Bison, Acid, and Budworms

Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'etudes canadiennes Bison, Acid, and Budworms Much of the history of Canada - discovery, settlement, and exploitation - is recorded in its transformed landscapes. Forests became farms Or tree plantations , prairie grasslands were fenced and plowed, rivers Were dammed to generate hydroelectric power: all epitomize the transformation of the environment for economic and political purposes. This special section of the Journal ofCanadian Studies presents three articles on the environmental history of Canada. It examines the management ofbison in Wood Buffalo National Park, the scientific study of air pollution in n~rthern Ontario, and logging and pesticide spraying in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. When we consider how Canadians have interpreted their landscape, writers and artists- from Catharine Parr Traill to Roderick Haig-Brown, Paul Kane to Tom Thomson - most often come to mind. When we think of how Canadians have changed their landscape, we think of farmers and loggers, prospectors and promoters , and the transformation of ecosystems into marketable commodities. But scientists have also contributed to both interpreting and transforming Canada. Since early in the nineteenth century there has been a persistent demand for science - viewed as able to ensure rational, efficient, economic development-to guide this process of transformation. As Suzanne Zeller has explained, scientific knowledge of the resources of British North America, generated by the Geological Survey of Canada and by other institutions, contributed not just to colonization and economic development, but to the idea of Canada as a transcontinental nation. Science also became a significant cultural activity, with natural history societies and journals attracting those who hoped to join imperial (and, increasingly, North American) networks of naturalists, or who simply wished to enjoy an afternoon's search for butterflies or minerals. Over the last century the demand for scientific knowledge has also justified expanding the responsibilities of government, expressed through new agencies such as the National Research Council in 1917, as well as through investments in resource mapping, agricultural research, wildlife studies, public health, and universities.- Since the 1950s, expanding universities, as well as new technical professions in forestry, fisheries, urban planning and environmental management have reinforced the capacity of science to shape how Canadians both understand and use their surroundings. Science is serving as a tool for exploiting nature, identifying resources to be transformed into commodities. It is also contributing to environmental protection, by describing the impacts of human activities, encouraging public concerns, and justifying political and regulatory initiatives. The diverse political implications of science mirror its institutional Volume 37 • No. 2 • (Ete 2002 Summer) 89 Introduction complexity: scientists are now active within government, universities, the private sector, and public interest groups. Debates over the Kyoto Accord and genetic engineering are only the most recent exhibitions of the role of science in framing·environmental controversies. The contributors to this section address several themes noted in this brief account of the history of Canadian science and the environment: the redefinition of areas of government activity, such as resource management, in terms of sdentific expertise; the proliferation of scientific institutions, which have carried their own implications for how science might be applied to practical problems; and the role of science generally in providing both the rationale and the tools for transformation of the Canadian environment. 90 The near-eradication of bison during the settlement of the west is a familiar story: with the rifle, plow and barbed wire as the instruments of their mass destruction , by 1920 bison had been reduced to a few thousand stragglers. John Sandlos begins his account of western bison at this point, when the federal government began to consider how it might preserve these last remnants. It is a story of a contradiction : how the last "wild" herd of bison was, in fact, subjected to decades of intensive manipulation. Transferred from the overcrowde~ Wainwright reserve in southern Alberta to the open spaces of Wood Buffalo National Park, they were treated almost as livestock: penned, vacdnated, slaughtered. While some scientists promoted this intensive managerial approach, others resisted, arguing instead for letting nature take its course. Debates about bison management were shaped not only by the state of the species, but by changing scientific ideas, especially the notion of a balance...