In Memoriam: William R. Burch Jr., Frederick C. Hixon Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources Management

William R. Burch Jr., a scientist of international renown for his pioneering work in social and community forestry who taught at the Yale School of the Environment for more than four decades, died July 16, 2024. He was 91.

Burch, Frederick C. Hixon Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources Management, founded the Tropical Resources Institute (TRI) and the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) at YSE, where he brought innovative approaches in ecological enhancement and community development to both rural and urban settings.

Burch grew up in Oregon and credited his father with introducing him to the natural world through fishing and camping trips in Western states. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Oregon, where he worked as a janitor and window cleaner. Concerned about treatment of workers, he became president of the Building Services Union there. He earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota, focusing his research on recreation and people’s relationship to nature.

During his career, Burch held positions in the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and USAID. He worked with many organizations including the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. He conducted some of the earliest research in community forestry systems and institute development in China, Bhutan, Thailand, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Nepal, where he served as a program director of the Institute of Forestry Projects in Tribhuvan University.

While participating in a panel discussion on U.S. national parks where he discussed his work in Nepal, Burch struck up a friendship with Ralph Jones, then director of Baltimore Recreation and Parks who was interested in his community-based approach. The encounter led to a partnership with the City of Baltimore and the creation of the Urban Resources Institute, which afforded many YSE students the opportunity to work on green initiatives in Baltimore. Burch later brought the concept to New Haven, founding YSE’s URI, which was officially incorporated in 1991.

“The goal of community forestry is the empowerment of the local community to gain greater control over their immediate environment,” Burch said in a 2017 interview with Biohabitats.

Students and colleagues described Burch as having an “incandescent sense of justice” in his scholarship, teaching, and social action. From his first book “Daydreams and Nightmares: An Essay on the American Environment” (1974) to his deep commitment to urban residents and park workers in Baltimore, Burch sought to reveal wrongs and find solutions to right them, they said.

He authored more than a dozen books and 100 peer-reviewed studies. His highly cited work on social and ecological research also includes the foundational texts, “Social Behavior, Natural Resources, and the Environment,”  “The Social circles of Leisure: Competing Explanations,” and later, “The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology Space, Scale and Time for the Study of Cities.” One of his seminal contributions to the field was the development of the Human Ecosystems Model (HEM), a framework for asking questions about the structure and process in human ecosystems that is aimed at connecting restoration work with community needs.

“The HEM can help you identify points of connection that you can make with local people. You talk. You listen. You identify and consider the concerns, needs, and demographics of the community just as you look at what you need in the way of soils, drainage, plants, etc. Then you work together to match the needs of the community with the needs and goals of your project. Whether you are in the villages of Nepal or an inner-city neighborhood, it is listening,” Burch said in the Biohabitats interview.

Colleen Murphy-Dunning, program director for URI, which supports and empowers communities in the restoration, enjoyment, and stewardship of urban forests in New Haven, said HEM guides its work. “Through the HEM, Bill taught us the importance of connecting environmental rehabilitation with social needs identified by community volunteers. In meeting URI community forestry interns, he encouraged our team to focus on listening carefully and with humility. Using his oft repeated mantra ‘mutual pathway of learning,” Bill guided us that while we had forestry knowledge to offer community partners, we needed to learn from their knowledge and experience, as equals,” she said.

Morgan Grove '87, '90 MFS, '96 PhD, scientist and team leader at the U.S. Forest Service in Baltimore and co-principal investigator for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, cited a line from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” in reflecting on his work with Burch — ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.'   “We didn’t do easy things, but we sure did meaningful things," Grove said.

Burch carried his focus on human ecosystems into all aspects of his work, including at YSE where he was a beloved faculty member before retiring in 2008.

“Cohort after cohort, generation after generation, his students at Yale and then their students and colleagues learned from his love of the written word and his faith in the street, the neighborhood, the landscape and their peoples. He respected the public intellectual, the poet, and the garage mechanic equally. He had an astonishing breadth of knowledge and shared it with authentic joy. If you were Bill's student, you learned how to read — really read — and critique, and ponder, and prepare, and how to take action, how to get things done and why those things were important,” said Gary Machlis ’79 PhD, professor of environmental sustainability at Clemson University.

Dorceta Taylor ’85 MFS, ’91 PhD, Wangari Maathai Professor of Environmental Justice recalled her first meeting with Burch, who was her advisor when she was a student at YSE.

“I encountered a door filled with postcards from around the world. This was my first insight into Bill’s global worldview and his connection to his students, who all seemed to send him postcards from wherever they went … The room was bursting at the seams with books, reports, articles, and blue-book exams. It occurred to me, where exactly would I find a place to sit in that office? I found a place to sit for two years as a master’s student and five as a doctoral student. When my mother traveled from Chicago to visit me one Thanksgiving, Bill made a seat for her and me at his family’s Thanksgiving table. He taught me about loyalty, trust, and hard work. I learned to push myself and think big and small while under Bill’s tutelage — and I strive to make him proud and to follow in his footsteps,” said Taylor.

Students and colleagues recall Burch’s down-to-earth approach, adventurous spirit, and colorful presence, including his signature blue jeans, bolo ties, Nepalese prayer flags, a gong that warned students to wrap up presentations, and his eclectic reading lists that taught more than traditional textbooks.

Mark Ashton '85 MF, '90 PhD, senior associate dean of The Forest School and Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture, who was both a student and colleague of Burch’s, remembered his beloved motorcycle, his “raucous” nature, and his penchant for getting students out of the classroom and into the field.

“He was an extraordinary person,” said Ashton. “It was unusual to have a professor who was a forester, who was sensitive to, and understanding of, the on-the-ground, day-to-day happenings and realities in forests. He had a sympathy for people who worked in the forest. That never left him. Bill’s students were about people because he was about people,” Ashton said.

Burch’s impact on YSE, on the environment, and so many people and places is difficult to quantify, students and colleagues said. It resides in the lasting impacts of the work of URI and TRI, which has grown from an initial handful of students working in a few countries to sponsoring more than 600 fellows in 82 countries.

“Understanding the physics, chemistry, or biology of a system is necessary but not sufficient if that knowledge is also to be applied and made useful. His deep experience of practical conservation efforts, and his vision to enhance and support collaborations within and among natural and social scientists have been key to the success of TRI, URI, and YSE as a whole,” said TRI Director Simon Queenborough.

It can also be measured by the decades of work across the globe by the students he taught and mentored.

“His legacy lives in the work of so many people throughout the world, in those who have met him on street corners, on mountaintops, in community gardens and forests who have worked in government and at community-based organizations,” said Erika Svendsen ’93 MES, a research scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, who noted that she has the HEM framework posted on her wall and often turns to it for guidance. “His work resonates in all different settings, from very rural areas but also highly urbanized areas and with all different types of people. He found a way to have us understand what’s common to us all as humans.”

Burch is survived by his wife, Judith, his three children, Laurel Burch-Minakan, Steven Burch, and Marcel Burch, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

YSE is planning a recognition ceremony to celebrate Professor Burch’s life and many contributions to YSE and the environment. Details will be announced at a later date.