Short Life, Long Legacy: The Vision of George Meléndez Wright

In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, today’s episode is dedicated to George Meléndez Wright, the first Hispanic person to occupy a professional role in the National Park Service. His life was cut tragically short, but his holistic approach to wildlife management in the National Parks has left an indelible mark. To submit a business for the Outsiders Gift Guide, please email [email protected] by October 22nd :)For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to the week’s partners! Rocket Money: Use our link to get started saving. Wildgrain: Go to Wildgrain.com/NPAD and start your subscription to get $30 off the first box, PLUS free Croissants in every box. IQBAR: Text PARK to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products and free shipping. Cash App: Download Cash App Today: [SECURE10] #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Direct Deposit, Overdraft Coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Did you know that if your spouse goes missing, but you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand-new season of Bear Brook, the award-winning true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In season three of Private Matter, we investigate another New Hampshire mystery. A beloved Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes from his small town. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found?

• 0:33Speaker 01

  If you knew Jay as well as I do, he's private. He doesn't want everybody to know his business.

• 0:40Danielle LaRock?

  That, I don't believe you.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  I kind of revert back to that Bear Brook saying, what if we were to just come across something? And I wrote down, she said, I found him.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Follow Bear Brook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:02Danielle LaRock?

  30 years ago, a team of scientists were trying to understand why mammals have such different lifespans. Mice live for around two years, and dogs for 12. Elephants can pass 60 years, and some whales live up to 90. Boiling down all of the details of their studies, they discovered that no matter how many years each animal lived, each lived for about 1 billion heartbeats. Humans, thanks to modern medicine, have managed to extend our life expectancy to around 2 billion heartbeats and have continued our quest to lengthen it further through various diets, exercise routines, and fostering healthy relationships. And yet, despite the never-ending odyssey to tack years onto our existence here on Earth,

• 1:47Danielle LaRock?

  the meaning of life is not measured in years or in heartbeats. We remember people not for the number of candles they blow out on their final birthday cake, but rather for the difference they made, the people they helped, the joy that followed them, and the ideas they leave behind. None of us know how much time we'll get here. A life well-lived can certainly be long, but all too often, it can be cut short. Regardless, one thing is for certain: You sure as hell don't need a billion heartbeats to make a difference that people will remember and honor long after your heart goes still.

• 2:24Danielle LaRock?

  Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 2:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  I really liked that intro. I never knew that. One billion heartbeats.

• 2:51Danielle LaRock?

  I know. It's like, it kind of feels like it's programmed to stop around then, maybe.

• 2:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Slow down. Slow down.

• 3:00Danielle LaRock?

  Take it easy.

• 3:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's why you need a low resting heart rate.

• 3:06Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I know. Well, it's so funny because I've been trying to use my Oura ring a little bit more. I got it just to track my cycles, like natural cycles and stuff. And it does a bunch of other stuff, like with stress and, you know, steps and

• 3:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Danielle LaRock?

  all that other stuff. And I've been trying to keep track of my heart, like my resting heart rate and stuff. And I used to do it at work. I used to put the SPO2 monitor on my finger and be like, what's my heart rate at?

• 3:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, yeah, I used to do that, too.

• 3:36Danielle LaRock?

  And then be like, calm down. It's okay. You're just stressed.

• 3:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  All is well.

• 3:41Danielle LaRock?

  All is well.

• 3:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  What's your resting heart rate?

• 3:43Danielle LaRock?

  It hovers around 60.

• 3:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, that's very good.

• 3:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I'm trying to get my cardio better, get on the Peloton a little more, but it's a struggle. Yeah. So, welcome everyone to National Park After Dark. I'm going to be telling you a story today and my name's Danielle.

• 4:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm Cassie. I'm going to be listening to the story and hanging out.

• 4:04Danielle LaRock?

  Getting comfy. It's so funny. The other day I looked at, um, I looked at one of the comments on Patreon because we posted like a video version of the episode on there. And somebody was like, I love how just throughout this episode, Cassie is getting comfier and comfier. Like your blanket just kept rising up to your chin.

• 4:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  By the, I start off like normal, just hanging out. And by the end of it, I'm like,

• 4:28Danielle LaRock?

  You're a cocoon. Yeah, you're not even here.

• 4:32Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, well, today I have a really interesting story about somebody that I first learned about when we were in Rocky Mountain National Park, actually earlier this year. But before we get into all of that, this is the top of October. It's the first October release. So happy fall season officially, everybody. And I know it's like we just started spooky season in fall and autumn, and I'm about to talk to you about the holidays, but it's for a good reason.

• 5:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Comes up quick.

• 5:03Danielle LaRock?

  It does. It sneaks up on you. And I'm trying to get ahead of it this year because last year we did this, but it was kind of late and it wasn't as good as it could have been. So this year, we're going to try and do something different. We're putting together an outsider's gift guide. And that means we want to put together, it's nothing fancy, it's just going to be kind of a condensed list of small businesses that are owned and operated by National Park After Dark listeners. And we're going to send it out to our email subscribers as a way of supporting our community as the holidays approach. And we just have so many listeners that are not only so talented with, you know, creating tangible, physical

• 5:47Danielle LaRock?

  things, whether it be art, or I don't know, just unique pieces, but also that have really cool companies. Because we all know you don't have to give a physical gift, you can give an experience or a service. And we have so many listeners who just are so talented and offer so many awesome things that we get to hear about because they'll email us about it. And we want to make sure that everybody else has the opportunity to not only know about those cool things, but also support them during the holiday season, if you so choose.

• 6:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And I feel like our outsider and P A D community has supported us so much throughout the years that it's a fun way to kind of give back to you guys to help support your businesses and to connect our community all together. So it's a fun, more local way to shop. And also probably a lot more unique because we're hoping to highlight some of you that have things that maybe people don't even know exist yet.

• 6:47Danielle LaRock?

  Right. So if you want to be, two things, if you want to be considered to be included in the gift guide, and we say considered, not because like we're judging you or anything, but because we expect the response to be, if it's anything like last year, really overwhelming, we just, we're only two girls, okay? Um, and we don't have-

• 7:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  You can only put so much, but we'll try to include as much as we can.

• 7:08Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And we'll put it through into like sections, kind of to make it a little more easy to read and things like that. But either way, yeah, if you want to be considered to be included, please write to [email protected]. That's kind of our side email we use for things like this.

• 7:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And we'll put a link, we'll put that in our show description too, so you can just click it.

• 7:32Danielle LaRock?

  Yep. And then put, uh, gift guide in the subject line. And on the reverse of that, if you want to receive this gift guide, sign up for our email. Um, if you go onto our website, there's a pop-up right away that asks if you want to subscribe. We literally don't spam because we don't have the time.

• 7:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  We're just two girls.

• 7:52Danielle LaRock?

  We're just two girls. We do a newsletter once a month that we put together. And with the exception of this gift guide, this will come out, if all goes well, at the very beginning of November, so that you have time to go through it and place orders and things like that for December. So yeah, that's what we're cooking up on the side. So if you're interested in that, now's the time. And we're accepting submissions until like the third week of October. So you have a couple of weeks.

• 8:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. So if you're hearing this late, it might not be too late for you.

• 8:24Danielle LaRock?

  Right. But if you're hearing it in November.

• 8:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Sorry.

• 8:28Danielle LaRock?

  Sorry. There's always next year. Okay. Well, moving on, again, we mentioned spooky season, and I think especially with the tone of a lot of our episodes and kind of what we're all about, people are like so amped to hear spooky and scary and haunted things for the entire month of October. But we're, uh, I'm not going to give that to you today. And I apologize. However, there's a good reason for it. It is kind of the tail end of Hispanic Heritage Month. And because of that, I wanted to highlight a story about a Hispanic man in the National Park Service that did so much. Like after this episode, you're going to feel really

• 9:12Danielle LaRock?

  bad about yourself, I think, because you're going to be like, how did this person do so much in such little time? It's so impressive.

• 9:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Danielle LaRock?

  Because I certainly haven't done this much. And learning about his story made me kind of inspired to do a little more. So I'm like, I'm going to put together a gift guide. So there's that. And yeah, I did hear, I learned about this originally when we went to, God, why can't I think of it? When we went to Rocky Mountain National Park, it was a book in the visitor's center and I took a picture of it. I'm like, I'm coming back for you.

• 9:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, cool. I love finding stories like that.

• 9:48Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. All right. So let's get going. In February of 1936, four cars found themselves stuck in the Rio Grande River. There is no bridge between West Texas and Buquilla in Mexico. So the cars had tried and ultimately failed to drive through a shallow section of the waterway. Around 20 men, representatives from both the United States and Mexico, climbed out of the trapped vehicles. They had convened to discuss the creation of parks along and across the shared international boundary. The catalyst for this trip had come the year before when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the creation of Big Bend National Park in Texas, just north of the river crossing that they were stranded in. While the designation was still a formality,

• 10:32Danielle LaRock?

  it entrusted the National Park Service with a vast landscape. From the towering Chisos Mountains to the sprawling Chihuahua Desert and dramatic canyons carved by the Rio Grande. But unlike many of the earliest national parks, Big Bend was not granted the status for scenic qualities alone. The Park Service first sent a biologist to survey the area, in part to document the wildlife that lived there, which was pretty standard, which included mountain lions, ringtails, and javelinas, known as pukarets. For those who they're like the they look like wild pigs, kind of.

• 11:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, okay, yeah.

• 11:08Danielle LaRock?

  But also to judge if the proposed park boundaries could provide enough habitat for those same animals to thrive in. And it was with that biologist's findings and endorsement that Big Bend State Park became a national park. The International Commission, who was eventually towed out of the river by Mexican ranchers on horseback, was meeting to discuss taking the designation up a notch. How international parks might extend those protections already in place even further. So it's like started as a protected space at the state park. It got bumped up to a national park. And now they're like, let's see if we can make this international because it they wanted to expand across borders.

• 11:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, so for clarification, you found this book in Rocky Mountain National Park, but the story is about Big Bend National Park.

• 11:54Danielle LaRock?

  No, it's right.

• 11:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yes, we're talking about Big Bend right now in this particular circumstance. This story is actually, I know we usually centered this around a particular public land, specifically whether it be a national park or national forest. This is actually about a individual that did a lot for the National Park Service in general.

• 12:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, so we're going to be like hopping around to national parks.

• 12:21Danielle LaRock?

  Gotcha. For the National Park Service, this was a radically new way of doing business and a dramatic departure from how they used to do things. It was the start of a shift towards science-driven management and towards the agency that we all know and love and respect today. Since its founding in 1916, park rangers have killed coyotes, mountain lions, and even pelicans to protect game animals. Now, it seemed like all animals were being considered, at the very least, fairly. And if you asked leaders in the park service at the time, the people with power and the people with influence, who who we have to thank for this change, they'd all answer with one name, George Melendez Wright.

• 13:06Danielle LaRock?

  So that is who we are going to be speaking about today.

• 13:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Interesting.

• 13:14Danielle LaRock?

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• 13:59Danielle LaRock?

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• 14:37Danielle LaRock?

  By just 31 years old, George Wright was the Director of the National Park Services Wildlife Division and the first Hispanic man to hold a professional role in the entire agency. He had conducted the first-ever comprehensive wildlife survey in national parks, and his skill as a field biologist was surpassed only by his personality. When asked to describe him, his friends said he was always quickly welcomed anywhere he went, and that his personality was unforgettable. He was considerate, could win people over easily, even those who at first were a little wary about him or didn't really know what he was all about, either as an individual or his stance in the wildlife division. But... With his knowledge and his intellect and his charisma,

• 15:21Danielle LaRock?

  it got him places with people and won people over at least to consider having a conversation, at the very least. And it also got him sent on many different trips for the Park Service, including the International Commission trip to Big Bend. In each photo taken of the group, George, often sporting a wide smile, was the shortest. At just five foot four, he earned the nickname Chapo, or Shorty in Spanish. And it is true. It's always like, you know, when you're looking at black and white photos, especially, it just, a lot of features kind of blend in, and especially the style and the way people not only dressed, but had their hair, their facial hair and things like that. It's like, you kind of all look the same. Immediately, you're like, okay, well, that's George because he's small.

• 16:06Danielle LaRock?

  We love a short king. Yes, we do. These trips, to which he referred to as wilderness elixirs, were much-needed literal breaths of fresh air from his busy schedule in his Washington office. And this was not the only trip of its kind for him that year. He made several to the Everglades, surveying proposed park boundaries by Blimp, and serving as the personal guide to the Secretary of the Interior, who immediately became a fan of George's. He seemed right at home with diplomats and dignitaries just as much as he was with ranchers and old timers in rural America. One of the many, many reasons, some believed, he was well on his way to climbing the ladder all the way to the top to someday become the Director of the National Park Service.

• 16:49Danielle LaRock?

  But Big Bend was not the only stop for the group on their route. After touring the region for a week, George hopped into a car with a few colleagues and headed west towards Tucson, some 500-ish miles away. As George's car passed into New Mexico, heading west on Highway 10, they reached the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. Suddenly, an oncoming car veered into their lane. Its tire had blown out, causing it to jerk violently and without warning to the left, directly into George's vehicle. The crash was sudden and deadly. The teenage driver of the oncoming car died instantly, and so did the driver of George's car. George sustained massive injuries, and despite being pulled from the wreckage by his surviving friends,

• 17:32Danielle LaRock?

  it was too late. George Wright was dead at 31 years old. But as we've said before, it isn't about how one dies, but how they live. So let's rewind the tape. Twenty years. In 1915, a world fair was opening in San Francisco. Hosted to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, it attracted displays of technological achievement, like a transcontinental phone call and automobile races. It hosted presentations of sports, music, and art, and it featured two enormous replicas of national parks. There was an Old Faithful display, which erupted every 20 minutes, and a scale model of the Grand Canyon, complete with a 30,000-square-foot painting of the canyon itself, more than half the size of a football field.

• 18:17Danielle LaRock?

  That's insane.

• 18:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's huge.

• 18:20Danielle LaRock?

  That's...

• 18:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  This is like a science fair on steroids.

• 18:25Danielle LaRock?

  And I wonder, we've talked about world fairs before, especially with your episode, what was it, on the tree?

• 18:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, the Centennial Tree in Sequoia.

• 18:35Danielle LaRock?

  Do you think it was at this one?

• 18:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Where is this again?

• 18:37Danielle LaRock?

  San Francisco?

• 18:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, because they shipped this to, um, they shipped the Centennial Tree to the East Coast to prove that they existed.

• 18:49Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 18:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Because people in the East didn't believe them.

• 18:52Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, right, yes. That was a kind of a long time ago, that episode, but it was really good. And we talked at length about world fairs and like how cool they were in one aspect, but also how problematic they were.

• 19:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Morbid and problematic, yeah. They used to put like people...

• 19:06Danielle LaRock?

  People on display.

• 19:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Of color, yeah, people on display, like indigenous people, people of color, like, they did a lot of really fucked up things as amusement at world fairs. But they were also really interesting. They did have some interesting things. I don't think we should bring them back, but it is an interesting point of history.

• 19:26Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. This event was of great interest to George, who lived only eight blocks away from the fair. He was just 11 years old at the time, and he was already an avid naturalist. He'd been carefully observing the birds who visited a bird bath behind his home and kept a list of the species that he had seen. His great aunt Cordelia had encouraged him to pursue his passion for biology, sending him out to explore nearby Lake Merced and the Golden Gate Parks with a bird book in hand. By this time, Aunt Cordelia, who he called Auntie, it was actually his great aunt. Um, was George's only family and his primary caretaker as both his parents had already passed

• 20:07Danielle LaRock?

  away when he was a child. His father, John Wright, came from a successful family of steamship captains in San Francisco. His mother, Mercedes Melendez Ramirez, came from a prominent family in El Salvador. How the couple met is kind of a mystery. It's been a little bit lost to time. There's a couple of different theories, maybe because Wright's shipping company brought coffee from El Salvador, or because Mercedes was sent to school in San Francisco and that's maybe where they met. But regardless, by 1905, the two of them were married, had purchased a home in San Francisco, and had three sons, with George being the middle child. It was by all accounts, a wonderful home, full of both conversations and customs in both English and Spanish, with the whole

• 20:52Danielle LaRock?

  family traveling between San Francisco and El Salvador often. But in 1906, George's mother passed away suddenly from acute appendicitis, and within a few years, his father was diagnosed with cancer. His father did what he could for his three boys, including enlisting the help of his widowed stepmother, Cordelia. He left his youngest son, Charles, in the care of family in El Salvador, dividing up his estate between his children, and passed away a few months later at the age of 56.

• 21:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, that's heartbreaking.

• 21:22Danielle LaRock?

  I mean, it's a lot.

• 21:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's a lot of death.

• 21:25Danielle LaRock?

  Yep, one after the other. George's oldest brother moved to El Salvador, leaving George and Auntie alone in their San Francisco home. Despite their large age gap, so at this point in time, George is a child, I mean, he's barely nine years old, and Cordelia was 72. So, different ends of the spectrum here in life. Despite that, the two shared a really special bond, and became constant companions. Beyond encouraging his passion for wildlife, Auntie taught him daily lessons until he started officially at school, which served as an early chance for his personality to really shine through. In high school, he founded the Audubon Society Club and served as

• 22:08Danielle LaRock?

  its president at the age of 13. And by this time, he was already corresponding with the local University of California offices to organize field trips for his club, the Audubon Society.

• 22:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  At 13?

• 22:20Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Yep. He was active in the Boy Scouts where he was tasked with teaching his fellow scouts about plants and animals and he excelled academically, which I don't think there's a surprise in that. At sixteen years old, he was accepted to the forestry program at UC Berkeley.

• 22:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  At sixteen?

• 22:39Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. So I don't know if that's standard for the time or if he was like today, that would, I know it's possible, but it's uncommon. I don't know if at the time that was more standard or not.

• 22:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, to leave school early and go to college or something.

• 22:56Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, but regardless, it's a huge accomplishment and Auntie thrilled for him, bought a house near campus and moved with him.

• 23:05Danielle LaRock?

  At Berkeley, he joined a frat, Delta Upsilon, which would become the center of his social life. And this is just, it's not very important to the story, but I just thought it was really funny. So he and Auntie would host regular frat parties and she was beloved by his friends.

• 23:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, I bet.

• 23:26Danielle LaRock?

  Like a great aunt, like a seventy something year old.

• 23:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's almost like your grandma who's sitting on the couch, like drinking and smoking weed with all your friends. She is going to be accepted by everyone at that party.

• 23:37Danielle LaRock?

  She's the house bunny.

• 23:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Danielle LaRock?

  Mom.

• 23:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Danielle LaRock?

  Uh, house mom.

• 23:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes, yes.

• 23:41Danielle LaRock?

  The House Bunny is the movie I'm thinking of.

• 23:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  I know.

• 23:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  But now I'm picturing Auntie in House Bunny attire.

• 23:49Danielle LaRock?

  As Anna Faris, yes.

• 23:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 23:52Danielle LaRock?

  So she was like, kind of when you have a cool, I remember my senior year of college, our landlord, he had bought the house on Water Street in Keaton, New Hampshire. It was an old, like Victorian era house that had been a family home for generations and decades. And then he happened to buy the, the year we moved in, he had happened to buy it and he's like, I'm actually going to renovate this and rent this out to college kids because it was just a couple blocks off campus. And I remember because he had never been a landlord before and he was just some guy that was like, I just want to make some money. Like he was the coolest. We would come over. I have pictures of Nataia giving him an apple pie shot.

• 24:37Danielle LaRock?

  And we're like, just like, he was just so chill and fun to be around. He was just like this older guy, just like, not in a creepy way or anything. He was just like a cool dude. And I just imagine Cordelia filling that same role. And she was just always around for their house parties and just like hanging out with everyone. And one of the, his friends, one of George's friends wrote about her once, saying, "The old lady was charming and her philosophy on youth so much broader than the average parent. It was amazing. When I left to go dance, her remark was, 'I think you better let the butler get you a highball. I can see you haven't had any and the girls don't want a stupid, slow one to dance with.'"

• 25:25Danielle LaRock?

  She's like, "You gotta loosen up. Get a drink."

• 25:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Get a drink, party. You're being a stick in the mud.

• 25:32Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, she surely had the right idea, is how he ended it. But it wasn't all cocktails and house parties. George was also developing as a student. As a forestry major, his coursework emphasized field observation and note-taking. One of his professors, Joseph Grinnell, developed a methodical style of field notes that is still widely used today. And I had to look it up because I just got a book when we were in Glacier about-

• 25:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  I was gonna say, is he after Grinnell?

• 26:00Danielle LaRock?

  Not of the same. Not of the same. But kind of like, this was, Joseph Grinnell was right before the other Grinnell that we're thinking of.

• 26:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay.

• 26:10Danielle LaRock?

  But still, still in like, the wildlife conservation space. And that's kind of why it confused me. But George, who had been taking notes on the species he'd seen all of his life, was very quick to make a good impression with his professor and other mentors. During his summers, George set his sights beyond California and began to explore more and more of the American West. In the summer of 1922, he participated in a Sierra Club trip to the High Sierras, the largest trip the club had ever put on up until that point. He was one of 200 hikers that made the 270-mile trek, summoning Mount Whitney along the way. The enormous group was supplied by a train of 90 mules, carrying, among many other things,

• 26:51Danielle LaRock?

  450 pounds of cheese and 2,000 pounds of ham. It's like-

• 26:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  So you were living off charcuterie boards over this trip?

• 27:00Danielle LaRock?

  You know, they're no wrong. In the summer of 1924, he and some of his frat brothers set out on a 2,000 mile road trip in George's beat up Model T, which he nicknamed Peter. In just two months, they visited what is now Joshua Tree, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone Glacier, and Crater Lake National Parks in an incredible road trip summer vacay. And along the way, they suffered 72 blown out tires. Why? Well, okay, so how do you go through 72 tires? Okay, this is the 20s and Model Ts have these like tiny tires. Honestly, when

• 27:42Danielle LaRock?

  you look back on pictures, some of them look like they have smaller, like they have smaller tires than a lot of the bicycles we have now. And the roads were awful. I mean, you're talking a lot of dirt roads. They must have been cheaper than to replace, if he had to replace 72 of them. He just got really good at changing tires. Imagine like 2,000 miles. Like not again. It's like, can we get more than 50 miles without blowing a tire? But the troubles only fueled his sense of adventure and invigorated his love of the parks. In the summer of 1926, his growing knowledge of the outdoors presented him with

• 28:22Danielle LaRock?

  an opportunity. His professor, Joseph Grinnell, recommended he join a scientific expedition to Alaska. One of the professor's former students, Joseph Dixon, was headed to what is now Denali National Park to search for an elusive bird nest. Surf birds, a small shorebird often seen along the Pacific coast, fly inland to lay their eggs, which they knew about at the time, but no one had ever seen one of their nests in the wild. So they know they're exhibiting this behavior, but they they can't track down where they're actually nesting. And Grinnell believed that George would be well suited for this particular search. So together Dixon and George were to spend three months together

• 29:02Danielle LaRock?

  in Denali, based out of a rustic patrol cabin in search of a surfbird nest. George's detailed field notes recorded sightings of many different species he had never seen before, including marmots, caribou, and Canada jays. And they also recorded that early on Dixon suffered a strained ankle, leaving George out to set out on his own in search for these birds pretty much right off the bat. And while surveying by himself, just 10 days into their trip, George's report reads, quote, "A quick movement some 500 or 600 feet away attracted my attention to a grayish bird that was sneaking hurriedly along. He was a surfbird in the nesting season. Better luck yet, when I looked down, there were the eggs, lying in a little depression. There were four of them, and they certainly looked too good to be true."

• 29:47Danielle LaRock?

  So he rushes back to tell his partner Dixon about his find, and his first immediate thought was, he's kidding. Like, he's joking. Like, you couldn't have found that. Yeah, it's like, no one in the history of, of naturalists looking for this bird have ever found this nest. It's like, I just looked down. I just happened to stumble upon it. No ornithologist had ever found a surfbird nest in decades of searching, and he found it in 10 days. And sure enough, I mean, at first, he was like, there's no way. I have to see this for myself. So he like hobbles out there to take a look for himself. He hikes

• 30:28Danielle LaRock?

  out and confirms, indeed, it was a surfbird nest. And in his writing, in his own notebook, he says, "To Mr. George M. Wright then belongs the credit of finding the first nest of this species on May 28, 1926, at 4:00 PM." And when I read that, the first thing I thought of was L. Woods being like, what, like, it's hard? What, like, it's hard?

• 30:55Danielle LaRock?

  Getting into Harvard, like, what, like, it's hard? Yeah.

• 31:02Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 32:19Danielle LaRock?

  After Alaska, George wrapped up his time in school and worked for a short time for Dixon and Grinnell at Berkeley Zoology Museum. And it was great. He loved it, but his passion really lied with being out in the field and being outdoors. And more specifically, to live and work in the national parks that he had spent his summers going to and exploring. So on October 17th, 1927, he cashed in when he got a chance to do exactly that. He received a letter in the mail informing him his application for a job with the National Park Service had been accepted. And he was to become a National Park Ranger in Yosemite. Moving with Auntie, because Auntie is right there still.

• 33:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  She's like, all right, we're going to Yosemite.

• 33:05Danielle LaRock?

  We're going to Yosemite Valley. George marveled at his new office. On his first day, he wrote in his journal, "The valley is sparkling, cool and clear with an abundance of autumn coloring. About the rim, there is 10 inches of snow, ever so white against the blue sky." And I can just imagine, I mean, my first experience in Yosemite Valley was with you. And I remember you saying, before we got there, just kind of hyping it up and being like, you're, it's so magical and beautiful. And I had the advantage of at least seeing pictures of it before and kind of mentally prepping of what I was about to experience. And for him, at this time, in the twenties, you know, there's descriptions and paintings

• 33:47Danielle LaRock?

  and maybe a few photos, but nothing could have prepared, I'm sure, an experience of getting into that valley for the first time and seeing that and being like, this is my life. And I get to work here.

• 33:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Not knowing what you're going into.

• 33:59Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  I know. But I remember the first time I saw Yosemite on just pictures because I think it was on Instagram and someone had tagged it and I was like, because I didn't grow up learning about national parks or anything like that. And I remember seeing it and being like, where is that? What is that? I've never, I have to go there.

• 34:17Danielle LaRock?

  How do I get there?

• 34:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I have to go there. And it became a bucket list place for me. And actually, when we were working at Banfield, I went there for the first time.

• 34:26Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, I don't recall.

• 34:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  It was.

• 34:28Danielle LaRock?

  My Cassie's on one of her trips.

• 34:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I did travel a lot when we were at Banfield, but that was one of them. I was out in California and we, and we went.

• 34:36Danielle LaRock?

  Well, despite being just 23 years old, George brought a huge amount of experience to his role, which really excited his supervisors. The year before, the park had completed its first year-round road into Yosemite Valley and had just opened the Owani Hotel, where guess who is now living? Auntie. Auntie's like, of course she would.

• 34:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  And live there year-round. It's like, she's like, the Owani would work great. Thank you.

• 35:03Danielle LaRock?

  It just opened. It's brand new. It's like this beautiful.

• 35:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  This'll do.

• 35:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  From frat house to the Owani.

• 35:11Danielle LaRock?

  Look at her go.

• 35:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  She's living large. Yeah.

• 35:14Danielle LaRock?

  I wrote in my notes, it's, but sometimes I'm like, when I'm first doing this, putting this together, I put my initial thoughts in here in case I don't have them in real time. I wrote, this lady is just L I V I N.

• 35:27Danielle LaRock?

  She is.

• 35:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  You're not wrong.

• 35:28Danielle LaRock?

  The increase in tourism that the Owani generated and that this year-round road is now providing actually helped create George's position. And he quickly started giving talks for visitors at the Yosemite Museum where he was based. And yet, almost as quickly as his dream had been realized, it nearly came undone. An administrative worker reviewing his hiring paperwork determined that George was too short to be a park ranger.

• 35:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  What? Okay, how tall is he?

• 35:56Danielle LaRock?

  Five-four.

• 35:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Five-four.

• 35:58Danielle LaRock?

  He's taller than us.

• 35:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  He is taller than us. I'm five-two and a half on a good day.

• 36:03Danielle LaRock?

  You're not two and a half. You're five-two for sure.

• 36:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, I'm five-two and three-quarters sometimes.

• 36:09Danielle LaRock?

  I'm five-three and in pictures, I look a lot taller than you.

• 36:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  That is not true.

• 36:14Danielle LaRock?

  That's a fact.

• 36:18Danielle LaRock?

  It's okay to be small.

• 36:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't mind being small, but that's how tall I am.

• 36:22Danielle LaRock?

  Unless I grew.

• 36:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's your hair.

• 36:25Danielle LaRock?

  It is my hair. It's full of secrets. Um, well, at the time, all Rangers were required to serve as law enforcement as well and to carry a gun. And while it was never stated on the application, this came with a height requirement. And one that George failed to clear at just five foot, four inches.

• 36:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  What's the height requirement?

• 36:48Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know. I don't know. I couldn't find that, but they were like, you're.

• 36:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  They just looked at him and it was like, no.

• 36:54Danielle LaRock?

  No, like you're too short to ride this ride. Um, fortunately, his supervisors fought the decision. They even enlisted Horace Albright, the Assistant Director of the National Park Service, to petition for an exception for him. In a persistent series of letters, Albright cited George's lengthy list of accomplishments and stated plainly, "We must take no chances of losing this valuable man." And ultimately, he was permitted to stay.

• 37:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Good. That's a ridiculous requirement.

• 37:22Danielle LaRock?

  Uh, yeah, I hope that, I mean, I know for a fact that is no longer in existence, but I hope that this situation with George was the catalyst for that.

• 37:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Kind of squashed that.

• 37:33Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. If this hiccup had bothered George, he didn't seem to show it. He was making the most of his new life in Yosemite Valley. Each morning, he'd bring coffee to Auntie in her room at the Iwani before getting out to work. He and his fellow naturalists gave talks to the thousands of visitors that came every year. And he also began to write articles for Yosemite Nature Notes, the official publication of the park's education division. These articles on natural history included the songs and calls of the mountain quail, a fungus that was killing the park's choke cherry plants, and the diet and decline of golden eagles in the park. He also made a ton of friends in the valley's tight knit community. He joined regular hikes with Enid Michaels, one of the first women naturalists in the park service,

• 38:17Danielle LaRock?

  and her husband, Charles, keep a friended local artist, including Norwegian landscape painter Christian August Jorkensen, and a young, up and coming photographer. Named Ansel Adams. But despite having all the success and kind of riding this high that is now his professional and personal life, by late 1928, his biggest supporter, Auntie, was in ailing health. At the age of 88, she had grown weak and suffered some health setbacks. George wrote of this time that he was always prepared for an emergency move, but on December 19th, Auntie passed away in the Owani Hotel. The impact that she had on George's life was immeasurable. The independence that she fostered in him had helped him succeed everywhere he applied himself, and she was a fiercely independent

• 39:02Danielle LaRock?

  woman for the time. The matriarch holding court at DU parties, which no doubt shaped George's rather progressive views of women in the National Park Service. But most of all, she was family. As he returned to work, his perspectives on wildlife management in the national parks began to take shape. He wrote about his dislike for several practices common in the National Park Service at the time. Many parks in the West advertised bear shows, which we've talked about, I mean, at length in several different episodes. But TLDR version, they were essentially piles of trash dumped to attract bears for visitor viewing purposes, like a tourism type of show, served as entertainment, which

• 39:44Danielle LaRock?

  was, as we know, extremely problematic. Several other parks, including Yosemite, constructed makeshift zoos as well, corralling local wildlife for guaranteed displays, which we haven't talked about a lot, but was a thing. It's just crazy. Welcome to the National Park Sierra Caged Wildlife. And it's kind of like, we make fun of people, especially historic accounts of people being like, when do you release the animals or when do you put them back? And we're like, whoo, they're wild animals, you stupid idiot. But then it's like, okay, with a history like this, where there's actual zoos within the national parks that employees have taken wild animals and put them in cages for. It's like, I can understand

• 40:28Danielle LaRock?

  how that kind of gets a little confusing back in the day. So, there is that. I'm not saying, I mean, still use your critical thinking skills, but, you know, I'm trying to give some credit. Additionally, all parks were practicing predator control, using guns, traps, and poison to indiscriminately kill mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, and bears. And George viewed these practices not only as distasteful, but counter to the very mission of national parks, moves that were actively harmful to the landscape. The views were no doubt fostered by his mentors. For example, Joseph Grinnell was staunchly opposed to park zoos, but they were also likely shaped by a woman named Maria Lebrado.

• 41:13Danielle LaRock?

  Also known as Totuya or Foaming Waters, Lebrado visited Yosemite in July of 1929, the first time she had visited the valley in 80 years, a valley that she had once called home. During the Gold Rush, a state militia known as the Mariposa Battalion was sent to Yosemite Valley to evict its native population. They burned villages and food supplies to force the relocation of indigenous people in order to allow miners to access the area. Chief Tenaya of the Awonichi tribe mounted a resistance, but by 1851, they were defeated. Totuya, who was the granddaughter to Chief Tenaya, was one of the last people to flee Yosemite Valley during the 1851 attacks.

• 41:57Danielle LaRock?

  She returned in 1929 to see her former home, collect acorns, and to tell her story. And because she spoke Spanish, George was asked to be her interpreter. Photos of their meeting depict an in-depth conversation, shared smiles, and show George listening closely. Her life and stories affirmed to him what had been ignored in park management up until that time. People had been living in and actively managing these so-called untouched wilderness spaces for thousands of years. Up until that time, the National Park Service practiced what some historians have called facade management, protecting scenery and prioritizing visitor enjoyment without any interest in or understanding of the consequences that those choices had.

• 42:41Danielle LaRock?

  George had been wrestling with the consequences of actions like predator control and bear feeding, and believed that successful park management would involve active efforts to undo those practices. He's like, how can we, I'm recognizing all of the problems that these practices are having. How do we right these wrongs? And how do we stop? Doing this.

• 43:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  And how do they preserve the land in a better way that actually preserves it and isn't? Because obviously what they're doing is harmful, even though that wasn't the intent.

• 43:10Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, and you know, starting to incorporate and integrate and acknowledge indigenous voices and knowledge. And you know, just kind of like this all encompassing revamp and re and pivoting how things are done. At, you know, a larger level. And not just in Yosemite, but I mean, of course, he's based there. So it's kind of like that's where his focus was at first, but he had larger plans. He believed that in an ideal world, parks should be to maintain the landscape in a primeval condition, free of harmful human influence. He wrote in his journal, quote, recognition that there are wildlife programs is admission that unnatural, manmade conditions exist.

• 43:53Danielle LaRock?

  Therefore, there can be no logical objection to further inference by man to correct those conditions and restore the natural state. He started to formulate an idea, a multi-year survey of wildlife problems across national parks in the West. He argued this would allow the National Park Service for the very first time to understand the issues wildlife are facing and do something about them. He wrote about this idea to his friend, Joseph Dixon, the one who's like, how did you just find these birds? In one hour. Years after their search for the surfbird, Dixon was now the head field naturalist for the Park Service. George laid out his plan for the survey, which Dixon eagerly supported, and the two began to slowly discuss the plan with more and more people.

• 44:36Danielle LaRock?

  And it's just goes to show, it's not always what you know, but who you know, that really propel things. Because if he didn't have these connections, this may not have gone anywhere. Even if it was a brilliant idea and something that was going to change everything for the Park Service. Some expressed doubt that George could lead such an ambitious effort. Because number one, it has never been done before, so it's unprecedented in that way, but he's just, he's 25 years old.

• 45:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  And he's only 5'4".

• 45:05Danielle LaRock?

  And he's 5'4", he's short. So how could he possibly?

• 45:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  How could short people do anything?

• 45:10Danielle LaRock?

  Well, in response to those concerns, the pair agreed that Dixon, with his additional years of experience, should be the face of the operation. And others worried that the National Park Service lacked the funds to finance the survey, just point blank. But George, in response, said, okay, I'll pay for it then. So he funded the entire operation, pulling money from his inheritance to create a private trust.

• 45:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Short man with big pockets.

• 45:37Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, and such a passion for like what he believed in. It's like, he works for the federal government and you would think that they would fund something like this. And he's like, well, if you can't, I think it should be done. So I'll pay for it.

• 45:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  If you don't have the money, then I will use my own inheritance that was supposed to be for my livelihood for the cause.

• 46:03Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it's like, explain to me what a teacher faces every single day.

• 46:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Danielle LaRock?

  Well, with all of these provisions in place, the Wildlife Survey was officially greenlit by Horace Albright, who is now the Director of the National Park Service. Remember, two years earlier, he was the one who advocated for him when that other guy was like, you're too short. So he had advocated for him, like, we can't lose this guy. He's gonna do big things. And here it is paying off. So now here he was signing off on his plan to launch the most ambitious research project the National Park Service had ever seen and probably smiling to himself, knowing he advocated for the right guy. You know, like, we made the right guy famous.

• 46:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, told you.

• 46:49Danielle LaRock?

  Type of thing. Yeah. The Wildlife Survey team was composed of three people, George, Dixon, and Ben Thompson. Thompson had been working as a waiter at the Awani Hotel in Yosemite when he initially met George. And over the years that he met him, those two or so years that they became friends, George actually convinced Thompson to pursue a zoology masters at Berkeley. He's like, I see great things in you and you can do, you can like, really make it. And he encouraged him to pursue his higher education. As the three men prepared for a summer full of fieldwork, George remembered the 72 blown out tires that he suffered on his previous road trip and probably dreading changing another tire.

• 47:34Danielle LaRock?

  He spent top dollar on a field car. And in May of 1930, they set out on a journey that would last three whole years. And, you know, I love a road trip with you. We were just talking about doing one. We've been on so many trips together, but I don't know if I could do three straight years.

• 47:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Why? What's wrong with me?

• 47:55Danielle LaRock?

  You just need so many snacks all the time.

• 47:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  You're not wrong.

• 48:00Danielle LaRock?

  You know, and you lose your phone like every fifteen to twenty minutes somehow in the car. You're like, hold on, I have to check for my phone. Can you check my location?

• 48:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  That happened one time for a duration of thirty minutes.

• 48:16Danielle LaRock?

  Happens a lot. And also, I just, three years away from home is just too far too long, I think.

• 48:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Right. Nothing's wrong with me.

• 48:27Danielle LaRock?

  It's not you.

• 48:31Danielle LaRock?

  It's not you as a person. It's me. It's not you, it's me.

• 48:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Right. That's what they keep telling me, and I just don't get it.

• 48:39Danielle LaRock?

  So the Wildlife Survey would eventually visit fourteen national parks, and in each park, they sought to gather a broad perspective on the issues facing wildlife. They met with park superintendents to evaluate different park management actions and interviewed what they refer to as old timers in the area to understand how things used to be in whatever park they were at and what changes they've noticed on the landscape. It was through these conversations that George and the team would identify issues in each park and begin to collect data, which is just so, like, something that we see also, we just saw. So we didn't mention, but we just returned from a trip to Voyagers National Park.

• 49:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Danielle LaRock?

  Where we did a weekend with the Voyagers Wolf Project. And a lot of what we learned that weekend was just this collaborative approach that the project has with the residents that live in and around the park and are living and working and recreating with and trying to ranch among wolves and how different coexistence measures either do or don't work, or they just listen to the locals about their frustrations or their worries or whatever, and that is integrated into how they operate and how the project is run.

• 50:01Danielle LaRock?

  And we see that over and over, not only with different, like, wildlife things, but even the park itself. We were talking to some people who work at the headquarters at Voyagers, and they were, you know, showing us some archival footage and materials about how, when the park was established in nineteen seventy-five, like, some of the frustrations that the locals had with. Either selling their property or having different parcels of land dedicated to the park that now is no longer available for private use and it's now public and just kind of the conversations that we kind of take for granted, like, well, of course, you talk to the locals. Why wouldn't you? It's like back here, back then, that was not something that was ever considered.

• 50:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And I mean, even still today is a struggle throughout. So seeing it incorporated is actually big, huge steps that are being made to talk, because I mean, especially when you are, of course, we're huge advocates for preserving land in national parks, but you have to, if it's impeding on someone's livelihood and it's taking away their land and it's interrupting where they live, they need to be at a bare minimum, a part of the conversation.

• 51:12Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, exactly. Well, his biggest thing, I mean, of course, this is kind of centered on wildlife management, this whole project. So he's going into the records at different park headquarters throughout their trip to kind of get a better understanding of what they're doing in regards to wildlife management and predator control specifically. And at the Grand Canyon, he discovered records in the park headquarters that tracked the number of animals killed by the national park staff in that park since 1922. And it read 293 coyotes, 75 wild cats, 19 fox, two mountain lions, and one wolf. And he knew immediately off

• 51:53Danielle LaRock?

  the bat that this number was almost certainly an understatement. Since the creation of parks in 1916, rangers had been allowed to supplement their income by trapping and selling animal pelts. And the park service wasn't the only agency involved in predator control. The U.S. Biological Survey, a predecessor to the Fish and Wildlife Service, had spent the previous 20 years targeting predators across public lands throughout the West, pioneering in particular, the widespread use of poison bait traps. And this was kind of, to George, he viewed this as not only, like, it probably upset him at a fundamental level, but also he recognized that the absence of predators revealed that the parks were incomplete. He believed, and rightfully so, that these predators were indicators of

• 52:38Danielle LaRock?

  a healthy environment and should be afforded the same protections the National Park Service gave to other species. Yet no matter how much George disagreed with the practice, he never reprimanded or chastised Those he spoke to, like the rangers who would hop out of their car while driving him around to shoot a coyote running across the road. The wildlife team would eventually make recommendations on how to address these problems. But while in the field, George was simply there to observe and to listen.

• 53:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  That would be so hard for me. And I feel like that's so hypocritical to be employed in a park to protect the area. And I know that there's a different view at this point in time, but you're there to protect these species in the land that lives here. And you are also privy to a lot of information that other people aren't, or say, just an average hunter who is out. You're privy to a lot of information of where these animals are and you're just allowed to like go off in your own time and go exactly where you know that they are and wait for them and hunt them.

• 53:39Danielle LaRock?

  And not only allowed, but encouraged.

• 53:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, we'll pay you. The government is not only employing you, but they're going to pay you for every predator pelt that you bring back. Like, so there's incentive as well.

• 53:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  And especially in a time where you have to provide for your families and stuff. You're like, oh, this is great. I'm in the place I love. These animals are at my, like, they're right here. They're right here. And

• 54:03Danielle LaRock?

  And at this time, they're also viewed as more of nuisance animals. And I mean, there's a lot of different reasons that kind of play into the larger picture here, but George immediately was kind of like, okay, this isn't right. We need to fix this a little bit. But the whole purpose of this trip, this multi-year trip, was to just gather the information and observe the practices for what they were. And yeah, in the years to follow, he would take all that data and make some recommendations on how to better operate and change practices and stuff. But in the moment, he was simply just there to hear people out and see what was going on.

• 54:44Danielle LaRock?

  And it takes a lot of restraint, especially with somebody who disagrees with what you're doing.

• 54:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Right, exactly. Yeah, it's moments like these and stories like these and these. I just think if people had taken the time to actually talk to indigenous people way back when, not even that far, and even now, there's so much we could have known and learned about our land, or our land, their land, and, and not made so many mistakes to eradicate species and ruin landscapes. And it's just, it's interesting now, having these conversations where they're like, they were, they were thought of these nuisance species where if you had, I guarantee, if you had spoken to any indigenous people before that, you would have learned that they're

• 55:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  not a nuisance, that they have a real, a real meaning to being here. And I just think of that when you're talking about it, like, huh.

• 55:42Danielle LaRock?

  It's a real missed opportunity to say it very plainly, you know?

• 55:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it's just, you could have avoided so much death and ruining and, and even just, I mean, even just being here in the first place. We obviously did a lot of stuff, but if there had just been open conversations that were happening, all of this could have been avoided. So then when you're talking about how George is just, he's just listening and hearing and then later has these conversations, it's kind of bringing it back to like, oh, someone who knows how to have a conversation.

• 56:12Danielle LaRock?

  Right, yeah.

• 56:21Danielle LaRock?

  One mystery that the group hoped to understand was the shockingly low survival rate of swan chicks, which was a serious obstacle to their recovery. One day, Dixon spotted one possible explanation, and that was ravens. Ravens would constantly harass the swans, swooping into their nests while the adults were away, leading them to fly back and chase the ravens off. George and Thompson spent a few nights at another lake nearby and observed a raven cracking into an egg without alerting the nearby adults, flying off with its contents. To see the aftermath, the two biologists stripped to their underwear and carefully weighted up to the nest itself a large mound of dried plants, three feet tall and six feet around. Five eggs remained, all safe and sound as they should be.

• 57:03Danielle LaRock?

  They took measurements and went back ashore unnoticed by the parents. Through work like this, they hope to lay out a foundation for a recovery plan for trumpeter swans. Understanding their habitat needs and the threats they face would allow parks to better protect them going forward. And sprinkled in with their detailed notes of wildlife surveys were glimpses into the lives of the biologists themselves during their three-year-long trip. Their work was often challenging, getting up at four or five in the morning and hiking at far distances. But it also had its rewards, spending months outdoors, camped out in some of the most spectacular landscapes this country has to offer. While on a trip through Mesa Verde, George's journal reads, "These four days were spent as happily as any I have ever known.

• 57:47Danielle LaRock?

  The desert scenery for color and fantastic formations surely must be as fine as any in the world." Even Dixon, whose notes were usually pretty like dry and direct and very clinical almost, leaned towards some like flowery descriptions and bordering on poetry when in awe of the natural world. For example, he said, "Turning their tremendous spread of white wings against the blue waters of the lake, it made a picture never to be forgotten." In each park they visited, George encountered problems that we still see in certain locations today. And specifically, I want to hone in on one in particular, and that is park boundaries. There was no relationship between the park boundaries and the natural boundaries of habitats.

• 58:32Danielle LaRock?

  In Mount Rainier, for example, deer, elk, and mountain goats flourished in the high elevation park throughout the summer. But come winter, they moved down to lower elevations, down into the Forest Service lands, which didn't afford the same protections as within the park, and many were immediately shot once they stepped out of the park boundary protections. These species had been long targeted with landowners aiming to keep them off their grazing lands for nearby cattle. But by the 1930s, people displaced by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl had also set up camp nearby. Depending on the game animals for income and sustenance. As a result, the protections that Mount Rainier provided were limited, if not useless,

• 59:13Danielle LaRock?

  to these animals, especially year round. I mean, they only spend part of their time within the protections of the park. The problem George described is that the park boundaries were drawn for political reasons with no considerations for natural habitat boundaries. And this problem was not limited to that specific park. It reared its head in other places, too, like Mesa Verde in Yellowstone. George, probably sighing in exasperation, wrote of the problem in his report, referring to Mesa Verde in particular, saying, quote, "On the south and west sides of the park, there are no present natural boundaries. It is like a house with two sides left open." The wildlife team began to argue that parks should be biographically self-sufficient

• 59:54Danielle LaRock?

  units, containing enough habitat for their wildlife to survive year round. When necessary, parks should acquire additional lands and new parks should only be created with this particular goal in mind. For all of these reasons, George and Thompson were sent to South Florida in the fall of 1930 to survive the region's wildlife as part of an evaluation of a newly proposed national park, which happened to be the Everglades. George's notes from this trip are surprisingly sparse, likely because on this particular trip to the Everglades, he contracted malaria. Oh, no. And for somebody who, I didn't have malaria, but I had dengue and it was an off on. I would not be writing in my journal. Let me just tell you that.

• 1:00:37Danielle LaRock?

  And for him, it proved to be quite debilitating. And it was so bad, in fact, that he couldn't make it back to California as planned. And their road trip stopped at a hospital in Phoenix. But while laid up in the hospital, he made a surprising choice. He decided to get married. In the hospital? Yep. George had met Bernice Ray, whom everyone called Bee, when they were both students at UC Berkeley. Two years younger than George, the two were engaged in July of 1930 and had planned to get married months down the road. However, after a phone call, they moved it up. Bee and her family rushed to Phoenix and they were married. Right there in the hospital.

• 1:01:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Did they think he was gonna die?

• 1:01:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I don't know if they were like, and I've heard of that before, you know, people getting married when somebody has a terminal illness or they know that the other person doesn't have long. So whether they were just impatient, were concerned for his, you know, his welfare, his fate, or especially because he had family inheritance and they wanted to make, he wanted to make sure that B was set legally. If he, if something happened to him.

• 1:01:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  It feels like an emergency marriage, not that they didn't want to be married. But to do it in that way, it feels like it's an emergency, like they're worried, they're really worried.

• 1:01:52Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, exactly. So he just wanted to make sure that she was set and he did.

• 1:01:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's really nice.

• 1:01:59Danielle LaRock?

  After three summers of constant fieldwork, he and the team turned to publishing their findings in nineteen thirty-two. While their work would continue for another year, they compiled their findings and recommendations into a publication titled Fauna One. In it, they addressed predator control, trumpeter swans, and park boundaries. They discussed overgrazing, a common problem caused by elk and deer populations left unchecked by native predators. And they investigated the ever-popular bear feeding shows. Thompson would even explore the creation of bear-proof food boxes, likely the earliest iteration of this idea. Like something we are so, we come to expect to be provided for us when we recreate in places in bear country.

• 1:02:44Danielle LaRock?

  Whether it be black bear, grizzly bear, whatever, like that's common practice now. But here he's like, hey, maybe we should perhaps try this crazy new idea.

• 1:02:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Crazy idea. You know, all ideas are crazy at first, right?

• 1:02:57Danielle LaRock?

  Their recommendations, keeping wildlife wild and limiting human impacts, impacts presented an entirely new future for the National Park Service. On paper, Joseph Dixon was the leader of the Wildlife Survey, because remember, they're like, you should be the face of this because people don't like me because I'm short and inexperienced. But everyone knew that George was always recognized as its driving force. George, through his boots-on-the-ground conversations with the public, specifically those who were most connected to the spaces he was studying, recognized that research would not be enough to affect change. They needed to get people on their side as their ideas about wildlife management were not always popular. Ben Thompson would later say of this time,

• 1:03:38Danielle LaRock?

  "There were a number of longtime employees, superintendents, chief rangers, and others who liked the good old days of predatory animal control and corralling the ungulates so the public could see them, feeding the bears at feeding stations and making a big show of it. There was all of that to overcome, and to make progress with that and have them still like you was quite an accomplishment. Joe and I didn't have the kind of personality for it, and we knew it. But George did have it. It was a gift of his character." Thanks to George and his team's efforts, National Park leadership would formally adopt FANA-1's recommendations as official policy, transforming the agency itself.

• 1:04:19Danielle LaRock?

  It was sent by mail to every park superintendent with custom recommendations for each park, including an endorsement from 27 prominent scholars, which is just such a huge accomplishment

• 1:04:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Danielle LaRock?

  to affect change not only in one specific area, but throughout the agency.

• 1:04:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, this is standard now. This is standard protocol for what we do as an agency nationwide.

• 1:04:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, he standardized the protocol.

• 1:04:47Danielle LaRock?

  For any one of us, that publication and the changes it served as a catalyst for would probably, would have been just like more than enough.

• 1:04:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, I did it.

• 1:04:59Danielle LaRock?

  We did it, Joe. And just hang up your hat and, um...

• 1:05:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  But he was just getting started.

• 1:05:04Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, for him, the work was just beginning. The success of the Wildlife Survey helped win the support for his next goal, the creation of a wildlife division within the National Park Service. This division would oversee the continued and expanded efforts of wildlife research within national parks. And there was no doubt in anyone's mind who should be the leader of that division. In March of 1933, President Herbert Hoover signed off on George's appointment as the head of the new National Park Service Wildlife Division. He, Bea, and their two daughters Charmaine and Pamela packed up their Berkeley home and moved to DC. Once there, he was able to hire a small staff, including his friends Dixon and Thompson, to continue research around the country.

• 1:05:48Danielle LaRock?

  For the very first time, the wildlife staff were paid directly by the Park Service. Because remember, he had been paying, he had been doing everything from the get-go out of his own pocket, which is crazy. In this new administrative role, he oversaw a period of significant change in the National Park Service and not just in wildlife policy. FDR was elected and his New Deal brought money and manpower to the national parks. The CCC sent thousands of unemployed young men out to build campgrounds, facilities, and roads. And while the National Park Service welcomed this influx of funds, the resulting development projects often ran in opposition of George's position as a Wildlife Director. And just because he now led a Wildlife Division didn't mean he had

• 1:06:32Danielle LaRock?

  a seat at every table when it was coming to making these decisions. But sure enough, he made his way into the room. In one example, he heard about a project that was going to essentially pave a certain portion of the road near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. And he had been there quite a number of times doing different surveys and gathering different data. So he knew that area and that dirt road in particular that they were trying to pave. And he knew that it spanned across a largely intact, remote habitat between the Canyon Village and Havasu by Point, an area that had been overgrazed and was in need of restoration. Yet he only heard about this road project after it had been approved.

• 1:07:16Danielle LaRock?

  Seeking to limit the impact of park planning efforts, he wrote a letter of protest to the director, making the case that the road should be kept as a wilderness trail for automobiles. Unpaved, he argued, it would both preserve habitat and provide a fantastic experience for any tourist who, quote, "would like to do a little exploring on their own as a real wildlife trip." The engineers and the architects pushed back on him right away. George sent Thompson to the area to collect detailed data on the impacts that the road would have. And after considerable back and forth, it was agreed that the road would be modestly improved. But kept as a dirt one. And from then on, the wildlife division had a seat at every planning meeting. And this was just one of the many ways that George steadily shaped the National Park

• 1:08:00Danielle LaRock?

  Service culture. It's just like he's right there in the mid. He's like, okay, I hear you. And I understand your concerns and your wants and needs and desires. But also, like, this is a problem. And it's not like my way or the highway. And I think that's when we see so many butting of heads. When it's like, no, we have to do everything my way. And there's no room for consideration of the other person or perspective. And he was just so good at coming to compromise, that it made people more open to considering a collaborative effort and maybe a new option. It doesn't have to be A or B, it could be C.

• 1:08:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Totally. And he's also coming at it from a, it feels like, and you've talked about this already, but that nobody's really looking at this from the wildlife perspective. So he's coming in and he's like, I see what you want. But what about the wildlife that's here? How can we, how can we fix this? So we're actually doing something that's beneficial to them as well. And when you were talking about the roads and driving them and stuff, you see those dirt roads in a lot of national parks now. And I wonder if this was like, kind of a

• 1:09:09Danielle LaRock?

  Well, he was like, yeah, I understand you want a road here to get tourism to these places and to provide access to people, which brings in dollars to the park, because people need to access the park. However, like, can we just keep it as a dirt road and not pave it? You know, it's just like, and that's just one example. I mean, there's so many. But that's just one that points to kind of his approach to coming into conversations and getting somewhere with them, instead of just arguing around and around.

• 1:09:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's a bad idea.

• 1:09:44Danielle LaRock?

  Or it's like, we're gonna actually close this whole area because the wildlife needs it. It's like, to the other side, they're like, okay, That's all well and good, but that doesn't provide opportunity for tourism. Yeah, which is paying for their protections. Right, right. The scope of his work had grown. While he continued to sport on the ground research, he began to make his case for wildlife conservation to larger and larger audiences. In 1934, he gave a heartfelt national radio address about the concerning decline of wild game across the country, published fauna two, a follow up to fauna one, and spoke at prominent conferences. Often, likely in a strategic move to make important connections, he prioritized relationships with the heads of other agencies,

• 1:10:26Danielle LaRock?

  like Bob Marshall, a Forest Service employee and prominent advocate for the growing wilderness movement. It was through relationships like these that he facilitated change, like his connection with Ding Darling, chief of the US Biological Survey, a collaboration which helped create the Red Rock Lakes Waterfowl Refuge in Montana, significantly expanding protected trumpeter swan habitat. For California National Park fans, you can think George. Pour out, pour one out for him here. Because he spearheaded the effort to create Kings Canyon National Park by working with the Sierra Club to coordinate an advocacy campaign and with photographer Ansel Adams, whom he'd met in Yosemite Valley years before. The pair organized an exhibition of Ansel's high Sierra photography,

• 1:11:11Danielle LaRock?

  which was displayed for Washington lawmakers, which inspired its preservation. And I think we hear about that a lot with Ansel Adams and how his photos really spoke to people who had never seen the area or, you know, just really was like, look at how beautiful this is. This should be protected. But I've, I've heard of that. I've never heard of George's part in it. And now it's very clear that it was an equal effort. And all of this by just 31 years old. Many who witnessed his rise, like former director Horace Albright, believed he would become director of the Park Service someday. And yet tragically, we know what happens next. On Tuesday, February 25th, 1936.

• 1:11:53Danielle LaRock?

  George Wright was killed in a car accident. Midway through the International Commission on the southern border, the National Park Service had lost one of its brightest rising stars. His loss sent reverberations felt by many. His former supervisor in Yosemite, Carl Russell, said, "George was at once my greatest inspiration and best sustaining friend in the office. I feel we have lost the conservationists in our official ranks who really combined understanding with action. I can think of no one who can replace George." And Bob Marshall said, "Probably more than any one person, George Wright was responsible for bringing about the healthy change in the general attitude towards the wildlife problem, which has recently developed.

• 1:12:37Danielle LaRock?

  He did not think merely in terms of keeping out roads or preventing lumbering or stopping hunting. He thought in terms of the primitive whole, just as he thought in terms of wildlife as a whole. No one could ever ask for a better friend." The Sunday after his death, B invited close friends over to the house where they put on George's favorite music and celebrated his life, then later went to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park and spread his ashes at Auntie's grave. Despite his short life, George Wright is widely known as the father of scientific research in the National Park Service. His view of wildlife and wilderness as a vast interconnected system rather than separate units shifted how national parks operated and changed what we believe parks can and should be.

• 1:13:22Danielle LaRock?

  His friendly approach, building relationships wherever he went, sped up the adoption of ideas that were, to many at the time and even now, considered radical. However, his absence in the Wildlife Division was felt in the years to come. Parks saw continued emphasis on the development through CCC projects, and without George present, the emphasis on wildlife declined in the years to come. Lowell Sumner, a biologist that worked under him and continued on after his passing, described the following years in the Wildlife Division, saying, "No one else had George Wright's ability to placate and win over the opposing school of thought, which increasingly was coming to feel that the biologists were impractical, were unaware that parks are for people,

• 1:14:04Danielle LaRock?

  and were a hindrance to large-scale plans for park development." Considered one of George's most significant contributions, the book Fauna One remained somewhat of a working bible for park staff biologists. But with the arrival of World War II, it went out of print. And its lessons for a time seemed to go with it. But George's influence and legacy survived. And if you know where to look, his name is honored in the very things that he loved the most. After the war, several mountains were named in his honor. One in Denali, where he once discovered the surfbird nest. And one in Big Bend. And in the 1960s, the Park Service began to think critically about the issues George had first raised during his time, forming committees to kickstart scientific research within parks.

• 1:14:48Danielle LaRock?

  Well, some are still working for the Park Service repeatedly insisted that George Wright had all this figured out years ago. Someone totally ahead of his time. By the 1980s, two Park Service biologists who recognized how much they owed to George created the George Wright Society. A nonprofit whose mission is to quote, promote research, the synthesis of information, and the useful dissemination of results to management, policymakers, and the public, in whose hands the ultimate fate of parks, historic sites, and reserves will rest. Fauna One still exists today and you can access it for free online. And if you are more of a visual person, photos taken by him, Dixon, and Thompson during that three-year wildlife survey

• 1:15:32Danielle LaRock?

  have been digitized for the first time and are available for all to see on the National Park Service History Collection website. George Wright's legacy as a boundary-breaking and pioneering wildlife biologist is something we can all admire. Yet, an enduring part of his story is wondering how things might have gone differently had he lived longer. What would be different today if his vision, his passion, and his personality were not cut short? We will never know, but one thing is for certain. We owe a lot to George Wright and all that he did to protect our parks. And that is the story of George Melendez Wright.

• 1:16:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's so interesting because I feel like you don't really see his name very often in comparison to a lot of other people. So it's been really interesting to learn about him and all of his contributions. And it is a question, I mean, how you ended that, if what else might, might he have implemented during his life if he had the opportunity?

• 1:16:28Danielle LaRock?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, he certainly served as a catalyst for change that. We see in our experiences in parks today and the questions that he had are still being contemplated and mulled over and thought out today on a larger scale. But yeah, I mean, going through the research for this and just the friends and connections that he had, you're right, their names I've heard of before. Bob Marshall, Ansel Adams, even Grinnell, even though it was the wrong Grinnell. But still.

• 1:17:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't know if that counts.

• 1:17:03Danielle LaRock?

  It kind of counts because when I did, when I looked at him, I did, I was thinking of somebody else. But the work that this, this guy did, I had heard of before. I just didn't know his name. So just either their work or who they were, I had heard of before, but never, never George. So now people know about him. And if you want to read more about him and his life and all the things that he did, I mean, it can, it goes on and on. The book, George Melendez Wright, The Fight for Wildlife and Wilderness in the National Parks by Jerry Emery is a fan. That's the book I found in Rocky Mountain National Park.

• 1:17:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  Gotcha.

• 1:17:40Danielle LaRock?

  That gave me the idea for this episode. And it's so interesting because not only is the book great, I mean, it's very interesting and it highlights just all the amazing things that he did. But the author has a personal connection to George. So he was, he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, same school that George went to all those years ago. But when he was there and he was a student, he met and fell in love with one of George's granddaughters.

• 1:18:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, no way.

• 1:18:10Danielle LaRock?

  And he got married to her and like he had, because he was, I think he was a geologist or studying geology. So he was in the natural sciences and had known about George, right? Like in passing, but it's through his partner and his wife that he was like, wait a second. What, who is, who was this guy? And he has all this, I mean, be, so be who is George's wife. I mean, she obviously became widowed in her thirties. She was very young and she did eventually get remarried. However, she kept all of George's field notes and books and notes and everything. So Jerry, the author of this book, had access to all of that. And clearly testimonial from his family.

• 1:18:56Danielle LaRock?

  His descendants. And of course, he did a bunch of other research and went to headquarter. I mean, he worked on this book for like almost a decade gathering information.

• 1:19:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's so cool that he dived into it, though.

• 1:19:06Danielle LaRock?

  That's really interesting. Cool, personal connection. And yeah, that's how he was really introduced to George Wright. And yeah, so it's a, it's a cool way to find interest in wanting to research somebody, not just because they were, they did so much and accomplished a lot, but because you now have this like familial connection to them.

• 1:19:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Danielle LaRock?

  So, yeah. Anyway, so yeah, that's Georgia's story. And again, I was saving it for a time like this to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and just recognize just the, the contributions that people throughout, you know, diversity is a strength and we want to recognize just everybody that has contributed amazing things to the National Park Service and George Wright was certainly one of them. So I will link the book in the episode description and post some fun pictures of him on his adventures. And thank you for listening.

• 1:20:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, thanks, everyone, for hanging out. Thanks for telling that story. We will see you next time. In the meantime, enjoy the view.

• 1:20:14Danielle LaRock?

  But watch your back.

• 1:20:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye, everyone.

• 1:20:16Danielle LaRock?

  Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark Book Club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark.

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