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The World of the Roosevelts Published in Cooperation with the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Hyde Park, New York General Editors: William E The World of the Roosevelts Published in cooperation with the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Hyde Park, New York General Editors: William E. Leuchtenburg, William vanden Heuvel, and Douglas Brinkley FDR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES THE UNITED STATES AND Foreign Perceptions of an American President THE INTEGRATION OF EUROPE Edited by Cornelis A. van Minnen and Legacies of the Postwar Era John F. Sears Edited by Francis H. Heller and John R. Gillingham NATO: THE FOUNDING OF THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE AND ADENAUER AND KENNEDY THE INTEGRATION OF EUROPE A Study in German-American Relations Edited by Francis H. Heller and Frank A. Mayer John R. Gillingham THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND AMERICA UNBOUND THE BRITISH EMPIRE World War II and the Making of a A Study in Presidential Statecraft Superpower William N. Tilchin Edited by Warren F. Kimball TARIFFS, TRADE AND EUROPEAN THE ORIGINS OF U.S. NUCLEAR INTEGRATION, 1947–1957 STRATEGY, 1945–1953 From Study Group to Samuel R. Williamson, Jr. and Common Market Steven L. Rearden Wendy Asbeek Brusse AMERICAN DIPLOMATS IN THE SUMNER WELLES NETHERLANDS, 1815–50 FDR’s Global Strategist Cornelis A. van Minnen A Biography by Benjamin Welles EISENHOWER, KENNEDY, AND THE NEW DEAL AND PUBLIC POLICY THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE Edited by Byron W. Daynes, William D. Pascaline Winand Pederson, and Michael P. Riccards ALLIES AT WAR WORLD WAR II IN EUROPE The Soviet, American, and British Edited by Charles F. Brower Experience, 1939–1945 Edited by David Reynolds, FDR AND THE U.S. NAVY Warren F. Kimball, and A. O. Chubarian Edward J. Marolda THE ATLANTIC CHARTER THE SECOND QUEBEC Edited by Douglas Brinkley and CONFERENCE REVISITED David R. Facey-Crowther Edited by David B. Woolner PEARL HARBOR REVISITED THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Edited by Robert W. Love, Jr. THE U.S. NAVY, AND FDR AND THE HOLOCAUST THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR Edited by Verne W. Newton Edited by Edward J. Marolda FDR, THE VATICAN, AND THE FDR’S WORLD ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN War, Peace, and Legacies AMERICA, 1933–1945 Edited by David B. Woolner, Edited by David B. Woolner and Warren F. Kimball, and Richard G. Kurial David Reynolds FDR AND THE ENVIRONMENT ROOSEVELT AND FRANCO Edited by Henry L. Henderson and DURING THE SECOND David B. Woolner WORLD WAR From the Spanish VAN LOON: POPULAR HISTORIAN, Civil War to JOURNALIST, AND FDR CONFIDANT Pearl Harbor Cornelis A. van Minnen Joan Maria Thomàs FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S FOREIGN HARRY HOPKINS POLICY AND THE WELLES MISSION Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer J. Simon Rofe June Hopkins FDR and the Environment EDITED BY HENRY L. HENDERSON AND DAVID B. WOOLNER FDR AND THE ENVIRONMENT Copyright © Henry L. Henderson and David B.Woolner, 2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6861-6 All rights reserved. First published in hardcover in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-61968-5 ISBN 978-0-230-10067-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230100671 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data FDR and the environment / edited by Henry L. Henderson and David B.Woolner. p. cm. — (The world of the Roosevelts) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945—Views on conservation. 2. Environmental protection—United States— History—20th century. 3. Conservation of natural resources— United States—History—20th century. 4. United States––Politics and government—1933–1945. 5. New Deal, 1933–1939. I. Henderson, Henry L. II.Woolner, David B., 1955– III. Series. E807.F335 2005 973.917_092—dc22 2004054139 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: September 2009 10987654321 Contents Acknowledgments vii Foreword ix Introduction 1 Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner Part 1 FDR as Environmentalist 5 1. Grassroots Democracy: FDR and the Land 7 John F. Sears 2. The Complex Environmentalist: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Ethos of New Deal Conservation 19 Brian Black 3. “A Conflux of Desire and Need”: Trees, Boy Scouts, and the Roots of Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps 49 Neil M. Maher Part 2 Conservation: Wilderness, Agriculture, and the Human Community 85 4. New Deal Conservation: A View from the Wilderness 87 Paul Sutter 5. FDR, Hoover, and the New Rural Conservation, 1920–1932 107 Sarah Phillips Part 3 Law, Policy, and Planning 153 6. Rediscovering the New Deal’s Environmental Legacy 155 A. Dan Tarlock Contents 7. FDR’s Expansion of Our National Patrimony: A Model for Leadership 177 John Leshy 8. Referendum on Planning: Imaging River Conservation in the 1938 TVA Hearings 181 Brian Black 9. “FDR and Environmental Leadership” 195 James R. Lyons Part 4 A Usable Past 219 10. Recovering FDR’s Environmental Legacy 221 Richard N.L. Andrews 11. A New Deal for Nature—And Nature’s People 245 Roger G. Kennedy Notes on Contributors 261 Index 265 Acknowledgments In the fall of 2002 the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, and Marist College hosted a remarkable conference entitled Recovering the Environmental Legacy of FDR. As the title suggests, the conference sought to reexamine the Progressive era conservation policies of the New Deal based on the principle that many of the programs and policies of this remarkable era stand at the root of modern environmentalism. A conference of this intellectual scope and vigor could not have happened without the assistance of many individuals and the support of a number of key institutions. The inspiration for the conference came from Roosevelt Institute Cochairs Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and William J. vanden Heuvel. Without their vision and dedication to the legacy of FDR such a conference would not have been possible. We are also grateful to Dr. Cynthia Koch, the director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and to the staffs of the FDR Library and Roosevelt Institute for their kind assistance. Special thanks must also go to Marist College president, Dr. Dennis Murray, for his strong support, as well as to Marist’s dean of Liberal Arts and director of the Hudson River Valley Institute (HRVI) Dr. Thomas Wermuth, whose steadfast commitment to our efforts proved invaluable. Chris Pavlovski, the program director of HRVI, and Marist’s Director Special Events, Valerie Hall also deserve recognition for their help in organizing the event. Our appreciation goes out to Sarah Olson, the superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site, and our friends at the National Park Service, who added a great deal to the proceedings. For providing us with a Hudson River Valley perspective of FDR’s environmental legacy we would like to thank Deborah Meyer Dewan, Scenic Hudson’s director of Riverfront Communities and a longtime environmental and community advo- cate; Cara Lee, the program director for the Nature Conservancy’s Shawangunk Ridge Program; and Martin Shaffer, assistant professor of Political Science at Marist College, and a specialist in the politics of American Environmentalism. We are also grateful to Dr. Thomas Lynch and Dr. Richard Feldman of Marist’s Acknowledgments Department of Environmental Sciences for their assistance, and to Dr. Ray Teichman, senior archivist at the FDR Library for his enlightening and humorous comments on the environmental holdings of the FDR Library. For his wise counsel on the intellectual dimensions of the conference and this book, our thanks go out as well to our dear friend and mentor, Roosevelt Historian, William Leuchtenburg. As has been the case with a number of Roosevelt Institute conferences, we are extremely grateful to the late Jack Gartland and the Charlotte Cunneen Hackett Charitable Trust for their financial support of our efforts. Without this support, this conference would not have been possible. The conference organizers also wish to acknowledge the financial assistance of Marist College, the Hudson River Valley Institute, and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Finally, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to participants of the conference who so graciously accepted our invitation to share their knowledge of this fascinating aspect of the Roosevelt era; and our appreciation to series editors Douglas Brinkley and Brendan O’Malley for their assistance in the final preparation of this book. Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner Chicago and Hyde Park Foreword William E. Leuchtenburg For those of us who lived through the era of the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the hero of the conservation movement, and multipur- pose river valley development was our creed. We were thrilled by the dams in the Tennessee Valley and the Pacific Northwest, and proud that leaders all over the globe thought of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as the model for how to harness the energy of rivers to provide clean electric power and how to nourish “grassroots democracy.” We acknowledged the pioneering efforts of FDR’s distant cousin, Teddy, but we doubted that anyone ever had, or ever would, equal the initiatives of the New Deal: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Soil Conservation Service, the shelterbelt, the Great Plains Committee, the wildlife refuges, and the national preserves from the Everglades and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in the east to the Olympic National Park rain forest in the west.
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