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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how forest departments and conservation associations presented forest conservation as a public matter to garner public support for their objectives during the interwar period, a time marked by fears of a global timber shortage.

Paper long abstract:

Preparing for the upcoming New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition set to open in 1925, director of forests Leon MacIntosh Ellis envisioned the court of the New Zealand State Forest Service to offer visitors a lesson on the importance of forest conservation through pedagogical tools such as relief maps, charts, and photographs. Such display, he believed, would help to foster a public forest consciousness – a utilitarian and aesthetic appreciation of forests as well as political support for forestry. Ellis’ ambition to educate the public on conservation mirrored those of contemporary advocates of conservation across the settler societies of the British empire and the United Kingdom itself in the wake of World War I. Indeed, fearing a global timber shortage, state forest departments and voluntary conservation associations across the British empire sought to create a public forest consciousness to secure public support for conservation and forestry policies. This paper explores how state forest departments and voluntary conservation associations presented forest conservation as a public matter through propaganda schemes and campaigns with the aim to garner public support for their policies, adding new insight into the relationship between forestry and notions of public opinion, and democracy. On a broader scale it offers a historical perspective to contemporary discussions on democracy, public opinion, and climate change.