Albert G. Way

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Albert G. Way | Burned to be Wild: Herbert Stoddard and the Roots of Ecological Conservation in the Southern Longleaf Pine Forest | Environmental History, 11.3 | The History Cooperative

burned to be wild: HERBERT STODDARD AND THE ROOTS OF ECOLOGICAL CONSERVATION IN THE SOUTHERN LONGLEAF PINE FOREST

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the work of wildlife biologist Herbert Stoddard, who came to the longleaf pine-grassland forests of south Georgia in 1924 to study the bobwhite quail, and stayed to develop a method of land management that stressed ecological habitat over the dominant production-oriented model. Stoddard's major early accomplishments were threefold: He helped to create the new profession of wildlife management, he fought for the reintroduction of fire in the longleaf-grassland system, and he was among the first to advocate for ecological diversity in cultural landscapes. His work offers new insight on how conservation played out regionally, suggesting that we rethink the local elements of national conservation policy.

AS HE DID most every day while visiting the Red Hills region of south Georgia and north Florida, Henry Beadel—the son of a northern industrialist—was out quail hunting with his brother, Gerald, and their African American driver, Charley. It was a chilly afternoon in February, late 1890s. Upon reaching their shooting grounds, Beadel witnessed the unthinkable: "we saw the whole country on fire, which within a few minutes left the ground black and bare except for scattered clumps of bushes." An area that only the day before stood as an idyllic scene of grand pine woodlands interspersed with small, almost meadow-like agricultural fields, now appeared before them as a fire-blackened hell-on-earth. Unbeknownst to Beadel, the local African American sharecroppers had "put the fire out" that afternoon, ridding field and forest of a year's worth of accumulated growth. Beadel was not amused. "The country looked to us irretrievably ruined, and the quail doomed."¹	1
Charley soon set Beadel's mind at ease. He "informed us that this burning took place regularly every spring as far back as his great-grandpapa could remember." Relieved, yet still a bit incredulous, Beadel took "a few calmer squints through the smoke [to see] all the trees still standing, and we even found that we could walk behind the flames without scorching our boots." After a little sleuthing, he discovered that locals "took the practice as much for granted that it had not occurred to them to mention it to us."² Setting fires was one of the many local land management practices that mimicked historical ecological disturbance in the South's longleaf-grassland environment—practices that would soon be repeatedly attacked and defended by a bevy of scientific experts.	2
Almost three decades later, it did not take such a revelatory experience for Herbert Stoddard to realize fire had an essential place in the South's coastal plain ecology. Despite the anti-fire dogma that infused the region in the 1920s, he already understood before arriving in the Red Hills that the stability of the region's longleaf pine-grassland system depended on routine fire. Stoddard came to the Red Hills in 1924 as the leader of a study, sponsored by wealthy landowners and carried out through the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey, to examine the life history and preferred habitat of the bobwhite quail, and develop a management scheme to reverse population declines. He had no formal education, but his experience as a young boy in the flatwoods of central Florida, his professional growth in the Midwest, and his profound respect for local people who had long experience with their environment, gave him the confidence to proclaim early in the study that "fire is unquestionably a controlling factor in determining the types of woodland in any given area in this region, as well as in the regulation of the ground vegetation."³ Innocuous as it may seem at first glance, this statement would have enormous implications for the conservation of the longleaf system, and for the now decades-long reconsideration of fire's ecological role. But Stoddard's recommendation came at a time when the prevailing, and practically unwavering, thought on the issue of fire in the South was clear: It should be suppressed at all costs.	. . .

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