Morley Nelson: Advocate of "The Vertical Environment" Morley Nelson was 12 years old on a ranch in the Cheyenne River breaks in North Dakota. Herding cattle, he saw a falcon strike down a teal duck. "I took my first hawk from the wild because I had seen the swiftest action in nature - the stoop of a falcon and its strike on aerial quarry. In my case, it was a falcon diving down from high above to hit a teal duck, killing it instantly. The falcon pulled up high and came down again, took the teal out of the air, and flew away." When Morley captured a red-tailed hawk, his grandfather and neighbors called it that "damned chicken hawk." "In three months of seeing that bird,they all realized she was smart and beautiful, and maybe we ought to quit shooting them," he smiled. Large, rumpled, driven with an evangelist's zeal, Morley commands attention. He doesn't wear a tie, is rarely silent, and is unquestionably one of America's foremost authorities on birds of prey.

ENVIRONMENT

Over half a century he has entertained, berated and coaxed the public away from tragic misconceptions about raptors. His work forged an awareness of the essential, inseparable world of habitat, prey, and predators.

"Gunpowder and the plow were the basic instruments used to change the environment to supply man's needs. When combined, many species of wildlife were doomed," Morley wrote in an early newspaper article. "The audacity of any man to be a selector for the universe should be a thing of the past," he charged, condemning heedless destruction of whole species with guns and their ecosystems with tractors.

Morley used film footage and years of observation to change the perception of hawks, eagles, and owls as "varmints" that preyed on livestock, or dangerous creatures that attacked humans. His unprecedented aerial footage for Disney films and "Wild Kingdom" television episodes were visual proof of the high station held in the natural world by the birds of prey.

He wrote that predators, so hated and feared in early America, must be preserved. "If we kill all the mountain lions, grizzly bears, eagles, and rattle snakes, we lose forever the very forms of life that exemplify some of our most cherished characteristics - strength, courage, integrity, and nobility." To destroy the predators would be to diminish ourselves, he reasoned.

His discovery in 1939 of the unique raptor habitat of the Snake River canyons was most significant. A soil scientist, he knew that the deep volcanic soil of the plateau lands bordering the canyon was responsible for an incredible prey base, supporting nearly 800 pairs of nesting birds of prey. Following World War II, he made his way back to Boise in 1948. He began working for protection of the canyon area, which holds the greatest population of nesting raptors in North America, if not the world.

The canyon nesting areas were federally protected in 1971, following Morley's incessant lobbying and lectures. In 1980 the Secretary of Interior designated the nesting site as the Snake River Birds of Prey Area, comprising 482,640 acres along 81 miles of the river, 30 miles south of Boise. The World Center was relocated to Boise in 1984.

Congress introduced legislation in 1990 to permanently protect these lands.

Dr. Tom Cade, an ornithologist with Cornell University, pioneered captive breeding of raptors and developed procedures for introducing them into the wild. He established the "Peregrine Fund" that led to creation of the World Center for Birds of Prey. Tom and Morley became inseparably linked in the work: Cade as chairman; Nelson as vice-chairman. They were two forceful people in a force of many.

The scope of the accomplishment is enormous. The Smithsonian magazine in April, 1990, noted: "... in this day of widespread concern over endangered species,...the most sustained and successful effort to save wild creatures has been launched on behalf not of elephants or whales or baby seals, but of raptors. The locus of this effort is in Boise at the World Center for Birds of Prey."

Morley wrote: "The battle never ends. But when you see what we've done with the peregrine, what we're doing with the teila falcon, the Mauritius kestrel, you see we've made some progress. And we can share it with people. With kids who need to feel a part of the universe. When I bring people down here and see the smiles on their faces when they see a falcon or an eagle, I feel nothing but good. You know, it's stipulated on this planet that you have to survive. But you have to go beyond that - to some wisdom."