Providing guideline principles: Botany and ecology within the State Forest Service of New Zealand during the 1920s

Abstract

This article examines the application of the sciences of botany and ecology by New Zealand’s State Forest Service (SFS) during the first half of the 1920s. Previous research concerning the SFS has primarily focused on its Director of Forestry, Leon MacIntosh Ellis, and the shift from a forestry practice based on the ideas of sustained yield management of indigenous trees to exotic afforestation. By studying the use and attributed value of botany and ecology, or ‘ecological and silvicultural research’ as the service categorised it, a wider knowledge can be gained on why sustained-yield management was abandoned for exotic afforestation, in addition to exploring changes in the relationship between state and science in New Zealand during the first half of the 1920s. In addition, by studying the Swedish Australasian Botanical Expedition, led by the Swedish lichenologist G. Einar Du Rietz, touring New Zealand for seven months in 1926–27, this article is able to explore the influence of non-British expertise during the 1920s in issues related to forestry management.