Dr. Larry Rymon

History of  Environmental Studies at ESU

By Larry M.  Rymon, Ph.D.

First Director of the ENVS program
Professor Emeritus
Department of Biological Science
East Stroudsburg University


Beginnings

    Upon my arrival at ESU in the fall of 1968 I became advisor to the “Nature Club” which we quickly converted to the “Biology Club” with support from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, AIBS.  This group became the nucleus of a larger interest group that would evolve into the Environmental Studies program.   Activism of all types was running strong across America at that time.  Civil Rights, Vietnam, Women’s Rights and many other elements of unrest dating back to free speech issues at U.C. Berkeley in 1964, set the stage for environmental activism.   Our students were ready to join the cause.

    In August 1969, when 400,000 young people gathered at Bethel, N.Y. for Woodstock, many of our ESU students attended. Some were enterprising and sold food to the masses.  In April, 1970, war protesting students at Kent State created international news when they were shot and killed by the National Guard.  These were the underlying factors that motivated my students to stand up for the “environment”.  All manner of environmental acts and laws were implemented following the formation of the EPA in 1970.  The Environmental Studies Institute was founded and the Environmental Studies major was initiated at ESU in 1972.
    Other issues drove local interest in the environment.  One in particular, the Tocks Island Project  was opposed by so many for so long, including Supreme Court Justice Wm. Douglas.  Proposals for the project were made in the late 1950's and gained much support from people affected by the 1955 flood.  Ecologists rapidly signed on to fight the Army Corps of Engineers and their efforts to take over the Delaware River Valley from the Water Gap to Port Jervis, N.Y.  A citizen’s organization, The Delaware Valley Conservation Association (DVCA) was founded in 1966 to protect the Upper Delaware River.  Much has been written about our successful fight to save one of the last free-flowing rivers in the eastern U.S. 
   A protracted struggle for the Valley was well underway by 1976 and the DVCA was gaining a strong voice in opposition to the project.  There was a complete lack of understanding by dam proponents of the complex and subtle ecological systems that would be lost forever if the dam was built.  I testified before the U.S. Congress, arguing that a reservoir flooding 12,000 to 18,000 acres of prime wildlife habitat could not be compensated for by the Corps of Engineers’ plan to create 800 acres of “mitigation” habitat at an unknown location.   Students accompanied me on many trips where we gave testimony.  Notable were Washington, D.C. before Sen. John Stennis, and Trenton, N.J. before the Delaware River Basins Commission.   Other locations were Philadelphia and Harrisburg.  The students learned a lot about environmental law, ethics and lobbying from these trips.  Several internships also resulted from these connections.


Thirty-five Years of Environmental Studies History at ESU

Some achievements accomplished during my years at ESU include:

Environmental Studies students were involved in all of this.

History of Internships

        One of my first interns was Sharyne Donfield in the fall of 1971.  She did her independent study with Trudy Hellman of Monroe County Planned Parenthood and Dr Sherwood Samet, Chief of staff at Pocono Hospital.  Her study involved time at the hospital and a review of birth control methods in the area.  The last I heard she was a practicing Oncologist in the Boston, Mass. Area.  The first student to receive a B.A. in Environmental Studies was Earl DeTurk in 1974.  He has been the Captain of this charter sailboat on Big Pine Key, Florida, for over twenty years. 

        Hundreds of other students would serve internships as the program grew over the years.  They served from coast to coast, in Canada, and overseas.  At first it was a local endeavor, but later the number of cooperating agencies increased to include municipal, state, and federal environmental agencies and numerous industrial placements.  All of this led to permanent positions ranging from lab technicians, environmental field work, agencies such as the EPA, DER, DEP, Peace Corps, etc.

        When I think back to the early days I always cite my original idea for the program and internships.  I borrowed the concept from a professor at Dartmouth.  In 1993 we were selected for a listing in “Education for the Earth - A Guide to Top Environmental Studies Programs” published by Peterson’s Guides, Princeton, New Jersey.  ISBN 1-560-79-164-0.  It was great to be recognized as one of 100 leading undergraduate environmental programs at Colleges and Universities all across the United States. 

Endangered Species: River Otter Re-introduction

        In the fall semester of 1972, I taught Wildlife Biology and an undergraduate student, Tom Eveland, was interested in wildlife field research. He later became my Graduate student and we started looking at the river otter and found that little research had been conducted on this species.  Tom got his B.A. in 1975 and M.S. in 1978.  He later completed his Ph.D. and taught at colleges in the Lehigh Valley area.  During his field work from 1976-78 we developed a number of pioneering methods for trapping, immobilizing and handling wild river otters in the field.  Up until that time no one had done any scientific trapping and in-depth study of this species.
 
     It was during Eveland’s course of study that new options for internships would develop.  Several undergraduates completed internships with Tom, and that pattern continued throughout the years.
 
    One of these was Tom Serfass, who, like so many of my majors, was uncertain about his future and had just transferred from a disappointing year at Penn State.  He would go on to continue Eveland’s work and also get his M.S. doing otter research.  He finished his graduate work with a Ph.D. at Penn State and now teaches at Frostburg State University where his specialty is endangered species.  He is recognized as a world authority on river otters and he and I have co-authored several papers on that subject.  It seems safe to say that the Pennsylvania River Otter Research Program was a major success and became a model for otter reintroduction worldwide.

    The Osprey Reintroduction Program began in 1980.  Another graduate student, Charles Schaadt, came to me as a Marine Vietnam vet following his graduation from Northampton Community College.  He was not sure college or grad school would be in his future.  It turned out that he was an excellent student and got his B.S. which led to his M.S. with the Osprey project.  Like the Otter program, we were pioneers in the area of reintroduction.  No one had attempted the capture, translocation, and hand rearing of nestling ospreys as a method of restoring an extirpated population.  We based our work on that done by Tom Cade with Peregrine Falcons at Cornell.

    After Schaadt completed his M.S. he went on to McGill University in Canada for a Ph.D.  He now teaches at the Dubois campus of Penn State.
  
    The program was a success and by the end of the translocation, over 300 young were raised.  As of 2006, over 60 pairs of osprey are distributed across the state, up from zero in 1979.
 
    Much of this early work was done by ESU interns who were paid from grant money that I had obtained.  Up to 22 students participated in one year, covering three areas of the Poconos. Other locations were at Tioga Hammond in the north central part of the state, and Moraine State Park, near the Ohio border.  Bruce Fortman and Brian Mummert, and several other grad students, got their M.S. degrees conducting osprey research.  Larry Houghton completed his M.S. in 1995 and went on to get a Ph.D. at Virginia Tech.  Patricia Rudinsky conducted a sexing and aging study of ospreys for her M.S. degree and went on for further study in Alaska.  A Mexican student, Xicotencatl Vega, received his M.S. in 1993 after conducting research on the development of a new national park in Mexico.  I visited his study area in the Sierra Madres in 1992.  He teaches and conducts research at Sinaloa University and is working on his Ph.D. at the University of Madrid.   

    A number of papers and publications related to many of these studies were published.   The Osprey Reintroduction program was documented in a film “Return From Forever”, which  was produced in 1989 and premiered at East Stroudsburg University, and later shown overseas in Eilat, Israel at the International Raptor Conference.  It was also shown on numerous occasions on ESPN TV nationally.  Funding for the film’s production was provided by the Wild Resource Conservation Fund, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and the Metropolitan Edison Electric Co.  Other support came from Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania and ESU.  The project helped link scientific research,
education, industry and government agencies.  I made professional paper presentations  across the U.S. and in Spain, Israel, Italy, Mexico, and Canada.   Graduate students accompanied me on several of these trips.

Endangered Species:  Bald Eagle Research

In 1968 I started surveying the Upper Delaware River Valley for signs of wintering Bald Eagles.  None were found.  Jacquelyn Katzmire began her M.S. study based on wintering bald eagles in the Delaware River Valley in 1983.  She completed her M.S. in 1989 and was assisted by Allan Ambler who would later receive his M. S.  Both now work for the National Park Service.

Retirement

    Upon retirement in 1997, my wife Barbara and I chose to move to Sequim, WA.  This is where the mountains meet the Puget Sound and the mild climate suits us well.  We have abundant salmon streams, a resident elk herd, lots of migratory birds, and believe it or not, less precipitation than Phoenix. 

  I have continued my interests in all of these species.  I still attend professional conferences and have just had a paper published in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Raptor Research.  This describes the nesting activity of bald eagles at the Power Plant in Portland, PA. 

  I have been active in the local chapter of the Audubon Society and have been Conservation Chair and Vice-President.  Barbara and I have traveled around the U.S., including Alaska, since retirement.  In 2000 we revisited New Zealand, and in 2002 we visited Ecuador, the Amazon, and the Galapagos Islands.  Lately, we have commuting to and fro between Seattle and JFK to see our daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in Long Island, NY.

For further reading on the history of local environmental issues, I recommend a couple of books and other sources:

  1. Stutz, Bruce.  Natural Lives - Modern Times     People and Places of the Delaware River, Crown Publishers, Inc.  N.Y. 1992 ISBN 0-517-58225-2.  This book has depth and includes much on the Tocks Island issue and one chapter about my osprey work.
  2. Bertland, Dennis N. et al.  The Minisink.  Four County Task Force on the Tocks Island Project July 1975.  (Look for this one in Kemp Library)
  3.  In Defense of Rivers,  Barry Allen and Mina Hamilton Editors   Delaware Valley Conservation Association 1976 (also should be in ESU library)
  4. The ESU library should be a repository for Tocks files.  
  5. The archives of the Stroud Courier and the Pocono Record have many articles about our environmental activities at ESU.  Stories and many photos can be found about the original Earth Day, April 22, 1970, and annual Earth Days that followed. 
Posted: Spring, 2007