cover image Pioneer Ecologist

Pioneer Ecologist

Robert A. Croker. Smithsonian Books, $29 (222pp) ISBN 978-0-87474-315-9

For more than 30 years, Victor Shelford taught zoology and related subjects at the University of Illinois; during that time he also conducted field research that led to the concepts of plant and animal communities, ecological succession and food webs. He was a founder of the American Ecological Society and an early advocate of the preservation of ecosystems. Dissatisfied with the AES stand on conservation, he founded the Ecologists' Union, which later became the Nature Conservancy. Croker, professor of environmental history and conservation at the University of New Hampshire, gives a detailed account of Shelford's academic career and his efforts to preserve natural areas. Though his work was important in natural science, Shelford was little known outside academic and scientific circles. Given this lumbering biography, he may remain an obscure figure. Illustrated. (Nov.)