author

Richard H. D. (Richard Hans Douai) Boerker

1887–1966

An early American forester and science writer, he helped explain the value of the nation’s forests to general readers at a time when conservation was still taking shape. His best-known book turns technical forestry work into a clear, practical story about public land and stewardship.

1 Audiobook

Our national forests : $b a short popular account of the work of the United States Forest service on the national forests

Our national forests : $b a short popular account of the work of the United States Forest service on the national forests

by Richard H. D. (Richard Hans Douai) Boerker

About the author

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1887, Richard Hans Douai Boerker studied at Dartmouth College and then earned a master’s degree in forestry from the University of Michigan. Archival records describe him as a forester with the U.S. Forest Service in California, Wyoming, and Colorado before he later became a science teacher in Kingston, New York.

Boerker wrote both technical and popular pieces on forestry, and his best-known book, Our National Forests (1918), introduced a broad audience to the work of the United States Forest Service and the importance of forest management in the United States. His work reflects an era when conservation writing aimed to be useful, civic-minded, and easy for non-specialists to follow.

He died in 1966. Although he is not a widely remembered public figure today, surviving archival collections show that he was part of a serious network of foresters, botanists, ecologists, and other scientists, and his writing still offers a window into early twentieth-century American conservation.