Speaker: Lloyd Irland, The Irland Group
Studying the winding course of Maine’s rivers over 5 centuries takes us through a series of distinct periods of history and engages multiple sciences. It illuminates a fraught series of interactions between society and the rivers, often calling on images of a vanished “Golden Age”.
The period imagined here starts at 1600, and it is not yet complete – so future studies, imagination, and scenario-writing, as well as the arts of politics and leadership, will emerge as critical in the coming century.
Lloyd Irland has studied, written, and taught about forests and water resources over a period of decades, coming to Maine in the 1970s as the great program of cleanup was getting underway. He has not only written and read widely on the history of the state’s waters but participated occasionally as a state and local government official. Irland recently completed an assignment as a technical specialist for the Indian Forest Management Assessment Team, as part of a nationwide review of Bureau of Indian Affairs stewardship issues on forests and forest management.
The talk will be held virtually via Zoom and in-person at 107 Norman Smith Hall, UMaine.
