Environmental and Wilderness Preservation History

I have long been interested in the history of what became the environmental eco-justice movement. The early years focused on wildlife conservation, wilderness preservation, and establishment of national parks. Battlegrounds still exist on all those topics – now joined with modern issues like water pollution, toxics, air pollution, and the arching overall crisis of our time, the climate emergency. And even the issue of global climate changing is only a symptom of the twin evils of our  era – loss of biological diversity and the overpopulation of human beings.

I have been there for many of these battles. And I have made a major effort to study the battles that occurred a hundred years before I was born.  I was especially active in the forest protection and “wilderness battles” between the mid-Seventies and the mid-Eighties.  And those battles are not over.

Below are major plot points in my connection with environmental and wilderness preservation history.

People and Places

  • The First Earth Day – I was there!  (My YouTube video interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day).
  • The Big Lie Against Wilderness – My rebuttal against “indoor philosophers” and misguided social justice theorists.
  • Clearwater Wilderness (Washington State) – As President of Friends of the Clearwater, I worked for years (1975-1983) to protect this area as legally-designated “Wilderness.”  Besides years of grassroots organizing, I testified  in Congress in 1982 in support of the establishment of this small Wilderness area near Mt. Rainier (Tahoma). This designation was ultimately successful – even though the Forest Service told me at the time that “it will never happen.” ( I was amazed decades later to attend the 50th Anniversary of The Wilderness Act Conference in New Mexico in 2014 that a new generation of Forest Service and BLM employees, whose predecessors had traditionally strongly opposed Wilderness designation, were now in full support of the Wilderness Act!
  • Alaska Lands Act  (1980) – I worked for several years in the movement advocating protection for wildlands in Alaska,, including full time between semesters while attending graduate school.
  • John Muir Global Network – A portal to celebrating and encouraging environmental protection through the inspiring life of John Muir (1838-1914), the founder of the worldwide conservation movement.
  • The Giant Sequoia Portal – including my work on websites for the Sequoia Wild Heritage Project, and the Sierra Club Sequoia Task Force including its  Citizen’s Guide to Sequoia National Monument.
  • Tribute to Maymie Kimes – We should not forget the work of those who have preserved the memory of our leading conservationists, such as Bill and Maymie Kimes did with John Muir.
  • Ron Eber – Pacific Northwest Environmental History
  • Ron Good – founder of Restore Hetch Hetchy and the modern restoration movement.
  • Lady Bird Johnson – First Lady from 1963-1969, her “Beautification of America” projects went beyond mere widlflowers.
  • Barbara Mossberg – University Educator and Administrator, poet, essayist, and John Muir scholar.
  • George Pettit -(1937 – 2022) – Tribute by Harold Wood, describing the many exhibits designed by George Pettit on the History of National Parks and Wilderness from John Muir through Today. (PDF)
  • Stewart Udall – Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, accomplishing more land protection than any previous Secretary of the Interior.

Recommended Reading

  • A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, 1948.  Should be required reading for all farmers, philosophers, economists, and politicians!
  • Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast by Bruce Byers (2024).  In this book, Byers explores the relationship between humans and nature at the edge of colliding worldviews: on the one hand, the human-centered Western worldview that sees the near-total human domination and exploitation of nature as proper and good; and on the other, an ecocentric worldview in which humans are seen as only one small part, an equal member, of Earth’s biotic community. Like myself, he believes  it is important and often inspiring to understand the history of nature conservation in a place. That history is always full of individual “heroes” who model for us the effectiveness of individual action, and how they frequently catalyze collective conservation action. Importantly Byers carefully surveys ecocentric philosophies and worldviews rooted in places like these and argues for their importance in developing a more harmonious and sustainable relationship between humans and our home planet. 
  • Hetch Hetchy History – The First Battle – and still ongoing!
  • This is the American Earth by Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall (PDF) – The First of the Celebrated “Exhibit Format” Books – This document gives the history of the original 1955 exhibit and 1960 book, and its legacy since that time. by Harold W. Wood, Jr., November, 2021.
  • The “Exhibit Format Series” – from This is the American Earth to the modern coffee table book.   My favorite remains Baja California and the Geography of Hope by Joseph Wood Krutch, Photographs by Eliot Porter.  This series was the result of David Brower’s strong belief that the book was a media that would outlive all others.  As Finis Dunaway observes, “Although David Brower experimented with other kinds of images, including motion pictures, he believed that the coffee table book offered the most powerful medium to present the Sierra Club’s message. “It has long been recognized,” he explained, “that the book, for all that TV, radio, and periodicals may do, still has a status of its own in influencing thought. It lasts. It is kept and referred to. It is quoted. This is particularly true of the exhibit-format books.” The book, with its weightiness and materiality, was something that would be around, long after a decision was made or a vote was cast. Motion pictures and other media—as Robert Flaherty had discovered with the fate of  ‘The Land’ in 1942—could easily be discarded and forgotten.  By contrast, the book, Brower believed, would endure. It would always be there, serving as a reminder of wild places preserved or wild places destroyed, weighing on the conscience of those who voted against the wilderness.”