This Land Is Your Land The Story of Field Biology in America

About this book

Field biology is enjoying a resurgence due to several factors, the most important being the realization that there is no ecology, no conservation, and no ecosystem restoration without an understanding of the basic relationships between species and their environments – an understanding gleaned only through field-based natural history. With this resurgence, modern field biologists find themselves asking fundamental existential questions such as: Where did we come from? What is our story? Are we part of a larger legacy? In This Land Is Your Land, seasoned field biologist Michael J. Lannoo answers these questions and more in a tale rooted in the people and institutions of the Midwest. It is a story told from the ground up, a rubber boot–based natural history of field biology in America.

Lannoo illuminates characters such as John Wesley Powell, William Temple Hornaday, and Olaus and Adolph Murie – homegrown midwestern field biologists who either headed east to populate major research centers or went west to conduct their fieldwork along the frontier. From the pioneering work of Victor Shelford, Henry Chandler Cowles, and Aldo Leopold to contemporary insights from biologists such as Jim Furnish and historians such as William Cronon, Lannoo's unearthing of American – and particularly midwestern – field biologists reveals how these scientists influenced American ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology, and in turn drove global conservation efforts through environmental legislation and land set-asides. This Land Is Your Land reveals the little-known legacy of midwestern field biologists, whose ethos and discoveries have enabled us to preserve and understand not just their land, but all lands.

Contents

Preamble
Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Foundation
The Explorers
The Settlers
The Thinkers
The Institutions
What It Meant

The Natural Historians
Bred in Their Bones
What It Meant

The Ecologists
An Illinois Original
The Nebraska School of Plant Ecology
The Chicago School of Plant Ecology
The Chicago School of Animal Ecology
The Wisconsin School of Limnology
What It Meant

The Wildlife Biologists
The Scattered Become Gathered
What It Meant

The Conservation Biologists
The Conservation/Preservation Tension
Wither and How to Engage?
America’s Best Idea, Expanded
The Sole Midwestern Wilderness: Quetico-Superior Boundary Waters
Two Agencies Face Tough Transitions
Bureau of Biological Survey/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
U.S. Forest Service
What It Meant

The Restoration Biologists
All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men
Indiana Jones Revisited
This Land Is Your Land

Notes
References
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Michael J. Lannoo is professor of anatomy and cell biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine-Terra Haute, an affiliate of the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois, and holds graduate faculty status at Purdue University. He has considerable tropical and polar field experience in addition to his primary research emphasis on temperate systems. He is the author or editor of six books, including Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism.