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Contribution short abstract:

"Mapping Texas" explores William L. Bray's biogeographical surveys of the Lone Star State (1897-1907) were essential to his settler-colonial commitments to map, classify, and name species and ecozones to secure the economic-political control that this western scientific knowledge generated.

Contribution long abstract:

"Mapping Texas" explores William L. Bray's biogeographical surveys of the Lone Star State (1897-1907) were essential to his settler-colonial commitments to map, classify, and name species and ecozones to secure the economic and political control that this western scientific knowledge generated. This ambitious enterprise dovetailed with his assiduous botanical collecting that expanded the university’s herbarium; and his transdisciplinary engagements with botanists, foresters, and geologists (even historians!). But these collaborations were also revelatory of his generation’s uncritical acceptance of their expertise and utilitarian perspectives. Bray repeatedly asserted in public lectures and professional papers that botany and biology must be of social use and economic value. Yet he was just as clear that there were distinct limits to how nature and its resources could and should be consumed. In a series academic articles and government reports, he decried the rapid extraction of natural resources that devastated crucial ecosystems and imperiled the public’s health and safety. Overgrazing and timber cutting on Texas' Edwards Plateau and the Balcones Escarpment intensified downstream flooding in cities like Austin and San Antonio. Clearcutting in the East Texas pineries, like the suppression of fire in its longleaf pine forests, was altering the capacity of these once-thick stands to regenerate. Bray was the first to call for the establishment of rigorously regulated national or state forests, a radical counter to the state’s unfettered entrepreneurism.