Bishop-Environaid Archives

Papers by Dan Bishop, hydrologist

Between 1974 and 1991, Dan Bishop, proprietor of Environaid, was probably the most widely respected environmental consultant in Southeast Alaska—the go-to advisor for any project idea involving water. His publications were delivered to agencies, NGOs and developers, but rarely archived in journals, thus largely unavailable to naturalists, scientists or curious outdoorsfolk. UAS Egan Library has some of the later reports in printed form, donated by Beth and Gretchen, and many are referenced by Juneau Public Library. Search on “bishop environaid.” With minor exceptions, however, few have been digitized for download.

I’ve long aspired to change that. As of early 2023, working from a box of scannable raw materials, I’ve assembled fairly high-res pdfs of Dan’s 20-or-so most useful papers. For a sense of the geographic and disciplinary range of Dan’s work, a good starting point is my 8 page list of Environaid reports. Download pdf (3MB)

Left: Photo from USFS archives, when Dan worked at Forestry Sciences Labs. Right: Dan and daughter Gretchen on a stream near Haines airport, on contract for ADOT

In 1985 I was a long-haired hermit caretaking the scout camp at Asx’ée, twisted tree (Eagle River). Not a fan of civilization, I was nevertheless conscripted into environmental consulting by this silverbacked Streamwalker (Discoveries, Fall 1996 issue ). Somewhat of a dropout himself, Dan had left his position as USFS Tongass Hydrologist to start the consulting firm Environaid.. By the time I started working with him, it seemed like everybody wanted Dan on their team. But whether developer, regulator, or environmental advocate, they knew this guy wouldn’t bend his findings to their perceived need.

Dan’s early death in 1991 left a hole, not just in lives of family and friends, but in the relationship of humans to this archipelago. By example (not by preaching) he taught his “associates” to speak for habitat. We also laughed a lot.

In his last years, one of Dan’s regrets was the fate of Environaid reports—so carefully researched and assembled yet often commissioned by busy bureaucrats who filed them away (or not!) in rarely-opened archives. The main beneficiaries of those reports, Dan said, were we who got to experience and describe these wondrous, often wounded places, from Jilkáat, (Chilkat country) down to Tàan (Prince of Wales Island).

So, let’s expand that tiny list of bushwacking beneficiaries. In 2022, Dan’s daughter Gretchen brought by half a carload of 30-year-old+ Environaid documents, with original sets of associated maps and graphics. I spent parts of the last 2 winters running these through my flatbed scanner, laying them up in a standardized format, and uploading pdfs to JuneauNature. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) failed on a handful that were created on an early dot-matrix printer, but even those are now clean and easily readable. Most have hyperlinked contents and are searchable and cut-&-pasteable. This Media types>Bishop-Environaid category page will henceforth be your digital ‘streamwalkers’ library.’ Each link below takes you to a content page describing the study.

I once made a hand-stippled, pre-GIS version of this map for an Environaid advertising 4-fold. It seems to have disappeared. (Way easier in ArcMap! :)