Quammen's recent work focuses on cancer as an infectious disease, a phenomenon found in Tasmanian devils, such as this pup.

DQ: I fell into a channel of privileged education -- ivy everywhere. [However,] I believe deeply in public education and, though I've had this peculiar experience of some famous schools, my sympathy and my support go to more democratic institutions. They always have. I believe deeply in what MSU does for the state of Montana...in bringing rigor and challenge to this region, and in precious programs like Native American Studies. The really significant difference isn't between public education and private education. It's between fine, robust, valued education and mediocre, sleepwalking education. MSU is full of the former kind of education, robust and valued.

You've lectured in colleges across the country and taught in several MSU classrooms. What are your thoughts about the students of today? If you were to be directing the education of these students, what would you advise them to read and study to be beneficial citizens of our changing world?

DQ: What would I advise them to read? Serious, enduring books in a broad range of subject areas. In other words, it's not enough to acquire information by flipping the channels on a remote or surfing the Web. Young people will be poorly served, and will poorly serve society during the maturity of their generation, if they don't develop the mental discipline, focus, and desire for reading. Serious reading, by which I mean books. For instance, I believe that every literate young citizen, whether he or she is majoring in drama or business or biology or English, should read Darwin's great book, The Origin of Species. It changed the world we live in, and the way we perceive ourselves within that world. And yet most people, even biology majors, never read it. That's crazy.

Does it surprise you that you are still defending the value of biological diversity and what we risk if we lose it?

DQ: It doesn't surprise me at all. It's the most important thing on Earth, and yet its importance can't be measured purely in terms of its practical, commercial, medicinal, standard-of-living value to humans. That's a hard sell, because imagination and passion are required for appreciating biological diversity for its own sake. It's the work of a lifetime, trying to help people experience that leap.

You say in your essay republished in this magazine that you first moved to Montana to fish, and then your fascination with area rivers turned to kayaking. Do you still have that passion, or does something else occupy your free time these days?

DQ: I retired from kayaking a handful of years ago, because all my kayak buddies got too old. I still have a passion for telemark skiing. For much of 10 years, I also played city-league hockey, hoping I might learn how to carry a puck through a crowd before my knees or my shoulders gave out. Alas, it didn't happen. I started too late. But what fun trying. Now I've retired from that, too. In summers I bicycle. I have a dear friend (Michael E. Gilpin, world- class biologist, retired), a superb senior bike racer, who thinks he can make me a bicycle racer. He's nuts, but I have fun chasing his wheel.

You have said that environmentalists are responsible for leading the fight to preserve species, to "stave off the sixth great extinction, to prevent habitats from being chopped up into tiny pieces that can't support viable populations." Since you've written books about both Darwin and the dodo, you are something of an expert on extinction. What are your observations about the chopping up of habitat in Montana and extinction in the Rocky Mountain West?

DQ: Suburban sprawl and ranchette country living are doing more to destroy the wildlife habitats of the northern Rockies than all the chainsaws Husqvarna could ever build. I've said this before but I'll say it again, at the risk of sounding bossy or judgmental: "If you love the landscape, live in town." In fact I have no interest in telling other people where to live, but that little slogan is my answer to your question -- where do I perceive the threats, the priorities. Lifestyle choices about where we live, how long our driveway is, how far we drive to work, what we eat.

Return to regular view	Text-only              Email this article	Published: 5/2/2008