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selection (Tansley 1935 ). So Tansley hardly put the kibosh to superoganismic
thinking in the science of ecology.
Primarily an animal ecologist, Shelford's lasting Clementsian affi nities were so
ingrained that he could comfortably team with Clements, primarily a plant ecolo-
gist, to write a unifi ed ecology text titled Bio-Ecology (Clements and Sheford 1939 ).
The dean of mid-twentieth-century ecology Eugene P. Odum ( 1969 ) fully returned
ecosystem ecology to its Clemensian roots by attributing even more sophisticated
and subtle equilbria to “mature” ecosystems, such as a ratio of 1 between biomass
production and respiration and between nutrient uptake and release. Indeed, Odum
( 1969 , p. 596) tellingly alludes to Clements when he writes, “As viewed here, eco-
logical succession involves the development of ecosystems; it has many parallels in
the developmental biology of organisms. . . .” As Robert P. McIntosh ( 1985 , p. 81)
wryly remarks, “superorganisms are not easily killed.” Like Shelford, Odum had
strong preservationist sympathies, which show through his writings. He was a gen-
tle advocate of “landscape law” and “environmental rights” as well as human rights;
and he expressed a “need to start teaching the principles of ecosystem in the third
grade” (Odum 1969 ), p. 269. But, unlike Shelford, Odum was no agitator for spe-
cifi c preservationist legislation and regulation.
That Shelford declined to join forces with the Wilderness Society (WS) seems to
be a historical mystery, given that one pillar of his agitational strategy was to enlist
the membership of various conservation and preservation organizations in letter-
writing campaigns on behalf of some item on the Committee's wish list of preserv-
able areas. The mystery deepens when we learn that, in 1940, none other than Aldo
Leopold was tasked by Robert Sterling Yard, then the WS's president, with forming
a WS-ESA alliance (Warren 2008 ). Shelford repeatedly rebuffed Leopold's
entreaties.
Based in a study of Leopold's correspondence, Juliann Lutz Warren ( 2008 ) con-
cludes that Shelford's rebuff of Leopold's WS-ESA affi liation efforts came down to
what Shelford perceived to be a confl ict of interest between the two organizations:
the WS was interested in the use of wilderness set-asides for the recreational activi-
ties of its members, while the ESA was interested in preserving “Nature Sanctuaries”
as “Research Reserves,” from which the non-professional public was excluded. And
at that time, wilderness recreation was a far cry from the “leave-no-trace” wilder-
ness ethic of the present day. Wilderness recreation was then conceived to be the
exercise of “woodcraft”—cutting down saplings to build rough shelters, hunting,
fi shing, traveling by pack train—generally living off the land (Turner 2002 ). And all
that, of course, would constitute anthropogenic disturbance and spoil the putative
natural condition of wildlands and thus ruin them for purposes of ecological study.
Interestingly, a secondary difference was spatial scale: the WS was interested in
large tracts of land, “big enough,” as Leopold ( 1921 , p. 719) fi rst put it, “to absorb
a two week's [mule] pack trip”; the ESA was then interested in “undisturbed patches
of nature” as its “material” for study.
Leopold's role as matchmaker for the would-be groom (the WS) in pursuit of a
marriage with the prospective bride (the ESA) led him to develop a scientifi c ratio-
nale for wilderness preservation (Warren 2008 ). In “Wilderness as a Land
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