ROSS, Roland Case

ROSS, Roland Case (1896-1987) After a lifetime as an education in natural history sciences, Ross retired as a California State College, Los Angeles professor. He died at age 90 in Los Angeles, California.

• 1926. Ross, Roland C. A Spring trip to Santa Cruz Island The Condor 28(5):240-241, September 1926

In the News~

1926: “Through the courtesy of L. E. Hitchcock, of the Biology Department of the Pasadena High School, I joined a party visiting Santa Cruz Island, going March 29 and returning April 1, 1926. The first night was spent at Potato Harbor and the next two at Fry’s Harbor. We cruised along the entire east and north coasts, and covered considerable territory inland, from the last named landing, on foot. Aside from sea fowl, were were impressed by the abundance of Ravens and the scarcity of Bald Eagles, and also by the Island Finches, inhabiting deep coastal caves having no flooring but that of surging water…”

August 17, 1997 [LAT]: “Perhaps 20 years ago, a man named Roland Case Ross — a retired Cal State professor — decides he's going to restore Pasadena's stretch of the Arroyo Seco, about a mile south of the Rose Bowl. Ross knows the arroyo's stream was channelized for flood control in the 1930s, its banks lined with 15-foot cement walls that killed off the canyon's wet riparian woodland. Ross owns a hoe and, environmentally speaking, a holistic philosophy. He plants indigenous flora along the channel, trees found there at the turn of the century, when you could pull 30 trout in two hours from the stream. But gophers kill every sapling he puts into the ground, and he becomes discouraged as his project founders. Not long after, Ross dies.”