Big stories come from small creatures

Above: Bob Pyle and his wife, Thea, watch the world from their Grays River home. Bob Pyle has recently published his 17th book, "The Tangled Bank." Photo by Rick Nelson.

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The photo of author Robert Michael Pyle that appears on the back cover of his latest book, “The Tangled Bank, Writings from Orion,” shows him wearing a thick coat of moss.

But if moss doesn’t grow on moving objects, it didn’t grow on Pyle, for he has covered a lot of ground in 40 years as a naturalist. Including two educational coloring books for children, “The Tangled Bank” is Pyle’s 17th book, and he has two in the works at the moment.

A recognized authority on lepidoptra--butterflies and moths, he has crisscrossed North American and worked or taught in Asia, Australia, Central America and Europe.

He found his calling as a specialist in butterflies by trial and error.

He grew up in Aurora, Colo., near Denver, and came to the University of Washington in the mid-1960s to study oceanography. He soon gave that up (“too much math,” he said) and moved into biology. He found that that field had little focus on natural history, which interested him, so he switched to education. “Education courses drove me mad,” he said in an interview this week.

He encountered some of the “old naturalists” who were still teaching on the campus, and with their inspiration, put together a self-styled degree in Nature Perception and Protection that allowed him to pursue his interest in natural history.

After earning the bachelor degree, he enrolled in the UW School of Forestry to earn a master’s degree in Nature Interpretation. He ended up focusing on butterflies, and his thesis turned into a field guide to the butterflies and moths of Washington. The guide was the first to use colored photos, which Pyle provided.

Next came a Fulbright Scholarship that allowed Pyle to study in England. He joined a group dedicated to the conservation of butterflies, and when he returned to the United States, he found no such organization existed. Inspired by what he had seen in England, he initiated the founding of the Xerces Society that now leads conservation efforts in the United States.

This work earned him an invitation to study at Yale University, and he earned his doctorate degree there.

Butterflies have an important role in nature, Pyle said.

They are prolific pollinators and, like bees, play a role pollinating fruit and other crops. They are a food sources for other creatures, such as birds.

Their larvae play a role in evolution: They prey on plants, and this has helped plants develop their natural defenses against insect predators.

“The traits we value in crops, such as flavor, came from this,” he said. “Spices and oils all evolved as repellents to insects.”

Butterflies have been “one of the greatest sources ever of beauty and inspiration,” Pyle said. They’ve become a metaphor for resurrection and rebirth.

And like water invertebrates, they are an indicator species for the health of the environment.

“Because they have well known, specific requirements, they exemplify ecological change dramatically,” he said. “When they decline, it’s worth looking at the situation and the impact on us. “They are very, very important as ecological indicators.”

Pyle documented some of this change in the ecology in his book, “Chasing Monarchs.” For that book he followed migrations of monarch butterflies from the summer range in the United States to their winter resting grounds in the mountains of central Mexico.

In Mexico, illegal logging is destroying their winter grounds and forcing them to seek other places with the similar climate. In the US, the introduction of genetically engineered crops and eradication of milkweed, a major food source, is eroding their summer environment.

“They’re taking shots at both ends,” Pyle said. They may end up moving part of their range into Appalachia, he added.

Also, butterflies are very sensitive to chemicals in the environment.

“If it’s too toxic for them, it’s too toxic for us,” Pyle said.

Early in his career, Pyle worked with conservation groups to preserve butterflies and their habitat. One job took him to New Guinea to help develop a conservation plan for the giant bird wing butterfly. A result was that the indigenous population began raising the butterflies, one of the first butterfly farming programs in the world.

Another job with The Nature Conservancy brought him to Portland where he managed the organization's reserves in the Pacific Northwest.

“It was a lot of travel and dealing with a lot of problems,” Pyle said. He wasn’t able to get as much time in the field as he liked, and about 1979, he decided to move to Grays River to focus on writing.

“Writing gives me the greatest pleasure,” he said. “I came to Gray’s River to make a living, to have an impact on conservation of nature, and to make people think.”

He still travels a lot, teaching, lecturing, consulting and doing research for his writing.

“Once again, I’ was adapting,” he said. “With Thea’s (his wife) assistance, I’ve been able to make a living and stay here.”

He has been active locally in finding spots of old growth forest in the Willapa Hills, such as Hendrickson Canyon, the Willapa Divide, and the South Nemah Cedars, and getting them into conservation programs.

“These have all been cooperative; they’ve all involved fair compensation,” he added. “None of it has been a take.”

The parcels will maintain the ecological diversity that is lost in the cycles of industrial forestry. “With a longer rotation, we could begin to build back the diversity of the Willapa Hills,” he said.

Pyle wants his books to affect the way people think about nature and they way they behave in relation to nature.

“I hope they will be more aware in making decisions about land use,” he said. “The major part of what I accomplish, I will never know.”

Mankind itself faces many challenges, Pyle said, and the biggest of these is population growth.

“No biological system, or physical system, can function in a state of perpetual growth,” he said. “It always, invariably crashes, and that’s the first law of thermodynamics. Societies and political systems look for that perpetual growth, but a reflex point will come in the atmosphere and other systems that will be contrary to that which humans have adapted. “I think that unless population can stabilize and reduce, one, and two, a form of human economy can evolve that is not utterly dependent on permanent growth, then I think the species has a dim outlook,” he said.

Pyle continues to write about nature. “The Tangled Bank” is a series of short essays written and published the “Orion” and “Orion Afield” magazine.They explore, Pyle said, Charles Darwin’s contention that the elements of a vegetated bank, and by extension, the living world, are endlessly interesting and ever evolving.

Pyle said he hopes to encourage the readers, and people in general to take an interest in nature, and learn the names of the plants and animals around them.

“The important thing is for all of us to connect, as we’re able, learn a new bird a year, learn a new animal in your pond because it’s curious to you,” he said. “And if we all become better naturalists all the time, in other words, don’t close ourselves off to what’s going on around us, but recognize these living neighbors, and pay attention, then that’s going to be a better world than if we seal ourselves off with our little electronic devices.”

Pyle said he is writing these days a lot for his own pleasure. He is working on the ninth draft of a novel, and he’s finishing a book of poems.

“The Tangled Bank,” published by Oregon State University Press, is available at Redmen Hall in Skamokawa, Lucy's Books in Astoria and Time Enough Books in Ilwaco.