Conserving means to “protect (something, especially an environmentally or culturally important place or thing) from harm or destruction.” John Muir, a famous preservationist is someone I agree with completely, his idea of preservationism is the best way to help our earth. Not damming Hetch Hetchy Valley was what really drew me into him. He believed that politicians were using nature as a way to get material gains. Muir believed that nature should be protected and should be kept beautiful. He states at one point that "everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” (Who was John Muir? “The Sierra Club") He’s saying that beauty is just as crucial …show more content…
John believed that turning places into national parks would be a great way to conserve them, this allows for wild life and plants to be monitored and kept under control. With his great love for the idea of national parks, came a lot of pro’s for the environment. Biodiversity plays an important role in national parks, biodiversity helps to keep environments clean and healthy for wild life. It allows for climate regulation, pollination and water purification. Yosemite National Park was one of Muir’s creates accomplishments. He first traveled there in 1868 an loved the beauty and scenery so much that he decided to come back the next year and get a job as a rancher. Soon he became very concerned about natural landscape preservation. John Muir, being a preservationist, makes him the most admirable choice because he believed in protecting wild places for the sake of people and the sake of the well being of the earth. Pinchot, Muir’s opposite, believed that conservation went hand in hand with development and that damming Hetch Hetchy would improve supplies in San Fransisco. The difference between conservationism and preservationism is that most times conservation focuses more on the needs of human beings. Preservationism is more focused on maintaining where the earth is at the time and the areas that are touched by humans. This idea helps to stop the invasion of human beings taking over open land and making them into farms and industries for developmental gain. This means that whatever we can preserve now, we can have in the future. A balance between the two would be difficult because of how strongly these opposing sides feel about the environment and what should be done in its best interest. I don’t feel that a balance is possible because a lot of times human needs are the reason for natures destruction such as knocking down forests for paper, and building dams to help increase a water supply. Not only do these human needs take away
The environmentalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries presents a picture of America at the time: torn between the desires to expand while seeking to protect nature. Although all members of the movement sought to protect nature, there were two predominant schools as to how to go about this. In their two philosophies, they created two methods for human interaction with the wilderness. The conservationist movement can be called the utilitarian movement, and sought the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest term. In contrast, the preservationist school aimed at keeping nature in its current state, although the
1. Karl Jacoby book brings the remarkable accounting of the negative aspects of conservation movement to the sunlight. Jacoby uses the early years of Adirondack Park, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon Forest Preserve to demonstrate his theme of the locals’ reactions to the creation of the park and the actions from the conservationists. And the fantasies the early conservationists’ promulgated of the locals of being satanic rapists of the environment are dispelled (193).
John Muir was a muckraker who protested against the expansion of people and animals that would ruin our soon to be national parks. Muir was a man that loved to explore natural formations in nature and traveled around the world to see as much natural land as possible. As he traveled around the world, he found out that California was his place to live. In California, his favorite places to explore and watch were the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite. As more and more settlers moved West, the land that Muir loved was soon to be destroyed by herds of animals and people looking for a place to build their homes. Muir wrote most of his 300 articles and 10 major books in Oakland, California. In Muir’s writings, he elegantly
It was John Muir one of the first advocates for the national park idea who developed the idea and also scientific theory that Yosemite Valley had been carved by glaciers. Muir was a very spiritual person coming from a religious family in which his father was a itinerant Presbyterian minister. John Muir had such a huge love and appreciation for nature, and being the religious man that he was he believed that “God is revealed
John Muir, a brilliant Transcendentalist, has written hundreds of enlightening environmental essay to emphasize the adamant need to save these sacred kings of the forests, the Redwoods. Within Muir’s vivid and emotional entries, specifically “Save the Redwoods”, John utilizes rhetorical devices such as personification, analogy, and Religious allusion in order to express the vital need to save the trees.
One day, John Muir said, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity...”-John Muir.(Brainyuote) As John Muir stated, we must experience true wilderness and nature. Yosemite showcases a variety of natural wonders such as waterfalls, Giant Sequoia trees, and rock formations.
The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform that grew from the 1890s to the 1920s. Social reformers and journalists, like Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell were some of the powerful voices for progressivism. “They concentrated on exposing the evils of corporate greed, combating fear of immigrants, and urging Americans to think hard about what democracy meant.” Many progressive reformers wanted to end corruption in the government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, and improve working conditions. It was also an era of conservationists. Conservationists are people who protect and preserve the environment and wildlife. Throughout the Progressive Era, there were many conservationists who wrote and described nature, but the most well-known figure in conservation was John Muir. John Muir worked to protect Earth’s beauty by traveling and exploring nature, co-founding the Sierra Club, and by influencing others through his writings and by showing some of the most important people how the wildlife was magnificent.
* The best definition of a conservationist is written not with a pen but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. Someone who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his
John Muir is arguably the most influential conservationist in American history. He was an active member in the preservation of the American wilderness from the late 1800’s until he passed in 1914. Muir is often referred to as the “Father of the National Parks” because of his efforts in the establishment of several National Parks. One of the biggest flaws of American history textbooks in need of change is the fact that they do not include the conservationists who have preserved the environment so today the same beauty can be see the way that they saw it. John Muir was involved in many American conservation efforts including the co-founding of Yosemite National Park, founding of the Sierra Club, and his overall career as a
The preservation ethic hold that we should protect our environment in a pristine, unaltered state whereas the conservation ethic people should put natural resources to use but that we have a responsibility to manage them wisely. John Muir argued that nature deserved protection for its own inherent value, but he also maintained that nature
John Muir is best known for his efforts to preserve the wilderness of the United States, which greatly contributed to the preservation of countless natural areas of the US through the National Parks Service. During his travels across the country and abroad, Muir recorded his thoughts and beliefs about nature and the fundamental connection people share with the earth. By voyaging into the wild and shedding the restraints and ideals of modern society, Muir argues that people can expand their understanding of the world and experience life to its full potential through immersing themselves in nature.
He had an accident that almost made him blind, and he really started to go after nature then. What he saw was people destroying nature, and he wanted to stop that. That is a problem because wild life needs to be protected and preserved, not taken away and destroyed. He was a co-founder of the Sierra Club and he helped create national parks. Muir is often called “The Father of Our National Parks” or “Citizen of the Universe.” He wrote a lot of articles and books that inspired people to be in nature and enjoy it. One of his quotes from My First Summer in the Sierra is, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
Environmentalism has always been two sided. Nature versus urban. locals versus national. Frequently, large tracts of public and federal land are bought and developed by industry. Pristine wilderness turned to bustling epicenters of human activity, all in the name of progress and economic growth. This tale of preserving natural wilderness is one that begins with John Muir, an advocate against the taming of Yosemite national park and the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir, while the head of the US Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, insisted on the reservoir to supply the city of San Francisco with water. This timeless epic of conservation or preservation brings us to the Jumbo Valley, a vast expanse of uninhabited, pristine wilderness home to diverse
During his time, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist who believed in the longevity of the land and that we should protect it, even if we must protect the land from ourselves. While this was an unpopular opinion, realizing that the land and animals naturally work together in a symbiotic relationship to protect one another was very apparent to Leopold. He believed that humans should be doing our best to lessen our impact on the environment. Time has caught up with Leopold’s ideologies and it is time that our efforts and contributions to the earth did too.
The Twentieth Century conservationists like John Muir and Gifford Pinchot always argued that it was important for the government of the day to strike a balance between the two conflicting goals of economic development and environmental conservation. According to Menzel (2007; 3- 4), other environmental movements in the USA had been in constant conflict with industrial enterprises. The major root cause of conflict being the fact that industrial enterprises had ignored the fact their activities were hurting the environment through