Jerry Emory's "George Meléndez Wright"

With four decades of conservation experience, Jerry Emory has written dozens of articles on the environment and science with a focus on Latin America and the Western United States. His books include San Francisco Bay Shoreline Guide and Monterey Bay Shoreline Guide.

Emory applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, George Meléndez Wright: The Fight for Wildlife and Wilderness in the National Parks, and reported the following:

Page 99 of George Meléndez Wright: The Fight for Wildlife and Wilderness in the National Parks not only announces the birth of Wright’s second daughter, but it also has a poignant quote mid-page, and then introduces a key issue he and his wildlife team worked on in the early 1930s in the western National Parks.

The page gives a clear, yet partial, snapshot of the book, covering some central themes, but by no means all. It highlights his family, which was very important to Wright. It displays his writing. And, the page ends with the topic of overgrazing in the parks.

Wright lost both of his parents by the time he was 8, and his brothers were sent to El Salvador to be raised. Wright was adopted by an elderly great aunt and stayed in San Francisco. “Auntie” died when he was 24, and Wright wanted to create his own family. His marriage, and the births of his two daughters, were monumental events for him. Wright died tragically at 31, but his young family eventually thrived and kept his memory alive.

The Wright quote demonstrates his close friendship with colleague Ben Thompson. Wright penned a note to an acquaintance in Yosemite lamenting the fact that he, Wright, couldn’t be in the field. “But next to being there myself it is nearly the same having Ben there,” he wrote. “We think and work so nearly along the same lines that it is like one person divided.”

Wright, Thompson, and another colleague, Joseph Dixon—all from U.C. Berkeley—were ground-breaking biologists in the Park Service in the 1930s. Wright created a Wildlife Survey for the western National Parks in order to introduce science-based management into the parks. At the time, feeding bears garbage for “shows” was common. Ramshackle zoos were kept by some parks, and large animals were corralled for easy viewing by visitors. Hundreds of thousands of predators had been killed in and around the parks by the government between 1916 and 1930, including over 8,300 wolves and 325,000 coyotes. Wright wanted to end that practice. The national parks were out of balance, and Wright knew it. Another major management problem, introduced on page 99, was overgrazing. Countless sheep and cattle were allowed to roam in the parks untethered. Wright’s effort to address all of these issues, and more, were mostly successful, though many persist to this day.

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--Marshal Zeringue