Dissertation Research: Cold War Conservation: International Science, National Resources, and Reproductive Limits

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This dissertation project explores unexamined aspects of the history of biological determinism in the twentieth century through a focus on postwar international conservation and its influence upon land-use planning and human population control. International post-war conservation efforts asserted a primary role suggesting a revised relationship between the biological and the social sciences. Frank Fraser Darling, Julian Huxley, Fairfield Osborn, and William Vogt claimed biology must be the arbiter of the social order if the human species is to survive. Environmental determination of a populations's optimum density meant that only biologists could judge what constituted a quantitatively and qualitatively appropriate population. These four international figures were ardent conservationists who participated in the founding of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUNC), a non-governmental organization recognized by UNESCO. A study of IUCN initiatives in the 1950's will reveal much about the significance and influence of biological and political concerns regarding reproductive limits and resource scarcity on land-use planning and population control during the Cold War.