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chapter 7 Bringing Agrarian Science to the Public By the 1950s Herbert Stoddard had become something of a cult figure among American naturalists and scientists. Though less engaged in professional matters after World War II, he continued to host a steady stream of visitors of all stripes at Sherwood: academic biologists eager to see some of the finest remaining longleaf woodlands in the coastal plain; government of- ficials usually seeking out subtle ways to subvert official management policy; wildlife managers looking for the latest field techniques; and, as always, ornithologists hunting down information on the latest bird migration or simply looking for good bird habitat. Stoddard, in other words, rarely performed his daily duties alone. With such widespread interest in his work and habitat, he came to recognize the potential to use the Red Hills as a public, teachable place, a biological reserve in which to learn not only about the longleaf pine woodland environment, but to learn how to mesh human choices with natural processes. The idea for a formal research station had percolated in Stoddard’s mind since the Cooperative Quail Investigation. The public controversy over fire, in particular, called attention to the confusion among so-called experts about the workings of coastal plain ecology. Stoddard found inspiration in the controversy in September 1931, while in the midst of an extensive correspondence with the American Forestry Association’s Ovid Butler. After hauling Butler over the coals for his Dixie Crusader campaign, among other things, Stoddard ended one of many letters on a constructive note. He encouraged Butler and the afa to “get behind my suggestion of an Experiment Station devoted entirely to a thoroughly scientific study of the effect of fire on plant and animal life in the Southeast.”1 Such a research station, in Stoddard’s estimation, would operate independently from a large constituency with disparate interests, and would include scientists from a number of bringing agrarian science to the public 201 disciplines—botany, zoology, forestry, geology, chemistry, and more. Butler responded with measured enthusiasm, and pushed Stoddard to elaborate. “I am not interested,” Stoddard replied, “in such research carried on by any agency that has been in the anti-fire propaganda business for a long period and has a vast structure of published and expressed opinion to uphold.” The U.S. Forest Service, in other words, should stay far away. He continued, “I am not keen for the sort of so-called research that is organized to determine ‘the damage that fire does,’ for we have already had too much of that. I want to see research to determine the effect of fire. Such an investigation,” he concluded, “should be a study in pure ecology . . . [which] might best be carried on under some great Foundation in which all the investigators might be entirely unbiased and interested in only the truth.”2 Like many resource specialists of the day, Stoddard sought to use scientific expertise to solve a complex socio-environmental problem, yet at the same time wanted to strip that expertise from its traditional arbiters—career government and industry professionals. It would take over thirty years for Stoddard to bring his vision for a proper research station to life. But he finally did so in early 1958, with the establishment of Tall Timbers Research Station. Tall Timbers began as an independently funded center set up with the ideal that scientific knowledge, undistorted by political economy, would prevail on the decisions of public land policy makers and conscientious private landowners. Like Stoddard’s career, it represents a bridge between pre– and post–World War II conservation science, as well as between the management of public and private landed resources. Rooted in the management ethos of the interwar years, Tall Timbers sought to apply the lessons of those decades to the complex questions of postwar resource management. By the time Tall Timbers Research Station came to be, the American countryside was vastly different than when Stoddard made his way south in 1924. Changing methods of production were particularly alarming. Dieselpowered machinery and synthetic chemicals gave Americans unprecedented control over nature, and when coupled with the industrial organization of agriculture and forestry, led to sweeping landscape transformations. In addition , rural life was not as important in the national consciousness as it once was. The rhythms of urban life began to define the nation after World War II, and suburbia had already begun its steady march across the American countryside . At the same time, the...

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