Nature's Scion

A critical compendium of the life, work, and photo-documentary archive of American zoologist Harold Coolidge Jr., whose pioneering study of primates and leadership role in co-founding the first international conservation organization helped shape the global environmental movement.

Told through transcripts of interviews conducted in the years following Coolidge receiving the J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation (1980), Nature's Scion centers on the first-hand account of Coolidge’s expeditions to Liberia, Congo, and Southeast Asia, shedding light on the moral responsibility of human encounters with animals in the wild and on how a movement originating in the ethos of hunting and the patronage of colonialism became focused on stewardship and global cooperation.

Coolidge dedicated his life to the animals he studied, later co-founding the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) after the Second World War. His interviews offer insight into the people who became "nature's diplomats" as well as intimately connecting readers to postwar institutions that have altered our laws and perception of natural environments. Recounting the Harvard African Expedition to Liberia and the Belgian Congo in 1926–27 and the 1928–29 Kelley-Roosevelt Asian Expedition, which he led for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, Coolidge takes us into the most exciting and controversial realms of species research and exploration. Understood within the changing context of colonization in the early 20th century, the expeditions Coolidge participated in were not only important for our understanding of the animals themselves, but also for the role of medical science in natural history and the emergence of institutionally separate fields of study.

Coolidge’s account allows us to understand the origins of modern-day conservation as a movement pioneered by a community of men who were not just passionate conservationists, but also hunters and outdoorsmen. While Coolidge’s own views about the Western presence in Africa and Southeast Asia keep pace with social developments of his time, as they shift and modernize, they demonstrate achievements of involving more stakeholders and voices. Additional framing content is offered by Chief Conservation Officer of re:wild, Russell Mittermeier and professor of art, Miles Coolidge.