Ecology Archives - Not Even Past

Review of Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (2022) by Laura J. Martin

In Wild by Design, historian Laura Martin points to an irony at the heart of our contemporary ecological moment: in the face of human-made threats to the earth’s biosphere, it is only through further intercession into the workings of nature that humankind may remediate the harm that it has already caused. The notion that through conscious action, people have the potential to revivify or enhance natural systems is not, however, new. The assumption rests at the heart of the field of ecological restoration, whose history within the United States during the 20th century Martin seeks to recount.

Martin writes that historians have typically presented the history of 20th-century environmental management as a duel between environmental conservation and preservation. The former asserts that certain designated lands should be actively managed to guarantee the long-term availability of economically desirable natural resources. Environmental preservation, on the other hand, has sought to protect lands from any human footprint whatsoever. The logic of ecological restoration has long existed as a middle ground between these two poles, but its history, when it has been written of, has been traced back only as far as Aldo Leopold’s 1949 Sand County Almanac. In her book, Martin casts her gaze farther down the well of the past to the early 1900s, and beginning there, she traces a deeper and longer history of ecological restoration in the United States.

Martin begins her narrative with the American Buffalo Society in the early 20th century and its ambition to create game reservations in order to repopulate portions of the Great Plains after they had been depleted of buffalo. From there, Martin advances chronologically up to the present moment. She concludes her monograph with a discussion of the practice of off-site mitigation, the contemporary approach to minimizing environmental harm that attempts to compensate for destruction done to one ecosystem by restoring another. As a whole, the book traces how efforts to revitalize United States wilderness areas have evolved from attempts to restore only a single species to now much grander schemes that aim to guard the resiliency of entire ecosystems. Martin successfully shows in clear prose how ecological restoration evolved from the pursuit of many small, private organizations into an institutionalized scientific field whose knowledge shapes the majority of federal ecological management policy today. Martin reconstructs this history by working through government documents, published and unpublished scientific papers, news clippings, and other sources.

As Martin weaves her narrative together, she is at pains to show how the evolving understandings of nature’s workings that lay at the heart of restoration efforts interfaced with contemporary material, political, and cultural circumstances. Thus, Martin emphasizes how the studies and conceptual frameworks that have advanced ecological restoration as a field have also benefitted from and furthered the harm done to historically oppressed groups within the United States. In addition, Martin shows that at the heart of ecological restoration’s history lie shifting understandings of what constitutes “wildness” and frequent debates around what should be the baseline against which an ecosystem’s current health is measured.

A photograph of a "government buffalo herd" in Yellowstone National Park from the American Bison Society's 1907 Annual Report. — *A photograph of a “government buffalo herd” in Yellowstone National Park from the American Bison Society’s 1907 Annual Report. Source: Wikimedia Commons.*

Martin’s ability to construct narratives from primary sources and, in the process, chart an intellectual, political, and cultural history of ecological restoration is extremely impressive. However, as is typically the case with histories that cover long lengths of time, any one of her chapters feels like it could be expanded into its own book. Furthermore, in limiting its scope to the United States during the 20th century, Martin’s work begs the question of whether the history of ecological restoration can be geographically and temporally broadened beyond one country.

Finally, Martin’s narrative focuses exclusively on the knowledge and actions of an extremely limited number of actors and official institutions. Given her concern with environmental justice and the deleterious effects that restoration efforts have had on oppressed groups, it is curious that Martin does not devote more space to recovering their voices. Ultimately, the book invites a richer genealogy of the knowledge and experiences that fed and were informed by the development of ecological restoration.

Such comments are, however, not meant to detract from the value of Martin’s work. Her book adeptly situates, both politically and culturally, the development of ecological restoration in the United States during the 20th century. Wild by Design constitutes a well-crafted, clearly written work defined by sharp analysis. As such, it is suited to everyone from informed general readers to specialists in environmental history and the history of science.

Gaal Almor is a 2nd-year PhD student in the History department at UT Austin. His research centers on questions of legal rights and epistemology in the early modern Atlantic.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott (2017)

By Steven Richter

Beginning with the title and continuing through the final pages, James C. Scott’s Against the Grain seeks to subvert the historical narrative of inevitable progress toward civilization that has been dominant for millennia. Instead of framing agriculture as a driver of enlightened civilization, he conceives of it as a social and ecological building block that spawned early states that were more coercive than civil. Scott may not have launched the first attack of this kind, but his clear prose synthesizes evidence from a broad range of disciplines to craft a well-reasoned barrage of arguments, causing irreparable damage to a foundational element of western thought – that, since the first agricultural civilizations, the organized state has brought about enlightened and morally superior society.

Beginning from the perspective of a “thin” Anthropocene, a historical approach that emphasizes the ways in which human action has shaped the environment and landscapes, Scott emphasizes the richness of social-ecological relations before organized states appeared. The more traditional “thick” Anthropocene claims the environmental impact of modern industry has so thoroughly transformed the planet that it constitutes a new geological epoch. The “thin” perspective points out that that human activity, especially ecosystem niche creations through fire, so pervaded the landscape that it is difficult to think of ancient nature as separate from human influence.

Early settled communities built around the diverse and abundant sustenance activities along rivers and wetlands slowly domesticated plants and animals millennia before states first emerged. These novel arrangements, which Scott terms the “late Neolithic multi-species resettlement camps,” constituted the core of a long, slow transition. Contrasting with the more abrupt “Neolithic Revolution,” such a transition yielded not only plants with bigger seeds and more docile animals, but also dangerous new organisms that thrived in larger communities – diseases. Only through the combination of elevated birthrates and inherited immunity in settled communities could states eventually coagulate. But in many ways, these states represented, to borrow a phrase from Chief Seattle’s 1854 speech, “the end of living and the beginning of survival.”

Scott primarily defines states through the presence of tax collection, officials, and walls, with grain serving as the keystone to the political-economic system. Predictable, transportable, and calorie-dense, grain represented a surplus that could be monitored, collected, and, crucially, controlled. Put another way, grain was the perfect resource for taxation, allowing for the emergence of a ruling class. Despite the advantages yielded by such a surplus – a large, non-agricultural workforce – grain-derived civilization remained fragile. A single bad harvest could throw an early state into disarray, and even without catastrophic floods or drought, extractive agricultural and forestry practices often led to a slower demise. When combined with this ecological instability, the laborious nature of agrarian life made it so unappealing that early states likely built walls for restriction as much as for protection.

An Ancient Egyptian Statue of Grinding Grain (via Wikimedia)

Early states had to overcome tremendous social and ecological friction, so much that they typically were short lived. Only through the control and acquisition of its primary resource – people – could early states persist. The incorporation of human assets, whether by conquest of small neighboring communities or through slave trade, invigorated early states. Such a capricious system lacks robustness, and state failure could come from without or within. Such narratives of “collapse,” as it has often been framed, should be viewed critically. Scott argues what may appear to an archeologist as the catastrophic downfall of a monumental capitol may be more accurately, though not exclusively, thought of as disassembly into decentralized, independent communities. It is crucial to keep in mind that, perhaps as late as 1600, non-state peoples constituted the vast majority of global human population. States were “small alluvial archipelagos,” surrounded by hordes of ungoverned people who provided valuable trading and military allies, at least when they weren’t raiding and pillaging.

By incorporating innovative forms of evidence, Scott illuminates a critical perspective on the origins of modern states. He should have pointed out the difficulties of life outside states to create a more balanced narrative, but this omission takes little away from the central argument. Crucially, Scott compels the reader to be cognizant of the invisible or illegible, both historically and in our present lives. To make his argument, Scott relies on historical sources, such as dental analysis of ancient teeth, that prove just as informative as formal edicts or other, more visible historical sources. In a time with so much information, Against the Grain reminds us to be critical of whose story is told and why. For this reason, Scott’s work should have a place in courses focused on both the present and the future, not just the past. It suggests that students ask about the role coercion and bondage play in the twenty first century, or if our economy is built around appropriation or ecological wisdom. The reader, while learning about the distant past, cannot help but ponder what about our daily lives we take for granted and which narratives or stories should be elevated, and which should be relegated to the past.

Steven Richter is currently a PhD Student in the Community and Regional Planning program in the University of Texas School of Architecture whose focus is on sustainability, regional land use, and natural capital.

Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, by William Cronon (1983)

By Jesse Ritner

Thirty-five years ago William Cronon wrote Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. It has aged well. The continued relevance of the book is likely a result of two things. First, it is eminently readable. Flipping through the pages, one can imagine the forests that Cronon describes and feel his connection to them. Second, the problem he poses about the limits of disciplinary work in writing the history of environmental change are more poignant now than ever before, as humanists across disciplines attempt to write to current concerns about climate change and the relationship between humans and nature. Cronon argues that the cultural and ecological consequences of colonization are deeply connected. As such, they demand the tools of both a historian and an ecologist. He traces the process by which Indigenous communities and European communities made meaning of the environment to the ecological changes that resulted from the influx of a new culture. His book is not meant to suggest a single material cause of conflict, but looks at how cultural histories of diverse issues – such as land acquisition, the development of capitalist economies, the growth of towns, and the fur trade – can benefit from studying the relationship between human action and ecological consequence.

Cronon offers transparency about his methods and sources as well as any other author. He begins his book with an explanation of what ecological sources might be for a colonial history of New England. He pinpoints four varieties: naturalists’ accounts written by early colonists and their ancestors, town records that register disagreements over ownership and property, the work of historical ecologists, and then what he terms “interpolations,” which use modern ecological literature to assess the probability of past change. By looking at these materials together, Cronon demonstrates that changes in people’s livelihoods and the means of production are not simply social, but are often dependent on ecological changes. As a result, his book is not about two landscapes, one before colonization and one after, but about two different ways of belonging to an ecosystem.

Following his discussion of methodology, Cronon moves on to explore the relationship between property ownership and human interactions with ecosystems. He begins by analyzing the diversity of New England woodlands in the pre-colonial era. He makes a clear distinction between the northern and southern halves of New England, determined mostly by the lack of agriculture further north. This created a different relationship to property and different modes of production for northern Indians. As a result, the makeup of the forests was different. Different modes of production also occurred, however, as a result of different relationships to seasonality. Cronon argues that European conceptions of poverty often disguise the importance of seasonal practices to Indigenous peoples. This has also led to a false perception that European societies do not also adjust their work and technologies to the seasons. Mobility was central for Indigenous populations, who hunted, fished, or farmed depending on the season. In contrast Europeans relied on storing food over the cold winters. This demanded a type of non-mobile settlement that was previously uncommon in New England. Cronon contends that the conflict over seasonality, not over a specific resource, was the root of European and Indigenous conflicts. The role of stability in European seasonality necessitated the creation of a new property regime in New England that limited Indigenous abilities to interact with the ecosystem and profoundly changed the land. In his estimation we live today with the consequences of this new property regime.

In the final parts of the book, Cronon looks at the fallout from this conflict through the commodification of furs, trees, and livestock. In each of these cases. Cronon shows that transformations of property regimes and the effects these transformations had on the ecosystems surrounding them were a process, rather than an immediate change. Through examining this process, he deconstructs the development of European property regimes, the commodification of resources, and the changes in both European and Indigenous means of production. The most notable result of these changes was the destruction of “edge areas” that were home to diverse flora and denser populations of fauna. These “edge areas” gave the woods the park-like appearance that early naturalists encountered in New England and that Thoreau mourns the loss of in Walden.

There are moments when the age of Cronon’s book shows. The lack of local ecological specificity, the omission of variations in specific Indigenous communities, and the overshadowing of violence and direct human conflict by broad ecological changes all demonstrate that the politics and principles of writing Native American histories have changed in the past few decades. Yet, the connections that Cronon draws powerfully denaturalize the idea that humans exist outside of nature. The clarity of his argument, and the pleasure of reading his work allow this book to maintain its place as a staple in everything from undergraduate introductory classes and grad-student seminars on Native American and Environmental histories, to bookstore shelves, and as a gift for friends and relatives who love history and camping. Few books are so intellectually satisfying and casually readable at the same time. For this reason, and many more, Cronon’s book will continue to worth reading in years to come.

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