2.1 The american conservation movement

Learning objectives

After reading this module, students should be able to

• understand the history of environmental policy in the United States and the role of different groups in shaping environmental policy

Introduction

To most early colonists who immigrated to North America, for whom the concept of “wastage” had no specific meaning, the continent was a land of unimaginably vast resources in which little effort was made to treat, minimize, or otherwise manage. This is not surprising, when one stand of trees was consumed for housing or fuel, another was nearby; when one field was eroded to the point of limited fertility, expansion further inland was relatively simple; when rivers became silted so that fisheries were impaired, one moved further upstream; and when confronted with endless herds of wild animals, it was inconceivable that one might over-consume to the point of extinction. European-settled America was a largely agrarian society and, apart from the need to keep spaces productive and clear of debris, there was little incentive to spend time and energy managing discharges to the “ commons ” (see Module The Tragedy of the Commons ). These attitudes persisted well into the 19 ^th century and aspects of them are still active in the present day. While such practices could hardly be said to constitute an “environmental policy,” they did serve the purpose of constellating a number of groups into rethinking the way we went about managing various aspects of our lives, in particular our relationship to the land and the resources it contained or provided. As early as the mid-18 ^th century, Jared Eliot (1685-1763) of Connecticut, a minister, doctor, and farmer, wrote a series of treatises on the need for better farming methods. He summarized:

When our fore-Fathers settled here, they entered a Land which probably never had been Ploughed since the Creation, the Land being new they depended upon the natural Fertility of the Ground, which served their purpose very well, and when they had worn out one piece they cleared another, without any concern to amend their Land…( Carman, Tugwell,&True, 1934, p. 29 ).

Although Eliot avidly instructed his fellow farmers on better methods of “field husbandry,” there is little evidence that his writings had a lasting effect (he is most known for advances in the design of the “drill plough,” an early planter that produced even rows of crops, increasing yields).

By 1850, the population of the United States was approaching 25 million and increasing at the rate of three to four percent per year (for comparison the population of England was about 26 million, of France 36 million, and Germany about 40 million). Although the westward migration across North America was well underway, most people still lived within a relatively narrow strip of land along the east coast. By modern measures the United States was not densely populated, and yet the perception of the country as “big” and on the international stage was in contrast to the mentality just a few decades before of a new world that had broken with the old, one of endless open spaces and inexhaustible resources. The country was also becoming more urbanized (about 15 percent of the population lived in cities, three times the proportion of just fifty years before), and increasingly literate.