Ward B. Stone, who as New York State’s maverick wildlife pathologist happy environmentalists however angered his bosses and company polluters by going past his mandate to show the hazards that PCBs and different poisonous chemical substances additionally posed to people, died on Feb. 8 in Troy, N.Y. He was 84.
The obvious trigger was respiratory failure, his daughter Montana Stone mentioned.
In the course of the almost 42 years he was employed by the State Division of Environmental Conservation, Mr. Stone and his group carried out 1000’s of necropsies on mammals ranging in measurement from mouse to moose, in addition to on hawks, swans, deer, beavers and bears. The reason for dying included accidents, unlawful looking, deliberate poisonings, and contamination by pesticides and different toxins.
However in the midst of his forensic investigations, and likewise on his personal, he sampled soil, landfill, ash and different residue and was one of many pioneers — together with Gunnar Widmark and Soren Jensen of the College of Stockholm and the biologist Robert Riseborough of the College of California, Berkeley — find proof that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, have been ubiquitous within the setting.
“In his place as state wildlife pathologist, Ward Stone shone a light-weight on environmental threats lengthy earlier than others may discover them and gave a science-based voice to nature in occasions of disaster when few different state officers would hear,” Roger Downs, conservation director of the Sierra Membership’s Atlantic chapter, mentioned in an announcement.
“His strategies have been typically unconventional,” Mr. Downs added, “however he all the time selected to pursue environmental justice first earlier than pointless forms, and the pure world is a greater place due to his fearless advocacy.”
Mr. Stone discovered PCBs on the base of utility poles and different websites; criticized fishermen for weighting their hooks with sinkers product of lead; and even found traces of the insecticide DDT on the grounds of considered one of his personal division’s regional workplaces.
20 years in the past, on the peak of the West Nile virus epidemic, which Mr. Stone had helped establish, his laboratory was being inundated with a mean of 300 wildlife corpses day by day. A stainless-steel refrigerated cell chest designed for useless individuals was tailored for big turtles.
Mr. Stone usually ventured past his mandate as a pathologist and leaked his findings to the information media. This led some individuals to dismiss him as a brash, untutored interloper.
He loved his fame as a renegade. “I’ve been referred to as a free cannon,” he as soon as mentioned, “however I all the time know precisely the place I’m firing.”
However there have been additionally different criticisms, which have been substantiated in a report by the state inspector basic.
In 2012, two years after Mr. Stone retired, the inspector basic, responding to years of complaints from state workers and disclosures in The Instances-Union of Albany, concluded that he had “engaged in persistent misconduct with close to impunity, together with abuse of employees, misappropriation of state assets and insubordination.”
The inquiry claimed that he had used the division’s Wildlife Useful resource Middle in upstate Delmar as his residence; demoralized workers, who complained of verbal abuse and inadequate coaching in security protocols; assigned them private duties, like caring for the chickens he stored as pets for his youngsters; saved firearms on the middle; and did not submit information of the time he spent working for the state.
Whereas he collected tens of 1000’s of {dollars} in improper private advantages throughout almost 4 many years as a state worker, the inspector basic’s report discovered, he was merely warned and never formally disciplined, as a result of division executives overruled his direct supervisors “partially out of concern of unfavorable reactions from his supporters and the information media.”
Mr. Stone denied or downplayed a lot of the particular expenses in opposition to him, though he did comply with make modest restitution. He mentioned that he took early retirement as a result of he had a household to help and the monetary incentive was too tempting to refuse.
“I hate to retire underneath fireplace,” he advised The Instances Union in 2010. “There’s nonetheless a lot science to do.”
Ward Byron Stone Jr. was born on Sept. 28, 1938, in Hudson, N.Y., to Ward and Nellie (Smith) Stone.
Raised in upstate Columbia County, he studied on the Spencertown Academy, a two-room schoolhouse, the place he developed a ardour for nature. He then attended the Nationwide Naval Medical College in Maryland and served within the Navy in Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
At Syracuse College, he served on the varsity debate group and earned a Bachelor of Science diploma in 1963 after which a grasp’s diploma in animal pathology and parasitology. He joined the Division of Environmental Conservation in 1969.
“Whereas he beloved pathology,” Montana Stone mentioned of her father in a telephone interview, “his love for all times and dwelling creatures was his true inspiration and motivation for persevering with to rehabilitate wildlife of every type, and higher perceive illnesses and toxins that inextricably have an effect on people, wildlife and the setting.”
Mr. Stone and his accomplice, the ecologist Mary Bayham, who lived in Troy, had 5 youngsters. She survives him; along with their daughter Montana, he’s additionally survived by their youngsters Johnathan, Jeremiah and Ethan Alan Stone; two stepchildren, Thomas and Emily Caraco; and a daughter, Denise Stone, from his marriage to Lorraine Cebula. Mr. Stone and Ms. Bayham’s daughter Therese Rose Stone died earlier than him.
“I’ve spent my life attempting to do one thing in regards to the horrible environmental destruction I noticed, most of it achieved by industries with a number of energy,” Mr. Stone mentioned in an interview with The Cobleskill Instances-Journal in 2016. “I wasn’t in style, however I didn’t let that cease me.”
