly for Native American fishing rights and salmon conservation. Nielsen also looks abroad, highlighting contributions from Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and “Gandhi of the Amazon,” and Wangari Maathai, who was honored with the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on sustainable development, democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in Kenya. Paying tribute to their battles and accomplishments, Nielsen effectively showcases the passion and persistence of a remarkable group of individuals. (Feb.)
This review has been corrected to fix a typo.
“Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World” by Larry A. Nielsen
Posted on June 30, 2017 by Elderwoman
Island Press, 2017
ISBN: 978-1610917957
Reviewed by Marian Van Eyk McCain
________________________________________________________________________
The extent of environmental challenge that our world is facing today is unprecedented—but as the publishers of this book point out, it is at times like this that we need inspiration more than ever. With political leaders who deny climate change, species that are fighting for their very survival, and the planet’s last places of wilderness growing smaller and smaller, it is all too easy to succumb to despair and to give up because, after all, what can a single person do? Well, one person can do a surprising amount. In Nature’s Allies, Larry A. Nielsen uses the stories of eight people to show that through passion and perseverance, we can each be a positive force for change.
The eight men and women whose biographies are contained here could not have been more different from each other but the one thing they have in common is that they are all conservation pioneers. Some are well known, some less so. Yet, all of them have made a significant and lasting mark on our world, each in his or her unique way.
The eccentric John Muir who taught us all to value wilderness, lives again in these pages as we read of his devotion to Nature and to certain special places, such as Yosemite. We see how well Ding Darling’s cartoons brought the politics of environment home to people in ways that mere words could never have done and we read here of the experiences and influences that led Aldo Leopold to develop the land ethic that has guided the thinking of a whole generation of environmentalists. We feel gratitude, once more, to Rachel Carson, whose painstaking research and eloquent writing finally convinced the world of the danger of pesticides and learn how Chico Mendes devoted his entire life—and eventually, tragically lost it—in passionate defence of the Amazon, its ecosystems and its indigenous peoples. We meet Billy Frank Jr. whose single-minded determination eventually restored to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest their ancestral right to fish sustainably for salmon, aiding the entire ecosystem in the process. We are inspired anew by the example of Norwegian cabinet minister Gro Harlem Brundtland whom the book describes as the Godmother of Sustainable Development and hear again of how the indomitable Wangari Maathai oversaw the planting of several million trees in Africa—a life’s work that earned her the Nobel prize she so richly deserved.
The stated aim of Nature’s Allies is “to inspire students, conservationists, and Nature lovers to speak up for Nature and show the power of one person to make a difference.” And I am sure it will help to do just that. I found it an interesting, heart-warming book.
NATURE'S ALLIES
Larry Nielsen
Island Press (Feb 2, 2017)
Hardcover $28.00 (272pp)
978-1-61091-795-7
Featuring short but detailed biographies, Nature’s Allies elevates past and present icons of the environmentalist movement.
From John Muir to Wangari Muta Maati, this book covers major environmental figures roughly chronologically from the mid-1800s to the present day. In doing so, it initially focuses on the US but transitions to a wider world perspective about halfway through. The ethnic and gender diversity of the subjects is a major factor in the book’s favor. Though the largest percentage of the subjects are still white Americans, this work represents a step in the direction of correcting the erasure of non-white, non-American environmentalism from mainstream American dialogue. The message, one that Americans may not often hear, is that environmentalism is universal and global in scope. Nature’s Allies seems targeted toward Americans, specifically, and could function as a consciousness-broadening tool for activists and students who are unfamiliar with the names of Billy Frank and Chico Mendes.
The book is brief in length, and some profiles are more engaging than others. Occasionally, as in the case of John Muir, the bios nearly become odes. Even with characters who, like Aldo Leopold, might have considered themselves pragmatic people, the author goes out of his way to highlight their idealism and moral bravery. He attempts a tricky balancing act in addressing the practical concerns faced by these eight individuals while at the same time focusing on their environmental pursuits—all in under three hundred pages—and if he occasionally tips into enthusiasm or glosses over a rough patch, that may be forgivable. Regardless, the notes are thorough and include a bevy of references for follow-up.
Students would take well to Nature’s Allies, especially teenagers and college freshmen considering entry into environmental studies. It could also function well as a popular introduction to environmental heroes who aren’t necessarily household names, including Ding Darling and Gro Harlem Brundtland.
Reviewed by Anna Call
March/April 2017