 OWAA Legends
A Grand Performance, Durward Allen
He knew the facts, and he wrote them with hope that the
dolts and do-gooders of this world would awaken before the human environment is
subdivided into standing-room only.
By Lonnie Williamson
There are and have been hundreds of special people in fish and wildlife
conservation. Some teach, some conduct research, some write and some administer
programs. However, no one has ever performed so grandly in all those segments of
the profession as did Durward Allen.
Durward was born Oct. 11, 1910, in Uniondale, Ind. He graduated from the
University of Michigan in 1932 and earned a doctorate at Michigan State College
(Now Michigan State University) in 1937. He worked for the Michigan Department
of Natural Resources and then moved to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Eventually he became the Service’s acting director for research in Washington,
D.C.
Durward’s landmark book, Our Wildlife Legacy, was published in 1954 while he was
working for the Service. To find someone in wildlife conservation today that has
not studied this classic would be rare indeed, virtually a sin. I recall many
years ago when my major professor, Ernie Provost, assembled his graduate
students in wildlife management and presented them a “must read” list of books.
Our Wildlife Legacy was No. 1 on that list. I still treasure my autographed
copy. The work remains, in my opinion, the most eloquently written book ever on
wildlife management. It has enormous power to impress upon a biologist’s mind
how wild things function and our responsibility to them.
Durward left the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and joined the faculty of Purdue
University in 1958. There he launched the world-famous studies of wolves and
moose on Michigan’s Isle Royale. Few realize the continued impact of Durward’s
studies of wolf-moose relationships on Isle Royale. They have been lauded in
academic circles, recorded in books and scientific journals and publicly
presented in films. Yet, no one explains the importance of that research so well
as Durward. He wrote: “On this continent and in the world, Isle Royale is an
almost unique repository of primitive conditions. Like a priceless antique, it
will be even more valuable in time not far ahead. … The great carnivore removes
the elders, the ailing, the afflicted – and also, no doubt the foolish and
incompetent. For the moose it is a health, welfare, and eugenic program of
inscrutable realism. This is the most important of our findings. In it we have
the key to why both moose and wolf are what they are, and indeed to the
character of wilderness. This system and these dependencies matured through ages
beyond our reckoning. The wolf manages his livestock as any husbandman must
manage to survive. He is inspector of the herd, liberator of the weak, and
guardian of the range.”
While at Purdue training many of the nation’s top wildlife ecologists, Durward
wrote six more books, including Wolves of Minong and The Life of Prairies and
Plains. He came to believe that wildlife conservationists must convince the
general public that scientific resource management is necessary to maintain and
improve our quality of life. Consequently, he produced dozens of articles for
that audience; many were published in Audubon. He knew instinctively when a
sentence was right and which sentences made the perfect paragraph. Thus, his
impact was great.
Durward was pressed to serve on numerous national boards and committees. He was
part of the secretary of the interior’s board on national parks. He was honored
with memberships in the Boone and Crockett Club and the Explorers Club. He
received the highest honors given by The Wildlife Society (Aldo Leopold Memorial
Award), National Audubon Society (Audubon Medal) and OWAA (Jade of Chiefs
Award). He also was a member of the Cain Committee, which reviewed federal
predator control policies. That committee’s report led President Nixon to ban
the use of many poisons on public land.
Throughout his career, Durward stood above all others in wildlife conservation,
stressing the importance of protecting ecosystems and controlling human
populations in order to perpetuate desirable and usable wildlife populations.
Late in his career, Durward focused intently on the menace of increasing human
numbers. Probably the most insightful speech ever on that subject was Durward’s
acceptance of the Audubon Medal in 1990. In that sobering presentation, he
noted, “We can be thankful that a few members of Congress understand the
relationship of human numbers to living standards and to resource use. But these
few are outnumbered by a majority who has little interest in such abstractions.
This is exemplified by recent proposals for legislation that would open wider
our immigration floodgates to the great population surpluses of Latin America
and the Far East – people caught in a bind who understandably would like to
share our diminishing resource wealth, our great ideal of two jobs for every
household, our health facilities, our welfare and educational systems. And of
course they bring their birthrates with them. In 1990 world population increased
by 93 million – each year that statistic grows by at least a couple of million.”
Obviously Durward was not afflicted with the politically correct disease. He
knew the facts, and he wrote them with hope that the dolts and do-gooders of
this world would awaken before the human environment is subdivided into standing
room only.
Durward Allen died October 17, 1997. That day, OWAA lost one of its most
distinguished and productive members.
Life member Lonnie Williamson was the subject of a Legends piece in the
January 2003 issue of OU. Williamson is the recipient of the Jade of Chiefs
Award and the J. Hammond Brown Memorial Award, and he served as OWAA’s president
in 1991-92. He makes his home on the family farm in Athens, Ga.
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