CCC Upsets Nature's Balance

Background: By the late 1930s, the science of ecology, which stressed the importance of biological balance and the interconnected nature of organisms, gained prominence among conservationists and spurred growing criticism of the CCC. Merritt L. Fernald, a Harvard botanist, spoke to scientists in Philadelphia about these concerns, and his critique of the CCC was covered by newspapers such as the New York Times.

New York Times,  May 21, 1938

Says CCC Upsets Nature’s Balance

Professor M. L. Fernald Holds It Alters Life of Ages and Menaces Rare Plants

Philadelphia, May 20.— The Civilian Conservation Corps was pictured to scientists here today as a destroyer of the “natural equilibrium of nature” and, inferentially, as a menace to many rare plants which, as “fugitive aristocrats,” had struggled to retain a foothold on this continent.

Speaking at a scientific forum as part of the three-day exercises dedicating the Benjamin Franklin Institute, Professor Merritt Fernald of Harvard classed the “misguided and enthusiastic young men” of the CCC with the “highly trained and often overcultured landscapist” as pursuers of a course of “misbranded conservation.”

“So long as man has the passion to alter the perfectly balanced conditions of life which nature, through countless ages, has developed,” Dr. Fernald warned, “the rare ad retiring plant of animal has no more chance of survival than has the human fugitive aristocrat in the dictator-ruled countries which are so upsetting to lovers of human liberty.” 

The speaker made his observations on the CCC after referring to the fate of the rare shrub names “Franklinia” in honor of Benjamin Franklin by William Bartram, early American botanist, who first introduced it to horticulturists from its native haunts. . . .

He quoted from a Boston newspaper account of March 31 inviting citizens to visit camps where 65,000 CCC boys had earned enough money to send $14,000,000 to their homes and where, the story said, they and “advanced conservation eighty years.” In the forests, it added, the workers had been responsible for “new ponds, roads, bridges, water holes, and new plantings.”

“Now think carefully for a moment, “ Professor Fernald suggested. “The building of artificial ponds, roads, artificial bridges and artificial beaches and the planting of introduced trees and shrubs is not conservation. It is just the opposite of true conservation, for it upset the natural equilibrium which has become established long before man, proud of a supposed resemblance to God, came to ruin it. 

“If vast regiments of otherwise unemployed young men are to be encouraged to hew, rake, and burn the forests, they will unconsciously become destroyers of the natural equilibrium of nature.”

Source: "Says CCC Upsets Nature’s Balance: Professor M.L. Fernald Holds It Alters Life of Ages and Menaces Rare Plants" New York Times,  May 21, 1938.