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Return to Home Page April 23, 2014 Continuation of Discussion of American “Conservation” History

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817-May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King,Jr. Thoreau is often claimed as an inspiration by anarchists, as well. Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government –“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”– the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

George Catlin George Catlin (July 26, 1796 -December 23, 1872) was an Americanpainter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Following a brief career as a lawyer, he produced two major collections of paintings of American Indians and published a series of books chronicling his travels among the native peoples of North, Central and South America. Claiming his interest in America’s 'vanishing race' was sparked by a visiting American Indian delegation in Philadelphia, he set out to record the appearance and customs of America’s native people.

Yellowstone National Park In 1871, eleven years after his failed first effort, F.V. Hayden was finally able to make another attempt to explore the region. With government sponsorship, Hayden returned to Yellowstone with a second, larger expedition. He compiled a comprehensive report on Yellowstone, which included large-format photographs by William Henry Jackson, as well as paintings by Thomas Moran. His report helped to convince the U.S. Congress to withdraw this region from public auction; on March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill into law that created Yellowstone National Park.

Homestead Act 1862 The Homestead Act was a United States Federal law that gave freehold title to 160 acres (one quarter section or about 65 hectares) of undeveloped land in the American West. The person to whom title was granted had to be at least 21 years of age, white, and free, to have built on the section, and to have farmed on it for 5 years, and to have a house on it that was at least 12 by 14 feet (3.6 x 4.3 m) in size. The Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862. Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270 million acres was privatized between 1862 and 1964. A total of 10% of all lands in the United States.

General Mining Act of 1872 A United States federal law that authorizes and governs prospecting and mining for economic minerals, such as gold and silver, on federal public lands. This law, approved on May 10th, 1872, codified the informal system of acquiring and protecting mining claims on public land, formed by prospectors in California and Nevada from the late 1840s through the 1860s, such as during the California Gold Rush. All citizens of the United States of America 18 years or older have the right under the 1872 mining law to locate a lode (hard rock) or placer (gravel) mining claim on federal lands open to mineral entry. These claims may be located once a discovery of a locatable mineral is made. Locatable minerals include but are not limited to platinum, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, uranium and tungsten.

Timber and Stone Act of 1878 This act sold western timberland for $2.50 per acre in 160 acre blocks. Land that was deemed "unfit for farming" was sold to those who might want to "timber and stone" (logging and mining) upon the land. The act was used by speculators who were able to get great expanses declared "unfit for farming" allowing them to increase their land holdings at minimal expense. In theory the purchaser was to make affidavit that he was entering the land exclusively for his own use and no association was to enter more than 160 acres. In practice wealthy companies fraudulently obtained title for up to twenty-thousand acres by hiring men to enter 160 acre lots which were then deeded to the company after a nominal compliance with the law.

Federal Land Policy & Management Act of 1976 The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; the government believed that the best use of public lands was for them to remain in government control. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.

Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 This act is the oldest federal environmental law in the United States. The Act makes it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse matter of any kind into the navigable waters of the United States without a permit; this specific provision is known as the Refuse Act. The Rivers and Harbors Act also makes it a misdemeanor to excavate, fill, or alter the course, condition, or capacity of any port, harbor, channel, or other areas within the reach of the Act without a permit. Although many activities covered by the Rivers and Harbors Act are regulated under the Clean Water Act, the 1899 Act retains independent vitality. The Rivers and Harbors Act is administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Related acts were also passed in 1913 and 1938. Congress passed an act of the same name in 1882, and overrode a veto by President Arthur.

George Perkin Marsh George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801-July 23, 1882), an Americandiplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist. [1] The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Vermont takes its name, in part, from Marsh. Born in Woodstock, Vermont to a prominent family, (his father had been a U.S. Senator,) Marsh graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1816 and from Dartmouth College with highest honors in 1820, was admitted to the bar in 1825, and practiced law in Burlington, Vermont; he also devoted himself to philological studies. In 1835 he was appointed to the Executive Council of Vermont, and from 1843 to 1849 was a Whigrepresentative in Congress. In 1849 President Zachary Taylor appointed Marsh United States minister resident in Turkey. In 1852�1853, he discharged a mission to Greece in connection with the imprisonment of an American missionary, Dr. Jonas King (1792-1869). He returned to Vermont in 1854, and in 1857 was a member of the state railway commission. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Marsh the first United States minister to the kingdom of Italy; he died in that office at Vallombrosa. He is buried at the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Marsh was an able linguist, able to both speak and write fluently in Scandinavian and half a dozen other European languages. He was a remarkable philologist for his day, and a scholar of great breadth, knowing much of military science, engraving and physics, as well as Icelandic, which was his specialty. He wrote many articles for Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, and contributed many reviews and letters to the Nation. His chief published works are: A Compendious Grammar of the Old Northern or Icelandic Language (1838), compiled and translated from the grammars of Rask The Camel, his Organization, Habits, and Uses, with Reference to his Introduction into the United States (1856)▪Lectures on the English Language (1860)▪The Origin and History of the English Language (1862; revised ed., 1885)▪Man and Nature (1864)The last-named work was translated into Italian in 1872, and, largely rewritten, was issued in 1874 under the title The Earth as Modified by Human Action; a revised edition was published in 1885. He also published a work on Mediaeval and Modern Saints and Miracles (1876).Man and Nature constituted an early work of ecology, and played a role in the creation of the Adirondack Park. Marsh argued that deforestation could lead to desertification. Referring to the clearing of once-lush lands surrounding the Mediterranean, he asserted "the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon."

John Muir John Muir (April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914) was one of the first modern preservationists. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, and wildlife, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, were read by millions and are still popular today. His direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement.

Gifford Pinchot Gifford Pinchot (August 11, 1865-October 4, 1946) was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905-1910) and the Governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927, 1931-1935). He was a Republican and Progressive. Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal. He called it "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man." Pinchot coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources. Born in Simsbury, Connecticut in 1865, Pinchot graduated from Yale College in 1889, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He studied as a postgraduate at the French National Forestry School for a year. He returned home and plunged into the nascent forestry movement, intent on shaping a national forest policy. Gifford Pinchot's father, James, had made a great fortune from lumbering and land speculation but regretted the damage his work had done to the land. He made conservation a family affair and decided that Gifford would become a forester. He endowed the Yale School of Forestry in 1900, and he turned Grey Towers, the family estate at Milford, Pennsylvania, into a "nursery" for the American forestry movement. Family affairs were managed by Gifford's brother Amos Pinchot, thus freeing Pinchot to do the more important work of saving America's forests. Unlike others in the forestry movement, Pinchot's wealth allowed him to singly pursue this goal without worry of income. Pinchot's approach set him apart from the other leading forestry experts, especially Bernhard E. Fernow and Carl A. Schenck. Fernow had been Pinchot's predecessor in the U.S. Division of Forestry before leaving in 1898 to become the first dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell. Schenck was Pinchot's successor at the Biltmore Estate (widely recognized as the "cradle of American forestry") and founder of the Biltmore Forest School on the Biltmore Estate. Their schools largely reflected their approaches to introducing forestry in the United States: Fernow advocated a regional approach and Schenck a private enterprise effort in contrast to Pinchot's national vision.

Gifford Pinchot In 1896, Grover Cleveland appointed Pinchot to the National Forest Commission and charged him with developing a plan for managing the nation’s Western forest reserves. In 1898, he became head of the Division of Forestry, later renamed the United States Forest Service.With fellow Yale alumnus Henry S. Graves, Pinchot founded the Yale University School of Forestry (now the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) in 1900 and was a professor there from 1903 until 1936.Pinchot sought to turn public land policy from one that dispersed resources to private holdings to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land. He was a progressive who strongly believed in the efficiency movement. The most economically efficient use of natural resources was his goal; waste was his great enemy. His successes, in part, were grounded in the personal networks that he started developing as a student at Yale and continued developing throughout his career. His personal involvement in the recruitment process led to high esprit de corps in the Forest Service and allowed him to avoid partisan political patronage. Pinchot capitalized on his professional expertise to gain adherents in an age when professionalism and science were greatly valued. He made it a high priority to professionalize the Forest Service; to that end he helped found the Yale School of Forestry as a source of highly trained men.

Pinchot-Muir conflict Pinchot used the rhetoric of the market economy to disarm critics of efforts to expand the role of government: scientific management of forests was profitable. While most of his battles were with timber companies that he thought had too narrow a time horizon, he also battled the "back to nature" spokesmen like John Muir, who were deeply opposed to commercializing nature.[3]Pinchot with Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Pinchot rose to national prominence under the patronage of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905, his department also gained control of the national forest reserves, thereby dramatically increasing the authority of the Forest Service. Pinchot developed a plan by which the forests could be developed by private interests, under set terms, in exchange for a fee. Pinchot embarked on many publicity campaigns to direct national discussions of natural resource management issues.Central to his publicity work was his creation of news for magazines and newspapers, as well as debates with opponents such as John Muir. His effectiveness in manipulating information hostile to his boss President Taft led to his firing in January 1910. But his successes became a model for other bureaucrats on how to influence public opinion. [4]Pinchot’s policies encountered some opposition. Preservationists opposed commercialization of the land; Congress was increasingly hostile to conservation of the forests, owing to local commercial pressures for quicker exploitation. In 1907, Congress forbade the creation of more forest reserves in the Western states. Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km2) of new National Forests just minutes before his power to do so was stripped by a congressionally mandated amendment to the Agriculture Bill. These were called the Midnight Forests.

Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy The Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy was a dispute between U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Achilles Ballinger that contributed to the split of the Republican Party before the 1912 Presidential Election and helped to define the U.S. conservation movement in the early 20th Century. Ballinger's appointment In March 1909, President William Howard Taft began his administration by replacing Roosevelt's appointed Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield (son of the assassinated Republican president, James Garfield) with Richard Ballinger, a former Mayor of Seattle who had served as Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) under Secretary Garfield. Ballinger's appointment was a disappointment to conservationists, who interpreted the replacement of Garfield as a break with Roosevelt administration policies on conservationism. Within weeks of taking office, Ballinger reversed some of Garfield's policies, restoring 3 million acres (12,000 km²) to private use.[1] Allegations by Pinchot and Glavis By July 1909, Gifford Pinchot, who had been appointed by President William McKinley to head the USDA Division of Forestry in 1898, and who had run the U.S. Forest Service since it had taken over management of forest reserves from the General Land Office in 1905, became convinced that Ballinger intended to "stop the conservation movement". In August, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Irrigation Congress in Spokane, Washington, he accused Ballinger of siding with private trusts in his handling of water power issues. At the same time, he helped to arrange a meeting between President Taft and Louis Glavis, chief of the Portland, Oregon Field Division of the GLO. Glavis met with the president at Taft's summer retreat in Beverly, Massachusetts and presented him with a 50-page report accusing Ballinger of an improper interest in his handling of coal field claims in Alaska. Glavis claimed that Ballinger, first as Commissioner of the General Land Office, and then as Secretary of the Interior, had interfered with investigations of coal claim purchases made by Clarence Cunningham of Idaho. In 1907, Cunningham had partnered with the Morgan-Guggenheim "Alaska Syndicate" to develop coal interests in Alaska. The GLO had launched an anti-trust investigation, headed by Glavis. Ballinger, then head of the GLO, rejected Glavis' findings and removed him from the investigation. In 1908, Ballinger stepped down from the GLO, and took up a private law practice in Seattle. Cunningham became a client. Convinced that Ballinger, now head of the Department of Interior, had a personal interest in obstructing an investigation of the Cunningham case, Glavis had sought support from the U.S. Forest Service, whose jurisdiction over the Chugach National Forest included several of the Cunningham claims. He received a sympathetic response from Alexander Shaw, Overton Price and Pinchot, who helped him to prepare the presentation for Taft.

Teddy Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858-January 6, 1919), also known as T.R., and to the public (but never to friends and intimates) as Teddy, was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement. He became President of the United States at the age of 42. He served in many roles including Governor of New York, historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. Roosevelt is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" persona. As Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, he prepared for and advocated war with Spain in 1898. He organized and helped command the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the Rough Riders, during the Spanish-American War. Returning to New York as a war hero, he was elected Republican governor in 1899. He was a professional historian, a lawyer, a naturalist and explorer of the Amazon Basin; his 35 books include works on outdoor life, natural history, the American frontier, political history, naval history, and his autobiography.[5]In 1901, as Vice President, the 42 year-old Roosevelt succeeded President William McKinley after McKinley's assassination. He is the youngest person to become President (John F. Kennedy is the youngest elected President).

Teddy Roosevelt, page 2 Roosevelt was a Progressive reformer who sought to move the dominant Republican Party into the Progressive camp. He distrusted wealthy businessmen and dissolved forty monopolistic corporations as a "trust buster". He was clear, however, to show he did not disagree with trusts and capitalism in principle but was only against corrupt, illegal practices. His "Square Deal" promised a fair shake for both the average citizen (through regulation of railroad rates and pure food and drugs) and the businessmen. As an outdoorsman, he promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources. After 1906 he attacked big business and suggested the courts were biased against labor unions. In 1910, he broke with his friend and anointed successor William Howard Taft, but lost the Republican nomination to Taft and ran in the 1912 election on his own one-time Bull Moose ticket. Roosevelt beat Taft in the popular vote and pulled so many Progressives out of the Republican Party that Democrat Woodrow Wilson won in 1912, and the conservative faction took control of the Republican Party for the next two decades. Roosevelt negotiated for the U.S. to take control of the Panama Canal and its construction in 1904; he felt the Canal's completion was his most important and historically significant international achievement. He was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize, winning its Peace Prize in 1906, for negotiating the peace in the Russo-Japanese War.

Roosevelt and Pinchot Conservationist Roosevelt worked closely with early conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot, pictured above, with whom he organized the first National Governors Conservation Conference at the White House in 1908Roosevelt was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of national resources, winning the support of fellow hunters and fishermen to bolster his political base. Roosevelt was the last trained observer to ever see a passenger pigeon, and on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system) on Pelican Island, Florida. Roosevelt worked with the major figures of the conservation movement, especially his chief adviser on the matter Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt urged Congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service. Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres (785,000 km2). In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres (170,000 km2) of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of "special interest", including the Grand Canyon. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands commemorates his conservationist philosophy. In 1903, Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, but Roosevelt believed in the more efficient use of natural resources by corporations like lumber companies unlike Muir. In 1907, with Congress about to block him, Roosevelt hurried to designate 16 million acres (65,000 km2) of new national forests. In May 1908, he sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on the most efficient planning, analysis and use of water, forests and other natural resources. Roosevelt explained, "There is an intimate relation between our streams and the development and conservation of all the other great permanent sources of wealth." During his presidency, Roosevelt promoted the nascent conservation movement in essays for Outdoor Life magazine. To Roosevelt, conservation meant more and better usage and less waste, and a long-term perspective.

Roosevelt and Pinchot Roosevelt's conservationist leanings also impelled him to preserve national sites of scientific, particularly archaeological, interest. The 1906 passage of the Antiquities Act gave him a tool for creating national monuments by presidential proclamation, without requiring Congressional approval for each monument on an item-by-item basis. The language of the Antiquities Act specifically called for the preservation of "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest," and was primarily construed by its creator, Congressman James F. Lacey (assisted by the prominent archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett), as targeting the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest. Roosevelt, however, applied a typically broad interpretation to the Act, and the first national monument he proclaimed, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, was preserved for reasons tied more to geology than archaeology. Roosevelt's conservationism caused him to forbid having a Christmas tree in the White House. He was reportedly upset when he found a small tree his son had been hiding. After learning about the commercial farming of Christmas trees, where no virgin forests were cut down to supply the demand during the Christmas holiday, he relented and allowed his family to have a tree each season.

Teapot Dome Scandal Background: Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills in Kern County, California, and Teapot Dome in Natrona County, Wyoming, were oil fields located on public land reserved for emergency use by the U.S. Navy only when the regular oil supplies diminished. Many politicians and private oil interests had opposed the limits placed on the oil fields, claiming that the reserves were unnecessary and that American oil companies could provide for the Navy. One of the public officials most avidly opposed to the reserves was New MexicoRepublicanSenatorAlbert B. Fall. A political alliance ensured his appointment to the Senate in 1912, and his political allies – who later made up the infamous Ohio Gang– convinced President Harding to appoint Fall as United States Secretary of the Interior in March 1921.

Teapot Dome Scandal – continued 2 In 1922, the reserves were still under the jurisdiction of Edwin C. Denby, the United States Secretary of the Navy. Fall convinced Denby to give jurisdiction over the reserves to the Department of the Interior. Fall then leased the rights of the oil to Harry F. Sinclair of the original Sinclair Oil, then known as Mammoth Oil, without competitive bidding. Contrary to popular belief, this manner of leasing was legal under the General Leasing Act of 1920. Concurrently, Fall also leased the Naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum in exchange for personal loans at no interest. In return for leasing these oil fields to the respective oil magnates, Fall received gifts from the oilmen totaling about $404,000 [equivalent to $4 million in the year 2000]. It was this money changing hands that was illegal not the lease itself. Fall attempted to keep his actions secret, but the "sudden" improvement in his standard of living prompted speculation. On April 14, 1922, the Wall Street Journal reported a secret arrangement in which Fall had leased the petroleum reserves to a private oil company without competitive bidding. Fall denied the claims, and the leases to the oil companies seemed legal enough on the surface.

Teapot Dome Scandal - continued 3 However, the following day, WyomingDemocratic Senator John B. Kendrick introduced a resolution that would set in motion one of the most significant investigations in the Senate's history. Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. At first, La Follette believed Fall was innocent. However, his suspicions deepened after his office was ransacked.Despite the Wall Street Journal's report, the public did not take much notice of the suspicion, the Senate Committee Investigation, or the scandal itself. Without any proof and with more ambiguous headlines, the story faded from the public eye. However, the Senate kept investigating. The investigation and its outcome Doheny testifying before the Senate Committee investigating the Tea Pot Oil Leases. La Follette's committee allowed the investigation panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas J. Walsh, to lead what most expected to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry seeking answers to many questions. For two years, Walsh pushed forward while Fall stepped backward, covering his tracks as he went. The Committee continually found no evidence of wrong doing, the leases seemed legal enough, and records simply kept disappearing mysteriously. Fall had made the leases of the oil fields appear to be legitimate, but his acceptance of the money was his undoing.

Teapot Dome Scandal - continued 4 By 1924, the Committee had only one unanswered question: How did Fall become so rich so quickly? Any money from the bribes went to Fall's cattle ranch along with investments in his business. Finally, as the investigation was winding down and preparing to declare Fall innocent, Walsh uncovered one piece of evidence Fall had forgotten to cover up: Doheny's loan to Fall in November 1921, in the amount of $100,000.Walsh became a national hero and figurehead for the fight against government corruption. The investigation led to a series of civil and criminal suits related to the scandal throughout the 1920s. Finally in 1927 the Supreme Court ruled that the oil leases had been corruptly obtained and invalidated the Elk Hills lease in February of that year and the Teapot lease in October of the same year. The Navy regained control of the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills reserves as a result of the Court's decision. Another significant outcome was the Supreme Court case McGrain vs. Daugherty which, for the first time, explicitly established Congress' right to compel testimony. Albert Fall was found guilty of bribery in 1929, fined $100,000 and sentenced to one year in prison, making him the first Presidential cabinet member to go to prison for his actions in office. Harry Sinclair, who refused to cooperate with the government investigators, was charged with contempt, fined $100,000, and received a short sentence for tampering with the jury. Edward Doheny was acquitted in 1930 of attempting to bribe Fall.

FDR Alphabet Soup Depression Drought CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) WPA (Works Progress Administration) Soil Conservation Service

Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 - April 21, 1948) was a United Statesecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. Aldo Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United States and was a life-long fisherman and hunter. Leopold died in 1948 from a heart attack, while fighting a brush fire on a neighbor's farm. In 1933 he was appointed Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An advocate for the preservation of wildlife and wilderness areas, Leopold became a founder of The Wilderness Society in 1935. Named in his honor, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness lies within the boundaries of the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico. Leopold was instrumental in the proposal for Gila to be managed as a wilderness area. As a result, in 1924, Gila National Forest became the first designated wilderness area by the US government. [2] Together, the Leopold Wilderness and Gila National Forest, often are considered the starting point for the modern wilderness-conservation movement throughout the U.S. Leopold offered frank criticism of the harm he believed was frequently done to natural systems (such as land) out of a sense of a culture or society's sovereign ownership over the land base - eclipsing any sense of a community of life to which humans belong. He felt the security and prosperity resulting from "mechanization" now gives people the time to reflect on the preciousness of nature and to learn more about what happens there.

Aldo Leopold A Sand County Almanac Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac (hardcover ISBN 0-19-505305-2, paperback ISBN 0195007778), which has been read by millions and has informed and changed the environmental movement and a widespread interest in ecology as a science. By the same token, the Wilderness Society and Leopold’s work in it were important precursors to the environmental movement that coalesced around the time of the first Earth Day. Published in 1949, shortly after Leopold's death, A Sand County Almanac is a combination of natural history, scene painting with words, and philosophy. It is perhaps best known for the following quote, which defines his land ethic: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Conservation: In "The Land Ethic," a chapter of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold delves into conservation in "The Ecological Conscience" section. He wrote: "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."

Harrison Brown BROWN, HARRISON. The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry Concerning the Condition of Man During the Years that Lie Ahead. Pp. xii, 290. New York: Viking Press, 1954. Early work that addresses the interlinkages amongst population, technology, energy, food production, non-energy resources, air & water pollution, etc. and the limits to growth in a finite world.

Rachel Carson Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907-April 14, 1964) was an Americanmarine biologist and nature writer whose writings are often credited with launching the global environmental movement. Carson started her career as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and transitioned to a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her financial security and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the republished version of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, were also bestsellers. Together, her sea trilogy explores the gamut of ocean life, from the shores to the surface to the deep sea. In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides and the grassroots environmental movement it inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Lynn White, part 1 “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” : White's article was based on the premise that "all forms of life modify their context", that is: we all create change in our environment. He believed man's relationship with the natural environment was always a dynamic and interactive one, even in the Middle Ages, but marked the Industrial Revolution as a fundamental turning point in our ecological history. He suggests that at this point the hypotheses of science were married to the possibilities of technology and our ability to destroy and exploit the environment was vastly increased. Nevertheless, he also suggests that the mentality of the Industrial Revolution, that the earth was a resource for human consumption, was much older than the actuality of machinery, and has its roots in medieval Christianity and attitudes towards nature. He suggests that "what people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things in their environment." He argued that Judeo-Christian theology was fundamentally exploitative of the natural world because: 1. The Bible asserts man's dominion over nature and establishes a trend of anthropocentrism. 2. Christianity makes a distinction between man (formed in God's image) and the rest of creation, which has no "soul" or "reason" and is thus inferior.

Lynn White, part 2 He posited that these beliefs have led to an indifference towards nature which continues to impact in an industrial, "post-Christian" world. He concludes that applying more science and technology to the problem won't help, it is humanity's fundamental ideas about nature that must change; they must abandon "superior, contemptuous" attitudes that make them "willing to use it [the earth] for our slightest whim." White suggests adopting St. Francis of Assisi as a model to imagine a "democracy" of creation in which all creatures are respected and man's rule over creation is delimited The debate White's ideas set off an extended debate about the role of religion in creating and sustaining the West's destructive attitude towards the exploitation of the natural world. It also galvanized interest in the relationship between history, nature and the evolution of ideas, thus stimulating new fields of study like environmental history and ecotheology. Equally, however, many saw his argument as a direct attack on Christianity and other commentators, amongst them the 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore, think his analysis of the impact of the Bible, and especially Genesis is misguided. They argue that Genesis provides man with a model of "stewardship" rather than dominion, and asks man to take care of the world's environment.

Garrett Hardin Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915-September 14, 2003) was a leading and controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas, who was most known for his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the ubiquitous phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.Hardin received a B.S. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1936 and a PhD in microbiology from Stanford University in 1941. Moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1946, he served there as Professor of Human Ecology from 1963 until his (nominal) retirement in 1978.A major focus of his career, and one to which he returned repeatedly, was the issue of human overpopulation. This led to writings on controversial subjects such as abortion, which earned him criticism from the political right, and immigration and sociobiology, which earned him criticism from the political left. In his essays he also tackled subjects such as conservation and creationism. In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which defended the findings on race and intelligence in The Bell Curve.[2]Hardin and his wife Jane were both members of the Hemlock Society (now Compassion & Choices), and believed in individuals choosing their own time to die. They committed suicide in their Santa Barbara home in September 2003, shortly after their 62nd wedding anniversary. He was 88 and she was 81.

Barry Commoner Barry Commoner (born May 28, 1917) is an Americanbiologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 U.S. presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. Commoner was born in Brooklyn. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University (1937) and his master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University (1938, 1941). After serving as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during World War II, Commoner moved to St. Louis and became a professor of plant physiology at Washington University, where he taught for 34 years. In 1966 he founded the Centre for the Biology of Natural Systems to study the science of the total environment. During the late 1950s, Commoner became a well-known protester against nuclear testing. He went on to write several books about the negative ecological effects of above-ground nuclear testing. In 1970 he received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. His 1971 book, The Closing Circle, suggested a left-wing, eco-socialist response to the limits to growth thesis, postulating that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to population pressures. In 1980, he founded the Citizens Party to serve as a vehicle for his ecological message, and his candidacy for President on the Citizens Party ticket won 233,052 votes (0.27% of the total).

Paul Ralph Ehrlich Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is currently the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Kansas. He is a renowned entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies). He is also well known as a researcher and author on the subject of human overpopulation notably for his 1968 book The Population Bomb. Population growth predictions: Ehrlich wrote an article that appeared in New Scientist in December 1967. In that article, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience famines sometime between 1970 and 1985 due to population growth outstripping resources. Ehrlich wrote that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also stated, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." These specific predictions did not actually come to pass, and his later book The Population Explosion is much more cautious in its predictions. The article led to a book (The Population Bomb), the founding of Zero Population Growth, a vigorous policy debate, and both widespread support and criticism of Ehrlich.

Clean Air Act United States, the Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Air Quality Act in 1967, the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970, and Clean Air Act Amendments in 1977 and 1990. Numerous state and local governments have enacted similar legislation, either implementing federal programs or filling in locally important gaps in federal programs. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 proposed emissions trading, added provisions for addressing acid rain, ozone depletion and toxic air pollution, and established a national permits program. The amendments once approved also established new auto gasoline reformulation requirements, set Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) standards to control evaporative emissions from gasoline and mandated that the new gasoline formulations be sold from May-September in many states.

Clean Water Act 1972 The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the symbolic goals of eliminating releases to water of high amounts of toxic substances, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that surface waters would meet standards necessary for human sports and recreation by 1983. The principal body of law currently in effect is based on the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972, which significantly expanded and strengthened earlier legislation.[2] Major amendments were enacted in the Clean Water Act of 1977 enacted by the 95th United States Congress[3] and the Water Quality Act of 1987 enacted by the 100th United States Congress.

Limits to Growth vs. Models of Doom

Limits to Growth The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Its authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used the World3 model to simulate[1] the consequence of interactions between the Earth's and human systems. The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).Five variables were examined in the original model, on the assumptions that exponential growth accurately described their patterns of increase, and that the ability of technology to increase the availability of resources grows only linearly. These variables are: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The authors intended to explore the possibility of a sustainable feedback pattern that would be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables. The most recent updated version was published on June 1, 2004 by Chelsea Green Publishing Company and Earthscan under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have updated and expanded the original version. They had previously published Beyond the Limits in 1993 as a 20 year update on the original material.[2][3][4]In 2008 Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia published a paper called "A Comparison of `The Limits to Growth` with Thirty Years of Reality".[5][6] It examined the past thirty years of reality with the predictions made in 1972 and found that changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the book's predictions of economic and societal collapse in the 21st century.[7]

Models of Doom Models of Doom, by an interdisciplinary team at SussexUniversity Science Policy Research Unit, examines the structure and assumptions of the MIT world models and a preliminary draft of Meadows technical reports. Based on computer runs, it shows that forecasts of the world’s future are very sensitive to a few key assumptions and suggests that the MIT assumptions are unduly pessimistic. Further, the Sussex scientists claim that the MIT methods, data, and predictions are faulty, that their world models - with their built-in Malthusian bias - do not accurately reflect reality. The second part of the book assesses the models and their assumptions in the context of historical forecasts about economics (including those of Malthus and Keynes), population, the environment, and technology. Here the Sussex scientists criticize the MIT approach for its lack of concern with politics, social structure, and human needs and aspirations. They assert that changing social values, not a part of the MIT computer input, can significantly affect the exponential growth of the world’s physical properties. Nevertheless, they agree with Forrester and Meadows about the urgency of the challenge and believe that dealing with foreseeable physical limits and disturbing the fruits of growth equitably will require radical political and social, as well as technological, changes. Claiming that the Sussex critics have applied “micro reasoning to macro problems,” the authors of The Limits to Growth, in “ Response to Sussex,” describe and analyze five major areas of disagreement between themselves and the Sussex authors.

Club of Rome http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.clubofrome.at/news/sup2006/img_meadowsvienna.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.clubofrome.at/news/index2006_4.html&usg=__S0wfpVtqFvPyoWV-1VmWKpEr9Ds=&h=739&w=919&sz=37&hl=en&start=99&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=-DIrq5nukSHaVM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=147&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlimits%2Bto%2Bgrowth%26start%3D80%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1 http://www.clubofrome.at/links/index.html

Turner review http://www.clubofrome.at/links/index.html

Counter Movements WUM: Wise Use Movement Sagebrush Rebellion Global Warming Disinformation Campaign

Wise-Use Movement Wise-Use MovementThe wise-use movement is a general term relating to an approach to the management of federal lands in the United States that encompasses many themes, but emphasizes a preference for extractive (e.g., mining, oil drilling) or utilitarian (e.g., grazing) uses over ecological, scenic, wildlife, or aesthetic values. The movement was founded in 1988 by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, who run the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise based in Seattle, Washington. The movement is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that initially advocated increased access to and development of federal lands and resources. Although the movement has enlisted some support nationwide, its appeal has existed primarily in the West, where the percentage of land owned by the federal government is the highest. The federal government owns approximately one-third of U.S. lands, but the percentage is much higher in many western states, a fact that has engendered considerable resentment among corporations and individuals who want to use or develop the resources on those lands. The movement had its ideological origins in the Sagebrush Rebellion of the late 1970s and 1980s that focused on eliminating federal ownership of many lands in the West. However, the wise-use movement focuses less on ownership issues and more on changing public and corporate access to and uses of federal lands, and encompasses other issues as well. "Wise use" was a phrase originally used by Gifford Pinchot, an early conservationist and the first head of the Forest Service in the early 1900s, who advocated the use of federally owned natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number. However, the phrase is used by the wise-use movement to encompass a wide range of issues, from eliminating environmental controls, to defense of private property rights with compensation for all environmental regulation, to local control of federal lands in order to permit unrestricted logging, grazing, drilling, and mineral developmenteven in national parks and wilderness areas. The movement is largely sustained by corporate funding and contributions from other organizations. The movement deliberately adopted the grassroots techniques and terminology of the environmental movement to create a proworker and community image for policies that actually furthered corporate and industrial goals (i.e., mining). Many of the positions advocated by the wise-use movement continue to be influential. Anti-big-government policies in general, greater nonfederal control of federal lands, self-audits by corporations to determine environmental compliance, increased emphasis on commodity development, and the weakening of environmental laws are but a few examples.

Wise-Use 2 Some of the laws the movement seeks to reverse or eliminate include the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act. Many wise-use movement organizations have adopted names that camouflage the organization's pro-development, anti-environmentalist stance, such as the National Wetlands Coalition, the Public Lands Council, Citizens for the Environment, Environmental Conservation Organization, and Defenders of Property Rights. Some aspects of movement positions also reflect the policies of other organizations. For example, the American Enterprise Institute and Political Economy Research Center advocate the privatization of natural resources through "free market environmentalism”policies that overlap with some of those of the wise-use movement. On the other end of the spectrum, the movement has ties to more extreme organizations, such as militia groups. Its writings range from constitutional interpretations supporting its viewpoint to vitriolic attacks on "pagan" and "communist" environmentalists whose alleged goal is a "totalitarian one-world government.” Bibliography: arnold, ron, and gottlieb, alan m. (1998). trashing the economy: how runaway environmentalism is wrecking america. bellevue, wa: free enterprise press. helvarg, david. (1994). the war against the greens: the wise use movement, the new right, and anti-environmental violence. san francisco: sierra club books. pendley, perry. (1995). war on the west: government tyranny on america's great frontier. washington, d.c.: regnery.internet resources arnold, ron. "overcoming ideology." available from center for the defense of free enterprise web site, http://www.cdfe.org/wiseuse.htm.environmental working group clearinghouse on environmental advocacy and research (clear). "the wise use movement: strategic analysis and fifty-state review." available from http://www.ewg.org/pub. Pamela Baldwin

Sagebrush, page 1 Sagebrush rebels is a group that attempted to influence environmental policy in the American West during the 1970s and 1980s, surviving into the 21st century in public lands states (generally, the 13 western states where federal land holdings include 30% to more than 50% of a state's area), and surviving in organized groups pressuring public lands policy makers, especially for grazing of sheep and cattle on public lands, and for mineral extraction policies.An extension of the older controversy of state vs. federal powers, Sagebrush Rebels wanted the federal government to give more control of government owned Western lands to state and local authorities. This was meant to increase the growth of Western economies. Ronald Reagan declared himself a sagebrush rebel in 1981. He cut federal funding for research on energy conservation and renewable energy resources. Reagan was faced with opposition with conservation organizations. This struggle persists today after changing form, with the "wise-use movement" in 1988. George H. W. Bush helped work around restrictive environmental laws to help mining, ranching, and real estate developing industries that created jobs in the states. The term "Sagebrush Rebellion" was coined during fights over designation of National Wilderness lands, especially in western states, and especially after the National Forest Service (NFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducted required surveys of plots of public lands of at least 5,000 acres (20 km2) that were roadless, after 1972, for potential designation as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Sagebrush, page 2 This process was known as the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE, or later, RARE I). The process developed significant opposition by environmental groups and by public lands users, and was challenged in federal court. Results of RARE I were tabled by the courts for lack of uniform criteria for evaluation of lands and other procedural problems, and a second review started in 1977, known as RARE II, involving more than 60 million acres (240,000 km2) of wildland under federal jurisdiction. RARE II was completed in 1979. Controversy, and lack of support from the Reagan administration starting in 1981, largely sidelined a formal, national wilderness assessment. Congress has designated several wilderness areas since 1981, sometimes using data acquired through the RARE processes. The National Wilderness Preservation System grew out of recommendations of a Kennedy-administration Presidential Commission, the Outdoor Recreational Resources Review Commission (ORRRC)[1] chaired by Laurence S. Rockefeller, whose 1962 report suggested legislation to protect recreational resources in a "national system of wild and scenic rivers," a national wilderness system, a national trails system, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, and recreation areas administered by then-existing public lands agencies beyond National Parks and National Monuments (both of which are administered in the Department of the Interior by the National Parks Administration). Much of the wildland was sagebrush, not particularly pretty to look at, but useful for grazing, off-road vehicle use, and other development. Some advocates urged that, instead of designating more federal wilderness protection, some or much of the land be granted to states or private parties. These advocates took on phrase "Sagebrush Rebellion" to describe their opposition.

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