In 1934, the US federal government launched a project to plant shelterbelts of trees across the Great Plains to protect the land from the drying and erosive force of the wind during the Dust Bowl. There were initial hopes that the belts would moderate the climate of the region. The decision to launch the project was based, in part, on Russian experience of forestry and shelterbelts in the steppes that dated back to the early nineteenth century. One of the conduits for Russian and Soviet expertise was a Russian–Jewish émigré, Raphael Zon, who was the director of a forestry experiment station in St. Paul, Minnesota. This chapter analyzes: Russian experience of forestry and shelterbelts in the steppes; American forestry in the Great Plains before the Shelterbelt Project; and the transfer of relevant Russian experience, and Russian trees, to the United States.

This second chapter on Shelterbelt Project explains that it was launched in the summer of 1934 to address the Dust Bowl, but also because the Forest Service was seeking to get access to New Deal relief funds to make up for the cuts in its research budget. Raphael Zon in St. Paul, Minnesota and Edward Munns in Washington, DC, drew on Russian and Soviet studies to convince the president to approve their plan. Zon and his colleagues also drew on Russian studies in preparing a technical manual for the project. Zon fell out with the project’s administrative director, Paul Roberts in 1935. Thereafter, American experience played a larger role in the project, until it was brought to an end in 1942.