Before we get to the midterm you’ll be tired of hearing about the rise of "conservation" in American history. About the shift from a relentless, thoughtless exploitation, even wasting, of resources, to a solid philosophical, scientific, and policy/legal framework of "conservation."

And you’ll get tired of the story you’ve all heard before, about the tension between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot.

Fortunately, Curt Mine is a good writer, and this chapter is a compelling read.

Meine places the transition around 1890 (despite mentioning Yellowstone’s preservation in 1872).

• Muir: preservationism

• Pinchot: utilitarian conservationism, based on science and the goal of: maximum sustained yield

Both in opposition to exploitation and destruction, like the white pine logging of the Upper Midwest.

ASIDE: Now, the clever students here will wonder, and should ask, how come we’re talking just about American conservation when societies have grappled with this issue for thousands of years. And moreover, hadn’t many societies of which America was a direct or indirect descendant, practiced a careful, even rational resource conservation for centuries---I’m thinking here of Swiss forestry laws and customs; of Sami common use of reindeer grazing areas; and we could get into the debates about whether Summerian irrigation practices in the T-E valley were a form of practical resource management not unlike what Pinchot would prescribe, or, for that matter, the agricultural systems of th Maya in meso-America, both thousands of years old, or of the Chacoans of present-day new Mexico. My answer is to say: yes, let’s raise fundamental question about how societies interact with environment, but that a full analkysis is for another class (Poltical Ecology), and out goal is to get quickly to the established framework of American formal resource policy and how it affect practice.

Pinchot’s conservation applied to forestry, then, by the 1930s, to:

Rivers/water; agricultural soils; rangelands; forage; spot and commercial fisheries; game animals, and even scenic and natural areas.

We got what Meine calls a: "fully institutionalized and professionalized" resource management.

Forestry: develop practices to actively manage forest for maximum yield to "supply a continuous supply of timber to the nation".

Response to perceived depletion.

Research, training of foresters; creation of Forest Reserves, and Forest Service (which also greatly affected private forestry). Protection from fire.

Management of supply (for all kinds of reasons, economic, political; trade wars; and shooting wars)

A narrowing over time from multiple concerns (water, game, timber, etc.) to timber production and timber cutting.

Agriculture: Focus on soil conservation in a system heavily depeednent on technological inputs.

Agricultural expansion

Industrialization

Bifurcaiton into: industrial vs. naturalistic camps of agricultural practice/research/policy

And, Miene barely hints at it: the 1930s Dust Bowl on the Great Plains scared the hell out of agricultural scientists and policy-makers.

Response to depletion. Create science, management principles, and apply policies.

Also to the "open range" problems of free access.

Also, easy access, free land, etc. Demand for action by ranchers themselves.

Response to depletion again—especially of some particular animals.

Bison, deer (believe it or not!), bear, etc.

Concern also over habitat loss (mostly to agriculture) for waterfowl and migratory birds.

Demand for action by sportsmen’s organizations.

Special case of state jurisdiction over wildlife, evne on federal lands.

Scientific management, including predator control, breeding programs, fish hatcheries, etc.

Research and some cases (resurgence of deer pops) led to changes in attitudes toward predators even in the 1930s, though anti-pred attitudes continued.

Move toward sustained yield and

toward hatcheries.

Not much attention in early days of professional resources management./

Some boost from 1916 National Park Service Act: "enjoyment of by the people".

1940s and beyond

attention to:

habitat

systems and connections

pred/prey relationships (systems)

But this was in parallel with continued, even growing focus on production: of timber, wildlife, graze, etc.

Economies of scale

Technological interventions of all sort: from pesticides on rangelands, to tree genetric studies.

READ quote on p.28

Some basic ideas to keep in front of us"

"Sustained yield" as the dominant paradigm: balance between reproduction (renewal) and harvest or removal.

Theory: removing the "surplus" or the "interest"

But, the goal has generally been to achieve something close to:

Maximum Sustained Yield

Clear-cutting

Even-aged stand management

Seeding/fertilizing/

Release cutting (remove unwanted species or age classes)—optimize the forest stand for production.

Basis idea; carrying capacity

Range improvement

Grazing rotations

Basic utilization standards (take half, leave half)

Single-species vs. community management

Game/hunting systems

Predator control

Habitat protection, recovery; improvement