Topics: what is conservation, history of resource conservation movements, approaches to natural resource conservation management
“The Great Resource is: Education”; the knowledge also brings responsibility not borne by the bacteria-the responsibility to manage the human use of the planet earth argues that both the creation and decline of civilizations is related to more than resource availability-it is human kind that provides the key factor of economic development-specifically the ideas and values that we use to think.
What is conservation? 1. Why should we be concerned with conservation of our natural resources? 2. At this point in time? 3. Ultimately why conserve rather than exploit?
A Brief History of the Resource Conservation, Environmental, and Sustainability Movements
I. Conservation in the Nineteenth Century – the 1700s and 1800s were time of seemingly limitedness boundaries in the United States.
-George Perkins Marsh-wrote “Man and Nature” in 1864, it served as a catalyst for the fledging conservation movement
-John Muir-born in Scotland in 1838; in 1867, he walked from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico; lobbied for the establishment of Yosemite and Sequoia national parks; Yellowstone (1872) and Sequoia (1890) were established because of his efforts; in 1872, he founded the Sierra Club.
II. Conservation in the Twentieth Century
-First Wave (1901-1909)
-concerned with the severe depletion of timber and the growing apprehension that resources were being grossly mismanaged, Theodore Roosevelt established a 50 member National Conservation Commission.
-Gifford Pinchot-profoundly influenced the way forests are now managed; he later became the first chief of the Forest Service.
-Second Wave (1933-1941)
-FDR established a National Resources Board which completed the nation’s second comprehensive Natural Resources inventory;