Natural History Society of Minnesota

While many people were involved with the Natural History Society of Minnesota through the years, it was a consuming passion for one of its original incorporators, Dr. Clayton G. Rudd. The purpose of the nonprofit society was to bring together people interested in the outdoors, including both amateur and professional naturalists, by conducting meetings, exhibits, lectures, and conferences and publishing a journal on natural history. Its founders hoped that by living the society's motto, "conservation through education," members' awareness about threats to the environment would be heightened and they would become active in promoting conservation legislation and education.

Though Dr. Rudd's vocation was dentistry, he spent most of his free time speaking about conservation, arranging programs for the Natural History Society, and editing the society's journal. Though an amateur naturalist, Dr. Rudd was at the forefront of the environmental movement in Minnesota because of his persistent promotional and lobbying activities. It was no coincidence that many of the first members of the Natural History Society of Minnesota were Rudd's patients.

The Natural History Society held eight or nine meetings per year (often the same program repeated on consecutive nights) featuring programs on nature, adventure, travel, exploration, and scientific research. These meetings featured color movies or slides, personally narrated by scientists, explorers, and world travelers recruited largely through the personal efforts of Dr. Rudd. A member could be entertained and learn about places all over the globe including Europe, Africa, India, Australia, South America, Canada, Antarctica, as well as places in the United States.

The other educational activity of the Natural History Society of Minnesota was its quarterly journal, The Minnesota Naturalist, eventually simplified to Naturalist . Clayton Rudd was its editor for its entire run, 1950-1985. To keep from becoming a dry nature magazine, Rudd secured illustrations from such prominent artists as Francis Lee Jaques, Florence Page Jaques, and Les Kouba and later the magazine featured the color photography of Les Blacklock, J. Arnold Bolz, and others. Articles were engaging, if sometimes controversial, and each issue contained contributions from prominent ecologists, scientists, researchers, and nature writers including Sigurd F. Olson, Grace Lee Nute, Frank and John Craighead, Olaus Murie, Robert Lucas, Miron "Bud" Heinselman, and many others. This magazine, run on a shoestring out of Rudd's office and home, was kept afloat through membership dues and donations, and grants from individuals and foundations. Many issues of Naturalist were devoted to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) along the Minnesota-Ontario border and to the Rocky Mountain West (particularly the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area were the Rudds had a summer home), prairie lands, and the desert southwest. Other parts of North America received little attention.

One particular issue of Naturalist, in 1964, showed Rudd's outrage about logging management in the BWCA. While the Wilderness Act of 1964 did not prohibit logging or motorboat use in the BWCA, the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act of 1930 prohibited logging within 400 feet of any shoreline. Twelve pages of photographs published in Naturalist showed clear violations of the 1930 Act at Finn Lake, just off the Gunflint Trail. Lumber companies had actually bulldozed soil into the water and built a road "through" Finn Lake. The Finn Lake incident became a rallying cry for further protection for the BWCA. Though it took another fourteen years until passage of the 1978 BWCA Wilderness Act to ban logging in the BWCA, Clayton Rudd helped change attitudes through article after article in Naturalist , which stressed the aesthetic and spiritual values of wilderness.