Key overall themes for this unit include:

1. What is the history of U.S. land management policy?
2. How have attitudes toward wilderness and wild species changed over time in America?
3. What practical problems and strands of thought contributed to the emergence of scientific, aesthetic, utilitarian/conservationist, and ecological perspectives on nature in the U.S.?
4. What are the different ways we can think of wilderness, what are their implications for management, and what broader principles might govern our wilderness policies?
5. What are our obligations to other species, how are they justified, and how strong are they in comparison to the costs species preservation can impose?

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What is the environmental history east-side forests in general?
• What clashes between peoples' desires for forest products, and ecological realities does Langston describe?
• What changing ideas have guided forest policy in east-side forests?

• What is the history of the Loomis Forest?
• What are the current issues about forest and species preservation?
• What solutions have been pursued?
• What ethical questions are raised by the Loomis Forest issue?
• Why were millionaires and others willing to donate so much money for a few acres of forest?
• What does this issue suggest about changing values and views of forests?

1. Langston, Nancy. "Human and Ecological Change in the Inland Northwest Forest." In Dale D. Goble and Paul W. Hirt (Eds.), Northwest Lands, Northwest Peoples: Readings in Environmental History.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999,  pp. 415-436.

• Check out what the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance (NWEA) is doing on the Lynx & State forest lands.
• Check out the Forest History Society.

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What were the major eras in Federal land management?
• What were the main legal or other mechanisms used to accomplish the main aims of each era?

• Colonial & revolutionary perceptions of wilderness as hostile.
• Land acquisition and disposal; Land Ordinances
• Early scientific interest in nature
• What needs and situations were early land policies responding to?

1. USFS, A History of United States Public Land Law and the Evolution of the National Forest System. Start with the link to the "Introduction," and follow the "Proceed" links at the bottom of each section.  You may want to refer back to the "Reservation Era" and the "Management and Stewardship Era" sections for days 4 & 5, below.

• John Bartram
• William Bartram

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What major changes in perception of society and nature began shaping American attitudes in the 19th Century? (You may also want to refer back to the earlier chapter of Nash's we read.)
• In Nash's account, what was the significance of these figures: Thoreau, Marsh, Muir, Evans, Darwin, Moore?
• What attitude toward nature does Thoreau demonstrate? Based on what you've read, how do you think this differed from earlier perceptions?
• What ideas about nature did Marsh contribute?  How would you compare  and contrast his writings to those of contemporary environmental scientists?

• How did the emergence of aesthetic and spiritual perceptions of nature affect American attitudes in the 18th Century?  Do they still do so?  Is this something unique about American or at least Western perceptions?
• What led to the emergence of an awareness of environmental degradation during this era?
• Progressivism the urban environment.
• Is your perception of nature more indebted to Thoreau or Marsh?

1. Nash, Roderick. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1989, Ch. 2, pp. 33-54.
2. Thoreau, Walking (this is a Project Gutenberg text; you'll have to scroll down a few screens to get past all the boilerplate language on copyright, etc.)  Read it, and do it.   Click here for a photo of Henry David in about 1879.   Links for Walden Pond.
3. George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature (go to page 35, "Destructiveness of Man") (This is a Libr. of Congress document; ignore the 'page image' links, which bring up a reproduction of the actual original document; instead, read the text provided, which corresponds with each original text document page.)

• Library of Congress' "Documentary Chronology" of The Evolution of the Conservation Movement: 1850-1920
• University of North Texas site on "Why We Think Nature is Beautiful"

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What effects on Powell's description of the lands of the Arid Region did his views of science and nature have?
• What dangers did Powell seem to perceive as threats to the Southwest? What does he seem to believe about development (human settlement) in this area? Do you think it's important to consider his audience in making such interpretations?
• What is Muir's perception of nature? How does it compare and contrast with Thoreau's and Pinchot's?
• Summarize Pinchot's conception of conservation, and the practical steps he advised. Then examine some of what we might identify as contradictions in his thought. How can he have thought all of his beliefs were consistent? What do we need to know about his context? Do we define issues like "development" in the same manner today?

1. John Wesley Powell (1879), Report on the lands of the arid region of the United States, with a more detailed account of the lands of Utah. (Suggestion: Chapter 2, beginning on p. 25)
2. John Muir (1894), The Mountains of California (Browse and enjoy)
3. John Muir (1901), Our National Parks (Browse and enjoy)
4. Gifford Pinchot (1910), The Fight for Conservation (Scroll down and read Chapter 4, "Principles of Conservation")

• Photos of Muir
• More Muir writings
• George Bird Grinnell on the Boone and Crockett Club, "Big Game in Its Haunts"

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• How did concerns about soil emerge in the 30's?
• Given that conservation had been around for several decades, what accounts for the problems encountered with soil in the 1930's?
• What are the origins of wildlife law in the U.S.?

• Expanded definitions of conservation in the 20's and 30's
• Origins of species protection.
• How did the study of ecology develop in the first half of the 20th Century?

1. Bennett, Hugh H. Soil Conservation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939, excerpts.
2. Worster, Donald. "Grass to Dust: The Great Plains in the 1930's," Environmental Review 3 (1977), pp. 3-9.
3. History of the Lacey Act & FWS Law Enforcement
4. History of the Endangered Species Act

• Stegner's letter is at once a broad cultural commentary and an intense personal revelation. How does it attain its effectiveness, and not become simply the prattlings of a curmudgeon? To whom might it not speak? Why?
• Stegner provides a defense of wilderness that is based on values other than the usual "use" values. Explore - and explain the relationship between the value of the "idea of wilderness" and intrinsic values of wilderness.
• What definitions of wilderness are used in the 1964 Wilderness Act?
• What tensions and dilemmas does Woods identify in the USFS's "purity" notion of wilderness?  How else might we conceptualize wilderness?
• What role do you think roadlessness should play in defining wilderness?
• What paradoxes in Federal wilderness management does Woods identify?
• What criteria of wilderness do you think are most important? Why?

1. Stegner, Wallace (1960), "Wilderness Letter"
2. Wilderness Act of 1964. (16 US Code Ch. 23, sec. 1131-1136) (Click on the highlighted numbers to read the text; be sure to look at 1131 on the definition, and 1133 on permitted uses.)
3. Woods, Mark. "Federal Wilderness Protection in the United States: The Preservation of Wilderness?" In J. Baird Callicott & Michael P. Nelson (Eds.), The Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press,1998, pp. 131-153.

• National Parks Service Timeline
• MacIntosh, Barry (1999), "The National Parks Service: A Brief History"

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• How do the different authors differ in their definitions of wilderness and our obligations toward it?
• Do you think Nash succeeds in establishing some values of wilderness that might transcend cultural barriers? Or are they all ethnocentric?
• How does Callicott use Leopold in advocating his neither conservationist nor preservationist conception of nature?
• What do the authors argue wilderness should mean in the developing world?
• Rejecting "preservation" of pristine nature, what ways does Callicott offer to differentiate between more and less ecologically desirable states of nature?
• What are Rolston's disagreements with Callicott, and what reasons does he give for them?

Debate format:  Each team will open with a brief summary statement of their main points provided by one speaker (5 minutes each side).  Next, each team may respond to the points of the other, and pose questions of each other (other speakers) (10-15 minutes total); the remainder of the time will be devoted to fielding audience questions, and class discussion.

READINGS:

1. Nash, Roderick. "The Value of Wilderness." Environmental Review 3 (1977), pp. 235-47.
2. Callicott, J. Baird. "The Wilderness Idea Revisited: The Sustainable Development Alternative," The Environmental Professional 13 (1991), pp. 370-77.
3. Rolston III, Holmes. "The Wilderness Idea Reaffirmed," The Environmental Professional 13 (1991), pp.14-25.

• Willers, B. (Ed.). Unmanaged landscapes: Voices for untamed nature. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999.
• Cronon, William (Ed). Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.  See especially Cronon's famous / infamous paper that opens the book, "The Trouble with Wilderness, Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature."
• Guha, Ramachandra. "Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation:  A Third-World Critique." Environmental Ethics 11 (Spr., 1989): 71-83.
• Here is a long exchange of messages on the meaning of "wilderness" the instructor collected from an email discussion on H-ASEH (the Amer. Society for Env. History listserv) on the topic of wilderness, particularly whether we have an ethnocentric or culturally biased definition of it.
• Find out about and/or contact the Washington Wilderness Coalition
• Consult the Blue Ribbon Coalition site.
• See instructor for other sources.

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What are the stated purposes of the ESA? What kind of values do they reflect?
• What bothers Palmer about how we often perceive our own species today?  Do you think he is right that we do so?  What basis does he offer for seeing Homo sapiens as "the crown of creation"?
• What are the various instrumental reasons we might value "non-useful" species, in Ehrenfeld's view? Are you tempted to use these reasons in an argument? Why does he believe such reasons ultimately insufficient? Do you agree?
• What reasoning does Rolston use to argue for our obligations to species (per se-- and what IS a species?)

Debate format:  Each team will open with a brief summary statement of their main points provided by one speaker (5 minutes each side).  Next, each team may respond to the points of the other, and pose questions of each other (other speakers) (10-15 minutes total); the remainder of the time will be devoted to fielding audience questions, and class discussion.

READINGS:

1. The Endangered Species Act (16 USC Ch. 35, sec.1531-1544) (Click on the highlighted numbers to read the text; look at purposes and definitions especially.) (The USFWS also provides a summary of provisions of the ESA.)
2. Palmer, Thomas. "The Case for Human Beings," The Atlantic Monthly (Jan. 1992), pp. 83-86.
3. Ehrenfeld, David W. "The Conservation of Non-Resources," American Scientist 64 (Nov-Dec. 1976), pp. 648-56.
4. Rolston III, Holmes. "Duties to Endangered Species." Bioscience 35 (1985): 718-26.
5. Defenders of Wildlife (1995), "The Case For Saving Species: Scientists Explain Why We Should Stop Squandering Nature's Riches" Eloquent statements; read several.

• Competitive Enterprise Institute on the ESA
• The Heartland Institute on ESA (has downloadable files)
• Check out the work of the  Pacific Legal Foundation
• Mann, Charles C. & Mark L. Plummer, "The Butterfly Problem," The Atlantic Monthly(January, 1992)
• Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer , "Empowering Species,"The Atlantic Monthly(Feb. 1995)

• National Audubon Society, "Ark to the Future: 25 Years of the Endangered Species" (1998)
• Report of the National Audubon Society Task Force on Habitat Conservation Plans (1995)
• Endangered Species Coalition

READINGS:

1. Rolston III, Holmes. "Winning and Losing in Environmental Ethics."  In John D. Echeverria and Raymond Booth Eby (Eds.), Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Private Property Rights Movement  Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1995, pp. 263-73.