Value of Maintaining Natural Ecosystems: Preservation Versus Conservation

HISTORY OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

By Jeremiah Hall

The wide expanses of the Western United States have become the recent site of a fierce battle . At issue : reintroduction of the gray wolf Beginning in 1995 , wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park as part of the recovery plan required by the Endangered Species Act . The original plan called for 35 to 45 wolves constituting a healthy population in Yellowstone . Today there are 115 to 120 wolves within the Yellowstone ecosystem , and as many as 664 in the Western Montana-Idaho-Yellowstone region . Contrary

to original beliefs that wolves would restore balance to the ecosystems of this area , wolves are decimating both domestic livestock and wild game populations . As ranchers lament the threat to their livelihood , environmentalists celebrate the "rewilding " of America

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is the mechanism by which the changes are occurring . In this , I will explore the history of the Act itself and the social and philosophical ideologies which precipitated it . I will focus on the movements and events of the 1960 's which fostered the Act , and also look at some of the modern aspects

The environmental movement finds its roots in the 19th century . In 1854 Henry David Thoreau published Walden , a book about living simple in a natural setting . During the same time period , Ralph Waldo Emerson began writing about nature . In the summer of 1868 , John Muir moved to the Yosemite Valley in California . At first , he worked as a shepherd and later at a sawmill , but his true passion was the wilds of Yosemite . He would spend weeks hiking through the mountains . In time he became convinced that nature had inherent value of its own and needed to be set aside , put off-limits from the destructiveness of man . Together with Robert Underwood Johnson , he successfully lobbied Congress for the creation of a preserve for Yosemite , and in 1890 Yosemite National Park was born . Shortly thereafter , Johnson and Muir officially joined forces to create the Sierra Club , one of the first environmental groups and progenitor of many modern organizations (Weiss

Gifford Pinchot returned to America in 1890 from France , where he had been studying forestry . He was shocked to see the inefficient abuse of national resources in the U .S . He began to work in the forest industry and due to his training and experience , he quickly advanced . In 1898 he became the head of the Division of Forestry . When President Theodore Roosevelt created the US Forest Service in 1905 , he named Pinchot , whom he personally knew , Chief Forester (Dowie 16 . Pinchot used the knowledge he had gained in France to set up a system of management for natural resources that focused on selective harvest , rather than indiscriminate plunder . Large portions of land (hundreds of millions of acres ) were brought under public ownership and made into National Forests , which the Forest Service managed

Pinchot and Muir began two subgroups of the environmental movement conservation and preservation , respectively . Pinchot advocated a "wise use...