Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
I had suffered an utter revulsion towards needless and unnecessary shooting
of anything. I therefore put my guns away and became, for the first time, a
birdwatcher, watching birds for their own sake. I also acquired a camera and
began to achieve as much fun from stalking an animal to photograph it as I
had originally in stalking it to shoot it.
(Letter from H.J. Frith to Lydia Cheuang, 4 January, H. J. Frith Files, AAS)
At the same time he needed his skills as a hunter to collect birds for gizzard analysis.
While Frith continued with gizzard analysis, he nevertheless appears not to have
supported hunting for sport, nor to have seen 'sportsmen' as allies of conservation,
as Kinghorn had done. Frith's changing views reflected broader trends in Australian,
and global, ideas about conservation following World War II. His reaction to
'unnecessary shooting' was linked to a widespread ethical shift towards valuing the
lives of other living things after the large number of casualties from the war
(Cartmill, 1993: 204-209; Dunway, 2000; Brower, 2005). These ideas were tied
into new concerns over the environmental effects of technological 'progress', which
also took hold in this period, and the growing popularity of ecology and
conservation science both within and beyond the sciences.
Post-war ecology and conservation science
Both Frith and Ratcliffe were part of this increasing shift towards ecology and the
development of conservation science in government institutions. Ratcliffe had
studied zoology at Oxford with Charles Elton under Sir Julian Huxley, and from
1929 to 1930 worked as an economic entomologist in the CSIR (the precursor of
the CSIRO), researching damage from flying foxes (or fruit bats) to agriculture in
Queensland (Tyndale-Biscoe
et al
., 1995: 250; Robin, 1998: 134-136; Robin,
1997: 69; Dunlap, 1999: 250-251; Mulligan and Hill, 2001: 182-183; Robin,
2001: 181-183; Warhurst, 2002). In 1935, Ratcliffe began work with CSIRO into
widespread severe soil erosion that was devastating the pastoral industries in inland
Australia. At the same time, the USA faced a similar problem with the 'Dust Bowl'
of the Midwest. Robin has argued that this crisis was a turning point in government
science in both countries:
The soil erosion crisis in both the USA and Australia changed the emphasis
of applied science . . . [as it] could not be handled on a 'pest control' model
. . . but its progressive agenda increasingly emphasized development in the
long term, not instant results.
(Robin, 1997: 70)
In Australia, conservation science as it emerged in the 1930s and 1940s 'became
the next important umbrella for ecological work' (Robin, 1997: 70). Although
ecology had a long history in science, with its roots in the nineteenth century, it
emerged as a professional discipline only in the post-war period, with strong ties
Search WWH ::
Custom Search