Volume 20 Issue 1 Winter 1980 Winter 1980 Pioneer Conservationists of Western America, Peter Wild Channing Kury Recommended Citation Channing Kury, Pioneer Conservationists of Western America, Peter Wild, 20 Nat. Resources J. 208 (1980). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol20/iss1/20 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resources Journal by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. PIONEER CONSERVATIONISTS OF WESTERN AMERICA PETER WILD Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1979, 246 pp., $12.95. Prior to reading Pioneer Conservationists of Western America by Peter Wild, who also has written twenty volumes of poetry, I had the impression that environmental poets were neither poets nor environ- mentalists. Not having read any of Wild's poetry, I can not pass judgment on his efforts toward lyrical imagery but, having read his Pioneer Conservationists, I find that he has a conception of conserva- tion that is factually well-founded, reasonably consistent with a broad range of conservation theory, sensible in its judgments and, as might be expected from a wordsmith, well-stated. Pioneer Conservationists profiles 15 conservationists who some- how have been associated with the American West but who also have national significance. The profiles are well sculpted in that, given the limits of literary bas-relief, the reader comes to a satisfying under- standing of these environmental activists through personal introduc- tions as well as precis of their professional contributions. Wild chose well in selecting his 15 profiles. There are the obliga- tory chapters on John Wesley Powell, John Muir and Gifford Pin- chot. Stephen Mather, Enos Mills, Aldo Leopold and Olaus Murie are also included. Those from the Earth Day era are William 0. Douglas, David Brower, Garrett Hardin and Stewart Udall. The literati are represented by Mary Hunter Austin, Bernard DeVoto, Joseph Wood Krutch and Edward Abbey. Wild is to be commended for including DeVoto since DeVoto's major contribution through printer's ink ad- vocacy has tended to be overlooked by other persons in their re- countings of the development of conservation following World War II. The chapter on Edward Abbey is especially significant. If you have read Abbey's Desert Solitaire, The Journey Home or The Monkey Wrench Gang, you already know that Abbey is the environmental movement's Hunter Thompson, i.e., an artful writer of dark humor about the psyche in society. The explication of such an author is difficult for readers who can see the candlelight in the darkness but who have not plumbed the depths of their own psyches to resolve the dialectic between the manifestation of the individual and the accommodation to society. If you do not understand the candlelight in the darkness, then Pioneer Conservationistsis worth obtaining for the Abbey chapter alone. CHANNING KURY* *Attorney, State of New Mexico Department of Natural Resources, Water Resources Division..