Natural And National Recovery: The Rise Of Ecological Restoration In The United States, 1930-1975

Abstract

This dissertation integrates methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS), Environmental History, and Ecology to ask how scientific models, natural resources management, and the natural world influence one another. Chapter 1 explores the ecological and evolutionary impacts of whitetail deer overpopulation - a phenomenon challenging land managers across the eastern United States. Broadening the theme of land management, Chapter 2 applies methods from STS and geography to critique the systematic biases in the global distribution of ecological field sites. Chapters 3 through 9 analyze the intellectual and political history of ecological restoration in the United States from the 1920s to 1970. This portion of the dissertation traces previously obscured relationships among individual ecologists, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and particular organisms, technologies, and landscapes. It contends that for decades, American ideas about ecological restoration have been conceptually and materially linked to ideas about ecological destruction and the related expansion of environmentally relevant spaces from metersquare field sites to the biosphere as a whole. More broadly, it uses ecological restoration as a lens through which to examine how Americans have understood the relationship between the past and the present.