Joseph Grinnell

Biologist and zoologist (1877–1939)
the biologist

Joseph Grinnell (February 27, 1877 – May 29, 1939) was an American field biologist and zoologist. He made extensive studies of the fauna of California, and is credited with introducing a method of recording precise field observations known as the Grinnell System.

Joseph Grinnell was born February 27, 1877, the first of three children by his father Fordyce Grinnell MD and mother Sarah Elizabeth Pratt. Grinnell's father worked as the physician for the Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita Indian Agency near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His distant cousins included the Massachusetts politician Joseph Grinnell (1788–1885) and George Bird Grinnell (1849–1938) who founded the Audubon Society. The Grinnells moved to the Pine Ridge Indian Agency in 1880. Students of Grinnell's biology class at Throop included Charles Lewis Camp and Joseph S. Dixon. Charles Camp would become the director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Joseph Dixon would join John Thayer's sponsored expedition in 1913 to Alaska. The Thayer expedition almost perished when their ship became locked in ice off the coast, east of Point Barrow until the summer of 1914. Dixon collected specimens during this time, including a new species of gull, Larus thayeri which was named for the expedition's sponsor. In the Yosemite transect, no significant change in avian species abundance was found. Grinnell documented 133 species and the resurvey team reported 140 bird species.

Grinnell worked on conservation issues in the latter part of his life. He wrote several articles: "Bird Life as a Community Asset" (1914), A Conservationist's Creed as to Wild Life Administration" (1925), "Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks" (1916), and " Bats As Disirable Citizens" (1916). He tried to change National Park Service policies on predator control and on forest management. Additionally, he promoted the idea of a trained biologist or naturalist in national parks to conduct public education programs for visitors. He studied and published on the Point Lobos area on the California coast, and during the last two years of his life, studied animal life at Hastings Reserve in Santa Lucia Mountains of Carmel Valley, California.

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology's Yosemite survey of 1914–1924 documented the area's wildlife. A second goal of the survey was education of the public as a means to protect the park. Yosemite was established in 1890. Total land area (excluding the valley, which was state owned) was more than 1500 square miles (3,885 km2). Congress reduced the park boundaries by one third in 1905 in response to pressure from mining, grazing and logging interests. "Ultimately, Grinnell realized, whether in Yosemite, or across the nation, further assaults on wildlife habitat would only be blocked by a concerned and knowledgeable public." wrote historian Alfred Runte. The fish Synchiropus grinnelli, the Philippines dragonet, is a species of fish in the family Callionymidae, the dragonets. It is found in the Western Central Pacific from Philippines to Indonesia. It was named after him by Henry Weed Fowler.