Grass: In Search of Human Habitat

5. Pleasing to the Eye

F I V E Pleasing to the Eye 23 Figure 5. The Rocky Mountains by Albert Bierstadt. Courtesy Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Can science measure what the eye finds pleasing? Artists generally say no. But in a way, that’s what I set out to do at Big Brown before the bulldozers razed the landscape. Those planning restoration wanted to understand what features of the habitat attracted animals. With this information , reclamation specialists could bring back the animals by restoring the contours, soils, trees, and grasses that had attracted them in the first place. So in a sense I needed to measure what the various species found pleasing to their eyes or, for some, their noses or ears. Into the field I went, carrying the paraphernalia for measurement. I mappedtheplantcommunitiesandwithineachcalculatedtheaveragesizes and densities of trees, the extent and variety of shrubs, the canopy coverage of weeds and grasses. On these plant community maps I systematically laid out locations for transects and stations at which I would take “samples ” of the animal populations, which usually involved calculating their densities or indexes to their densities. I identified and counted birds at “listening ”stations,censusedlargemammalsbyobservingtheirtracksonroadside strips of sand, and live-trapped small and secretive ground-dwellers. I jotted down sightings of mockingbirds and painted buntings singing from woodland edges and isolated trees. I scribbled notes about whitetailed deer and bobwhite quail at pasture-woodland margins. I watched killdeers come to barren ground and trapped cotton rats in tallgrass swards. Wood ducks and beavers lingered in the dark bottom woods of Pin Oak Creek. After several weeks of observation, I added up the numbers and described which kinds of animals preferred forest, savanna, meadow, marsh, brushland, or edges between two types. The measurement gave me something to go on, but a still larger question loomed. How does each species know its proper place, its best habitat ? How does it know where to establish its territory or build its nest? University training provided an evolutionary answer: That’s where it survives the best. But how do they know which places are best for their survival? The artist might gloat: We cannot know. The scientist might counter: Presumably by some hard-wiring in the brain, some neurological signal stimulated in many species by vision, that we cannot yet measure . Both might agree that some features of the habitat are particularly pleasing to the animals in question. 24 . . . . . Future historians may look back on the 1970s as the crowning glory of Manifest Destiny. The decade opened on unprecedented good times in the United States and indeed the entire industrialized world. Congress had signed off on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the waning days of 1969, a gesture that signaled more than any other the readiness of Americans to end their fixation on quantity and begin the quest for quality. Powerful pieces of legislation to protect water, air, soil, rare plants, and endangered animals came down the following decade. The rest of the developed world began to follow suit. People in urban environments had for many years been making money studying the kinds of habitats preferred by the human animal. They designed settings for houses, development complexes, golf courses, parks, and cities. They claimed insight into the ideal human habitat. They called themselves landscape architects. The same year that Congress approved NEPA, an unusual book started circulating among landscape architects. Arising from the same prosperity that emboldened people to ask about human impacts on animals, it urged architects to look beyond the conventional in planning human habitats . The book, bearing the title Design with Nature, came from a Scotsman turned American named Ian McHarg. He has since been compared with Frederick Law Olmstead, the undisputed father of American architecture, the designer of the Capitol Building grounds in Washington, D.C., and the planner of Central Park in New York City. Ian McHarg grew up in the countryside ten miles from the industrial grime of Glasgow. During World War II he served in a parachute brigade of the British Army. From this aerial vantage point, he saw the devastation of human habitats resulting from the pursuit of money and power. After the war, he came to the United States and enrolled at Harvard University , where he received graduate degrees in landscape architecture and city planning. Subsequently he founded the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania...