Paul Wesley Johnson
Paul Wesley Johnson (10 June 1941 – 15 February 2021) was an American writer, policymaker, and environmentalist. Early career After high school Johnson got his private and commercial pilot's certificates and airframe and power plant ratings at the University of Illinois Institute of Aviation. In the early 1960s he served in the Peace Corps' Ghana 2 contingent, teaching sheet metal and auto mechanics in Kpando, in the Volta Region. After the PC he studied forestry at Michigan, then in the mid-1960s worked for the US Forestry Service in Washington State. In the later 1960s he taught in Ghana again, this time for the Teachers for West Africa Program, at the School of Forestry in Sunyani. After returning to Michigan, he did graduate work on Cordia alliodora at what is now the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center in Turrialba, Costa Rica. In the early 1970s he did doctoral work in (and taught) forestry at the School of Natural Resources of the University of Michigan. In 1974 he and his family bought and moved to a dairy farm in northeast Iowa. In the late 1970s he was elected a Winneshiek County Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner. Political career In