ALUMNIProfile
Steve Pauley '62 says admitting our mistakes with the environment should be the first step to making amends.
Of Stars and Ahupua'a
It's the failure of our generation," says Steve Pauley '62, "that we can't admit we've made mistakes with the environment. Now we have a chance to correct them, yet nobody has the courage."
A surgeon with a clinic in Ketchum, Idaho, Pauley has spent many years on environmental causes both close to home and close to his heart. Since leaving Southern California, he has tackled several issues: dark-sky ordinances in the Wood River Valley, increasing the salmon population in the Snake River, and restoring a native Hawaiian ahupua'a, or integrated agricultural-aquacultural production system, on Oahu.
While a senior at Pomona in 1962, Pauley took his first ecology course. "We didn't really know what it was. We studied the interactions of micro-systems, learned about weather patterns and water cycles, but we were ignorant then of what was really under way within the macro-systems of our planet."
Majoring in zoology, Pauley credits his enthusiasm for environmental causes--as well as his hobbies and career--to his Pomona education. "Pomona taught me not to be afraid of diving into new things," he says.
Guided by Stars
Pauley's interest in preserving the dark sky began with a voyage in 1979. With his wife, Marylyn '64, and their two sons, Pauley navigated a 42-foot sailboat by the stars. "There's nothing like steering under the stars," he says. "After all, before we had computers, sailors relied on the night sky."
Though Idaho meant leaving the sea and celestial navigation, Pauley's interest in astronomy soon became a crusade to preserve the beauty of the night sky through ordinances that "limit bothersome light such as glare, light trespassing, and sky glow."
Glare he defines as an inordinate amount of light. "Think of a gas station where light under island awnings is bright enough for a sunburn--even at night," he says. "Once a driver's eyes have adjusted to bright light, it's dangerous to pull onto a dark road."
Light trespassing, he explains, is when one person's light shines onto another person's property. "Think of a driveway motion lamp."
And sky glow, he says, is exactly what it sounds like. "It's light shining into the sky, diminishing one's view of an unobstructed, darkened sky."
Efforts to preserve the dark sky paid off last year when Ketchum's city council became the first in Idaho to pass an ordinance to restrict light pollution. Today, battling urban sprawl, Pauley continues to propose more intelligent city planning and zoning in nearby cities and counties. Ideally, Pauley wants cities to use full cut-off street lamps that direct 30 percent more light toward the ground.
A Fisherman's Cause
"I love fishing," says Pauley. "What else can I say?" Shortly after moving to Idaho, he found himself involved in another cause, preserving and restoring the natural salmon populations on Idaho's Snake River.
A member of Idaho Rivers United (IRU), Pauley has been working diligently to remove four dams on the Snake River. Among other things, he has made cases to local, state, and federal agencies and printed full-page ads for the cause in The New York Times.
"We want to get the river back to its natural state, and this is the way to do it," says Pauley. "We must get the attention of the Northwest Congressional delegation, and convince them that their plans have failed. The federal government spends $400 million per year on so-called fish recovery which has repeatedly failed, but it continues to spend our money." To remove the dams, he predicts, would cost less than $1 billion. "This plan shows far more benefit to the local river economy."
Connections
"Everything is connected," says Pauley. "The sky, the rivers, the earth, the ocean--everything." At the 1998 dedication of the Edwin W. Pauley Lab and Pauley-Pagen Science Library on Coconut Island off Oahu, Pauley made a point of describing to his granddaughters, Hannah and Brooke, the failure of his generation to care for the ecosystem.
Today, the lab and library on Coconut Island are a part of a larger project by the University of Hawaii and the Pauley Foundation to restore the natural ecosystem of the Hawaiian Islands and Pacific Rim. The Foundation is working with environmentalist-architect William McDonough and the Center for a Sustainable Future (CSF). "Our goal is to design a building that makes efficient use of electricity, energy, and water," says Pauley.
In addition to a marine lab on the island, CSF is working to obtain land to restore a traditional ahupua'a, a model for an integrated agricultural-aquacultural production system.
"Hawaiian royalty used to distribute land and ocean property to sub-royalty, requiring owners to make things sustainable," Pauley explains. "Native Hawaiians understood how everything is connected--from flowing mountain streams to irrigating lowlands to fish in the ocean--everything is interrelated."
The Next Generation
Pauley hopes that the CSF ahupua'a project will drive home many environmental issues central to the survival of natural habitat in Hawaii.
"Somehow, I still have hope for the next generation," says Pauley. "If people can appreciate the interconnectedness of everything, then, possibly, there is a hope for some restoration to be made for the environment. What we've done is criminal. We shouldn't be leaving a mess for our children and grandchildren, but rather, we need to admit our mistakes and make amends."
--Sarah Dolinar
