Refuge Update – March/April 2009, Volume 6, Number 2

Table of Contents: America’s Birds: In an Alarming State Snakes Alive! Title Sub Title East Coast Wetlands Are Disappearing Chief’s Corner: What We Do Now Extreme Makeover for Bird Sightings by Mike Carlo Taking Care of Our World War II Legacy by Lisa Matlock Whatever Happened to . . . . San Francisco Bay Wetland Restoration Projects Recalling the Battle of Long Island Sound by David Klinger Bold Approaches for Climate Change How Alligator River Refuge Is Planning and Adapting by Mike Bryant Rapid Climate Change Is Transforming the Arctic by David Payer Tracking Change on Wildlife Refuges by Kathy Granillo Where SLAMM Foretells a Wetter Future Reviving the Land – and the Air by Bob Ford and Pete Jerome Connecting the Conservation Landscape a New Priority by Mike Scott and Bob Adamcik Awards for Refuge System Palmyra Atoll Refuge Becomes Ramsar Site Not So Strategic Habitat Conservation: A True Story by David Viker Putting Food on Alaskan Tables by Andy Aderman

Book Review of Discovering North American Rock Art Edited by Lawrence L. Loendorf, Christopher Chippindale, and David S. Whitley

If readers of Great Plains Research are seeking a window on rock art research in North America, this book provides a few clear panes, a few that are hazy, and a few muddy ones. Like many edited volumes, the weaker contributions and lack of a consistent style limit the book's usefulness. Some authors target a general readership; others clearly are addressing colleagues. The book has two stated themes: the history of rock art research in North America and recent approaches to rock art analysis. Articles by Julie Francis and (jointly) David Whitley and Jean Clottes explore why rock art research has long been marginalized in North America. Unfortunately, both of these otherwise observant essays slip into advocacy of shamanism as a unifying or primary explanation for rock art, an interpretive model by no means universally accepted by today's rock art specialists.

Book Review of Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology by John F. Galliher, Wayne H. Brekhus, and David P. Keys

As an undergraduate sociology major, the only thing I learned about Oklahoman Laud Humphreys's classic, Tearoom Trade (1970) was how it violated standards of informed consent in social science research. As Galliher, Brekhus, and Keys recount in their biography, Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology, sociology graduate student Laud Humphreys needed to supplement his (quite likely, participant) observational research of men who had sex in public bathrooms (i.e., tearooms) in St. Louis in the mid-1960s with a formal questionnaire. Knowing that these men would never agree if they knew they were selected because of their participation in highly stigmatized and criminal behavior, Humphreys recorded their license plates, got their home addresses, and interviewed them as part of a "community health survey." Herein lies the deception and the major source of the controversy. What I didn't fully appreciate when I was a student, however, and what the authors so deftly illuminate is the importance of this work not only for debates around ethical issues of social science research, but more importantly, perhaps, for the study of sexuality, deviance, and urban life.