Dietrich Brandis

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Sir
Dietrich Brandis
KCIE, FRS
Born(1824-03-31)31 March 1824
Bonn, Germany
Died29 May 1907(1907-05-29) (aged 83)
Bonn
Occupation(s)Botanist, forestry academic, civil servant
Scientific career
Author abbrev. (botany)Brandis

Sir Dietrich Brandis

magnum opus. Brandis is considered the father of tropical forestry and has also been described as the father of scientific forestry. In addition to his work in India, he also had a significant influence on forest management
in the United States.

Early life, education and family

A member of the patrician

King Otho of Greece and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn. His grandfather Joachim Dietrich Brandis was personal physician to Queen Marie of Denmark and Norway and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
.

He studied at the universities of Copenhagen Biology, Göttingen Botany and Bonn Biology major and minor Geography and Antiquites, and in 1849, he took up a post as a lecturer in botany at Bonn. His interest in forest management was initially from a botanical perspective.

In 1854, he married Rachel Marshman, a daughter of the Indian scholar and missionary

Burma and eventually India.[1] His first wife died in India in 1862, and during a two-year sabbatical in Europe from 1865 to 1867, he met and married Katharina Hasse, eighteen years his junior. She moved to India with him and the couple had six children, some of whom did not reach adulthood.[2][3]

Dietrich Brandis was the father of supreme court justice Bernhard Brandis and the grandfather of the microbiologist Henning Brandis.

Forestry administrator in British India

Among other natural resources, the British government in India was interested in the use of

Burma
, at the time part of the British India.

Burma

Brandis joined the British civil service in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of

Pegu division in eastern Burma. In 1858 he became head of the imperial forest administration of all of British Burma
.

During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals. He introduced the "taungya" system,[4] in which Karen villagers provided labour for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. In return, they were allowed to plant crops for the first few years between the trees. As the teak trees grew, villagers were moved to new land and the process was repeated. As a result of this process, many villagers became dependent on the state forestry service and local resistance to the state takeover of forests became increasingly difficult.

Based on his academic training, Brandis was initially interested in botany. His herbarium and botanical library, which he shipped from Calcutta to Rangoon, were lost when the boat carrying it capsized. This loss led him to shift his focus from botanical studies to forestry.

Brandis' work included the determination of teak volume, rate of growth, identifying rate of harvest, developing forest protection plans against pests and fire. He also introduced timber purchase rules, clearing rules and the establishment of managed teak areas called conservancies with officers who were appointed as Conservators. Based on his experience, he helped formulate the Indian Forest Act of 1865.

Contribution to forestry management in India

In 1864 Brandis became Inspector General of Forests in India, a position he served in for 20 years. He formulated new forest legislation and helped establish research and training institutions. The

Imperial Forest School at Dehradun
was founded by him. Brandis was created a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1878, and he became a Knight Commander of the same order in 1887.

Brandis documented the

Shevaroys
. He was among the earliest in India to formally link forest protection with local peoples.

He also took an interest in the forest flora of northwest and central India and of Indian trees in general. Even after retirement, Brandis continued to work on Indian forestry and, at the age of 75, he started his principal botanical work, Indian Trees, dealing with 4400 species. It was first published in 1906 and re-issued several times afterwards, the last time in 1971. He was posted at Balaghat in M.P. as a principal of forester training institute for a long time in his service period.

Retirement

After his retirement from the position as Inspector General of Forests in India in 1883, he returned to Bonn, but frequently visited England in the following years. From 1900 until 1906 he lived permanently in Kew in Greater London. He also supervised training of forestry students at the Royal Indian Engineering College in England for eight years (1888–1896). His interest in American affairs led him to take special care of American foresters visiting Europe, for which he received a personal letter of thanks by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.[5] He was succeeded as Inspector General of Forests by Lt Col Frederick Bailey of the Royal Engineers.[6]

Shortly after returning to Bonn in late 1906, he was hospitalized and died a few months later on 28 May 1907.

Broader influence

Dalbergia sissoo from "Illustrations of the Forest Flora of North-West and Central India"

Brandis was also involved in forestry education in England at

W. Schlich and C.A. Schenck of Germany (while a visiting professor at the University of Giessen), and Gifford Pinchot and Henry Graves (the first and second chiefs of the USDA Forest Service) of the United States.[citation needed
]

He influenced the forestry movement in the United States by mentoring Pinchot, Graves, and others who came to study with him in Germany, and through his voluminous correspondence with many other men, such as Charles Sprague Sargent and

Franklin Hough involved in establishing the U.S. national forest system. Pinchot relied heavily upon Brandis' advice for introducing professional forest management in the U.S. and on how to structure the Forest Service in 1905. His influence was so great that President Roosevelt
sent him a photograph in 1896 with the inscription

"To Sir Dietrich Brandis, in high appreciation of his services to forestry in the United States. From Theodore Roosevelt."[7]

Honours

Legacy

Many species of plants are named after him:

The standard author abbreviation Brandis is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[8]

Notes

  1. ^ Rajan, Ravi (1998). "Imperial environmentalism or environmental imperialism?". In Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran and Satpal Sangwan (ed.). Colonial foresters and the agendas of forest management in British India 1800–1900. pp. 324–371.
  2. ^ Prain, David (1912). "Brandis, Dietrich" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. doi:10.1098/rspb.1908.0046
    .
  4. ^ King KFS, "Agro-silviculture (the taungya system)". University of Ibadan / Dept. of Forestry, Bulletin no. 1, 1968, 109pp.
  5. ^ R.P. Sharma, The Indian Forester, vol. 112, 1986
  6. ^ Whos Who in India, Riddick 1998
  7. ^ Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, Volume 80, page V paragraph IV
  8. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Brandis.

References

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Dietrich Brandis
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Illustrations of Forest Flora, 1874.
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