Print PageA literature search for information on raccoons turned into an ecological detective story, with one surprising link leading to other even more interesting and surprising links. When standard literature search methods failed to produce any useful results, communication with State and University Archives and blind emails to university faculty ultimately led to direct communication with the author of a seminal paper published in 1950.
Results/Conclusions
A series of obscure and largely uncited publications in the scientific literature reveal a set of unexpected interactions, both confirmed and suspected, among pioneering scientists in several fields, including the young Hans Jenny, Aldo Leopold midway through his legendary career, and William Albrecht, a pioneer in soil fertility research. Much remains to be discovered and confirmed, but it is clear that a variety of personalities and opportunities converged at the University of Missouri and Missouri Conservation Commission in the 1930s and 1940s, and produced a body of quantitative research on the relationship between soils and wildlife that has not been equaled since then. The sophistication and level of understanding revealed in these publications emphasizes the tragic cost to science and society of our failure to learn from the accomplishments of the past, dooming the field of ecology and other sciences to continually reinvent the wheel, and struggle to push the same rock up the same hill in a perpetual sisyphean farce.
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