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!
• The Big Lie Against Wilderness – Unfortunately, some academics trapped by “indoor philosophy,” and now many social justice advocates, who should know better, argue that wilderness is an antiquated idea that ignores the fact that people lived in those places, regarding wild nature “as a transcendent realm apart from the Native people who inhabited those realms.”    It has now become one of the primary arguments by social justice advocates who think attacking “white supremacy” means we must  abolish the idea of Wilderness. Close examination reveals that this “Big Lie About Wilderness” is a literary/philosophical construct little related to the Real Wilderness Idea that conservationists have used to establish the National Wilderness Preservation System.

  The current cancel culture targeting the many white males who promoted the Wilderness Idea likes to analyze and, as Todd Wilkinson says,  “parse their writings by assigning intent to turns of phrase that never were written to trigger. Allusions are taken out of context; individuals are judged not by the times in which they lived but ridiculed for what they should have said or done, or how they should have acted. In hindsight, some historical figures in conservation are demonized and discredited for being imperfectly human or having not been saintly. Often lacking in today’s culture wars is larger context and nuance, for it is far easier and lazier to cancel than engage in complicated, uncomfortable discussions about how the cause of saving nature involves mortal beings, none of whom, on any side of any issue, are without flaws.”

   Here are some essays which attempt to correct this “big lie”:

  • Criticizing Muir and misunderstanding the foundation of American nature conservation by Bruce A. Byers (October 22, 2021)
  • Wilderness and Traditional Indigenous Beliefs: Conflicting or Intersecting Perspectives on the Human-Nature Relationship?
    By Roger Kaye, Polly Napiryuk Andrews, and Bernadette Dimientieff in Rewilding Earth (December 8, 2021)
  • Reclaiming Wilderness: It Tells Us Who We Are, and We Lose It at Our Peril by Kenneth Brower (June 4, 2014)
  • The Real Wilderness Idea by Dave Foreman (2000) (PDF)
  • Wallace Stegner’s The Wilderness Letter Still Rings True – Yellowstonian – In 1960, Wallace Stegner wrote about the enduring importance of wilderness in the modern world. He called wilderness “the geography of hope” and today it’s more vital than ever for wildlife.
  • Wally’s Dream Of A Wilder New West by Todd Wilkinson (including an interview with Mark Fiege) – Why it is wrong to castigate the series of white males who played important roles in advancing conservation.

    The list includes John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner,  and even recent takedown attempts in Jackson Hole aimed at Olaus Murie.  The obvious  counter-argument to their cancellation is that these people were by necessity writing from their own knowledge, and were products of their time and while not peerless or without fault, they spoke out for land and species protection when it was unpopular to do.  “To not read the words of white male conservationists, to pretend that they did not matter to the world that we have inherited, to dismiss them as objects of study from whom we can learn—is to make a virtue of denialism, censorship, and ignorance. You don’t have to like the conservationists in every regard if at all, but you are a fool if you refuse to take them seriously, read them, learn about them—and learn from them. ” Likewise “Lacking among some cancel culturalists is a coherent and honest articulation of what the alternative would have been. Yellowstone is held up by some as a symbol of ignominy. And it’s true that the Tukudika, the Shoshone people known as the Sheepeaters, most notably, were prevented from continuing to live seasonally and engage in subsistence activities after Yellowstone was created. But Yellowstone is only a tiny reference point in a continent-wide phenomenon of removal, genocide, and injustice. The larger value of Yellowstone, ironically, is that it was a bold pushback against Manifest Destiny, that the total sublimation of nature would not continue there and that it supported the idea that some natural places ought to be set aside as inviolate. That’s a concept that many tribes practiced with regard to certain places, in reverence for wildlife and the power they possessed as Native peoples expressed in traditional ceremonies.”

• 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. 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.” 

People and Places

• George Pettit – Exhibits on the History of National Parks and Wilderness from John Muir through Today – from the Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center. (PDF)
• The First Earth Day – I was there!  (YouTube video interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day).
• Clearwater Wilderness (Washington State) – As President of Friends of the Clearwater, I worked for years (1975-1983) to establish this area, and 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!
• Alaska Lands Act – I worked for a long time on this movement, including full time between school semesters.
• 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
• Lady Bird Johnson – First Lady from 1963-1969, her “Beautification of America” projects went beyond mere widlflowers.
• Stewart Udall – Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, accomplishing more land protection than any previous Secretary of the Interior.