Historians are from Venus, Ecologists are from Mars

TLDR: This Comment on Szabnd H´ (2011), paper "Advancing the Integration of History and Ecology for Conservation," provides the other half of the sought-for antiphonal duet from the perspective of an environmental historian.

Abstract: Previous calls for cooperation between historians and conservation scientists published in ecological and con- servation journals have been made by nonhistorians This Comment on Szabnd H´ (2011), paper "Advancing the Integration of History and Ecology for Conservation," provides the other half of the sought-for antiphonal duet from the perspective of an environmental historian Most calls for interdisciplinary research frame their discussions in terms of problems to be overcome They elaborate reasons for the failure of this union to be con- summated, and this shapes discussions of what is to be done In their welcome article, Szabnd Hfollow this route, noting contrasting tendencies toward gener- ality versus particularity for ecologists and historians, re- spectively, and mismatches in scale and precision of data collection They frame the lack of ecological research be- fore 1800 as a "major obstacle to successful cooperation between history and ecology" but then show that this lack of ecological data is really an opportunity for ecol- ogists to gain from history (Szab´ ´ 2011, p 685) Helpfully, they advise us to pay attention to "difficulties in communication rather than to fundamentaldifferences between the 2 disciplines" (Szab´