Alagona Peter S
Department of History & Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, c/o Department of History, 4231 Humanities & Social Sciences Building, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA,
J Hist Biol. 2012 Winter;45(4):651-80. doi: 10.1007/s10739-011-9298-0.
In 1937 Joseph Grinnell founded the University of California's (U.C.) first biological field station, the Hastings Natural History Reservation. Hastings became a center for field biology on the West Coast, and by 1960 it was serving as a model for the creation of additional U.C. reserves. Today, the U.C. Natural Reserve System (NRS) is the largest and most diverse network of university-based biological field stations in the world, with 36 sites covering more than 135,000 acres. This essay examines the founding of the Hastings Reservation, and asks how it managed to grow and develop, in the 1940s and 1950s, during a time of declining support for natural history research. It shows how faculty and staff courted the support of key institutional allies, presented themselves as the guardians of a venerable tradition in nature study, and emphasized the station's capacity to document ecological change and inform environmental policy and management. In the years since, Hastings and other U.C. reserves have played crucial roles in California environmental politics. Biological field stations in the post-war era deserve more attention not only from historians of biology, but also from environmental historians and other scholars interested in the role of science in society.
1937年，约瑟夫·格林内尔创建了加利福尼亚大学（U.C.）的首个生物野外研究站——黑斯廷斯自然历史保护区。黑斯廷斯成为了西海岸野外生物学的中心，到1960年时，它已成为创建更多加利福尼亚大学保护区的典范。如今，加利福尼亚大学自然保护区系统（NRS）是世界上最大且最多样化的以大学为基础的生物野外研究站网络，拥有36个站点，覆盖面积超过13.5万英亩。本文考察了黑斯廷斯保护区的创建过程，并探讨了在20世纪40年代和50年代自然历史研究支持减少的时期，它是如何发展壮大的。文章展示了教职员工如何争取关键机构盟友的支持，将自己展现为自然研究悠久传统的守护者，并强调该研究站记录生态变化以及为环境政策和管理提供信息的能力。自那以后，黑斯廷斯保护区和其他加利福尼亚大学保护区在加利福尼亚环境政治中发挥了关键作用。战后时期的生物野外研究站不仅值得生物学史学家关注，也值得环境史学家以及其他对科学在社会中的作用感兴趣的学者关注。
