2.1 The american conservation movement  (Page 2/6)

Thus by the mid-19 ^th century the American public was prepared to listen to the messages of various groups who had become concerned about the impacts of growth on society. Three groups in particular, of considerably different sympathies and character, came to have profound influences on the way we thought of ourselves in relation to the environment, on our land use policies, and on providing environmental goods and services to the growing population: the “resource efficiency” group, the transcendentalist movement, and organized industrial interests.

Resource efficiency

As typified by the concerns of Jared Eliot nearly a century before, there were always some who were alarmed at widespread agricultural practices that were wasteful, inefficient and, using the modern terminology, unsustainable. By the early 1800s the cumulative impacts of soil erosion and infertility, decreasing crop yields, and natural barriers to expansion such as terrain and poor transportation to markets led to an organized effort to understand the causes of these problems, invent and experiment with new, more soil-conserving and less wasteful practices, communicate what was being learned to the public, and begin to build government institutions to promote better stewardship of the land and its resources. Although initial conservation concerns were associated with farming, the same approach soon found its way into the management of forests and timbering, wastes from mining and smelting, and by the end of the century the control of human disease outbreaks (most commonly associated with cholera and typhoid) and the impact of chemical exposure on workers. There were many individuals who contributed to understanding the scientific underpinnings of the environment and educating practitioners: Eugene Hilgard (agricultural science), John Wesley Powell (water rights), George Perkins Marsh (ecological science), Franklin Hough and Gifford Pinchot (sustainable forestry), J. Sterling Morton (forestry and environmental education; co-founder of Arbor Day ), Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape architecture), and Alice Hamilton (industrial hygiene), to name a few. These resource conservationists were instrumental in applying scientific methods to solving the problems of the day, problems that were rooted in our behavior toward the environment, and that had serious consequences for the well-being of people. It was as a result of these efforts that the basis for the fields of environmental science and engineering, agronomy and agricultural engineering, and public health was established. Over time these fields have grown in depth and breadth, and have led to the establishment of new areas of inquiry.

Just as importantly, several federal institutions were created to oversee the implementation of reforms and manage the government’s large land holdings. Legislation forming the Departments of the Interior (1849), and Agriculture (1862), the U.S. Forest Service (1881), the Geological Survey (1879), and the National Park Service (1916) were all enacted during this period. It was also the time when several major conservation societies, still active today, came into being: the Audubon Society (1886), the Sierra Club (1892), and the National Wildlife Federation (1935). Arbor Day was first celebrated in 1872, and Bird Day in 1894.