DASMANN, Raymond (Frederic) 1919-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born May 27, 1919, in San Francisco, CA; died of pneumonia November 5, 2002, in Santa Cruz, CA. Environmentalist, educator, and author. Dasmann was a noted environmentalist who helped bring the plight of wildlife and natural resources to the attention of the international community. After serving in the U.S. Army in Australia and New Guinea during World War II, he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his doctorate in 1954. He briefly taught biology at the University of Minnesota from 1953 to 1954, becoming an associate professor of natural resources at Humboldt State University during the late 1950s. From 1959 to 1961 he worked as a biologist for the National Museum in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He then taught for a year at the University of California at Berkeley before returning to Humboldt in 1964 and working as professor and chairman of the Division of Natural Resources from 1964 to 1965. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Dasmann was an ecologist, first for the Conservation Foundation and then for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In 1977 he joined the University of California at Santa Cruz as a professor of ecology, retiring in 1989. Dasmann was one of the first advocates of sustainable development and also proposed that instead of removing indigenous peoples from areas in third-world countries that were being set aside for conservation, they should instead be allowed to remain and become stewards of the land. He also firmly believed that environmental conservation is not just the responsibility of the government but of all individuals, who must act locally as well as globally. Dasmann's ideas are incorporated in his books, which include the standard textbook Environmental Conservation (1959; fifth edition, 1984), The Destruction of California (1965), Planet in Peril: Man and the Biosphere Today (1972), and The Conservation Alternative (1975). Toward the end of his life he completed his memoirs, Called by the Wild: The Autobiography of a Conservationist (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2002, p. B20.

New York Times, November 14, 2002, p. C18.

Washington Post, November 11, 2002, p. B7.