Studying Grand Canyon with Dr Larry Stevens

Dr. Larry Stevens has spent over fifty years as a boatman and researcher trying to understand water and life in the Grand Canyon. In this time, he has explored much of the change in important river and spring ecosystems within the desert. On this episode of Behind the Scenery listen as Larry shares observations on insect life, healthy seeps and springs, and the role hope plays in science.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Larry: If we we're to start a first Church of the Earth, Grand Canyon would be the temple. And the story that Grand Canyon reveals about the tremendous expanse of time, life's role and change through that, through that process is the material reality that we have here and to drift off into other belief systems just takes us away from appreciation of this incredible green planet that we live on.

Behind the Scenery Introduction (multiple voices): Grand Canyon; Where hidden forces shape our ideas, beliefs, and experiences. Join us as we uncover the stories between the canyon’s colorful walls. Probe the depths and add your voice for what happens next at Grand Canyon. Hello and Welcome!... This is Behind the Scenery Luke: Hey Ya’ll, I’m Luke and Interpretive Ranger here on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. For this episode of Behind the Scenery I got the chance to sit down with Larry Stevens whose life and career has been heavily intertwined with the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. I was curious to hear Larry’s perspective on the changes and development of the river and its ecosystems and where he sees us headed in the years ahead. Larry would you be willing to introduce yourself, please? Larry: Sure. My name's Larry Stevens. I'm the director of the Spring Stewardship Institute. Senior scientist for the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. And I've got a Ph.D. in zoology from Northern Arizona University. I've been working in Grand Canyon since 1974. But in the landscape since 1970. Luke: Would you be willing to expand off of that and describe maybe what you're currently interacting with the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon with and maybe your past interactions as well? Just a brief discussion of your career. Larry: Okay. So in 1974, I became a biotech here at grand National Park, working on all manner of fire issues and insect life and bird life. Yeah, here at the park, back in those days, it was a pretty deep focus on natural history. And so as a biotech, I guess pretty much free roam of the collections and wandering around the park looking at the various organisms, did that for a year, went off back to my family farm in northern New Hampshire, uh, for a while and got a call from the Museum of Northern Arizona from Steve Carruthers, and he was looking for somebody to do an insect inventory of the Colorado River corridor. Knowing that I had that interest, he called me in and I said, Well, yes, I'm interested. And, uh, pursued the interview with him in which he asked, Do you want to do science or do you want to eat? And I said, Science, of course. I'm a scientist. So I spent two and a half years collecting, analyzing the insect fauna of the river corridor, and in that time period, learned just a huge amount, including how to row on the river and did that job as he has, he promised, I had $4.10 to my name, so I walked around Flagstaff to try to find somebody who would be willing to hire a kind of a mendicant boatman and stumbled into a company that was willing to hire me. And it launched my commercial river running career. I've done more than 400 trips on the Colorado River, commercially guiding, doing research, taking thousands of people down, many scientists, who really opened my eyes to all of dimensionality of the place over the last 50 years. And, uh, went on to get my master's and Ph.D. funding myself by doing commercial River guiding, uh, during the summer months, worked on issues related to Glen Canyon Dam. So how Glen Canyon Dam has affected the Colorado River Corridor has been a real focus of that research. Um, became the ecologist for Grand Canyon National Park in 1989, worked there for five or six years in that position, then moved on to work for the Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior, etc. and primarily working on dam management issues. Co-initiated the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council with Kim Crumble and Kelly Burke in 1998. Maybe so 25 years ago an effort to preserve the natural ecosystems and native species of the landscape. And that work has culminated just in the last, this last month with, uh, with completion of protected land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park. Work isn't completely done because kaibab national forest is not... the Teddy Roosevelt's authorization of that as a game preserve has not been reauthorized and that this is the last piece of the puzzle of trying to protect the area around Grand Canyon. Anyway. So it's been a 25 year effort to get that protection done. My typos show up in the enabling legislation for these nationa...