Land Conservation: For Humanity or for the Sake of the Wilderness

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Pinocht ,one of the earliest men to even consider conserving the forest , gave rise to the government to set aside more land under the forest protection. With more regulation set in place it pacified the fear of running out of resources faster than the nation could provide. Pinocht believed that to set aside the forests and later on other resources such as water, be set aside for the present generation to develop. In his essay, ‘The Fight for Conservation’, he quotes, “ The development for our natural resources and the fullest use of them for the present generation is the first duty of this generation.” Also from his essay Pinocht explains even though the resources are for the present, it is also the responsibility of those to prevent waste , which causes sickness in the environment. He experienced such a thing in the forest fires of the early 1910’s. “ we understand forest fires are wholly within the control of men”( Pinocht, Fight for Conservation, 2).
Leopold another conservationist, thought the land as a community coinciding with man. He defined conservation as protecting the land and protecting our individual culture. He firmly believed that the wilderness gave us identity as a society and as a civilization that rose we had to master our environment. He suggests that we owe a great deal to the wilderness for it made us who we are and by that we should respect the wilderness. As industrialization takes a more complex form, our world is becoming more uniform, even in the most distant places. Culture and values follows with living with the land and protecting what gave us our modern world. In his essay, “A Sand County Almanac”, he explains how people abuse the land and only starts to realize the value of the environmen...

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...nd on opposite sides of the spectrum of conservation, both extremely believing an all or nothing type of mentality. Between these men stands one who believes a balance of the two is what is required to fully live an acceptable life. What Leopold suggests is that we become more land ethic and learn to respect the land that gave us rise to what we are now, he represents a compromise suggested to those who want to protect the land yet still live in the standard we are use to.

Although these men claim to be conservationists, they all define what is means to be a conservationist differently. Pinocht like Park defines conservation in favor of humans as Brower views conservation as protecting the wilderness and land from the extraction of resources from private companies.

Works Cited

Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight for Conservation. Seattle: U of Washington, 1967. Print.

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