The Ecological Society of America at Mid‐Century: Finding Its Voice

How to ensure responsible application of ecological knowledge to conservation and other environmental problems has been the subject of perennial discussions in the Ecological Society of America, leading to important spin-offs, such as The Nature Conservancy (founded in 1951) and The Institute of Ecology (incorporated in 1971). The Institute of Ecology (TIE) was a most unusual spin-off, being an ambitious multidisciplinary enterprise that tried to develop the “no-man's land where society, politics, and science meet” (Doherty and Cooper 1990). It had a novel organizational structure consisting of a consortium of founding institutions, an environmental “asssembly,” and various cooperating organizations. Through numerous advisory and study groups, TIE sponsored symposia and workshops and produced reports on a broad range of topics. The overall goal was to advance ecological science and improve how ecological knowledge was applied to policy. Josephine Doherty and Arthur Cooper (1990), in an insightful assessment of the reasons for TIE's eventual demise in 1984, pointed out that it originated in proposals developed by the Ecology Study Committee of ESA in the 1960s. In this essay, I would like to probe the prehistory of TIE by looking at the origins and development of the Study Committee, which was created in 1958 in reaction to concern that Americans were not very aware of ecology. Over the following decade this committee underwent a remarkable transformation, its members becoming increasingly outspoken as they were pushed to articulate in forceful, concrete, and even provocative language just why greater attention needed to be paid to ecological science. The story of the Study Committee is also the story of how ESA found its voice. ESA passed its 40th anniversary in 1955 without a lot of fanfare. It was less a time for celebration than for serious stock-taking. Paul Sears, chair of Yale University's conservation program and former ESA President, was discouraged by the American public's indifference to ecology, a problem he attributed in part to educational curricula that slighted ecology, leaving students completely unprepared to identify and deal with environmental problems before they became serious (Sears 1956). Sears's career as a botanist and ecologist had begun just before the founding of ESA in 1915. Four decades later this veteran ecologist feared that Americans had little sense of the importance of ecology to society. Other sciences involved in the study of the earth and earth systems were poised to leap forward dramatically. July 1957 marked the beginning of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which would actually run for 18 months through the end of 1958 (Odishaw 1958). In conjunction with this multinational and multidisciplinary research effort, the US-IGY program created an up-to-date teaching aid, “Planet Earth,” distributed at cost to schools and focusing on the scientific fields studied during the IGY (Anonymous 1958). Nothing remotely comparable that could be of any assistance to ecology was occurring in the biological disciplines, although in IGY the seeds were being sown for the International Biological Program a decade later. In fact biology was about to experience a major schism, prompted by the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953, which in the minds of many meant that the future lay with molecular biology. Ecology suffered from the lack of a unifying theory or perspective around which ecologists could rally. The idea of making the ecosystem the central organizing concept for ecology was still a relatively novel proposal, recently advanced in a new ecology textbook by Eugene Odum (1953) but not yet widely accepted. Sears's response to this problem of low status was to encourage the Society to open a discussion about the nature of ecological science and its value to society. While serving on an ad hoc committee of ESA formed to consider “ecological policy,” he recommended that ecologists needed to promote their science and its usefulness more deliberately (Ecological Society of America 1958: 37). He envisioned a conversation that would clarify ecology's contributions to “intellectual life and general welfare” and work toward a “means of realizing that potential” (Sears 1960:32–33). The Society endorsed Sears's proposal. With a grant from the National Science Foundation it created a new Ecology (or Ecological) Study Committee in November 1958, with Sears as chair. The final report of this committee, published in June 1965 in the ESA Bulletin, was intended to chart a path for the future of ecology and of the Ecological Society of America (Miller and Reed 1965). The report provides a snapshot of how ecologists were thinking about the future directions of the field and of ESA at a critical juncture in the history of the discipline, as environmental problems worsened and the modern environmental movement got underway. Since the members of the committee included current and former officers of the Society, it also provides a picture of how ESA was thinking about its responsibility as a professional society. It reveals some of the difficulties that ecologists faced in explaining—clearly and forcefully—just why ecology mattered to American society. One early theme explored by the committee was human ecology, although it proved a difficult subject to define. Sears himself had long been interested in human ecology (Anonymous 1965). As a botanist he was intrigued by the relation between plants and humans and explored the impact of white settlers on the native flora in Ohio. Work in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl sharpened his interest in conservation and convinced him that ecology was an important subject. As he argued in Deserts on the March (Sears 1935), an ecologist was a synthesizer of knowledge, capable of interpreting what was happening in a landscape and therefore able to evaluate what an effective management strategy might entail. In the postwar period Sears also promoted human ecology, which he saw as being linked to the application of ecological expertise. In a session devoted to “Perspectives on human ecology” at ESA's Annual Meeting in 1954, Sears (1954) argued that ecologists had to go beyond reading landscapes. They needed to analyze human communities and understand the forces at work in these communities, because solving an environmental problem required taking into account the cultural values of the people occupying the land. Another Study Committee member, Stanley A. Cain, from the University of Michigan and ESA's president in 1958–1959, proposed that the Study Committee create a subcommittee on human ecology. The motive was lack of consensus on what this field was, and what ESA's role was in relation to human ecology. Cain's address to the Society as retiring president in 1959 discussed how ecological concepts could be applied by analogy to human-dominated ecosystems (Cain 1960). But he did not intend to argue either for or against the idea of including a field of “human ecology” in the biological sciences. Nor did the subcommittee attempt to define what such a field might look like. Instead, the subcommittee took an easier route, looking toward other disciplines in social science that had explored human ecology in a way that was compatible with the biological approach of ecology. Anthroplogy appeared a promising source of ideas about how to conduct human ecology, since anthropologists studied the relations of humans to their environments. Therefore the subcommittee's contribution was to highlight work being done in this discipline. Under the chairmanship of Paul T. Baker, an anthropologist, the subcommittee arranged a symposium on ecology and anthropology at the AAAS meeting in New York in 1960. The papers, later published in American Anthropologist in February 1962, were all written by anthropologists and focused on how anthropologists might use ideas and methods from ecological science. The human ecology subcommittee was the only section of the Study Committee that reached out to social science disciplines, the idea being to promote an ecological perspective in disciplines that studied humans. By 1961 there were additional subcommittees on ecological biotronics, mineral cycling, microenvironment, competition, energetics, and natural selection (Ecology Study Committee 1962). These subcommittees focused on research areas that were growing within the discipline of ecology. They produced reports on these fields and organized symposia at annual meetings to draw attention to the research needs of the present and future. Many of the reports were not widely disseminated, however. The final report of 1965 noted that several imaginative and challenging reports remained unpublished even by that time, suggesting that the reports were more for internal use within the committee. The committee members did publish several essays on ecology in a special issue of BioScience in July 1964, nearly six years after the Study Committee was formed. These essays marked a shift in the nature of the committee's work, as it evolved from being a discussion group into something more like a strategic planning committee. The external causes propelling this change in the committee were growing environmental problems, which were forcing the committee, and ESA in general, to engage in more open public discussion of why ecology mattered. By the early 1960s the idea that ESA needed to reach out to the public and to adopt a stronger public voice was starting to make inroads, albeit in a tentative way. Early in 1963, during W. Frank Blair's presidency, ESA formed a Public Affairs Committee, chaired by Arthur D. Hasler, a limnologist who was also on the Study Committee. Its purpose was to promote the use of ecological expertise in resource management and pollution control, as well as to encourage ESA's president to “write strong letters” to government officials in support of the preservation of regions of ecological significance (Public Affairs Committee 1964). The Study Committee and the Public Affairs Committee were linked in their interests and had overlapping membership. One of the recommendations of the Study Committee in its annual report to ESA for 1963 was that the Public Affairs Committee should clarify what actions in the public interest could be undertaken without jeopardizing the tax-exempt status of ESA, whose bylaw 18 prohibited activity that might influence legislation (Ecology Study Committee 1964). The resulting recommendation, as reported in the Study Committee's final report, was to avoid strict interpretation of this bylaw and to allow the Society to adopt an advisory role and provide information that might affect legislation (Miller and Reed 1965:72). The Public Affairs Committee in turn recommended that the Study Committee form a subcommittee on environmental pollution, which it did in 1964, with LaMont C. Cole as its chair (Public Affairs Committee 1965). Cole was also on the Public Affairs Committee. The year 1964 was a crucial turning point for ESA, marked by demands that ecologists should speak out on issues of public concern. By January that year the membership of the Study Committee had doubled from the original six and consisted of the ESA President, immediate Past-President, President- Elect, and Secretary, plus an oceanographer, limnologist, two animal ecologists, two plant ecologists, and the director of the NSF's Environmental Biology Program (ex-officio). (The March 1964 ESA Bulletin listed the members as W. Frank Blair, James Bonner, Stanley A. Cain, John E. Cantlon, George L. Clarke, Arthur D. Hasler, Charles Olmsted, Thomas Park, Paul G. Pearson, John F. Reed, Paul Sears, and George Sprugel, Jr.). There were in addition other ecologists contributing to the various subcommittees, which usually had three or four members, sometimes more. Paul Sears, by then emeritus professor at Yale, had relinquished the chairmanship in 1963 and John F. Reed, who served as ESA President in 1963–1964, became the new chair. Reed took the key step of bringing in a consultant, Richard S. Miller, ecologist at the University of Saskatchewan, to help the committee produce its final report (Miller and Reed 1965). With Reed and Miller in charge, activity shifted into high gear. In March 1964 Miller wrote to the committee members reminding that the original of the committee was to identify some of the major problems and to the and to as I from the of the Committee and he in 1958 has yet to be (Miller 1964). Miller well beyond the and of the Study Committee since He also about other ecologists and in fields in the and The of Americans were in the and to where the members of the Study Committee of the Study Committee also to in January where they with a group a symposium on Ecology and Environmental Biology at the While in they also with John and science to of the to a by the of the for a program on ecological The meeting the committee a stronger sense of its and to Other the value of environmental biology. 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But the committee's report the following year the for more and that the of pollution were a more serious Ecology Committee that the Ecology Committee was to the for ecologists to speak out on Its annual committee reports in the Bulletin, which to be the of the committee at the many serious problems ecologists and In the the decade were to natural their and with a for scientific to provide recommendations to As Paul the committee wrote in his annual report for not as a of before but a with the of America would go a long way to The voice of most scientific is it to of It is a from and to the Ecology Committee But these were internal discussions within the the problem of use before the with the that was or because did not present the of the One of the to this was F. in his in was a and who was in that was to for the fact that the public did not to about the of and that this of the problem needed to be his to ecologists to improve public of ecology, that the public would ecological this is not he a science and the to as an of the earth and a of the ecosystem not be The Study Committee's were the that ecologists had not done to ecology on the of problems to control, and of pollution were well but where were the of ecological The Study Committee members, with other ecologists, published a special issue in BioScience in July 1964 to what LaMont Cole of ecological 1964). 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Frank for ecology” and argued that ecology and areas of and be on the of movement to a the biological Paul Sears, in the essay, proposed that ecology could even be a he the to that he was not being in making this being at with many of the and of modern a of within the (Sears to the issue were John Reed, Arthur Hasler, and A. W. These essays the for the Study Committee's report that appeared about a year later during Eugene The report on essays for more research and greater of ecology into science It noted that without ecologists for this report were of the that the adopt a on but there was less on the to which the should involved or the that should be for in public (Miller and Reed The of the Public Affairs Committee in 1963 was a step but the report noted that it was for that committee to a about any environmental The Society could draw attention to problems and to the and could but it could not provide a on many topics. 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Odum in his report, by the Study Committee had evolved from a discussion group to an important planning group within the Society, ideas to the Committee and with the Public Affairs Committee, it was to create between the Society and advisory or the One was the Study Committee's of an ad hoc advisory group on created in response to a in 1964 from the for of the National Science Under the chairmanship of A. at the advisory group proposals to the on and proposals at that time to major on the One was to create a the of The proposed by was to the by and at the in the of a major on the While the committee report of against any in it that major should be done without research The Study Committee also to for help from the National the and the of as president was to make the Study Committee into a committee. The Society through on that The from discussion group to planning group had nearly a and as the Study Committee evolved during the 1960s its voice became more in the for for ecological research and a for the development of ecology, with ESA's was important in the interests of the ecological to In on environmental in the proposals of the Study Committee formed the of these was chair of the on and of the Committee on Science and One of his was to more information on ecological science and on the chair of the Study Committee, that ESA could a strong report to to the subcommittee in advance of these As he to Stanley avoid the that ecology is important to be in the of professional Four ecologists to the three of LaMont Cole John and of Environmental and Biology at had in the work of the Study Committee. The was not an although he was then chair of ESA's Committee on was a and professor of human ecology at the University of research interests with the relation of and the Cole the idea of a of ecology and to the committee the proposals that the Study Committee had developed (Anonymous for his part that there was only ecology and that the Ecological was the human into ecology” language that of “human ecology” to the of other disciplines, ecologists and ESA should of this field and develop it within ecology. idea of humans into ecology would be explored for it was not to the of a discipline that had to humans and The for a of ecology a little but took a from what the Study Committee to The Institute of an consortium of whose and difficulties Doherty and Cooper The discussion that Paul Sears had but to new ecology in the 1960s was on the of would it a new of about ecologists be able to work in or with people from other new and would they a theory of the ecosystem that would help to the would a and difficult conversation through the of ESA's While the story not an but is and in new might end with a of The is that ecologists found it very challenging to the importance of their interests in conservation and resource as well as other of ecology. 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