Tag Archives: gifford pinchot

We the People

Conservation, Fermata, , , , , , , , , , , ,
A century ago, lumbering, followed by wild fire, completed denuded this forest. Pine Creek Gorge, Pennsylvania
A century ago, lumbering, followed by wild fire, completed denuded this forest. Pine Creek Gorge, Pennsylvania

What stands between our heritage and the inability of man to control his greed is law.

Europeans came to this country over 400 years ago, and were blessed by what they believed to be limitless resources. The land seemed fertile beyond reason or imagination, and wildlife could be harvested without concern for its diminishment. Or, so they thought.

Theodore Roosevelt is the better known of a generation that came to realize the risk rapaciousness and predatory greed presented to our country’s natural heritage. Roosevelt and his colleagues such as Gifford Pinchot, Edgar Lee Hewett, John Muir, Frank Chapman, John F. Lacey, J.T. Rothrock, Myra Lloyd Dock, and George Bird Grinnell could see that without direct action, without government involvement, the feast would continue unchecked, leaving only a few moldy scraps for future generations.

Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot were faced with millions of acres of cutover lands being abandoned after they were timbered. Fires constantly raged through the debris left after the harvesting; watersheds were eroding, silting rivers and streams.

ca. August 1907, New York State, USA --- Men stand on piles of cut trees --- Image by © U.S. Gov'T Agriculture Forest Service/National Geographic Creative/Corbis
ca. August 1907, New York State, USA — Men stand on piles of cut trees — Image by © U.S. Gov’T Agriculture Forest Service/National Geographic Creative/Corbis

States (such as New York and Pennsylvania) and the federal government moved in to begin the restoration of these lands. They bought these worthless lands from owners eager to sell.

Roosevelt recognized that we also needed a system of refuges where wildlife could flourish. One reason? We needed sources of wildlife, especially game animals. for restoring those lost in the Big Cut.  Pennsylvania, for example, began reintroducing Rocky Mountain elk (the native eastern elk Cervus canadensis canadensis was extinct by this time) and white-tailed deer (!) in the early 1900s.

Edgar Lee Hewett’s inspiration, the Antiquities Act, and John F. Lacey’s Lacey Act (Lacey also helped with the Antiquities Act) are examples of legislation that pushed the federal government into conservation. The modern game laws were enacted in the early 1900s, bringing market hunting under control. The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service were created in this same period.

Market Hunter
Market Hunter

What stands between our heritage and the inability of man to control his greed is law. Through law, we established a system of public lands that is the envy of the world. Through law, we defined the limits to which we would allow our water and air to be fouled. And, through law, we protected land rights, establishing a clear demarcation between a public interest and one that is private.

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, currently occupied by a self-styled militia, is a perfect case in point. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “In 1908, wildlife photographers William L. Finley and Herman T. Bohlman discovered that most of the white herons (egrets) on Malheur Lake had been killed in 1898 by plume hunters. After 10 years, the white heron population still had not recovered. With backing from the Oregon Audubon Society, Finley and Bohlman proposed establishment of a bird reservation to protect birds, using Malheur, Mud, and Harney lakes.”

In other words, the Roosevelt administration set aside this property to help restore heron and egret populations devastated by the plume trade. Roosevelt’s original executive order included only those excess federal lands that had not been claimed by homesteaders under the federal programs that had been created to attract them. Eventually, additional lands were added to Malheur through purchase from willing sellers.

These are called public lands for a reason. We the people own them; we the people conserved them; we the people restored them.

Conservation and restoration efforts like Malheur have been funded by American taxpayers for well over a century. These are called public lands for a reason. We the people own them; we the people conserved them; we the people restored them.

by Bassano, whole-plate glass negative, 7 July 1911
Woman Wearing Feathered Hat by Bassano, whole-plate glass negative, 7 July 1911

The people who work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the other state and federal land resource agencies have done a wonderful job working for us to protect our shared natural patrimony. The next time you get a chance, thank them for their service.

As for the people occupying Malheur, they are thieves trying to steal our shared natural heritage. There is nothing patriotic or admirable about thievery.

The people at Malheur would like to remove from the public domain assets that would accrue to themselves. They would like to return to a time when government had no role in protecting our national heritage. Look at the photographs that I have included in this article. They reflect that time.

Regardless of the strategy being used by the federal government to bring this stalemate at Malheur to a close, those occupying the refuge are breaking the law. Americans have worked for generations to conserve and restore this heritage once at risk, and now a handful of mindless ultra-rightests would like to snatch that heritage away.

I understand our government’s wish to not make these people martyrs. Waco is still too fresh in our memories. But, there is a limit to patience. These lands are owned by we the people. And we, the people, have a right to reclaim that which is ours.

Here is one final photograph and anecdote to consider, this one from Western Colorado. These are bison hides.

Buffalo Hides in Western Colorado
Buffalo Hides in Western Colorado

The hides were often shipped by train to Pennsylvania and New York to be processed in tanneries. Some of these tanneries were in an area where I have worked, now call the Pennsylvania Wilds. I have walked around the ruins of these tanneries, a sobering stroll.

Most of the hemlocks in those forests, once called Penns Woods, were felled for their bark. Tanneries would first soak the hides in water, then lime, then tannic acid derived from the hemlock bark. Tanneries then dumped all of the waste (flesh, hair, lime, tannic acid) back into the streams and creeks where the tanneries preferred to be located. These tanneries proliferated in New York and Pennsylvania, any area with an abundance of water and hemlock.

Arroyo Tannery, Elk Co., PA
Arroyo Tannery, Elk Co., PA

This is a photograph of the tannery at Arroyo, in Elk County, PA. This image is from around 1910, the height of the hide tanning era. Notice the denuded slopes behind the tannery. The river in front of the tannery is the Clarion.

After J.T. Rothrock visited in the late 1800s, he told his wife that only two words came to mind to describe the Clarion – desolation and abomination.

Consider the environmental impacts of this process. First, market hunters slaughtered the bison. Next, “bark peelers” cut all of the hemlock. It has been estimated that one tannery alone used 100,000 cords of hemlock bark from an estimated 400,000 trees over its 20-year history. Finally, they dumped all of the waste into pristine rivers and streams – lime, tannic acid, flesh, and hair.

Of course, I have ignored the social and cultural costs of this process. The bison were slaughtered not only for their hides. They were slaughtered as a way to control the remaining tribes of Plains Indians and to force them to reservations.

Bison Skills in Saskatchewan
Bison Skills in Saskatchewan

The forests of the Pennsylvania Wilds were completely obliterated during this era (post Civil War through early 1900s). Finally, at the turn of the century, Joseph Trimble Rothrock began taking his wagon through these devastated forests to photograph the wreckage. He returned to Philadelphia and gave lantern slide shows showing the “city people” in the east the extent of this ruination.

Through his efforts (and those of his acolytes such as Gifford Pinchot) the public finally forced the state into creating a forest bureau (now part of Pennsylvania DCNR) and a school of forestry in Mont Alto. Acquisition of these cutover lands by the state would soon follow, beginning over a century of restoration. The result of this effort is millions of acres of state forest in Pennsylvania, one of the world’s largest FSC certified sustainable forests.

The federal government has played a role in this restoration, as well. When the U.S. Forest Service first established the Allegheny National Forest in western Pennsylvania, locals ridiculed the land purchased as the “”Allegheny brush-patch.”

 

Clarion River, Elk Co., PA, by Ted Lee Eubanks
Clarion River, Elk Co., PA, by Ted Lee Eubanks

This final image is one of my own of the Clarion today. Arroyo is now part of the Allegheny National Forest. A section of the Clarion that crosses the national forest is now designated as a National Wild and Scenic River.

Let that soak in for a minute. In about a century, the Clarion has gone from “desolation and abomination” to “wild and scenic.” That recovery is due, in large part, to the efforts of the U.S. Forest Service and the PA DCNR Bureau of Forestry.

Now, virtually all of the land in the region is public (national and state forests), the only way this devastated region would have ever recovered.

The threats remain, however. The land purchased for the Allegheny National Forest, in many cases, only included surface rights. With the fracking boom, the forest has become riddled with active wells and pads. State forests have been opened to oil & gas development. Yet, with a recent change in administrations, there is hope that this too will be addressed.

This is the lesson that I take away from my studies of conservation history. Man’s rapacious, insatiable greed is inborn and indelible. Greed is an inexorable force, relentlessly searching for the tiny cracks where our attention wanes. Without the rule of law, and never-ceasing vigilance by we the people, man inevitably slides back into the dark abyss.

We have proven, time and time again, that we can change this world for the better. We will have to prove this again and again if this world is going to survive.

Man’s rapacious, insatiable greed is inborn and indelible. Greed is an inexorable force, relentlessly searching for the tiny cracks where our attention wanes. Without the rule of law, and never-ceasing vigilance by we the people, man inevitably slides back into the dark abyss.

America the Beautiful

History, Opinion, , ,
Katherine Lee Bates

My youthful reading naturally gravitated to history. In fact, I cannot remember when I didn’t have three of four history books in some stage of completion. Now, armed with a Kindle and an iPad, my consumption has eclipsed what is possible ingesting only words on paper. I am awash in digital history.

My preferences are for world periods that I know little about, and for American conservation history. At the moment I am reading Reston’s Defenders of the Faith. Are you curious about the origins of conflicts between the Christian and Islamic world, between Charles V and Suleyman the Magnificent? Reston is an encyclopedic source. As for American conservation history, I rarely leave the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Roosevelt, Dock, Pinchot, Bird, Rothrock, McFarland, and Lacey inevitably suck me into their vortex.

Recently I have been exploring place as a way that we Americans consider ourselves, in fact, define ourselves. A song that captures that notion for me is America the Beautiful. Consider the first stanza. What could be more evocative of place?

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Amber waves of grain, eastern Colorado

I decided to look closer at the origins of this seminal piece of American patriotic composition. Not surprisingly, I found myself back in this frenetic high-period of American progressive politics. At the outset I knew very little about Katherine Lee Bates, the lyricist, professor, social activist, and poet whose words are memorialized in the song. Bates spent her life teaching at Wellesley College, and in addition to her teaching she wrote children’s books, travel books, and poems. Only one of her poems is famous, but, in her case, one is enough. Here are notes that she wrote about her first thoughts about this poem:

One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.

Purple mountains majesty, Pike's Peak

Bates would continue to craft the poem, first published in 1895, for another eighteen years. In 1910 Bates lyrics were combined with the music of Samuel A. Ward as America the Beautiful. The music began life as Ward’s hymn Materna. Ward would never meet Bates, and he died in 1903. Ward never heard America the Beautiful, his music or not. Bates is a different matter.

As I have continued to read about Bates, there are aspects of her life that are surprisingly contemporary. Bates is often described as an ardent feminist (although at that time I suspect suffragette to be more likely.) In addition, although the details of their relationship are sketchy, Katherine Lee Bates spent most of her adult life as the partner of another woman in a “Boston marriage.” While on staff at Wellesley she met Katharine Coman and began a relationship that lasted for 25 years. Most historians have described the relationship as a “romantic friendship,” but there is no doubt that they enjoyed an intensely loving partnership that lasted until Coman died of breast cancer.

Let this soak in for a moment. The author of America the Beautiful, considered by many to be the most stirring anthemic affirmation of our nation, one of the few that most Americans can sing at the drop of a hat, came from the poetry of an educated, progressive, liberated woman who spent her life in a loving relationship with someone of the same sex.

Although I said that most Americans can sing the anthem at the drop of a hat, few make it past the first verse. Sad. Bates wrote her poem at the height of the progressive movement. Here are the second and third verses, as germane and cutting now as then.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

Katherine Lee Bates found her passion for this country as she traveled west across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. Her love of country is rooted in a love of American places. Roosevelt’s passions for America were similarly kindled by the landscape, by the wildlife, by the place.

Scott's Bluff, Nebraska

We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune…Theodore Roosevelt

Who would have the temerity to question Roosevelt’s love of country? Who would challenge the patriotism of the amazing woman who authored America the Beautiful? Can you imagine telling either to “love it or leave it?” Yet, in these polarized times, a time when fair and balanced are neither, these are precisely the charges they would suffer. Consider how this statement from Roosevelt would be treated by some in the press today:

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed…Theodore Roosevelt

Or, what about this quote from Gifford Pinchot?

The earth and its resources belong of right to its people…Gifford Pinchot

Little Missouri River, North Dakota Badlands

How would the words of these two stalwart Republicans be welcomed today? The judges may have changed, but not the principles of the ones being judged. There is a well-worn trail for us to follow, one blazed by these unequaled men and women of the past. The country may at times feel lost, but never should we. A life in conservation embraces a love of nation, a love of neighbor, a love of the wilds, a love of place. As our poet wrote,

O beautiful for heroes prov’d
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

Thank you, Katherine Lee Bates, for your wonderful song and beautiful life.

Here is Ray Charles’ live rendition of this soul-stripping, heart-charging song. Note that he begins with the third verse, not by accident. If this doesn’t drip with irony, with raw passion, you have no pulse.

Ted Lee Eubanks
12 Nov 2010

The Culture of Conservation – Taking it to the Street

Conservation, Culture of Conservation, Gulf Gusher, Opinion, Politics, Recreation, , , , , ,

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture—Gaylord Nelson

Gifford Pinchot popularized, rather than coined, the word conservation. He placed his mark on the word by combining conservation with ethic, embedding his concept of conservation in an almost forgotten book The Fight for Conservation. Aldo Leopold followed with the Land Ethic which states that conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. For the past century American conservation has heeded these tenets.

Yet even Leopold spoke of the difficulties in applying these rules, these ethics. In Land Ethic Leopold asks the following:

Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation still proceeds at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely letterhead pieties and conventional oratory. On the back forty we still slip two steps backward for each forward stride. The usual answer to this dilemma is ‘more conservation education.’ No one will debate this, but is it certain that on the volume of education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in the content as well?

Walter Russell Mead has recently written that the environmental movement has “become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats.” Leopold spoke of “letterhead pieties and conventional oratory.” Edward Abbey said “that which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.” What all are saying (or at least implying) is that conservation, to remain relevant, must constantly evolve. Yet as conservation has become more business and less movement, the forces constraining evolution have become increasingly restrictive and dampening. At these junctures evolution must become revolution.

Over a decade ago I served on the board of the National Audubon Society. One spring we met in Jamestown, North Dakota, where we continued with our debates and discussions about a new strategic plan for the Society. I recall sitting in the Holiday Inn, unable to sleep, and slipping over to my computer to write a section of the plan that I called the culture of conservation. Although the board at that time adopted my thoughts, not long after I left the board the concept vacated as well.

Now I want my idea back.

As I have written before, the conservation and environmental movements (which I will simplify to movement) have been signaled onto the wrong track. I will avoid the Casey Jones analogy, but my message is the same. I see trouble ahead, and trouble behind. Once an organic, social phenomenon, the movement has sacrificed its soul in the pursuit of efficiency and currency. Most environmental organizations are well-meaning, highly educated, and effectively isolated from the fabric of everyday life in America.

Here are a few off-the-cuff examples. In the U.S. two out of three Americans are white, non-Hispanic (according to the census bureau). About 16% of Americans are Hispanic, and around 13% are black. I know of no environmental organization, agency, or department where employment or membership remotely reflects these percentages. The environmental movement, save environmental justice, remains lily white.

In the U.S., only 27 percent of the population has earned a college degree. Only 8.9 percent of Americans have a Masters’ Degree and only 3 percent have earned a PhD. Yet the conservation and resource agencies and organizations usually require an advanced degree as a term of employment. We are white and egg-heads.

Environmental threats occur in every state. In recent years, for example, the Gulf of Mexico (Katrina, Ike, the BP gusher, the dead zone) has been a hot spot. Rural communities are often disproportionately at risk, for example the Marcellus Shale play in Pennsylvania and New York states. Yet the national environmental groups office in the largest cities in the U.S., and at the edges of the country. Here are a few examples:

National Audubon Society – New York City
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
National Wildlife Federation – Washington D.C.
American Bird Conservancy – Washington D.C.
Environmental Defense Fund – New York City
The Conservation Fund – Washington D.C.
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
The Trust for Public Land – San Francisco
The Sierra Club – San Francisco

I remember an Audubon board meeting that I helped arrange in McAllen, Texas. The board and dozens of staff members would be coming to southmost Texas for this meeting. I recall one of the young female staff members cornering me before the meeting, asking me if it would be safe to drink the water.

I mention this not to embarrass the Audubon staff. I only want to illustrate my point about the groups being culturally, educationally, and geographically remote.

The environmental problems and threats we face in this country are relevant to everyman, not just white, educated urbanites. The average American earns less than $40,000 annually, does not have a college education, and is left wondering why he or she should give a damn about something as amorphous and ill-defined as global warming. We in the environmental movement may be convinced of the facts, and smugly certain of our position, but science does not win elections or hearts. The average American must understand enough to care, and care enough to vote. At this moment, he and she do neither.

You say you want a revolution? Begin and end with the people.

Lincoln said:

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

By real facts Lincoln did not mean the obscure, confusing, and tiresome arguments that only serve to alienate our audience. For example, I believe that most people understand that millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing. What most do not understand are the endless arguments between experts. We speculate about lost oil while Governor Barbour howls about lost jobs. We debate the pros and cons of cleaning birds while Governor Jindal promises to clean house. We aim for the head, they for the heart.

I realize that the terms grassroots and ground up are hackneyed and shopworn. This does not mean that the words are not true, even if overused. Few of the national environmental organizations are of the grassroots form. Sierra has a local chapter structure, and a few have state offices. Audubon had the most distributed, community-level organization of them all, with hundreds of local chapters. Yet over the past several years Audubon has moved away from chapters and more toward state offices and centers. The Tea Party has shown the efficacy of working at the community, even district, level. Our movement, in contrast, has spent the last decade consolidating and distancing itself from the hoi polloi.

Here is an example. A close friend in Houston wrote me to ask about volunteer opportunities to help with the Gulf gusher. Her daughter had a few free weeks of summer break to spend, and she desperately wanted to help. She called Audubon and asked about opportunities, and received the fundraising spiel in return. Ted Williams recently wrote in Audubon magazine that “the very last thing Gulf Coast birds need are well-meaning amateurs crashing through nesting habitat.” Dead wrong, Ted. What the movement needs is those 17,000 potential volunteers to become crusaders, and what better way to engage them than through their willingness to pitch in and help. We would all agree that nesting areas would be off limits to the uninitiated. But that leaves the vast majority of the shore eligible for cleaning by volunteers.

Our movement has become Conservation Inc. We need to step forward to the past, and spark conservation back to life.

Walter Russell Mead notes the following:

Intellectually and culturally, environmentalists came out of the same movement as critics of crude urban development like Jane Jacob (The Death and Life of Great American Cities). They celebrated the diverse local, small-scale adaptations that reflected the knowledge of communities as opposed to the grandiose plans of the social engineers.

Precisely. Jane Jacobs dug in against Robert Moses and the planners who would have stripped New York of the diversity that is its hallmark. She worked at the neighborhood level, yet argued that her concepts also had application on a global scale. Jacobs spent her life concerned with city culture, and the ways in which enlightened, empowered citizens can persevere. I will argue that conservation is a community as well, peopled by well meaning, dedicated citizens that simply need to be empowered, enlightened, and appreciated.

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has—Margaret Mead

Yes, a small group of people can provoke a cultural shift. Change is contingent on these provocateurs, the tiny legion willing to face friend and foe alike. My previous article focused on one of these provocateurs, Drew Wheelan. Drew is a person willing to allow the public to see a problem (the Gulf gusher) through his eyes. We need more of his kind to help us drag this movement out of the muck. I am not arguing that the ecocrats and Conservation Inc. should go away. We need all the help we can get. I am arguing, though, that we need to quickly reintroduce ourselves to our neighbors and ask for their help, not just their money. In this we are years behind, so we have little time to waste.

This is just the first part of a rewriting of conservation and the movement that needs to take place. Future articles will address additional steps in the process. But without the public, there is no movement. Let’s take it to the street.

Ted Lee Eubanks
10 Sep 2010