John Muir
Source: John Muir National Historic Site Collection
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"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed -- chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones...God has cared for these trees... but he cannot save them from fools -- only Uncle Sam can do that."
- John Muir 1897, American Forests |
Theodore Roosevelt
Source: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
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"There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred."
- Theodore Roosevelt Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905 |
Gifford Pinchot
Source: Grey Towers NHS, U.S. Forest Service
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"When I came home not a single acre...timberland was under systematic forest management ...the common word for our forests was "inexhaustible." To waste timber was a virtue and not a crime...The lumbermen...regarded forest devastation as normal...The few friends the forest had were spoken of as impractical theorists...What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American that the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating."
- Gifford Pinchot, 1890 |
Establishment of Yellowstone 1872
"That said public park shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be, as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation, from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition."
- Yellowstone Act 1872 |
First National Wildlife Refuge 1903
Source: Library of Congress
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"On March 14, 1903...President Roosevelt [established] Pelican Island as the first federal bird reservation. He would establish a network of 55 bird reservation...the forerunner to the national wildlife refuge system. But Pelican Island was the first time that the federal government set aside land for the sake of wildlife."
- Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, 2009 |
The Hetch Hetchy Controversy
Source: National Park Service, early 1900's
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"With the passage of the Raker Act...in 1913, the city of San Francisco won its long battle for a public water supply. The...conservation crusade had worked hard to preserve the valley as an integral part of the park. . . . in November 1903...John Muir had taken the Hetch Hetchy issue to the nation. Preservationists rallied to support its retention...in January 1909. Among them were women...who were opposed to the commercial use of such a scenic wonderland"
- Carolyn Merchant, "The Women of the Progressive Conservation Crusade, 1900-1915," University Press of America, 1985 |