Notes
Notes Introduction 1. This is obviously a highly condensed description of the work that has been done on the history of environmentalism over the past fifty years, and it smoothes out some of the differences of opinion that have dominated the field. Some of the earliest historians of the movement, such as Samuel P. Hays and Roderick Nash, recognized that late-twentieth-century environmentalism had historical precedents, but they emphasized its difference from the earlier conservationist and preservationist movements that are usually associated with Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, respectively. Others, like Carolyn Merchant in The Death of Nature, Max Oelschlaeger in The Idea of Wilderness, and Lynn White Jr. in “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” have almost entirely tossed aside the periodizing impulse and crafted narratives that locate the origins of environmental crisis in “Judeo-Christian,” or “Abrahamic,” land ethics, suggest that these land ethics have become a fundamental symptom of modernity, and trace moments of environmentalist resistance throughout a telescopic historical narrative that extends to the late twentieth century. Still others, such as William Cronon, Jack Davis, Stephen Fox, Robert Gottlieb, Carolyn Merchant (in many works beyond The Death of Nature), and Donald Worster have balanced the sharp periodic boundaries and telescopic narratives by accepting some periodizations but focusing on the continuities between periods rather than the differences. To trace these arguments, see Samuel P. Hays’s Beauty, Health, and Permanence : Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (with Barbara D. Hays); Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920, Explorations in Environmental History; “From Conservation to Environment: Environmental Politics in the United States since World War II”; and A History of Environmental Politics Since 1945; Roderick Nash’s American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History; The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics; and Wilderness and the American Mind; Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution; Max Oelschlaeger’s The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology; Lynn White Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”; William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England; Jack Davis’s “Conservation Is Now a Dead Word: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Transformation of American Environmentalism”; Stephen 135 136 Notes to Introduction Fox’s The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy; Robert Gottlieb’s Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement; Carolyn Merchant’s Columbia Guide to American Environmental History, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England; and “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement”; and Donald Worster’s American Environmentalism: The Formative Period: 1860–1915. For more recent histories that demonstrate the continuing attractiveness of Hays’s and Nash’s original periodizations of environmentalism, see Kirkpatrick Sale’s The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962–1992 and Phillip Shabecoff’s Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century and A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. 2. Here I am relying heavily on the groundbreaking work of William Cronon’s Changes in the Land and Carolyn Merchant’s Ecological Revolutions. For fuller discussions of early resource exhaustion and early conservation measures, please see Changes in the Land, particularly pages 82–172, and Ecological Revolutions, particularly pages 65–68 and 185–260. 3. The early Massachusetts game laws were particularly ineffective, but they still demonstrate a concern over dwindling deer stocks. It is worth noting that these laws quickly became entrenched in Massachusetts. The state completely suspended hunting for white-tailed deer for three years beginning in 1718 and installed “early game wardens in the 1740s” (Cronon 101). The British government was interested in preserving trees that could be used for masts and the production of pitch and wrote these protections into the 1691 Charter of Massachusetts Bay (Cronon 110). Although I do not have the space to fully discuss it here, the conservation of fish and fish habitats was another major concern in early New England. As soon as mills and mill dams began to appear on rivers and streams in the region, the spawning of fish such as alewives and salmon suffered greatly. This situation led to numerous “Fish Acts” throughout the eighteenth century, which were usually designed to balance the rights of private enterprise, the natural rights of citizens to fish in common waters, and ecological necessities. Peter Kalm discusses the depletion of fish stocks due to mills and mill dams in his...
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