another look from SANDERSON'S FARM: A PERSPECTIVE ON NEW ENGLAND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY AND CONSERVATION

BRIAN DONAHUE

ABSTRACT

Hugh Raup's "Sanderson's Farm" essay is remembered for its vivid account of New England land use history, illustrated by the famous Harvard Forest dioramas. But Raup also used that history to argue that natural resource conservation (particularly as attempted at Harvard Forest itself) had proven a failure, because it assumed economic and ecological stability that was naive and untenable. This article reexamines the history of New England farming and forests, and explores ways in which the current understanding of that history and its implications have been used at Harvard Forest to support a renewed call for wide scale land conservation.

I HAVE ALWAYS FELT a bit uneasy about Hugh Raup's classic "View from John Sanderson's Farm," published in the Journal of Forest History in 1966. Perhaps the most widely cited article in the history of that journal (which is now merged with this one) it was forcefully written, firmly grounded in New England history, and very persuasive. Conservation, Raup concluded, is out of touch with ecological reality and seldom pays. Was he telling us that conservation is bunk?	1
Raup raised his challenge after the heyday of the gospel of efficiency in resource management, but before the rise of the modern environmental movement. Safeguarding the land's long-term productivity was the conservationist's creed. Raup rejected that. He denied that the use of nature should be clouded by moral considerations, which he called emotional. Instead, Raup championed laissez-faire: Get it while you can. It is naive to try to save resources for tomorrow, said Raup. Tomorrow's demands will be different, and technologies will change to meet them, thanks to human ingenuity. Raup urged landowners to take advantage of current market opportunities, trusting that those who come next will do the same with whatever resources they inherit. Land and trees, he said, merely provide shifting "stage and scenery" to this unpredictable but always progressive human drama.	2
Figure 1. Hugh Raup. Courtesy of Harvard Forest Archives, Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA. Hugh Raup (right, with pipe) listens as Ernest Gould (left, with pipe) talks with University of Syracuse forestry students on Petersham town common, 1965.
Hugh Raup was director of the Harvard Forest from 1946 to 1967. His acerbic take on the history of New England land use was even less charitable toward his own institution. Raup's tenure came in the aftermath of Harvard Forest's early twentieth-century push to promote conservation of New England's regenerating forests for sustained timber yield—an effort he declared a "dismal failure." Raup himself was an Arctic biologist, geographer, and field botanist. Under his guidance, Harvard Forest researchers turned away from forest management and toward study of ecology and history. To this day they devote themselves primarily not to silviculture, but to scientific investigation of the New England landscape.	3
Yet in spite of Raup, Harvard Forest still promotes forest conservation, and on a grand scale. The urge to conserve just will not die. Perhaps it is time to reexamine Raup's view of New England's environmental history, and his nettlesome challenge to conservation.	4
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