"To believe the message you must believe the messenger"
Who is this guy? Who does he think he is?
This is who I was in 2008. I'm a professor emeritus of wildlife management and systems ecology, formerly in the College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. I've worked for many companies and the US Forest Service, got a BS degree in forestry and MS degree in wildlife biology at Virginia Tech, then worked with the Virginia Game agency as a biologist. I got a Ph.D. at The Ohio State University working on the effects of malathion insecticide labeled with radioactive sulfur sprayed on a forested area. I then taught and did studies at the University of Idaho and began intensive computer applications then. I later returned to Tech and taught and did studies there with wonderful grad students for 38 years. You can find out all about me as interested.
What do I know about being a survivalist? I'll not define one but I'll just claim that the following ought to put me somewhere within a cloudy cluster of such folks.
- Eagle Scout; extensive outdoor and camping experiences, Maine to Florida.
- Survival training, Ft. Benning, US Army 2nd Lt.
- Fire guard and smoke-chaser, US Forest Service, Oakridge, Oregon.
- Survival training during US Army Ranger qualification.
- First statewide GIS for Virginia (before Geographic Information Systems were called GIS)
- First non-game management plan for the state.
- Publication on new likely coast line of Virginia based on increased sea level (Giles, R. H., Jr. and D. R. Anderson. 1990. The next coastline of Virginia. Proc. Conf. on Applications of Geographic Information Systems, Simulation Models, and Knowledge-Based Systems for Landuse Management, Blacksburg, Va., p. 471-478) with article on that topic in the Roanoke Times, May 25,2008).
- Chairman of the Blacksburg Planning Commission.
- Testimony before the Virginia state corporation commission on high voltage powerline environmental impacts.
- Publication on novel computer applications: Giles, R. H., Jr. and M. S. Fujita. 1989. Computer applications for wildlife management in national parks and protected areas. International Conf. on Parks and Protected Areas, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16 p.
- Unit in graduate distance-learning course on feedforward.
- Book chapter on quality of life formulation: Giles, R. H., Jr. 1987. Systems ecology, marketing, and quality of life. Pp. 112-128 in A. C. Samli (ed.), Marketing and quality-of-life interface. Quorum Books, New York. xviii + 348 pp.
- Futures estimates: Giles, R.H., Jr. 1998. Natural resource management tomorrow: four currents. Wildl. Society Bulletin 26:51-55.
- Agroforestry future procedures: Giles, R. H., R. G. Oderwald, and A. U. Ezealor. 1993. Toward a rationally robust paradigm for agroforestry systems. Agroforestry Systems 24:21-37.
- Work on family gardens, orchard, pond, cabin, etc. on 20 acres near Salem, Virginia.
No one of the items proves or justifies anything. I'm working hard to learn and become a a survivalist.
