From The Archives Of The Struggle Against Climate Change And Animal Preservation-West Coast Version-Professor Johnny Allan-Climate Guru And Con Artist

From The Archives Of The Struggle Against Climate Change And Animal Preservation-West Coast Version-Professor Johnny Allan-Climate Guru And Con Artist                

By Bart Webber

Sometimes when you deal with guys who have that “wanting habit” business you can bite off more than you can chew. Lately I have been retelling the ups and downs of the career of once famous ecologist Professor Johnny Allan who back in the 1970s before his personal crash was treated like a living god among many ecologically minded folks. Among his other contributions the professor was the “inventor” of the donation hustle by having canisters and later animal statutes placed in zoos and other places where people might donate to what today is called climate change conditions as they affect animals in the wild. He almost single-handedly led the fight against bringing polar bears and penguins to the San Diego Zoo and later having the animals set up in conditions closer to their natural habitat so patrons could see what the effects of climate change might be back home.

But Johnny Allan also had a twisted gene in his scheming skull probably heightened by his evangelical upbringing in rural Georgia by snake-handlers and people speaking in tongues. From a young age he was a con man and bullshit artist. He used those skills to bilk thousands of people out of donations to various endangered species groupings he created out of pure clothe to rake in the dough. Once exposed it turned out that he gave enough money to such organizations (one-tenth of the haul) to keep his ass from stir, to keep those affected from “playing ball with the law.” He walked really because all the other organizations and individuals did not want to have their own spickets stopped if word got out that scams were afoot.

I mentioned that information, the scam stuff, recently in one of a series of archival captions around his career, the good and the bad since I had been a student of his back in the 1970s when he was visiting my college for a year. I also had seen in a bookstore, a real bookstore, in Harvard Square a copy of Gill Ray’s The Endangered Species Con: The Johnny Allan Story which goes into the scam stuff he pulled around grabbing dough for endangered species and pocketed most of it for “administrative costs” (the book had plenty of scam stuff from his youth as well). Those incidents got me thinking about the old man and his mixed bag career.

Frankly since Professor Allan seemed like an old man when I was a student I thought he was dead. My mistake, or maybe better Johnny opportunity. Somehow he found out that I had been doing short archival pieces on him (his archival material is rich in well-thought out ideas and a few screwy ones too like bringing Sea World to Mystic down in half frozen Connecticut and building a landline for the endangered West African rocker macaw at Big Sur). He got in touch, or rather his lawyer got in touch with me about my attempts to damage his client’s reputation.

Not the good reputation he earned in the early ecology climate change days when he could have anything he wanted in some circles, there would be nothing but hushed sounds in his classes. Not the bad odor reputation around the various longtime scams either, well documented. What has Professor Allan exercised is what my bringing attention to his later career will do to his business. That business (see photograph) is some god forsaken stall selling Mexican serapes and knickknacks in Olde Town San Diego. Somehow the masses of people who come through there looking for novelties for the folks back home will shun his operation if he has the letter “C” (con artist) branded on his head by me.

Of course the attentive reader knows where this was going. The lawyer suggested a number, money, that would make Johnny whole otherwise to court we go for my libelous remarks. Except the best defense for such is the truth. Yeah, that will be the last I hear from dear sweet Johnny, the old reprobate.