Paul Errington, Aldo Leopold, and Wildlife Ecology

Residential Science

Bibliographic Data

ID8095817
AuthorsRobert Ε Kohler (0000-0002-2590-0553, corresponding author), Robert E Kohler (Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6304; [email protected].)
Year2011
Volume41
Issue2
Pages216-254
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorical Studies in the Natural Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1939-182X • E-ISSN: 1939-1811
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/hsns.2011.41.2.216
OpenAlexW2092829206
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited1

The subject of this paper is a pioneering field study of bobwhite quail by the trapper-turned-ecologist Paul Errington and the environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Their project is significant in several ways. It produced an influential environmental view of predation and contributed to Leopold's celebrated environmental ethic of “land health.” It also exemplifies a generic type of intensive or “residential” field practice, which involves knowing a research locale as intimately its human or animal residents know it, but also as generally as do cosmopolitan scientists. Finally, this essay argues that Errington's ecology and Leopold's ethic were shaped by their own residential trajectories, from the rural Midwest of their youths, through wilder environments of the Southwest and Canadian North, and back again. Place shapes field science: not just the place where research is carried on, but the places where investigators have been in their mobile careers

Biology · Environmental ethics · Field (mathematics · Sociology · Wildlife · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Ecology · Philosophy