The newly created Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive is a digital repository for the University of Idaho’s renowned scientific field station, TWRS, which sits in the heart of the 2,360,000-acre Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness. The Wilderness Act of 1964 preserved areas that it deemed “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (Wilderness Act). From an archival perspective, questions arise as to how to reconcile and present an archive of human history within/against a wilderness defined by minimal human impact. This panel discussion between two of the archive’s developers, PhD candidate Jack Kredell and Librarian Devin Becker, and two of its archival subjects, former TWRS faculty coordinator Ed Krumpe and ecohydrologist Grace Peven, explores what it means to be ‘history’ in relation to wilderness and wilderness study. The presentation will also feature interviews, visualizations, and highlights from the TWRS archives project.

About the Speakers

Jack Kredell is a PhD candidate in Environmental Science at the University of Idaho’s College of Natural Resources. His PhD work explores the discursive framings and feeling structures of the contemporary wildfire crisis. He has also collaborated on several public-facing archival projects funded by the library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning—Storying Extinction: Responding to the Loss of North Idaho’s Mountain Caribou and Keeping Watch—that explore rural environmental change issues within Idaho and the western United States.

Devin Becker is the Associate Dean for Research and Instruction at the University of Idaho Library, where he also co-directs the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL) and oversees the development of the digital exhibit framework CollectionBuilder. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine and an MLS from Indiana University. His first book of poetry, Shame | Shame, was awarded the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2015.

Ed Krumpe is a recognized expert in wilderness management and natural resource planning. He served as a professor and department head in the Department of Conservation Social Sciences within the College of Natural Resources for 37 years. His work focuses on wilderness planning, public involvement in natural resource management, sustainable recreation practices, and monitoring human impacts in wildland recreation settings. He served as a faculty coordinator and advisor for the Taylor Wilderness Research Station from its formative years in 1979 until 2020. Recently he has served as Chair of the board of directors of the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation.

Grace Peven is a PhD candidate in the Water Resources program at the University of Idaho in Moscow. She has spent three seasons at Taylor Wilderness Research Station exploring how groundwater from springs contributes to landscape resilience from high-severity wildfire, drought, and climate change.