ON BEING A NATURAL HISTORY SCIENTIST
            Scientific information begins with research and data collection. The Illinois Natural History Survey has more than 200 professional researchers and support staff in nine field stations throughout the state and several buildings on the University of Illinois Champaign campus. About this staff, Stephen Forbes said in 1958, “Without this class of workers, devoted to science for its own sake, no solid and valuable progress in science is possible. From them comes the initiative, the incitement.”
            Professionals look into the science of uncovering the evolutionary history of organisms and applying that to their classification; making inventories that tell what kinds of species and how many live in an area; studying native habitats; focusing on individual declining or invasive species; examining human dominated ecosystems; documenting habitat loss and overexploitation; and providing data to balance sustainable alternative energy production with conservation concerns.
            Contrary to the stereotypical scientist in a lab coat in a laboratory with bubbling test tubes, natural history survey scientists collect data in the field dressed in jeans and long sleeved shirts. They go to their laboratory with tape measures, nets, plant presses, jars, bags, traps, PVC measuring squares, and a variety of other implements to collect data.  When they return their clothes reek of insect repellent and sunscreen, there is usually a trail of dirt through the clean hallways of our buildings, and our data pages are smudged with stains or warped from the humidity. They leave smiling and return laughing and joking. One survey scientist quipped: “The best day in the office is far worse than the worst day in the field.” Susan Post, MASTER NATURALIST, Outdoor Illinois, Summer 2008.
Survey scientists do whatever it takes to collect data. Post says they know “what it’s like to spend a frigid night in an open boat shocking fish, crawling through wet, dark cave passages as the sound of thunder rolls through the blackness, staring numbly in the hot, close forest at that last quarter-meter transect of the day, or summiting remote mountain passes in central Asia with nothing between us and disaster but a cranky, aging truck. Yet, it’s important to remember that field biologists (scientists) are just people after all, but people who are living their dreams.”
            Working in the field these scientists are continuing to explore the outdoors as they did as children, but now they are answering important questions. “The days ‘in the field’ may be long, uncomfortable, full of tedium, but we are still out there, having fun in places where we reinvigorate our passion for discovery,” Post concludes.
            Natural history scientists deserve our thanks and support.
            To find out more about Illinois Natural History Survey visit www.inhs.uiuc.edu.

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 09/03/08 (for publication on 09/13/08 in the Journal Standard, Freeport, Illinois) Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org