Wilderness Society Member Helping Alaskan Village
If Dr. Ben Hammett had any doubts that the planet is heating up, they vanished as he stood in Shishmaref Island, a 4,000-year-old subsistence community of about 600 Alaskan natives near the Russian border. “It was so convincing,” he says. With sea ice decreasing and permafrost melting, the Chukchi Sea is eroding 10 feet of this island a year—and wiped out 125 feet after one winter storm. Hammett, a retired psychologist who had learned of Shishmaref’s plight at his church in Palo Alto, California, says, “That trip gave me a purpose for the rest of my life.” He is helping find the money needed to move the village to a safer spot. The federal government estimates that Shishmaref Island will be gone in 10 to 15 years.
A native of Santa Barbara, Hammett inherited some of his conservation ethic. Part of it came from a third-grade teacher who nurtured his interest in wildlife. He became an Eagle Scout, attended Stanford, and earned a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina. Eventually, he and his wife Ruth returned to California. In the mid-1980s they attended a lecture by a Forest Service ranger, and Hammett asked which group he considered most effective at protecting our national forests. “He told me ‘The Wilderness Society,’ and we’ve been members ever since,” Hammett recounts. “I like the focus on protecting the wildest places and keeping them undeveloped. Also, I have been impressed by the scientists who do the GIS mapping and by other staff members I’ve met.”
Hammett, a 20-year volunteer at the California Academy of Sciences, is interested in a range of environmental issues. He has actively supported The Wilderness Society’s work to limit the use of ATVs and other off-road vehicles on public lands. “These vehicles have their place, but we can’t allow them to destroy our deserts and other natural areas,” he says.
The Hammetts honeymooned in Yosemite, and they have just returned from their 50th anniversary celebration, also at that national park. “Visiting such places has always been part of our lives,” he explains. “Our children used to say, ‘Oh, no, Dad, not another ranger talk!’ But now they do the same with their kids.”
