For the Love of Alabama

R. Scot Duncan can tell you how Alabama ranks for its number of imperiled species (third). He can say how much temperatures have already risen in the region (three degrees Fahrenheit over two decades). He’ll talk about legacy river issues and compare damming to “dropping a nuclear bomb on a river.” And he can detail the complex and seemingly contradictory climate change impacts affecting the Southeast’s water supply.

But R. Scot Duncan does not despair in the face of these biodiversity, climate, and water crises. For all the environmental problems he faces on a daily basis as a conservation biologist in a state where it’s particularly hard to be such a thing, Duncan fixates on solutions.

“Here’s the future that we need. It's good for biodiversity. It's good for people. It helps eliminate poverty. It helps people live healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives,” Duncan says. “When you start putting it in those terms, looking at the future becomes less burdensome and instead one we can work toward and we all want to be part of.”

Duncan is in his mid-fifties. He wears a goatee and keeps his dark hair short, with curls reaching across his forehead. He speaks with the light, gentle confidence of someone who has given university lectures for 20 years. He notices birds like a cat—interrupting our conversation to point out a wren’s churr from my side of the phone. And he wants all life in Alabama to prosper.

But a couple of decades ago, Duncan had no notion of Alabama’s biodiversity beyond its coastal bird populations. In 2002, Duncan accepted an assistant professorship at Birmingham-Southern College. He hailed from a beachfront property in Pensacola Bay, Florida, and completed his master’s and PhD programs at the University of Florida, researching tropical forest restoration in parts of Africa and Central and South America. As Duncan and his partner Ginger hauled their infant daughter and worldly belongings to Birmingham, they agreed: We will not be here long.