ERA TWO: Conservation – The Seed is Planted

As history progressed from the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, human impact on the natural world started to have apparent consequences on human and environmental health. This period witnessed the advent of more technological inventions, such as the steam engine, cotton gin, and automobile, than any time prior in the historical canon. The ramifications – both positive and negative – directly shaped this era of environmental history. Specifically, modern society was experiencing a rapid transformation from an agriculture-based economy to an industry-based economy. This transition continues to this day. As a result, the idea of “environmentalism,” or “conservation” as it was properly called in this period, became institutionalized for the first time. Many factors necessitated the rise of such an ethos: the world’s population reached one billion people, several cities amassed more than one million people, pollution became commonplace, machines replaced human or animal-based energy, and scientific understanding of the natural world became more common.

In many ways, the Conservation Era is better known not as an age of “firsts,” but as a time period of “lasts.” For instance, society saw the last “quests of discovery” around the world to reach any yet uninhabited land. Ernest Shackleton, the Irish merchant navy officer known for his courageous Antarctic expeditions, is exemplary of this age and its manifested desires to reach every corner of the world, for better or worse. In the U.S., many people wistfully recognized the advent of the Transcontinental Railroad as the end of an era of discovery and untapped wilderness. This was compounded by the significant settlement of the Western Coast, and most importantly, the closure of the Great Indian Wars in 1890 at Wounded Knee. At last, the vast expanse of the U.S. had been explored and settled. In many circles, nostalgia for a lost way of life began to emerge and continues to influence environmental ethic today.

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At the same time, such reverence for nature evolved in unprecedented ways, from renewed interest in the natural sciences, exemplified through the work of Charles Darwin and others, to the notable trends in the arts. For example, the United States’ most popular book of the time period, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (first published in 1845), is deeply symbolic of the author’s admiration for his surroundings and awareness of the role humans play in the natural world. Whitman’s own efforts grew out of the earlier works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau’s Transcendentalist philosophy in the U.S., along with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the rise of Romanticism on the European continent. Increasingly, artists left their indoor, portraiture-related studios to start surveying and painting in the natural world, ultimately leading to the widely popular Impressionist movement and its veneration for the transience of nature. As paintings became more stylistic and avant-garde through Impressionism’s growth into Post-Impressionism and eventually Cubism, they ultimately depicted the complete breakdown, reorganization and rebuilding of natural objects. These developments in the arts were greatly symbolic of the overall development of a more industrial, scientific and technological society.

Most notable for this era was the dichotomous relationship between the conservation movement and the broad-scale development of an industrial society. On the one hand, conservationists were critical of this, believing that the advancement of industry was overtaking the natural world; many even viewed technology itself as the root of the overall problem. As an example, the first formal conservation organizations were created with explicit missions to preserve or conserve certain natural areas or species. In many cases, governments cheered such efforts and began the large-scale sweep of setting aside natural areas, for the first time in history, either for their intrinsic value, or for the enjoyment of current and future generations. On the other hand, conservationists and the general public largely benefited from a growth in industry in terms of knowledge, conveniences and communication. A perfect example of this tenuous relationship was the invention and continued influence of the personal photographic camera.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the personal photographic camera allowed practically anyone to see realistic depictions of natural areas once limited to the well-traveled, very rugged or highly-skilled. The importance of this fundamental shift in appreciating nature cannot be overstated. People could directly see the grandeur and beauty of many “wild” and remote areas. In fact, the first books or catalogues of photos from multiple natural “wonders” were bestsellers and influential in convincing several members of Congress to guarantee their protection (Yellowstone was the first example in 1872.) These initial photographic efforts were terribly burdensome and highly toxic for the first photographers, but they nonetheless made accessible many natural areas for enjoyment, exploration or exploitation. This accessibility developed in two ways. On the one hand, people wanted to personally visit these locales and witness their magnitude firsthand. This pursuit eventually became a national pastime. On the other hand, the conservation movement relied on technology as a means of communicating the natural world – through photographs, testimonials, media coverage, and eventually videos. Yet, this visual accessibility was inherently counterproductive, as this dependence on technology further inhibited many people’s direct experience with nature. As the Industrial Age continued in its unyielding growth, this last point – that humans were now becoming more dependent on the industrial process rather than nature – remained the most influential factor for the burgeoning conservation movement.