Frank Wadsworth: Tropical Research and Technology Transfer

Born in Chicago in 1915, far from tropical shores, he enjoyed the outdoors as a boy and, in college, chose forestry as his major, earning B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. For his master’s degree, he investigated forest succession at the confluence of the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers in Alaska, again far from tropical shores. In 1938, he joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (FS) as a Shelterbelt Assistant planting windbreaks in Nebraska. Later that year, he was assigned to the FS Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station in Arizona. There he married Margaret Pearson, daughter of the Station’s first director and chief silviculturist, Gus Pearson. An anti-nepotism regulation required that he seek a transfer, so when a research officer position opened at the Tropical Forest Experiment Station in Puerto Rico, he applied; and the Wadsworths were on their way to the Tropics. The year was 1942, and despite the outbreak of World War II, they managed to travel by ship from Mobile, Alabama, to Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico Forests and Research

In Puerto Rico, Wadsworth found a long history of forest laws dating back to those passed by Spain in the 19th century. In 1876, Spain had proclaimed Puerto Rico’s rain forest in the Luquillo Mountains a Forest Reserve, making it one of the oldest reserves in the Western hemisphere. In 1898, at the close of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico passed from Spain to the United States; and in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt designated the rain forest the Luquillo Forest Reserve. In 1907, the reserve became the Luquillo National Forest, the most diverse unit in the National Forest System with more than 200 species of trees, 150 species of ferns, and 50 species of native orchids.

During World War I, many Puerto Rican farms were deforested. In the 1930s, the FS began acquiring these farms, eventually doubling the size of the National Forest and providing sites for tree plantations installed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1935, the Luquillo was renamed the Caribbean National Forest to accommodate the 6,620-acre Toro Negro Purchase Unit in central Puerto Rico. In 1939, the FS established the Tropical Forest Experiment Station, and began publishing the Caribbean Forester, a journal that Wadsworth would edit for 24 years.

Upon arriving in Puerto Rico, Wadsworth, with the help of his assistant, José Marrero, an agronomist and forester, began installing research plots on the CCC tree plantations in the National Forest and Puerto Rico’s 14 state forests. Most of the planted native tree species grew slowly, but mahogany and teak (both exotics) did better. In 1943, to test the contention that slow growth rates of tropical forests require plantations rather than forest management, Wadsworth began to study native species by installing research plots in natural forests. These plots demonstrated liberated tree growth in secondary tropical forests that halved future rotations for both timber and biodiversity. Forest ecologists have made good use of these research plots in their studies.

During World War II, timber sales on 5,000 acres of the National Forest under Wadsworth’s technical supervision supported charcoal production for use as cooking fuel in Puerto Rico. Trees with no potential use other than fuelwood were marked for selective removal. In 1946, the National Forest was designated an insular wildlife refuge. In 1949, Wadsworth proposed and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture designated 2,172 acres of the National Forest as the Baño de Oro Research Natural Area.

Expanded Tropical Forestry Programs

At the end of the war, Wadsworth began to travel outside Puerto Rico to better understand the forestry problems and aspirations of tropical countries and to promote technology transfer. He represented the FS at tropical forestry meetings sponsored by the new United Nations (U.N.) and its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), North American Forestry Commission, and Latin American Forestry Commission. Wadsworth would chair the LAFC Research Committee for 12 years.

A request by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for Wadsworth’s advice on watershed protection in the Panama Canal Zone led to his travel and field studies in Panama. He reported his findings in an influential speech entitled, “Deforestation: Death to the Panama Canal” at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Tropical technology transfer began to take him to other parts of the world. He was U.S. representative to a British Commonwealth Forestry Conference that included a five-week field program in five central African countries. He also was a member of a U.N. team of ten foresters who traveled to Sarawak, Malaysia, to address conflicts between the silviculture of hill dipterocarps (a family of rain forest trees) and nomadic tribal survival.

In 1949, Wadsworth, a devoted bird watcher, included in his National Forest Management Plan the setting aside of 3,200 acres as a Puerto Rican parrot reserve––two decades before the Endangered Species Act. Today the FS manages the parrot habitat, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operates aviaries and a release program.

Beginning in 1953, Wadsworth directed a series of 16 international, 3-month tropical forestry short courses for foresters who came from across the Tropics. In 1956, the entire Caribbean National Forest, because of its little-understood forest science, had the novel distinction of also being designated the Luquillo Experimental Forest. That same year, the Research Station became the Institute of Tropical Forestry (ITF), with Frank Wadsworth as ITF director as well as supervisor of the National Forest. In 1974, when the National Forest and the Institute were separated, Wadsworth continued as ITF director. In 1976, the U.N. designated the National Forest as part of the International Network of Biosphere Reserves. In 1979, when Ariel Lugo became ITF director, Wadsworth continued as a forest researcher and consultant. When ITF became the International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF), Wadsworth headed its Special Studies for International Cooperation. Since retiring in 1999, he has served as a volunteer research scientist at the Institute.

Tropical Forestry Research Legacy

Wadsworth has published more than 100 scientific articles as well as reference and technical books on tropical forests and remains a popular speaker on technology transfer. Active in the International Society of Tropical Foresters (ISTF), founded in 1950 by tropical forester Tom Gill, Wadsworth has edited the quarterly newsletter, ISTF News, since 1978. His awards include the USDA Superior Service Award (twice), the Fernow International Forestry Award, and honorary degrees including an honorary doctorate from the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) established by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and 13 member countries––Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Frank Wadsworth is a Fellow of the Society of American Foresters.

Wadsworth notes that with deforestation proceeding at a rapid rate throughout the Tropics, water supply becomes the real issue, and thus the focus of forest research needs to be on how to manage secondary forests. In linking tropical forestry with forest ecology, he states: “I am convinced that without the animals, the forest would fail in most cases. It may mean birds, it may mean insects. It’s not just the distribution of seeds, it’s not just the pollination. It is that the animals tend to have a role in the relative dominance of all the species. Some eat the bark off one, some eat the leaves off others…. They feed the birds. That is how the thing goes up through the chain, so if you knock out an insect that you don’t like, you may knock out something else, or let them go rampant. Some other insect could take its place.”

Suggested Reading

Little Jr., Elbert L., and Frank H. Wadsworth. 1964. Common Trees of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Agricultural Handbook 249. Washington, DC: USDA.

Little Jr., Elbert L., Roy O. Woodbury, and Frank H. Wadsworth. 1974. Trees of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Vol. II. Agricultural Handbook 449. Washington, DC: USDA.

Steen, Harold K., ed. 1998. The Evolution of Tropical Forestry: Puerto Rico and Beyond, An Interview with Frank H. Wadsworth. The Forest History Society, Oral History Interview, 1992. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service.

Wadsworth, Frank H. 1997. Forest Production for Tropical America. Agricultural Handbook 710. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service.

Wadsworth V3 Submitted for Posting 15 September 2010