land clearer

land clearer (plural land clearers)

1. Someone or something that clears land of vegetation, usually in preparation for development.
   • 1903, Farmers' Bulletin - Issues 126-150, page 7:

     Recently the Angela goat has attracted considerable attention as a land clearer.

   • 1994, Olivier Frayssé, Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809-60, →ISBN, page 54:

     Symbolically, to his work as a pilot Lincoln added that of land clearer, chopping down the branches that impeded the progress of the steamer toward the confluence of the Sangamon and the Illinois.

   • 2009, Paul Yee, Saltwater City: Story of Vancouver's Chinese Community, →ISBN, page 37:

     All a land clearer needs is a calloused skin and a dumb philosophy which refuses to recognize weariness and forgets man's right to pursue happiness.

   • 2017, Jennifer S. Holland, For These Monkeys, It’s a Fight for Survival., National Geographic (March 2017)

     Yaki have just one natural predator, the reticulated python, but they have many enemies. Land clearers are pushing the monkeys around.

2. (by extension) One who prepares the way for a project or type of endeavor by removing obstacles.
   • 2012 -, P. Dybjer, Sten Lindström, Erik Palmgren, Epistemology versus Ontology, →ISBN:

     It is as a pioneer and “land clearer” that we know Martin-Löf – one of the principal clarifiers of the syntax and semantics of constructive mathematics.