Local Knowledge in Two Conservation Eras

• In Event: Extracting Forest Knowledge: Race, Class, and Gender in Early American Forestry

Abstract

It is generally agreed that conservation actions are needed globally. However, the field of conservation science is only now officially admitting the need for projects co-design by people who live in natural areas being studied or explored. This problem has been recognized by social scientist Nathan Bennett, who recently co-authored the paper “Social Science for Conservation in Working Landscapes and Seascapes,” published in Frontiers of Conservation Biology. After surveying 14 project sites around the world, the team concluded that conservation decision-making must rely more on “insights from place-based and problem-focused” work to create “more effective, equitable, appropriate and robust conservation actions.”

I propose to use some of the social science guidelines used by Bennett and his colleagues to look back at the early 1900s forestry professional conservation education programs in the United States and how cohorts were sent into the forest to design massive speculative projects that later became high-profile federal, state, and local government-owned parks and forest reserves. We often take for granted these places today as part of our natural and cultural landscape. These forestry cohorts did surveys, marked boundaries, and reforested thousands of acres with seedlings from newly created, school-based nurseries. In order to develop and scale up these projects quickly, they had to rely on local workers to gain access and understand places. What was the role of women in this male-dominated woodsy environment? It was well-known at the time that women had created the public will for conserving trees and in some communities held critical knowledge, yet they had to deal with male foresters and forestry students there to extract knowledge. Today’s climate change mitigation calls for accelerated community engagement on a massive scale. I will show the parallels between scientific forestry in the early 20th century and conservation science in this century.

Author

• Ruth Anna Stolk, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage