Scientific expertise and volunteer power in the Cook County forest preserves

Bibliographic Data

ID4849347
AuthorsNatalie Bump Vena (0000-0002-3624-2787, Queens College, CUNY, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume6
Issue1
Pages259-279
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486221087103
OpenAlexW4225778056
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited31

Through a historical case study, this paper explores the political potential of volunteerism in urban natural resources management. As governments continue to rely on unpaid labor to perform essential services, volunteerism has proliferated in urban protected lands during the neoliberal era. It is therefore worthwhile to study the power that volunteers may wield at their service sites, alongside the scholarly attention already paid to the inefficacy and the inadequacy of volunteer labor. By drawing on science and technology studies literature, especially concerning the role of citizen science in activist movements, this article analyzes how volunteer stewards influenced natural resources policy in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. A local agency, the district is responsible for nearly 70,000 acres in the county that encompasses Chicago, IL. For most of the twentieth century, forestation constituted the district's official land management policy, as leaders sought to match its ecologically diverse holdings to the agency's name. In the late 1970s, volunteers won permission from the district to begin restoring prairies in the forest preserves. Working autonomously, volunteer stewards cultivated expert credibility in the science of ecological restoration. Over several decades, they drew on their scientific authority to convince forest preserve leaders to adopt ecological restoration as the district's primary land management policy, a process culminating in the early twenty-first century. The paper also explores the fragility of volunteer authority rooted in scientific expertise, by tracking how an anti-restoration movement and, later, forest preserve staff members successfully undercut volunteer expertise in ecological restoration

Business · Environmental movement · Natural resource · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Public Administration · Marketing

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