THE COMING OF CONSERVATION

Rex Burress

In reviewing a conservation article, it occurred to me that conserving America's natural resources was long in coming for the four centuries after Columbus's arrival in 1492.

The article, The Green Giant, by Jim Sterba, ( in the Wall Street Journal, of all places), reflected largely on the era of the Sierra Club and founder John Muir in 1892 and first executive director David Brower in 1952, but recounting the environmental history that led up to the present-day resource perils, is alarming. Where were the visionaries that could have changed the course of concern about the planet for the future?

The first couple hundred years after Plymouth Rock were especially appalling. It was “cut and dig baby, cut and dig,” It was parallel with Sarah Palin's “dig baby,dig” attitude toward oil and the Alaskan frontier.

The European settlers looked upon the new world as a hideous wilderness “full of wild beasts and wild men” for them to conquer and use, and it mostly remained that way until the middle 1900's when environmental awareness became more pronounced. By then, most of the eastern forests had been cut a couple times, major dams built, roads established, and all of the country claimed for various projects. People like Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir started a park and refuge sense of saving resources, but conservation of the land was slow to come.

Enter David Brower, who spear-headed the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth into formidable forces in defense of wildlife and habitat. Retaining park land had already been a challenging time with political forces gnawing away at any gains, as already Muir had lost the battle to save Hetch Hetchy valley from a dam IN Yosemite Park in 1913, a year after Brower was born, and a year before Muir died. Soon after Brower became Sierra Club's director in 1952, he was embroiled in opposing dams, especially in National Parks, as he believed, like Muir, that development in declared parks was off limits to private gain. Brower succeeded in stopping two dams in the Grand Canyon, and two on the Green River, but lost in the building of Glen Canyon dam.

I met David Brower at an East Bay Regional Park District event once, where I displayed my painting of Joaquin Miller holding a shovel among the redwoods. We discussed the significance of the shovel that I contended was a symbol of Joaquin's love of trees and his planting of 75,000 trees in the barren Oakland Hills in 1886. Brower seemed pleased and withdrew his impression that the shovel suggested to him digging dams and disrupting the Earth. That was also the year that I met Roger Tory Peterson, famous bird artist, and Robert Bateman, renowned wildlife artist. A banner year of inspiration.

Some economists eager for profit, called preservation ideas of Brower as a case of local greed versus national need. To them, Brower's brand of conservationists seemed slanted toward “urban bird-watchers, the daffodil wing of nature lovers.”

Say what you want, but it's the “little old ladies” with their binoculars and daffodils that have led many campaigns to save the environment. One of the most notable being the saving of the egrets when they were being slaughtered for the fancy breeding plumage “plumes” to decorate ladies hats in the late 1800's! Not all women believed in killing an egret for vanity. That movement led to the formation of the Audubon Society.

In 1988, Paul F. Covel, first municipal naturalist west of the Rockies who founded the Oakland Lake Merritt Naturalist Program, wrote a book, “Beacons Along a Naturalist's Trail” The book told about California naturalists and innovators in which he tells about 11 outstanding local environmental advocates not widely known but giants in their time and place. Five were women. Their stories deserve universal recognition for aiding in saving much of the bay and advocating nature on a par with Rachael Carson, although they “thought globally but acted locally.”

It is with utmost appreciation that the nature community recognizes environmental leaders of the past and the contributions they made to our storehouse of nature knowledge and the land they helped save for parks. Equally recognizable are the conservationists yet to come. Who will it be to step forth and make a difference for Earth salvation in this Trump administration era?

“A sense of history should be the most precious gift of science and of the arts.” --Aldo Leopold

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” --Rachael Carson