Service

Christopher Metzler

Professor Albert

Honors DNY Coastal NYC

31 March 2021

Part I:

Environmental conservation is an idea that has gained traction dating back to the late 1800’s. Conservation can be defined as “a broad approach to preserving what is already there and the due care and attention to protecting it for the future.” (EnvironmentalScience.org) Samuel P Hays’ work, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1957) is often regarded as the beginning point for the study of conservation however, there were some substantial efforts prior. During the Progressive Era (1890-1920), Theodore Roosevelt led the conservation movement in the U.S. Roosevelt was greatly troubled by the man-made waste and its effects on the environment, and during his term, roughly 230 million acres of land were granted Federal protection through the U.S. Forestry Service, five national parks, eighteen national monuments, and 150 national forests were created. This work delves into understanding environmental problems and potential solutions, and presents a dichotomy in which there is a demand for the rich and powerful to decide the rate of growth and land development and a demand for a freer system in which individuals make those choices through local elected officials. The conservation movement strived to keep the natural resources and landscape protected from corporal abuse. Hays, while agreeing with this sentiment, believed that scientists specifically should be the ones dictating how we ought to use (or not use) the Earth’s resources. Further, in 1964, The Wilderness Act was passed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and set aside large areas of land which were not yet greatly affected by human activity and prohibited logging, mining, etc. in these areas. In the present day, support for environmental conservation is stronger than ever, with it being a major talking point of politicians. Moreover, as an example of the effort and money being put into conservation, New York has a department named New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). On the NYSDEC website, it states this: “Our mission is: To conserve, improve and protect New York's natural resources and environment and to prevent, abate and control water, land and air pollution, in order to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state and their overall economic and social well-being.” I believe this perfectly encapsulates what environmental conservation is truly about, and a vision which I am extremely passionate about, which is why I chose to do the service that I did with Chimp & See. I genuinely hope for a future in which humans can find a solution that will fit our needs as well as the crucial needs of wildlife and the environment, and I believe we are on the track to this future now.

Part II:

For my service, I chose to complete classifications for the Chimp & See organization. Chimp & See is an effort by The Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf), based out of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Chimp & See's has two main goals: The first is to learn more about early humans through the behaviors of chimpanzees - one of our closest relatives, and the second is to document and learn more about the wildlife in the areas they study. This is done by placing cameras in 15 different countries in Africa and capturing animals as they move on camera in short 15 second video clips. These clips however, must be analyzed and sorted in order to properly study them. This is where I and over 13,600 other volunteers come in. As a volunteer for this study, you are tasked with analyzing these video clips and indicating whether or not you see a specific species out of 18 different choices, or if you see nothing at all. Then, you have to choose how many animals you see, what behavior you observe happening in the video, and whether or not the video is black and white or in color. Every so often, it was hard to tell exactly what it is that I was seeing, but Chimp & See’s instructions state that it’s alright to guess if you are unsure. This is because Chimp & See is taking the aggregate of volunteers’ responses in order to get the best match. This entire effort heightened my awareness in regards to the biodiversity in these areas and was immensely fascinating to see how these animals behaved in their natural habitat. I truly hope that this effort can help scientists and others learn more about humans as well as chimpanzees to better understand not only where we originated, but also how these beautiful animals live in the here-and-now in an effort to better protect their natural habitats from human activity.

Works Cited

Burrows, Lauren. “ID, Please!” Atlas of the Future, 29 July 2015, atlasofthefuture.org/project/chimp-see/.

Chimp&See. “Zooniverse.” Zooniverse.org, 2021, www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see.

EPA. “The Origins of EPA.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 13 Jan. 2021, www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa.

NPS. “Conservation, Preservation and Environmental Activism: A Survey of the Historical Literature.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 6 Jan. 2003, www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/NPSThinking/nps-oah.htm.

NPS. “Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 16 Nov. 2017, www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/theodore-roosevelt-and-conservation.htm.

NYSDEC. “Department of Environmental Conservation.” Welcome to the State of New York, 2021, www.ny.gov/agencies/department-environmental-conservation.

Matthew MasonMG Mason has a BA in Archaeology and MA in Landscape Archaeology. “Matthew Mason.” EnvironmentalScience.org, www.environmentalscience.org/conservation.

Images Cited

Chimp&See, July 2020, www.naturevolunteers.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/vcxz-1.gif?ref=123.

“Tropical Rainforest HD Wallpapers 11 HD Wallpaper.” WallpaperSafari, 3 Jan. 2018, cdn.wallpapersafari.com/78/5/nfFkLp.jpg.