UC biology prof traces his roots to the first Earth Day

While Uetz was a only a minor functionary at the national level (as the chairman of the Earth Coalition at Delaware), he did get to go to organizing meetings in nearby Washington, D.C. There he met such people as Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.), Denis Hayes, David Brower (first executive director of the Sierra Club), Carl Pope (current executive director of the Sierra Club), Paul Ehrlich (population expert) and David Mixner (civil rights/gay rights activist), who were among the original organizers of the Earth Day "Teach-In" movement.

“At a local level, I was involved with a group organizing to protect the relatively unspoiled White Clay Creek in Newark, Delaware,” says Uetz with pride. “One of our members was a lawyer, and was elected to the New Castle County Council, and we were successful in preventing a dam and reservoir. My friend then ran for office at a national level, and I helped on his ‘upstart’ campaign as an environmental advisor before I left for Illinois and grad school in the fall of 1972. Playing a role in the election of Joe Biden to the U.S. Senate is one of my fondest memories and proudest accomplishments.”

Uetz was a biology major at Albion College, and took Ecology as his last class in his senior year. The course culminated in a field trip to Loon Lake in upper Michigan, which he describes as an “awe-inspiring and eye-opening experience.”

“I have vivid memories of seeing the massive die-offs of alewife [a type of shad] on the shores of Lake Huron — the result of a complicated, human-induced ecological disaster, an unintended consequence precipitated by the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway,” says Uetz. “Connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes allowed the sea lamprey to invade, and eventually decimate populations of lake trout, the natural predator of alewife. As a result of this, populations of alewife grew so large they depleted the available dissolved oxygen supply (already reduced by pollution), and died off in huge numbers, piling up on the shoreline 2–3 feet deep!”

“It was easy to make a direct connection between the ecological principles we learned in class and what people were doing to the planet. After that, I went on to get a Master's, teach for two years and then earn a PhD in Ecology.”