page_title: William Beebe
section_title: Return to the tropics
hierarchical_section_title: William Beebe / Biography / Return to the tropics
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Jocelyn taken at the William Beebe Tropical Research Station in Simla, Trinidad c. 1960
context_page_description: Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.
  Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Beebe left college before obtaining a degree in order to work at the then newly opened New York Zoological Park, where he was given the duty of caring for the zoo's birds. He quickly distinguished himself in his work for the zoo, first with his skill in designing habitats for its bird population, and soon also with a series of research expeditions of increasing length, including an expedition around the world to document the world's pheasants. These expeditions formed the basis for a large quantity of writing for both popular and academic audiences, including an account of his pheasant expedition titled A Monograph of the Pheasants and published in four volumes from 1918 to 1922.
context_section_description: Although Beebe continued to use Nonsuch Island as his base of operations throughout the 1930s, with the onset of World War II in 1939 it was announced that the ferry linking Bermuda to New York would soon be making its final run, requiring Beebe and his team to hastily abandon their station there. Transportation to and from Bermuda resumed in 1940, and Beebe returned there in May 1941, but the environment was slowly being transformed due to the war. The large number of military ships made docking difficult, most of the island's reefs were being destroyed in order to construct an airfield, and the combination of construction activity and pollution made observation of the sea life impossible. Appalled by the destruction, Beebe finally rented his station at Nonsuch Island to a military contractor and returned to New York.
  With the loss of their station on Bermuda, Beebe and Elswyth gave up on their compromise of finding a research station where they could both be happy. Elswyth, who was most content in temperate environments, began searching for a home in New England where she could continue her writing. Meanwhile, Beebe began searching for a new tropical research station to replace Kartabo, which had fallen victim to deforestation just like Kalacoon before it. Beebe eventually helped Elswyth purchase a small farm near Wilmington, Vermont, where he visited her frequently. Elswyth explained in a magazine interview that she was uncomfortable on Beebe's expeditions, so the two of them had agreed that they would keep their careers separate from their private lives.
  With the financial assistance of Standard Oil and the Guggenheim Foundation, Beebe established his next research station in Caripito, a small city in Venezuela around 100 miles (160 km) west of Trinidad and Tobago. Beebe and his team used this station to study the ecology of the region, and recorded how its inhabitants were affected by its cycle of wet and dry seasons. One important study which resulted from this region was the first documentation of rhinoceros beetles using their horns in competition between males, proving that their horns were an adaptation for sexual selection rather than for defense against predators. Although Beebe's research at Caripito was productive, he felt that the extremity of its wet-dry cycle made it impractical as a research station, and the expanding oil operations in the region were in danger of destroying the local environment. For these reasons, Beebe did not return to Caripito after his first season there.
  In spring of 1944, Jocelyn Crane returned to Venezuela to search for a location for a new field station to replace the one at Caripito. The location that she found, known as Rancho Grande, had initially been intended as a palace for Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in the  Henri Pittier National Park. The palace's construction had been left unfinished after Gómez's death, and since then the building's vast corridors and ballrooms had become the home of jaguars, tapirs and sloths. Unlike Beebe's other tropical research stations, which had been located in lowland regions, Rancho Grande was located on a mountainside in what Beebe described as "the ultimate cloud jungle". Creole Petroleum, a Venezuelan spin-off of Standard, agreed to cover the cost of the station and finished a small portion of the vast structure for Beebe and his team to use. Beebe and his team began work there in 1945, staying as guests of the Venezuelan government.
  Rancho Grande was located at a mountain pass in a branch of the Andes known as the Venezuelan Coastal Range, which was an important migration route for butterflies, and the station proved very lucrative in the study of insects. During his work at Rancho Grande, Beebe broke his leg in a fall from a ladder, and the forced immobility which resulted from having his leg in a cast presented him with a new opportunity for observing the area's wildlife. At his request, he and his chair were transported into the nearby jungle, and as he sat motionless the wild animals around him soon began to go about the
caption: Jocelyn Crane visiting William Beebe Tropical Research Station, Simla, Trinidad and Tobago c. 1960
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