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Environmental History LEARNING OBJECTIVES

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Environmental History LEARNING OBJECTIVES Environmental History LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Briefly outline the environmental history of the feet of white pine, leaving less than 6 billion board feet United States. standing in the whole state. 2. Describe the contributions of the following people During the 19th century, many U.S. naturalists began to our perspective on the environment: John to voice concerns about conserving natural resources. John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, George James Audubon (1785–1851) painted lifelike portraits of Perkins Marsh, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford birds and other animals in their natural surroundings that Pinchot, John Muir, Franklin Roosevelt, Aldo aroused widespread public interest in the wildlife of North Leopold, Wallace Stegner, Rachel Carson, Paul America (Figure 3.2). Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Wangari Maathai. 3. Distinguish between utilitarian conservationists />>}iÀÃÊ UÊ }ÕÀiÊΰÓÊ and biocentric preservationists. 4. Explain how a systems perspective helps us This portrayal is one of 500 engravings in Audubon’s classic, The Birds of America understand human impacts on the environment. , completed in 1844. Shown are two male Louisiana tanagers (also called western tanagers, top) and male and female scarlet tanagers (bottom). rom the establishment of the first perma- nent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the first two centuries of U.S. his- F tory were a time of widespread environmen- tal destruction. European settlers exploited land, timber, wildlife, rich soil, clean water, and other resources that had been used sustainably by native peoples for thou- sands of years. The settlers did not recognize that the bountiful natural resources of North America would one day become scarce. During the 1700s and most of the 1800s, many Americans had a frontier attitude, a desire to conquer nature and put its resources to use in the most lucrative manner possible. Two characteristics of European settlers and their descendants drove this unsustainable resource use: rapid population growth and high per person consumption. European settlements tended to be more densely popu- lated than were those of natives, and settlers accumulated more permanent material goods (houses, roads, wagons, furniture, tools, and clothing). Protecting Forests The great forests of the Northeast were cut down within a few generations of European settlement, and, shortly after the Civil War in the 1860s, loggers began deforest- ing the Midwest at an alarming rate. Within 40 years, they had deforested an area the size of Europe, stripping Min- nesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin of virgin forest. By 1897 the sawmills of Michigan had processed 160 billion board Courtesy Library of Congress Environmental History 51 a prominent U.S. writer, lived for 2 years on utilitarian only after designating 21 new national forests the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, conservationist that totaled 6.5 million hectares (16 million Massachusetts. There he observed nature and A person who values acres). contemplated how people could simplify their natural resources Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot lives to live in harmony with the natural world. because of their (1865–1946) the first head of the U.S. Forest usefulness to humans George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was a Service. Both Roosevelt and Pinchot were but uses them farmer, linguist, and diplomat at various times sensibly and carefully. utilitarian conservationists who viewed forests during his life. Today he is most remembered in terms of their usefulness to people—such for his book Man and Nature, published in 1864, which as in providing jobs and renewable resources. Pinchot provided one of the first discussions of humans as agents supported expanding the nation’s forest reserves and of global environmental change. managing them scientifically (for instance, harvesting In 1875 a group of public-minded citizens formed trees only at the rate at which they regrow). Today, national the American Forestry Association with the intent of forests are managed for multiple uses, from biological influencing public opinion against the wholesale destruc- habitats to recreation to timber harvest to cattle grazing. tion of America’s forests. Sixteen years later, in 1891, the F orest Reserve Act (which was part of the General Land Law Revision Act) gave the U.S. president the au- Establishing National Parks thority to establish forest reserves on public (federally and Monuments owned) land. Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), Grover Congress established the world’s first national park in Cleveland (1837–1908), William McKinley (1843–1901), 1872, after a party of Montana explorers reported on the and Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) used this law to natural beauty of the canyon and falls of the Yellowstone put a total of 17.4 million hectares (43 million acres) of River. Yellowstone National Park now includes parts of forest, primarily in the West, out of the reach of loggers. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. In 1890 the Yosemite In 1907 angry Northwest congressmen pushed National Park Bill established the Yosemite and Sequoia through a bill stating that national forests could no national parks in California, largely in response to longer be created by the president but would require the efforts of a single man, naturalist and writer John an act of Congress. Roosevelt signed the bill into law but Muir (1838–1914) (Figure 3.3). Muir, who as a child President Theodore Roosevelt (left) >`Ê ÊÕÀÊ UÊ }ÕÀiÊΰÎÊ This photo was taken on Glacier Point above Yosemite Valley, California. 52 CHAPTER 3 Bettman/Corbis Images Courtesy National Archives Joanne Hoyoung Lee/ KRT/NewsCom a iÌV ÊiÌV ÞÊ6>iÞÊÊ9ÃiÌiÊ UÊ }ÕÀiÊΰ{Ê Some environmental battles involving the protection of national parks were lost. John Muir’s Sierra Club fought with the city of San Francisco over its efforts to dam a river and form a reservoir in the beautiful Hetch Hetchy Valley, which lay within Yosemite National Park. In 1913 Congress approved the dam. The State of California is considering restoring Hetch Hetchy, at an estimated cost as high as $10 billion. Hetch Hetchy Valley before (a) and after (b) the dam was built. b emigrated from Scotland with his family, was a biocentric Controversy over preservation battles, such as the preservationist. Muir also founded the Sierra Club, a na- Hetch Hetchy Valley conflict, generated a strong senti- tional conservation organization that is still active on a ment that the nation should better protect its national range of environmental issues. parks (Figure 3.4). In 1916 Congress created the National In 1906 Congress passed the Antiqui- Park Service to manage the national parks and biocentric ties Act, which authorized the president to monuments for the enjoyment of the public, preservationist set aside sites that had scientific, historic, or A person who “without impairment.” It was this clause that prehistoric importance. By 1916 there were 16 believes in protecting gave a different outcome to another battle, national parks and 21 national monuments, nature from human fought in the 1950s between conservationists under the loose management of the U.S. interference because and dam builders over the construction of a Army. Today there are 58 national parks and all forms of life dam within Dinosaur National Monument. 74 national monuments under the manage- deserve respect and Preservationists convinced decision makers consideration. ment of the National Park Service. that to fill the canyon with 400 feet of water Environmental History 53 conservation movement of the mid- to late 20th century ( Figure 3.5). His textbook Game Management, published in 1933, supported the passage of a 1937 act in which new taxes on sporting weapons and ammunition funded wildlife management and research. Leopold also wrote about humanity’s relationship with nature and the need to conserve wilderness areas in A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949. Leopold argued for a land ethic and the sacrifices that such an ethic requires. Leopold profoundly influenced many American think- ers and writers, including Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), who penned his famous “Wilderness Essay” in 1962. Stegner’s essay helped create support for the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Stegner wrote: Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved Everett Collection/Newscom Everett roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will `Êi«`Ê UÊ }ÕÀiÊΰxÊ Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste . Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is widely considered an We simply need that wild country available to us, even if environmental classic. we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, would “impair” it. This victory for conservation a part of the geography of hope. established the “use without impairment” clause as the firm backbone of legal protection afforded our national During the 1960s, public concern about pollution and parks and monuments. resource quality increased, in large part due to the work of marine biologist Rachel Carson (1907–1964). Carson wrote Conservation in the Mid-20th Century
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