Adam M. Sowards

Rexford F. Daubenmire and the Ecology of Place: Applied Ecology in the Mid-Twentieth-Century American West

Over his four-decade career in the Pacific Northwest, ecologist Rexford F. Daubenmire (1909–1995) developed an engaged ecology of place. Daubenmire connected regional fieldwork with ecology’s larger theoretical questions about plant communities. A prolific researcher with a national reputation, he practiced applied ecology on rangelands and in forests, orienting much of his work toward determining what vegetation could potentially occupy a habitat type to inform management decisions. Such a perspective made him useful to regional agriculturalists and resource managers but put him at odds with other ecologists who did not believe distinct and predictable plant communities existed. As a case study, Daubenmire reveals contours of ecological debates between the beginnings of American ecology and the rise of the environmental movement, and he also represents those scientists seeking connections between generalized theories, local conditions, and practical problems.

Instituting water research: the Water Resources Research Act (1964) and the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute

In 1964, Congress passed the Water Resources Research Act (WRRA) and created state research institutes to pursue practical research for the nation’s growing water problems. The Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI), initiated as part of WRRA, implemented its research program with multidisciplinary specialists across Idaho. Collaborating with public and private partners, IWRRI advanced research that reflected distinct political, economic, and environmental needs at a time when the state required more rigorous water planning. Case studies presented here include research on understanding and valuing wild and scenic rivers, tracing and mitigating water pollution from industrial mining, and improving efficiency and promoting maximization in irrigation among rural landscapes. Scientists developed new methods and advised on ways to improve water quality. Tracing IWRRI’s research demonstrates how concerns about wilderness, pollution, and efficiency developed within a research regime determined to improve water resources management. Each element reflected historical forces and social values, something only occasionally acknowledged by the researchers but nonetheless central to their efforts. In this way, IWRRI shines analytical light on state water use and the policy and scientific methods used to comprehend, mitigate, and manage water resources. The history of institutes like IWRRI provide a neglected, but useful, avenue to explore the powerful ways contemporary legal, political, and economic concerns shaped scientific research agendas, reminding us of the larger social context in which scientific research occurs.

Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism

This new version of political manhood made possible a reformist politics capable of battling political corruption while also addressing the ills of working-class urban life. The new reformers could also reach across class lines to work with Tammany leaders. But red-blooded reform had a darker side as well. According to Murphy, in overcoming male anxieties, the new political manhood narrowed “the ideological terrain of Progressive Era reform” (173). Leftist critics and advocates of alternative reform cultures, such as male settlement house workers who espoused the ideal of social brotherhood, were stigmatized “as perverted, pathological, and un-American” (124) and marginalized as weak, subversive, and sexually deviant. Theodore Roosevelt is the central figure in this story, and the Roosevelt who emerges in Political Manhood is a man driven by insecurities and anxieties that compelled him to stigmatize his opponents as sexual and political threats. Building in part on the work of Sarah Watts, Murphy’s portrait is dark and unpleasant. It is a view of Roosevelt somewhat at odds with the work of Eric Rauchway, Gary Gerstle, and Joshua David Hawley, who acknowledge Roosevelt’s anxieties but also suggest a more deeply felt commitment to political and social reform. However one interprets Roosevelt, Political Manhood is an impressive book, with much to say about the history of sexuality, masculinity, and Progressive Era political culture. Murphy weaves together several rich veins of historical analysis (all of which he generously acknowledges), he draws on extensive research, and he presents an original argument with great skill.

William O. Douglas s Wilderness Politics: Public Protest and Committees of Correspondence in the Pacific Northwest

Employing his regional identity and exploiting wide-ranging networks of conservationists and politicians, U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas worked from the 1950s to the 1970s to protect various western landscapes including Olympic Beach and Cougar Lakes. His efforts for wilderness reveal the importance of local connections, broader ties, and changing environmental legislation.