PrimalNature.org
A Tribute to Robert Zahner
Robert Zahner, professor emeritus of forest ecology at Clemson University, died September 1 in Highlands, North Carolina. He was an old-growth researcher and supporter and a friend to many of us. His achievements included receiving the Society of American Foresters' award for outstanding achievement in biological science in 1970 and he was a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, but he always had time to encourage individual researchers and conservationists. When asked to contribute a chapter to Eastern Old-Growth Forests: Prospects for Rediscovery and Recovery (1996), he did so unhesitatingly. In the chapter, he answers the question "How Much Old Growth Is Enough?" His conclusion: "all we can get, at every landscape level."
Rob Messick, North Carolina old-growth researcher, has written the following recollections of Zahner. "Bob was among the few surviving advocates of old growth work in the southern Appalachians who practiced before the conference in 1993 [in Asheville, North Carolina] that got a lot of us interested in the subject. Don McLeod was surely in this camp as well, and he passed-on in the fall of 2003. Bob Zahner was one who proved a person could have credentials (PhD), and still come out in favor of protecting what relatively little old forests we have left on public lands. His awareness of the need to look at the big picture (beyond just patches of existing old growth forests), and see forest issues at the landscape scale was legendary. He was a teacher and an inspiration to me. He always had a clear emphasis on the need to do field work, and to become familiar with forest conditions on the ground. He saw the latter as essential, and I resonated with this in my own practice.
His passing marks the end of an era in many ways. There are few people around who can be consulted about old-growth work in the region when it wasn't cool--as in the 1970s, 1980s. He supported the old growth forest work that the Western North Carolina Alliance did from 1994-2000 all the way.
I first learned of Bob's work from an article he submitted to Katuah Journal for issue 25. I did one of the illustrations that went with it when we published it. It was three meshed circles representing genetic diversity, species diversity, and habitat diversity, which he emphasized.
He was a great and courageous man, and he'll be missed." We at PrimalNature agree.
-- posted September 19, 2007