Reflection for the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy

On September 11, 2021, Jane Alexander accepted the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy’s Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award. This is her reflection upon the occasion:

A week ago I was walking a wild, windswept peninsula near my home in Nova Scotia—a place of rugged beauty ringed with huge granite outcroppings, and fields of wildflowers, cranberries, and crowberries where Whimbrels were feeding. A few of us have been trying to get this private land in conservation for almost a decade, unsuccessfully. But land is selling fast now in Nova Scotia since the pandemic—people looking for a safe place. The peninsula is the last large oceanfront property for sale in the province, and it was threatened with development. What would that mean for the Eider and Harlequin ducks that nestle in the rocky coves, the Northern Harrier that skims the grasses looking for rodents, or the purple fringed orchids that dot the low hills in August? Or for the local people who have walked the land for centuries? I urged the realtor again to push the seller to make it possible. And, just a few weeks ago to my utter surprise she agreed, coming down in price enough to make it possible for a conservation organization to take it on. Nothing is in writing yet, but with this promise I had hope. Then, just as I crested a rise near the end of the peninsula, there sitting on the highest boulder looking out to sea was a huge Bald Eagle, its white head glistening in the morning sun. What a wonderful sign! Everything was going to work out. Here was a bird that might have been extinct today had we not joined together 50 years ago to prevent it, had we not banned DDT. Here was land that would lose its rich variety, if it were not preserved intact.

Dillon Ripley was way ahead of everyone back in the late ’60s. He had been noting the decline of birds for some time and understood that the loss of any species was the loss of a living library—a lineage that went back millions and millions of years. There was too much we did not know about how we are all connected and affected by fragmentation when the connections are severed. It’s also how he saw the museums of the Smithsonian when he was director: not as stuffy warehouses of history but as living libraries informing our present and future. He made a huge mark with his presence in Washington from 1964 to 1984. Those were the years I was acting at Arena Stage and the Kennedy Center and bore witness. I only met Dillon Ripley once but it is indelible in my mind. One evening a friend, a curator, introduced me to him at one of the many large art receptions, or perhaps one of the openings of the eight new museums he created in those years. He looked down from his lofty height and told me how delighted he was to meet me and how much he had enjoyed the play I was currently in. I swooned and told him how much I admired him, how I too was besotted with birds and that I was overwhelmed by the 10 volumes of the Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan he’d written with Sálim Ali. He was kind, charming and altogether everything I’d imagined him to be. Then he was whisked away. That was over 50 years ago.

Dillon Ripley mentored many people through the years. One of them was a Smithsonian fellow named Tom Lovejoy, a young biologist who widened his scope to ecology to encompass the whole picture that Ripley saw. He coined the term “biological diversity” or “biodiversity” and began a project in Brazil to study the loss of species when landscapes are fragmented. That project is going to this day, giving continual statistics on decline of species. And Tom Lovejoy is, as you know, the president of the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy

But here is the connection to me, and to my fight today for habitats and biodiversity.

I returned to Washington, D.C., in the 1990s to be chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. A big party was given in my honor. I found myself on a silly stool surrounded by media pundits, and politicos who peppered me with questions I was not prepared to answer having been at the agency less than a month. Suddenly they all rose from their chairs and walked away, leaving me deflated and confused. A fine-looking man several feet away who had been observing the grilling came over, helped me up, and whispered in my ear, “Welcome to Washington; let me take you to lunch next week.” Tom Lovejoy became my mentor for the next four years and to this day still. He invited me to Brazil, and I stayed at his study site, Camp 41, as he taught me about biodiversity and how vital it was to life on our planet.

There is a clear through line from Dillon Ripley to me. The honor of this award is means the world to me. Thank you.