This Land Is Your Land

by Michael J. Lannoo (Author)

Field biology is enjoying a resurgence due to several factors, the most important being the realization that there is no ecology, no conservation, and no ecosystem restoration without an understanding of the basic relationships between species and their environments—an understanding gleaned only through field-based natural history. With this resurgence, modern field biologists find themselves asking fundamental existential questions such as: Where did we come from? What is our story? Are we part of a larger legacy? In This Land Is Your Land, seasoned field biologist Michael J. Lannoo answers these questions and more in a tale rooted in the people and institutions of the Midwest. It is a story told from the ground up, a rubber boot–based natural history of field biology in America.

Lannoo illuminates characters such as John Wesley Powell, William Temple Hornaday, and Olaus and Adolph Murie—homegrown midwestern field biologists who either headed east to populate major research centers or went west to conduct their fieldwork along the frontier. From the pioneering work of Victor Shelford, Henry Chandler Cowles, and Aldo Leopold to contemporary insights from biologists such as Jim Furnish and historians such as William Cronon, Lannoo’s unearthing of American—and particularly midwestern—field biologists reveals how these scientists influenced American ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology, and in turn drove global conservation efforts through environmental legislation and land set-asides. This Land Is Your Land reveals the little-known legacy of midwestern field biologists, whose ethos and discoveries have enabled us to preserve and understand not just their land, but all lands.

Review
“An original, absolutely fascinating book. Lannoo has given us an extraordinary gift: the inspirational story of one hundred fifty years’ worth of field biology in North America and what the ideas and actions of hardworking, brilliant biologists (many with charismatic, dominant personalities) have meant to the world—a global network of natural areas and environmental protection legislation. I predict This Land Is Your Land will be a classic narrative of American field biology far into the future.”
(Marty Crump, author of "Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog, Adder’s Fork and Lizard’s Leg")

About the Author
Michael J. Lannoo is professor of anatomy and cell biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine–Terre Haute, an affiliate of the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois, and holds graduate faculty status at Purdue University. He has considerable tropical and polar field experience in addition to his primary research emphasis on temperate systems. He is the author or editor of six books, including Leopold’s Shack and Ricketts’s Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism.