The Discovery of Nature - A Quick History

a DRAFT summary - for a book in progress

Comments welcome

The Discovery of Nature

People and Dates

Some will say that no one discovered it - that people already knew what nature was, since the stone age at least. In that sense, all the animals also "knew" about nature – but scientific discovery is something else. And true understanding of ecosystems is just beginning. 

In the early 1900s, a few people in the Midwest got the ball rolling. Here - unlike most of the temperate world where natural ecosystems had been entirely replaced by croplands, pastures, mines, and cities - small bits of ancient ecosystems survived. More importantly, they survived alongside a rapidly developing culture including universities with at least a few curious scientists who noticed strikingly rich remnant prairies and woodlands that were gone from Eurpoe and farther east (even by the time of Thoreau). These scientists began groping toward new understandings. 

·      In 1899 botanist Henry Cowles at the University of Chicago publishes planet Earth’s first insights into how an ecosystem functions. He focuses on plants that colonize bare sand and describes how much richer such communities become over time. He mentors Victor Shelford, May Theilgaard Watts, and others who would play key roles.  

·      In 1915 animal ecologist Victor Shelford, then a professor at the University of Illinois, launches the Ecological Society of America (ESA) with a mission that includes study and saving the surviving natural ecosystems of the Americas. As the ESA academics vie for grants and professional advancement, the conservation part of that vision gets lost. 

·      Starting in 1916, also building on Cowles, Henry Alan Gleason, a former Illinois farm boy trying to be a plant ecologist, briefly becomes the cutting edge of ecology. Breaking with the conventional simplistic and formulaic approach, he questions some basic principles of the time  – for example, that “succession” is always good … and fire always bad. Conventional scientists shun him. He abandons ecology, his ideas triumphing only decades later. 

·      In the 1940s, Aldo Leopold and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin begin efforts to learn to restore ecosystems. 

·      In 1949, a year after his death, Leopold’s “A Land Ethic” is published – for the first time defining a morality of ecosystem conservation. 

·      In 1951, following Leopold’s earlier recommendations, the State of Wisconsin begins work which will result in a State Board for the Preservation of Scientific Areas – and the first prototype nature preserve system. 

·       Also in 1951, Victor Shelford, still plugging away, enlists George Fell and others to launch The Nature Conservancy, which for decades becomes the unchallenged heavyweight of the ecosystem conservation business, buying quality wildlands.

·       In 1957, May Watts publishes Reading the Landscape – engaging a constituency in ecosystem appreciation. It focuses on the Midwest; later she publishes Reading the Landscape of America and Reading the Landscape of Europe. This is a vision people were hungry for. 

·       In 1959, giving credit to Gleason, John Curtis publishes The Vegetation of Wisconsin, for the first time defining plant communities in scientific detail. 

·       In 1962, Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring – inspiring world-wide conservation efforts and conveying to many people that the planetary ecosystem is a precious and fragile thing. 

·       In 1963 George Fell launches the Illinois Nature Preserves System, to focus on the small, highest quality areas, that had often been neglected. This updated Nature Preserves vision is sufficiently compelling that in the next two decades, more than half the other states follow suit. 

·       In 1975, Fell hires Jack White to lead the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory – the world’s first comprehensive effort to document a state’s surviving high-quality remnants of nature. Its first challenge: to define what such nature meant. 

·       In 1977, the North Branch Prairie Project becomes a model for public participation in the care of publicly owned natural lands, leading to the Illinois Volunteer Stewardship Network in 1983. 

·       1978 the Natural Areas Association forms (under the guidance of George Fell and Illinois chief botanist John Schwegman). Now national. 

·       In 1979, Gerould Wilhelm publishes an early draft of the Floristic Quality Index – a now widely used system for measuring plant community integrity, health, or quality.  

·       In 1988, the Society for Ecological Restoration is launched under the guidance of Bill Jordan and the University of Wisconsin. Now international. 

·       In 2019, although the Illinois Nature Preserves System has grown to more than 600 preserves with more than 250 owners, the ecological health of many preserves is badly stressed. Though legally protected, biodiversity is being lost. The Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves start work to help rescue these still-threatened gems of nature. Government alone can’t do it.