Meryl Smith Lawton

Need We Say More? | Dr. David Schindler, University of Alberta ecology prof and winner of the 2008 Alberta Award of Excellence, the 2001 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold medal, and the 1991 Stockholm Water Prize.

Fear and Happiness in the Modern World: Environment, Climate Change, and Biodiversity Conservation
w/ David Schindler and Edward O. Wilson. Sun, Nov 16 (2pm). Rice Theatre (The Citadel, 9828-101A Ave). Tickets: $18-$28, available through the Citadel box office (425-1820)/TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca).

David Schindler has been around scientific and government circles long enough to have a sense of humour about environmental politics.

It takes at least of couple of decades for politicians to trust scientists — especially the cantankerous ones, says the Killam Memorial Chair professor of ecology at the University of Alberta. “After they accuse you of exaggerating three or four times,” he says with a chuckle, “and then find out that you were right, they tend to consult you more frequently.”

After more than 40 years as a public-sector scientist, Schindler’s also been around long enough to see several reversals in public opinion. When he was a kid, his dad sold DDT, a pesticide, out of a warehouse on their Minnesota farm. Near the start of his research career in the 1960s, acid rain was still considered to be an isolated problem, and Schindler had to fight to get funding to study the problem. And until his experiments on a small lake west of Dryden, Ont., phosphates were considered a magical cleaning agent and not the cause of the algae blooms that were turning lakes in the region green.

Now Schindler is best known for his research that shows that Alberta is headed for 1930s-style droughts.

“There’s still a lot of people in the oilsands that say we have plenty of water,” he says. “That’ll change.”

Just A Summer Job

Schindler grew up in Barnsville, Minn., near Fargo, and the Detroit Lakes area. His father, grandfather, and two uncles ran a large farm, as well as a potato warehouse where they sold pesticides, beer and gas, and serviced automobiles. As a child, he spent many weekends with his grandmother and uncle fishing in the nearby lakes, and had a natural love for water. But if wasn’t for a summer job in North Dakota, Schindler might not have become the water scientist and public advocate that he is today.

While attending Minnesota State on his way to becoming a physicist, he took a temporary job with an ecologist in North Dakota measuring the energy content in lake organisms. He became so fascinated with the ecosystem that he decided to change his major and switch schools. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 book, widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, was also a turning point for him.

After receiving his PhD from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, Schindler took his first job in Canada at Trent University in Ontario in 1966. He’d interviewed at several big American universities, but didn’t relish living and raising a family in a big, polluted city.

Soon after, he joined the Fisheries Research Board, a now-defunct research organization funded by the federal government. The board was one of the most respected ecological management groups in the world, and offered Schindler the chance to do challenging research on Ontario lakes. However, the board was turned over to Environment Canada in 1973, and then later to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“It was a continuous downhill slide,” he says. “It was a typical civil service organization which seems to be managed to destroy employees’ personality, suppress the good people — and I’m not just talking about me here — and allow the bottom of the barrel to float to the top.”

Schindler left for his current position with the University of Alberta.

A Public Scientist

Schindler’s commitment to releasing his studies publicly is what separates him from other scientists, says Harvey Scott, one of the founders of the Keepers of the Athabasca, a water advocacy group.

“He’s not only a world-class scientist,” Harvey says. “For me, what makes him stand out is that he never forgets that science should be done in the public interest.”

But while Harvey says he feels indebted to Schindler for his work, they don’t agree on everything. Schindler describes Water for Life, the province’s water strategy, as the direct result of the pressure he’s put on the Alberta government, and something he’s very proud of. However, Harvey, along with others in the Keepers group, has been very critical of the watershed groups set up under this policy. Industry and government still have far too much control of the process, Harvey says. The Keepers decided to remain apart from these groups because they view them as a waste of time.

But these two men of science are hardly oceans apart on this point. One of Schindler’s main criticisms of the Canadian and Alberta governments is that policy-makers don’t consult with scientists enough, and even scientists within government departments do not have the kind of access to the decision-makers that they should.

In Alberta, the disconnect between science and government can be seen not only in the lack of action on water conservation, but also in the loss of biodiversity, a topic that will form a part of Schindler’s upcoming panel discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning American biologist Edward O. Wilson.

The destruction of boreal forest in order to make way for the oilsands could mean the loss of many animal species if mining practices are not changed, he says.

On this issue as well, Schindler is looking for a shift in public opinion. “I think most people think this is just greenie talk, that we are saying that the sky is falling without evidence,” he says. “But there is.”

abrunschot@see.greatwest.ca