John has over 30 years of experience in the natural resources field, most of which have been in Alaska. He worked on numerous wildlife projects for the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. John was also a Naturalist for the Alaska Division of Parks. His last agency position, as a wildlife biologist, was with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Since 1980, John has been an instructor for the University of Alaska, teaching field natural history courses. Class expeditions leading others into the State’s parks and wilderness include studies of Alaska’s flora and fauna, ornithology, botany, wildlife tracking, animal behavior and ecology.
Leadership training and experience was extensive for John, while serving in the military. After completing the Navy’s elite UDT/SEAL Team training, John was a platoon commander in Vietnam. He extended his active duty time to assist in recovering the Apollo 12 astronauts and command module.
As a safety-conscious and responsible leader, John must also be prepared for medical emergencies. He has completed and is certified in Wilderness Emergency Training, Advanced First-Aid, and CPR.
John is a founding member of the Alaska Society of Outdoor and Nature Photographers and the Alaska Native Plant Society. Besides being a Life Member of the Alaska Natural History Association, he is active with several state, national, and international conservation organizations. Each year, his volunteers to lead nature hikes for the Anchorage Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the Sierra Club. He is often invited to speak and present his photography on Alaska's natural history throughout the United States. Future plans for John include creating his own nature preserve to help save an endangered species and writing natural history articles to heighten awareness of world environmental problems.
"I participated in two of John’s field courses...he is knowledgeable in his subjects; his [expeditions] are well-
organized and smoothly run. What sets John apart...is his leadership. Moreover, his dedication to teaching and
conservation is so obvious it is a source of inspiration to the rest of us."
Dr. Michael Bronson, Ph.D., Zoology, University of California Berkeley.
"The fact that our field camp operations are running smoothly despite many difficult challenges...reflects the
care and thoroughness of your planning efforts. Also appreciated was your positive attitude and friendly nature."
Letter of thanks from Dave Cline, John’s supervisor while with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Dave became the Alaska Regional Director of Audubon.
"WANTED: Half professor/half animal to lead a unique and valuable wilderness expedition to
the Denali Parks. Humor, cleanliness, wilderness survival skills and knowledge of the flora and fauna of Alaska
are a must! Must be willing to work with a motley crew and answer repetitious questions 24 hours a day.
Thanks for answering our ad!!"
Humorous handwritten note added to newspaper want ads used to wrap a present for John from an
expedition group of happy and thankful nature lovers.
John Wenger, 46, naturalist. At home in Denali National Park, in front of a university classroom, or paying homage to Henry David Thoreau with a summer-vacation bike trip to Walden Pond. A Wisconsin farm boy turned teacher. An aspiring writer. And not least of all, the proud discoverer of the compass catkin, a pussy willow that points you south.
"It was, oh, maybe a good five years ago, we were up at McKinley, and I was teaching a flora and fauna
course. One day -- it was in the end of June -- we were out looking at one of the sandpipers. We’d
been chasing this bird to get a better look at it, when it flew right over by these red-colored bushes.
That time of the year, you don’t have much color yet. But this was very showy in the distance. And
we noticed it was a willow -- hadn’t even leafed out yet. And the entire one side of it was reddish.
"Well, being a naturalist, I try to notice these things I don’t understand. So I started looking at it very
closely. The little fuzzball was red on this one side. And I said, 'Now, wait a minute, there must be
a reason for that.'
"First thing I did was look at the catkins -- that fuzzy ball. Technically, a catkin is a whole group of
flowers that has no petals. These were males. An entire group of shrubs -- all male catkins. And
the red was the anther -- the top part of the stamen, the male reproductive unit. These anthers,
which hold the pollen, were beginning to ripen. Then I noticed this red was pointing south.
"I said, 'OK, that makes sense.' Because willows have a unique capability. They’re fuzzy for a reason.
It’s actually a heat-retention device. The heat that builds up in there, stays in there. Many of our plants
in the arctic and subarctic have all sorts of adaptations, to retain as much heat as possible.
"So you’re getting a buildup of heat in certain areas where you’re getting the sun at its strongest point.
And the strongest point, of course, is where it reaches its zenith. And it reaches its zenith at south. ...
How does it keep on developing? First you have red. After that it gets yellow. Remember the whole
rest is fuzzy. Now you’ll start to see a line form. The line is very red. As the sun builds up in intensity
...this line continues to move down. When you get a good clean direction-finder, this line is very definitely
perpendicular to the angle of the sun. As long as you can see some remaining fuzz on the catkin, it
would be on the north side.
"It works! You have to look for good compasses -- the catkin must sit upright. If you get ‘em bent,
say, or growing off to the side, they you’re gonna get red in the wrong spot, and it goofs things up....
"I haven’t written up anything, scientifically, and it needs to be, soon. But I want more data on it....
"Other plants do this -- display this compass -- where the growth rate is greater on the warmest part. I
suspect this phenomena is much more common than we realize. Actually, this direction-finder pussy
willow is probably not such a great observation, maybe, for a naturalist like myself. It’s really nothing
more than we’re not looking close enough....
"It happens all the time in nature. We don’t look and we don’t see very much. We’ve become conditioned
not to make the associations because we’re not forced to anymore. I don’t want to say we don’t need to.
I would say, if you want to get philosophical, we really need to. To me, it’s very important -- not the fact
that you can tell direction -- that’s a very nice thing because when the sun goes down or when it
disappears, as it commonly does on our cloudy days, hey, this could very well save someone’s life.
You’d say, well, that’s important.
"But to me, it’s important as a sign that I’m becoming more adept at observing in a very intimate way.
And that is the secret to any naturalist. John Muir had it. Thoreau had it. They would spend an entire
day observing some little phenomenon. Others criticized them greatly because they saw no value in it.
"But for me, the value was that I could observe things most others took for granted. Or overlooked. Now
I can pass this on. It makes others look closer."
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Rosanne Pagano is an Anchorage free-lance writer.
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