Douglas-El Paso County CO Archives Biographies.....Edmonston, William Douglas March 28, 1870 - November 7, 1936
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Carolyn Golowka http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00012.html#0002972 January 14, 2012, 11:45 am

Source: “A History of Forest Entomology in the Intermountain and Rocky Monntain Areas, 1901 to 1983,” published by the United States Department of Agriculture/Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, General Techinal Report RMRS-GTR-195, July 2007 –
Author: Malcolm M. Furniss

   William Douglas Edmonston (1870-1936) was born in Edingurgh, Scotland.   A
graduate of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Edinburg, he was an
artist of considerable ability and exhibited some of his water colors at the
Royal Scottish Academy and at the Royal Academy of England.  He came to the
United States in 1890 and steeled at Brunston near Larkspur, CO.
  In 1901, Edmonston became a ranger on what is now the Pike National forest. 
From 5 to 13 October 1905, he made several trips in the vicinity of Colorado
Springs and Palmer Lake with Hopkins to study infestations of the Black Hills
beetle.  From then on, Edmonston spent considerable time cruising bark beetle
infestations and conducting control operations in various forests of Colorado. 
Sometime in 1907 or 1908, he was assigned to the Bureau of Entomology from the
Forest Service to work under the direction of Andres Delmar Hopkins [an
authority on the southern pine beetle] on the practical application of insect
control in the national forests of Colorado, southern Wyoming, and eastern Utah.
 Edmonston experimented with methods of treating trees infested with the Black
Hills beetle, including felling the infested trees, sawing them into lumber, and
burning the slabs.
   In October 1913, he established the Southern Rocky Mountain station at
Colorado Springs, assisted by Agent George Hoffer.  From 1913 to 1924, Colorado
Springs was the headquarters of the Southern Rocky Mountain station, but
considerable time was spent at Sabino Canyon near Tucson.  The work in Arizona
consisted of collecting and taking biological notes for Hopkins’ taxonomic
specialists in various insect groups (for example, bark beetles, wood borers,
parasitic wasps). 
   In 1924, Edmonston and Hofer were involved with a Black Hills beetle control
project on the Kaibab.  Evidently, things didn’t go well.  As F. P. Keen of
Berkeley Forest Insect Laboratory (FIL) recounted (Maunder 1977):

      “I was assigned to the Kaibab control project in 1924 because the Forest
Service was not satisfied with the work that Edmonston and Hofer were doing down
there, so I was sent down to direct and supervise this project.  I found out
that (they) had no systematic method of spotting the bug infested trees, so I
set up a systematic spotting of the area…we soon found a number of infested
trees in gulches that they had missed.  Since the infested trees were
concentrated in large groups, I recommended that instead of peeling the park on
individual trees… they cut and pile the infested trees… and then burn the whole
pile.”

   In 1925 and 1926, Edmonston and Hofer assisted M. W. Blackman in his
experimental work on the Black Hills beetle on the Kaibab.  The results of this
work were published by Blackman in Technical Publication 36 of the New York
State College of Forestry titled,” The Black Hills Beetle.”
   In February, 1928, Edmonston was transferred to the Pacific Slope Forest
Insect Laboratory at Palo Alto, CA, where he remained until his retirement for
disability on 1 August 1932.  Edmonston spent most of the time at the Palo Alto
lab working on insect life history charts and drawings of forest and shad tree
insects.  Many of these were used in several bulletins of the Department and in
other publications.  He died in Tucson 7 November 1936.


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