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First Park |
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Game Preserves |
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Modern Conservation |
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"Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can
only mar it."
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT, speech,
Grand Canyon, 1903, quoted in William Schwarz,
ed., Voices for the Wilderness, 1967
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Wilderness
Preservation Begins With the Kings of England
The word wilderness originated in the
old English "wilddeorness", which meant "the place of wild deer". The first
conscious effort to protect nature in the World was made
by the kings of England in the Middle Ages. They were motivated by a desire for
private hunting preserves where they could hunt wild
animals recreationally.
But they learned very quickly that if they were to have animals to hunt they
needed to protect the wildlife from poachers and the land from the
villagers who would cut down the trees for firewood.
The idea of nature being something special and beautiful only really
emerged in the 1800s when British artists such as John Constable and JMW Turner
first started to paint
the splendors of the natural world. Up until then almost all paintings
had been of religious scenes or of human beings, so the idea
of seeing the beauty in nature was something new. Wordsworth,
one of England's premier poets, first started talking about the wonder
of the natural world (before then, the natural world had been a
scary, intimidating place). Increasingly the valuing of nature became
an aspect of British culture.
But despite this, when British settlers came to North America and discovered
the vast pristine lands of this new continent, they were completely overwhelmed.
Their
first reaction was to try and subdue the wilds. But soon their appreciation
for the beauty and expansiveness of the land showed up in their
writings, gradually germinating into the idea that the destiny
of America was to carve itself out of the wilderness. The ability to contend with
and live within
wilderness became an integral part of the American identity.
By the 1870s,
this concept had expanded to such an extent that an awareness evolved
of the importance of
preserving some of the country's wilderness. Because without wilderness,
Americans would lose what it meant to be American. That this idea should emerge
into the American consciousness had much to do with how fast settlement was
proceeding. For the first time the frontier no longer seemed infinite. Indeed
the expansion of railways across the west, and the role they played in speeding
the settlement of the land, was so rapid that for the first time wilderness
was seen to be truly waning.
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"The ability to contend with
and live within
wilderness became an integral part of the American identity."
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As proof of this growing appreciation of wild nature, in 1872 Yellowstone, the world's
first National Park, was created. At the time, the desire to protect this parkland
also reflected monetary interests in the area. The country's railways, including
Union Pacific, reasoned that if people heard
about the beauty of Yellowstone, they would be attracted to visiting
as tourists. To ensure this would occur, Union Pacific had several artists paint
spectacular pictures of wild Yellowstone, of its canyons and geysers,
to show to the wealthy populations of the Eastern United
States and Europe. Obviously the railways hoped that such visitors would
be inspired to ride their trains to Yellowstone and stay in their hotels while
there. To them, creating a park made good economic sense.
From these beginnings a tradition evolved that nature should in fact be preserved
for its beauty's sake. It was the writings of people like Ralph Waldo Emerson
and especially John Muir,
who in the 1890s formed the Sierra Club and led the campaign to preserve
Yosemite National Park, that so inspired the public. Indeed, Muir's
campaign to preserve Yosemite was the first citizen-led
effort to protect wilderness in the world. |
The idea of conservation and of protecting wild lands began to gain
great favor when Teddy Roosevelt became president of the
United States.
Roosevelt was a great outdoorsman who truly valued nature, wildlife, and wilderness. He moved
quickly to greatly enlarge the United States National Parks system, and to establish the
National Forest system.
This US concept of national parks was copied by other countries around
the world, especially Canada. Canada's first national park was created in the 1880s at Sulfur Springs, in what is now Banff, when the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway was being
built. A few people building the railway discovered the area's hot
springs and intended to make themselves rich. The Canadian government however, also
recognized the tourism potential of the area and decided to move pre-emptively
to create a small park there. Over the years, the idea of enlarging Banff National Park
gained more favor as the CPR (like their US counterpart had earlier at Yellowstone)
saw the value
they could reap from tourism, by enticing people to come across the ocean
and see the great wild spaces of Canada.
By the 1920s, more and more wealthy visitors were travelling by
train across Canada and the United States to experience
what it meant to be in the wilderness. At the time, the preferred version of
"wilderness" was to stay in fine hotels
and look out at nature through big windows. This mentality led to the commercialization
of
many of Canada's National
Parks through the building of great hotels such as The Banff Springs and Chateau Lake Louise.
Soon however, the idea of protecting nature for nature's sake was furthered by American
writers like Aldo Leopold, who in the 1930s talked
about the need for a land ethic and the need to protect wilderness quickly. By then it was
becoming
clear that wild spaces were very much in retreat and unless rapid
action was taken the wild country would be lost.
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"By the 1920s, more and more wealthy visitors were travelling by
train across Canada and the United States to experience
what it meant to be in the wilderness."
British
Game Preserves
In the late 1940s, global conservation took a major
step forward with the beginning of the end of the British Empire
in Africa. The British elite
had became used to hunting 'big game' here, and became
concerned that once the African colonies were turned over to the local people,
the wildlife would be slaughtered and the wild spaces that they valued
would be lost.
As a result, one of the last things the colonial power of Britain did was to establish
great wildlife preserves there. This spawned
the idea in the 1950s and the early 1960s of the need to protect large
spaces for wildlife worldwide. It was at this time that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
was founded. Eventually WWF was to become one of the largest conservation organisations
in the world.
Meanwhile in America, concern over the rapid disappearance of wilderness
was resulting in strong pressure being placed on government to preserve nature.
This pressure was focused on great fights,
such as the one
to stop the proposed damming of the Grand Canyon. It also led to the passage
of a truly historic piece of legislation in 1964: the Wilderness Act. This
Act's magnificent preamble states
"Wilderness is a place where the land remains untrammelled,
where man is a visitor who does not remain." It was this vision
of saving wilderness, not just individual parks, but the whole system
of wilderness, that really inspired conservationists. Indeed the passage of
this Act in the United States was the catalyst
to the modern age of wilderness protection.
The Wilderness Act instructed the US Government to create a vast
system of wilderness preserves nation-wide, not just in National Parks, but in all
catagories of nationally administered land. This included those lands managed by
the US Forest
Service, the US Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as the
National Parks service. It was a magnificent accomplishment that eventually
resulted in the retention of 110 million ha (270 million acres) of wilderness.
Given such success, in the early 1970s major national environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, the Audobon
Society, and the Wilderness Society, boomed in membership, particularly
as the youthful baby boom generation started to reach an age where they could
spend their recreation time in the wilderness.
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"National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent
use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside
an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and
reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty
of the earth as we know it today."
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY (1917-1963), speech,
First World Conference on National Parks, Seattle, 23 June 1962
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There was another crucial reason for the fast rising concern for the wild earth.
Just before 1970, humanity saw the first pictures of earth from
space, the images beamed back by the Apollo astronauts. For the first time,
as the spacecraft travelled in the black abyss of space, the
finiteness of our planet became starkly evident. Earth was seen for what it was, a
lonely jewel of life. It became unmistakably clear that if we destroyed Earth, we would
destroy ourselves. From this image the environmental
consciousness we know today was born. As people began to see and understand for
the first time
how precious and rare Earth was, they also began to understand why it was necessary
to
protect nature. This new view point generated
many lineages of environmental awareness, from concern about pollution, to the
need to protect fresh water sources.
As well, it served to intensify the tradition of protecting wild
spaces, of protecting the land.
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"Earth was seen for what it was, a
lonely jewel of life. It became unmistakably clear that if we destroyed Earth, we
destroyed ourselves."
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