Nancy Langston

In this talk, Nancy Langston explores shifting conceptions of old growth forests in the 20th century, in order to better understand current conflicts over sustainable forestry, restoration, and fire management. Her case study will be the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, where for nearly a century foresters attempted to use the best ecological research of the day to resolve conflicts over access to forests. The central problem was how to assure fair distribution of scarce resources. But, instead of acknowledging the fact of scarcity and using research to devise ways to manage within ecological constraints, the U.S. Forest Service tried to use science to remove those constraints. This led to a century of efforts to replace old growth ponderosa pine forests with regulated, rapidly-growing forests that required fire suppression to maximize output. By the late 20th century, changes in perceptions of old growth led to dramatic changes in forest management across western public lands, with rippling effects for ecological and human communities.

Speaker Biography 

Nancy Langston – Distinguished Professor Emerita of Environmental History, Michigan Technological University

Nancy Langston is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University. Langston's research explores climate change in the Lake Superior watershed and other northern watersheds. After 18 years at UW-Madison, in 2013 Langston moved to Michigan Technological University to join the new Great Lakes Research Center and the Environment and Energy Policy group in the Department of Social Sciences. During 2012-2013, she was the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Science, in residence at Umeå University in Sweden. Past-president of the American Society for Environmental History, from 2010-2013 she served as editor of the flagship journal in the field, Environmental History. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Marshall Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Author of six books, including Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares: The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West (winner of the Forest History Society’s Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award), Sustaining Lake Superior (Yale University Press 2017) and Reindeer on the Run (Yale University Press, forthcoming in 2026), she currently serves as Board President of the Keweenaw Land Trust. She is also a fine art printmaker and oil painter who explores the ways that visual arts can increase engagement with environmental citizenship.