Outreach Committee Report - Updated Dec. 2006

ASEH Outreach to SCB Meetings: Building Links with Conservation Biology

December 2006

By Kate Christen, Smithsonian Institution

The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) 2007 meeting will include an “Organized Discussion” among historians, conservation biologists, and wildlife managers about Environmental History and Conservation Biology: Building Links to Support Biodiversity Conservation.  This represents the latest of several ASEH Outreach Committee initiatives promoting closer ASEH-SCB contacts. The committee seeks to facilitate engagement among environmental historians and practitioners of many associated disciplines, to benefit our own EH scholarship and help enhance its applicability to formulation of present and future environmental policies and practices.

SCB has international chapters; its membership dwarfs ours; they are mostly natural scientists and conservation practitioners. Yet despite many differences, both SCB and ASEH are “absorbed in the study of the environment, and both would like our understanding to translate into real-world solutions,” as ASEH President Steven Pyne expressed to several SCB officers in our discussions during SCB 2006. Both groups agreed we should interact more, initially through more papers and panels at each other’s conferences.

Greater interaction offers symbiotic benefits.  ASEH can bring to SCB our expertise in history and humanities, and the richly textured understanding such scholarship can convey. SCB, in turn, can recharge our historical research with vital present-day concerns, reminding us that history--the search for a usable past--will find its utility especially by engaging the issues of contemporary environmentalism.

The Outreach Committee urges interested ASEH members to submit “oral presentations” or poster proposals to SCB 2007, taking place in South Africa July 1-5. Deadline is January 8; for full submission instructions, follow the 2007 “Global Meeting” links at www.conbio.org. Also there see information about SCB’s 2008 global meeting in Tennessee and 2009 meeting in Asia, and about “section meetings,” including the 2007 “Austral Asia” meeting. SCB shifts its alternate-year global meetings among continents (most section meetings are outside the US, too). Through presentations at these international meetings ASEH would be better able to engage topics on-site that, while within our intellectual reach, are beyond our institutional grasp. SCB’s US meetings and ASEH conferences also offer excellent opportunities to organize panels incorporating both ASEH and SCB regulars.

Now is an optimal time for greater research exposure at each other’s meetings, especially regarding parallel or collaborative projects. Conservation biologists are acutely aware of the need for aligning their research with social science and humanities approaches to improve project implementation and reach sustainable development goals. Additionally, SCB’s Social Science Working Group (SSWG; http://www.conbio.org/workinggroups/sswg/), created in 2003, seeks environmental historians’ involvement on its committees.

Some elements of SCB meeting culture may prove unfamiliar to environmental historians. For example, at SCB only a “symposium” (4-16 speakers, each with 15 minutes—sharp!) may be allotted a discussion segment (15 minutes—sharp!). Symposium proposals are due September of the prior year, and competition is fierce. But we’re certain interested ASEH members will submit competitive symposia, perhaps incorporating related natural science work. Organized discussions (1.5 hours long; September deadline) can also provide optimal opportunities for exploring EH in a conservation biology context. Our 2007 discussion will feature the different takes of historians Jane Carruthers and Nigel Rothfels and Kruger Park elephant manager Ian Whyte on and lessons of elephant management history research.

Additionally, I’ll attest firsthand to the rewards of presenting EH research papers within the non-symposium, no-discussion-time mainstream of SCB “oral contributions;” I’ve been doing it since 1994. Conservation biologists’ interest in what environmental history can do for them has dramatically increased in the past decade, so plan to stick around for questions after your session lets out. You’re guaranteed some excellent hallway conversations and cross-discipline networking! 

Report of the Outreach Committee to the Executive Committee of the ASEH

April 2006

Outreach committee events, 2006:

 A. Collaborations between societies:

One of our goals is to increase awareness, conversations, and potential collaborations across disciplines. With leadership from Kate Christen and Mike Lewis, a  roundtable on possible collaborations between environmental history and conservation biology has been organized for the 2006 ASEH conference (session H-4,  "Collaborations between Environmental History and Conservation Biology: Tales of Two Societies.") Roundtable participants include the president of the Society for Conservation Biology, John Robinson, SCB members Tracy Dobson and Brian Miller, and ASEH/SCB  members Mike Lewis, Kate Christen, and Nancy Langston.  We hope this roundtable will begin discussions about fruitful cross-pollination across disciplines.

With Lisa Mighetto's help, we've also set up a outreach committee breakfast for Saturday April 1 to discuss further cross-collaborations.  Among other things, this breakfast will discuss setting up  workshops (or mini-meetings) at future SCB and ASEH meetings, with the goal of furthering conversations across disciplines.

Nancy Langston has spoken with the president-elect of the Agricultural History Society, Jess Gilbert, who is very interested in setting up something similar at the upcoming AHS society meeting in Madison. Other societies may also be worth considering.

B. Place-based workshops:

One topic of discussion among outreach committee members, and an agenda item for the breakfast meeting, concerns place-based workshops. These workshops have the potential to draw together historians, geographers, biologists, and other researchers with common interests.  One model is an NEH-sponsored workshop on Yellowstone that will take place in early 2007, organized by Brett Walker, Montana State University, with the help of outreach members Nancy Langston and Gregg Mitman.  Gregg, Nancy, and Bill Cronon are working on funding for a series of brief, place-based workshops in the upper midwest.  Kate Christen and Mike Lewis are discussing a proposal for the central Atlantic region, while Marsha Weiseger is submitting an NEH proposal for a similar, interdisciplinary workshop on western rivers.  We would like to explore potential funding sources for future place-based workshops, and ways such workshops could help develop discussions across disciplines.

C. Experts' Roster

Ravi Rajan is taking the lead on organizing an experts' roster, which would help the media find contacts within the ASEH for input on issues and events.

D. Topics of Discussion:

The outreach committee would like to encourage discussions of the following issues:

-- Funding and publication issues in interdisciplinary research--who funds this work?  What publication outlets are most productive for research findings?  How can we encourage collaborations that explore human-environment interactions in all their richness?

-- Tools and methodologies: how can we best utilize and develop innovative tools, including GIS and remote sensing?  Some ASEH members, such as Kate Christen, Brian Donahue, and Lynne Heasley, have done excellent work with these technologies.  Many other ASEH members would love to learn how to use them, but they're intimidated by a steep learning curve.  Should ASEH consider sponsoring a formal techniques workshop connected to a  future meeting? This might be a money-maker for the society, as well as a useful opportunity for members. 

-- Collaborative and participatory research: involving communities in our research is a key part of outreach, and it means more than simply communicating findings.  A discussion of some of the methods, ethical issues, and benefits of participatory research would be helpful for many ASEH members.

-- Communicating our findings to policymakers and the larger public.  Encouraging conversations with environmental journalists, serving on National Research Council committees, participating in the Leopold Environmental Leadership Program, encouraging members to write op-ed pieces, serving as congressional fellows--these are all possibilities. Individual members need to make their own decisions about whether they want to be involved in such outreach, but the committee can help make ASEH members aware of the possibilities.

Many ASEH members take an active role in communicating environmental history to a wider public.  Craig Colten's discussions of Hurricane Katrina, Gregg Mitman's environmental film festival, and many members' appearances in documentaries are all examples.  We hope that the experts' roster will further these efforts, and we will discuss other ways to increase public awareness of environmental history.

Nancy Langston, Chair

Kate Christen

Ravi Rajan

Gregg Mitman

Dale Goble

Karl Brooks