BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 171: The Conservation History of George Washington Carver with Mark Hersey

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

Outdoors, Wilderness, Sports, Fishing, Outdoor, Hunting, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2024

⏱️ 124 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join Hal Herring and Mississippi State University environmental history professor and author of My Work is that of Conservation, An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver Mark Hersey for a fantastic American conservation story that has never been more relevant than it is right now.

If you finished seventh grade in an American public school, you learned about George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery in Missouri and grew up to be one of America’s leading scientists and agronomists, working from his laboratory at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Carver was a friend and advisor to U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, and sought out as counsel by some of the best minds in agriculture across the world.

Carver was also one of America’s pioneers of the science of ecology and a cutting-edge conservationist who advocated for the restoration of whitetail deer, quail and fisheries, long before such ideas became mainstream. His conservation vision was forged in the fire of his own history and in his life’s work in Alabama’s post-slavery Black Belt and along the Fall Line, known then as “the most destroyed land in all of the South” -- a place where poverty, injustice and hunger were closely tied to the abuse and collapse of the systems of the earth.

Don't miss Hal's fascinating conversation with Mark Hersey.

Transcript

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0:13.9	So what you get is tenants who are a farming land that is rapidly deteriorating that is open to erosion in a place where there's high rainfall and you get erosion like you don't see. It's even actually more marked north of the black belt and in places like the Piedmont
0:19.4	where Land is just opened up.
0:21.3	Yeah, that was interesting that he turned his art as Bartram and Audubon.
0:26.0	And then he turned his art to his, also his trade.
0:30.0	He like, I don't know, I just, it's hard to explain what I mean but it he he married
0:34.8	his art and his trade for Carver has the most famous black man in America asking him
0:41.7	to come down basically begging him to come down and take over the
0:45.4	Agricultural Department at Tuskegee, which he does.
0:48.2	And he's going to bring this gospel of scientific agriculture that he's learned at Iowa State. He's going to push back the
0:53.6	frontiers of these sudden ignorance of these southern farmers and he's going to
0:57.3	teach him on a farm and then he's going to go be an artist and boys he's out
1:00.8	when he gets there. Hey everybody, Hal hearing, backcountry hunters and anglers podcast and blasts.
1:08.0	Hey, I'm fired up this morning to announce that Savage Arms is going to be sponsoring this
1:14.2	podcast and on it has a special significance to me because I'm sitting here holding
1:20.2	the Savage Arms, Stevens Model 9, Theore ZM, 20-Gage single barrel shotgun that I got for my ninth
1:30.5	birthday.
1:32.3	I have had that since 1973. It is polished off. It's silvered up. It's scratched.
1:40.8	And I passed it on to my son when he was hen I think that would have been in 2010 and all I've done in all those years is to change the
1:50.6	replace the ejector that shotgun change the
1:53.7	shotgun has shot thousands upon thousands of thousands of rounds.
1:58.8	So this whole thing is very important to me.
2:06.7	When people have come to me who are new hunters
	...

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