The roots of the conservation movement reach into the nineteenth century. In 1832, a federal “reservation” was established at Hot Springs, Arkansas, to protect its mineral springs. In 1872, Yellowstone, perhaps the most famous national park, was established to preserve its natural wonders. There was little fear at the time that the land in Yellowstone would be exploited for agricultural or other commercial purposes if transferred to private hands. Rather, the concern in Congress was that if a private entrepreneur controlled access to Yellowstone, its natural beauties would be degraded by access roads and advertising, as had happened at some natural wonders in the East.
A major change in policy took place under President Theodore Roosevelt (19011909), who believed that natural resources would be depleted too rapidly if the rate of depletion was left to the market and that the federal government should, therefore, take an active role in preserving depletable resources, particularly timber and minerals. Roosevelt publicized the cause of conservation and, aided by Gifford Pinchot, the dynamic head of the Forest Service (then the Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture), converted some 150 million acres of western land in the public domain into national forests so that access could be controlled by the Forest Service.
The conservation movement languished in the 1920s but surged during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which undertook several important initiatives. First, during the New Deal the first systematic efforts were made to conserve agricultural land. These efforts began in 1933 with the establishment of the Soil Erosion Service in
The Department of the Interior. (In 1935, as the Soil Conservation Service, it became part of the Department of Agriculture.) Originally, contracts were made with individual farmers; the service furnished technical assistance and some materials, and the farmers furnished labor and the remaining materials. Early in 1937, President Roosevelt wrote the state governors requesting that their legislatures pass acts enabling landowners to form soil conservation districts. By 1954, about 2,500 soil conservation districts, including 80 percent of all U. S. farms, had been organized.
Second, the New Deal attempted conservation through its efforts to control water distribution in river valleys in programs of great scope, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. The main goals, reflecting the depressed condition of the economy, were providing construction jobs and cheap power that would lead to economic development, but conservation was also a goal. Some supporters of such programs argue that nothing less can produce permanently successful conservation. The evidence, however, is not conclusive. The Tennessee Valley Authority has unquestionably done a remarkable job of upgrading an entire region, but the costs of building this huge project were also substantial.
World History
