Jamie Bastedo - Protectors of the Planet: Environmental Trailblazers from 7 to 97

For Brenda

and the many trails we have blazed together

Copyright 2020 Jamie Bastedo

Published in Canada by Red Deer Press, 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, ON L3R 4T8

Published in the United States by Red Deer Press, 311 Washington Street, Brighton, MA 02135

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Red Deer Press, 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, ON L3R 4T8

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Protectors of the planet : environmental trailblazers from 7 to 97 / Jamie Bastedo.

Names: Bastedo, Jamie, 1955- author.

Description: Includes index.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20200181777 | ISBN 9780889955691 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: EnvironmentalistsBiographyJuvenile literature. | LCSH: Environmentalism Juvenile

literature. | LCSH: Environmental protectionCitizen participationJuvenile literature. | LCGFT: Biographies.

Classification: LCC GE55 .B37 2020 | DDC j363.70092dc23

Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S.)

Names: Bastedo, Jamie, 1955-, author.

Title: Protectors of the Planet : Environmental Trailblazers from 7 to 97 / Jamie Bastedo.

Description: Markham, Ontario : Red Deer Press, 2020. | Summary: This book introduces 11 inspirational environmental trailblazers carving bold new paths into a better world. They are heroes dedicated to a noble cause. They are role models empowering us to follow. They are ordinary people doing extraordinary things to protect the planet Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-0-88995-569-1 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-88995-648-3 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH EnvironmentalistsBiography Juvenile literature. | Conservationists Biography Juvenile literature. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Science & Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection.

Classification: LCC GE55.B378 |DDC 333.720922 dc23

Red Deer Press acknowledges with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Edited for the Press by Peter Carver

Text and cover design by Kong Njo

Printed in Canada by Friesens

www.reddeerpress.com

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed its the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead, anthropologist

A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.

President Barack Obama

MAGNIFICENCE MATTERS

Kicking Over Logs

If you had spied me back then, prowling alone through the sugar maple forest behind my house, in Kitchener, Ontario, you would have wondered what the heck I was doing. I was that kid kicking over logs, then falling to my knees to seize some wriggling thing in my eager hands. To my seven-year-old brain, this was an alien creature, some rare throwback to dinosaur days, an exotic being that only I knew about. When I later learned that this creature could grow new limbs and tails that were sliced off in death-defying fights, I became even more convinced it came from outer space.

The Red-backed Salamander.

I captured them by the handful, built terrariums for them, and fed them cottage cheese. I tried, unsuccessfully, to raise families of them and show them to my not-so-impressed friends.

Fast-forward and Im the teenager, ripping out surveyor stakes, one by one, and flinging them out of sight. They marked the footprint of a monster housing project that would flatten a forest close to my heart. It was there that I spotted my first Wood Duck, the most gorgeous duck in North America, with its impossibly painted Darth Vader helmet.

Sail ahead a few years and Im the rookie graduate student following wolf and caribou tracks through the Yukon wilds, trying hard not to fall off a mountain while stunned by the beauty of it all.

Decades later, Im a biologist, zooming low over the Arctic tundra, gazing out the bubble window of a chopper as I search for a satellite-collared grizzly bear.

Then, not long ago, there I am, leading tourists from faraway places like Berlin or Bar Harbour, down a lakeside trail near my Yellowknife home. Together we stroke the ancient rock, listen for Yellow-billed Loons, and whistle at the Northern Lights. We sink our souls into some of the biggest, wildest country on Earth.

I sometimes wonder if I would have become a biologist were it not for those Red-backed Salamanders with their mysterious, googly eyes. Ever since those early days, kicking over logs, Ive followed a treasure map into a world of wonders, learning all I can about nature, sharing it with others, and doing my best to protect it.

I see my job as guiding people into that world, using every tool I can get my hands ona winding forest trail, radio broadcasts to tickle your imagination, songs to swap around a campfire, skits to laugh along with, or books to curl up and get lost inlike this one.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Natures loveliness.

John Muir, Son of the Wilderness

People ask me a lot of questions along the way. Who made these tracks? What good are mosquitoes? What if a bear charges? Will I die if I eat this mushroom? We naturalists love questions. But these days, as sinister environmental threats about the future keep bursting into the news, more and more l hear this one: What can I do?

My short answer?

Keep hope alive and youll know what to do. Without hope, we might as well give up right now.

My long answer?

This book.

Where do I find hope for the future? Not kicking over logs looking for cool critters, though I still delight in that. I find hope in the lives of people doing amazing things for the planet.

You are about to meet some pretty awesome people.

A teen activist who risked gunfire to save a forest. A park warden who hiked thousands of miles in the path of the grizzly to help protect wildlife. A young woman who fought impossible odds to pioneer giraffe research in Africa. A teenage girl who barely escaped Nazi Germany and devoted the rest of her days to greening cities. A young climate crusader who lobbies nose-to-nose with the most powerful politicians in the land. And lots more!

Think of the following true-life stories as a human library of people who are painfully aware of the environmental threats to our planetmaybe even our very civilization yet are taking action to fight those threats in positive, sometimes epic, and often fun ways. They are all, as the saying goes, thinking globally, acting locally , to help make the world a better place.