Wildlife Preservation

WILDLIFE PRESERVATION

WILDLIFE PRESERVATION. In the colonial and early national period, a distinctively American conception of nature combined spiritual and aesthetic appreciation with antipathy and exploitation. Despite public outcries and literary appeals for the preservation of American forests and wildlife, economic considerations often took precedence over social concerns. By the twentieth century, this struggle between ideals had evolved into a central debate in the American conservation movement between utilitarian conservationists intent on scientific control and idealistic preservationists committed to wilderness protection from, rather than for, humans. This conflict can also be seen as a direct result of the relationship between human and nature that emerged from the scientific revolution. The confident push to gain control over natural processes reached its height during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was believed that through human ingenuity and the application of reason one could gain mastery over and understanding of nature. The widespread belief in the Baconian creed that scientific knowledge meant technological power was still tempered, nevertheless, by the ideal of stewardship.

Scientists and artists alike challenged the exploitative nature of American forestry and hunting practices on religious and spiritual grounds. While Baconians justified the power of science as the culmination of a fallen but redeemed humanity, English Romantics brought a revival of interest in the physical and spiritual links that had once existed between nature and society. The Romantic writers, combining a heightened sense of self with a heightened sympathy for the otherness of the natural world, celebrated the individuality of living things. This interest in nature was shown in Victorian times in plant and animal collections and conservatories.

Following the tradition of his transcendentalist mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and a generation of English Romantics, Henry David Thoreau (1817– 1862) went beyond his predecessors' discussion of the wilderness and embarked on a journey to uncover the universal spiritual truths to be found in natural objects. Thoreau argued that by uncovering all the laws of nature, the harmony and the interrelationships that had been lost to the misuse of the powers of civilization could be rediscovered. By affirming the call to rebel against the commercial and industrial interests in society and promoting the simplification of life through the contemplation and appreciation of the wild, Thoreau came to embody the pastoral tradition. Thoreau has been subsequently hailed as the originator of the deep ecology and biocentric philosophy that finds in nature moral instruction.

In creating a national identity associated with nature, earlier Americans had underlined the incomparable size of its wilderness and added to it European deistic ideas and Romantic assumptions about the value of wild country and species. This made American wilderness not only a cultural and moral resource but also a basis for national pride. The appreciation of nature's beauty, however, was insidiously combined with the widespread image of nature as an abundant and inexhaustible storehouse of resources. Her inexpressible beauty was only overshadowed by her fecundity.

This faith in ever-renewing nature concealed the problem of slaughtering wildlife. Consequently, wildlife preservation efforts in the colonial and early national period reflected the limits of legislative reform and the primacy of commercial prerogatives. As overharvesting represented the biggest threat to wildlife, restrictions on hunting were justified on protective grounds. Deer, buffalo, or water fowl were preserved and the financial future of the hunter secured. Colonial wildlife legislation, such as the first game law passed by the town of Newport for the protection of deer in 1639, regulated the killing of wildlife but was confined to the protection of traditional game species. Ordinances provided for a closed hunting season, but lack of enforcement made these laws ultimately ineffective.

By the early nineteenth century, reformers had advocated the need to encourage not only aesthetic appreciation of nature but also responsible governance. In his best-selling series Leatherstocking Tales, James Fenimore Cooper expertly combined a Romantic vision of the wilderness as a valuable moral influence, a source of beauty, and a place of exciting adventure with an emphasis on the uniqueness of the American environment. Cooper employed the idea that man should govern resources by certain principles in order to conserve them.

In 1842, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of state ownership of wildlife in cases like Martin v. Waddell. In the decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney argued that the state of New Jersey had jurisdiction over oysters in a mudflat claimed as property by the landowner because the interest of the public trust prevailed over that of the individual. The few additional Supreme Court cases to follow that considered the validity of state authority unanimously supported the decision. In 1896, state jurisdiction was expanded in Geer v. Connecticut, which upheld a conviction under state law for possessing game birds with the intent to ship them out of Connecticut. The Court's opinion provided a historical treatise on governmental control while sparking a long and continuing debate about the respective powers of the state and federal governments over wildlife.

Lacey Act

The decision set the stage for the Lacey Act (1900), the first step in the field of federal wildlife regulation. By the end of the nineteenth century, the federal government had finally responded to the mobilization of preservationist interest groups and the public outcry against overexploitation. In the 1870s, sportsmen groups, although engaged in hunting and fishing, had both realized the need for conservation and had tripled in number to more than three hundred. Sportsmen clubs created a powerful lobby that pushed for game laws, facilitated the development of Yellowstone National Park and similar game preserves, and played a crucial role in the expansion of the outdoor recreation industry. Prominent members of the Boone and Crockett Club, established in 1887, included President Theodore Roosevelt, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, and Representative John F. Lacey, sponsor of the Lacey Act that ended massive market hunting. The Lacey Act made it illegal to transport birds across state boundaries if they had been taken in violation of any other law in the nation. While it faced stiff opposition from states rightists, the Act passed behind the growing support of established groups like the League of American Sportsmen and northeastern chapters of the Audubon Society. Although limited to the regulation of interstate commerce in wildlife and initially criticized as a toothless legislative measure, subsequent amendments strengthened enforcement and extended provisions to all wild animals and some wild plants. Most important, the Lacey Act served as the cornerstone of federal efforts to conserve wildlife. The Act notonly gave the federal government broader enforcement powers in the area of interstate commerce, it also gave the secretary of agriculture the power to influence foreign commerce by prohibiting the importation of animals deemed a threat to agriculture or horticulture.

As a number of economically and aesthetically important species received increasingly widespread public attention in the second half of the nineteenth century, the federal government was compelled to expand its role. Beaver had become virtually extinct east of the Mississippi River and scarce nationwide by the mid-1800s. The decline of salmonids in the Pacific Northwest prompted the U.S. Fish Commission to send an ichthyologist to the Columbia River in the 1890s. The precipitous decline of bird species was reflected with the heath hen, a heavily hunted subspecies of prairie chicken, which disappeared around the turn of the century, in the death of the last clearly identified passenger pigeon in the wild in 1900, and in the warnings of famed ornithologist James G. Cooper that the California condor was on the verge of extinction. In response to the depletion of several bird species, the Lacey Act authorized the secretary of agriculture to adopt all measures necessary for the "preservation, introduction, and restoration of game birds and other wild birds" while remaining subject to various state laws. Although this was a cautious move toward wildlife management by the federal government, it was an unequivocal statement of public over private authority.

The widely publicized plight of the buffalo also signaled the ineffectiveness of state jurisdiction over wildlife, the results of commercial overexploitation, and the potential value of federal intervention. Heavily hunted for the hide market and slaughtered in the campaign against Native Americans, the buffalo, which had been so plentiful within living memory, was nearing extinction; the fight to save this symbol of America brought wildlife preservation dramatically to the attention of the public.

National Parks and Scientific Management

Following the Homestead Act of 1862, an immense public campaign to make citizens landowners, American land use philosophy shifted toward preservation. The first federal attempt to protect wildlife on a designated area appears to be the 1864 transfer of Yosemite Valley from the public domain to the state of California. The creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 followed, but the end angered buffalo were not adequately protected until the passage of the Yellowstone Park Protection Act of 1894. Preservation efforts were also strengthened by the Forest Reservation Creation Act of 1881, which allowed the president to set aside areas for national forests. President Benjamin Harrison quickly created the Afognak Island Forest and Fish Culture Reserve in Alaska by executive order, making wildlife concerns a central element in the proposal. These types of preservation efforts became an international phenomenon in the opening decades of the twentieth century, with national parks established in Sweden, nature preserves set aside in the Netherlands, and the National Trust set up in Great Britain. The second American response to the sudden realization that resources were limited was to develop techniques for the scientific management of wilderness areas in order to maximize yields and eliminate waste. These methods included the utilitarian ethic embodied by forestry guru Gifford Pinchot(1865–1946), who endorsed as the main principle of economic development the preservation of the greatest good for the greatest number.

President Theodore Roosevelt embodied the ideal of progressive reform and signaled a dramatic change in federal policy and environmental ethics. Roosevelt declared that conservation of natural resources was central to American life and put the issue of conservation at the top of the country's agenda. Supporting an environmental ethic based on stewardship, utility, and scientific management, Roosevelt revolutionized American conservation efforts by taking more action than any prior president to preserve wildlife habitat. By the time he left office, he had created the first official wildlife refuge at Pelican Island, Florida, expanded the national wildlife refuge system to fifty-one protected sites, increased the size of national forests from 42 million acres to 172 million acres, and preserved eighteen areas as national monuments, including the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest.

Expanding Federal Authority

In response to the public mood recognized by Roosevelt, Congress continued to expand federal holdings by establishing the Wichita Mountains Forest and Game Preserve in 1905, the National Bison Range in 1908, and the National Elk Refuge in 1912 (the first unit officially referred to as a "refuge"). Then in 1913, an expansive 2.7 million acres were set aside by President William Howard Taft when the vast Aleutian Island chain was added to the system. In the wake of the Lacey Act, the Supreme Court secured the constitutional authority of federal wildlife regulation with a series of judgments cementing the government's role in preservation. The constitutionality of the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was first upheld in Missouri v. Holland (1920). The case established the supremacy of federal treaty-making power by upholding the protective duty of the federal government over state claims of ownership of wildlife. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes disposed of the ownership argument in two ways. First, he explained that wild birds were not the possession of anyone. Second, he insisted that the Constitution compelled the federal government to protect the food supply, forests, and crops of the nation. The federal government assumed unprecedented responsibility for wildlife jurisdiction due to the migratory nature of the protected species and employed the first federal wildlife enforcement officers through the Biological Survey. In 1934, the passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act (known as the Duck Stamp Act) created a major stimulus for funding the refuge system. What remained unclear was the extent of federal obligation and affiliated power.

The government had prohibited all hunting in Yellowstone National Park since 1894 without officially sanctioned jurisdiction, but a more concrete answer to the issue of property rights and responsibilities was provided by Hunt v. United States (1928). The case involved the secretary of agriculture's directive to remove excess deer from the Kaibab National Forest. While the secretary insisted that the deer threatened harm to the forest from overbrowsing, state officials arrested people for carrying out the orders. The Supreme Court decision was explicit. The power of the federal government to protect its lands and property superseded any other statute of the state. The relationship between federal and state authority, nevertheless, remained a hotly contested issue to be revisited by the Court for decades.

Kleppe v. New Mexico (1978) provided a firm foundation for the basis of federal authority in property disputes. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, designed to protect all unbranded and unclaimed horses and burros on public lands as living symbols of the historic West, was upheld with the argument that the federal government had the power to regulate and protect its wildlife regardless of state interests. Palil v. Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (1981) carried Kleppe's suggestion of federal ownership a step further. Upholding the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the judgment found that preserving a natural resource may be of such importance as to constitute a federal property interest.

These decisions illustrate changes in the focus of wildlife preservation policy from preventing overharvesting to addressing the larger problem of habitat destruction. While the first acknowledgment of the federal responsibility to protect habitats on a national scale can be traced to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century presidential and congressional efforts, a series of legislative landmarks in the following decades extended the scope of federal preservation efforts. The Migratory Bird Conservation Act of 1929 established a special commission for the review lands to be purchased by the Department of the Interior to protect areas crucial to waterfowl reproduction and remains a major source of authority for refuge acquisition. The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934 also set an important precedent by requiring water development agencies to consider wildlife preservation in the planning process. The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 provided the necessary fiscal foundation for wildlife administration by setting aside funds from taxes on ammunition for state agencies.

Legislation and the Professionalization of Ecology

The profession of wildlife management also evolved in the 1930s as Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) taught the first courses in wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin and his Game Management (1933) became the first textbook. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Leopold, Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, and Thomas Beck to a special committee to study and advise him on the waterfowl problem in 1934. The committee undertook a campaign to alert the nation to the crisis facing waterfowl due to drought, overharvest, and habitat destruction. Darling was subsequently appointed head of the Bureau of Biological Survey in 1935. J. Clark Salyer was brought in to mange the fledgling refuge program, and for the next thirty-one years had a profound influence on the development of the refuge system. The Biological Survey subsequently established ten land grant universities equipped with research and training programs. Leopold was one of the first to recognize the shift from overharvest to habitat degradation as the primary threat to wildlife, his recommendations as chairman of the American Game Policy Committee established a new land ethic and fostered the blossoming of a new expertise in ecology. Along with the professionalization trend, new scientific organizations proliferated, among them the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Conservation Foundation, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. With the merging of the Biological Survey and the Bureau of Fisheries in 1940, to form the Fish and Wildlife Service, which presided over an expanding system of wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, the stage was arguably set for a broader view of wildlife preservation.

The professionalization of ecology, the exposure of widespread environmental degradation in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and the subsequent dawning of the American environmental movement collectively pushed the legislative evolution of wildlife preservation forward at an increased pace in the 1960s. The Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 had established a comprehensive national fish and wildlife policy, making increased acquisition and development of refuges possible. The National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 provided further guidelines and directives for administration and management of the refuge system. In 1966, Congress passed the Endangered Species Preservation Act in an attempt to protect habitat for endangered vertebrate species by creating new wildlife refuges. The 1969 Endangered Species Conservation Act extended the policy to invertebrates and directed the secretary of interior to facilitate an international convention of species preservation. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which convened in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1973, set the stage for the most far-reaching wildlife statute in U.S. history.

In an attempt to bridge the gaps between competing interests, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 intended to recognize the aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value of wildlife and plants. The ESA went beyond many earlier preservation efforts by mandating the conservation of entire ecosystems and requiring all federal departments and agencies to utilize their authority to further the purposes of the Act. Although it passed amidst a wave of environmental lawmaking in the early 1970s, the near unanimous support of Congress, and the endorsement of President Richard Nixon, debates continued in the wake of ESA. The longstanding issue of federal and state regulatory authority remained but was overshadowed by competing private interests. Conservationist organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and Nature Conservancy, along with activist organizations like the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation, utilized the ESA as an effective tool to protect threatened and endangered species like the highly publicized northern spotted owl. Meanwhile, the loose-knit but wide spread Wise Use movement led efforts to stop ESA's intrusion into the lives of private landowners. As special interest groups have consistently shaped wildlife preservation efforts since the nineteenth century, confronting the relationship between social and economic prerogatives, the formation of powerful lobbying groups on each side of the debate in recent years has ensured that wildlife preservation will remain a pivotal political issue for decades to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bean, Michael J., and Melanie J. Rowland, eds. The Evolution of National Wildlife Law. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997.

Czech, Brian, and Paul R. Krausman. The Endangered Species Act: History, Conservation, Biology, and Public Policy. 3d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Matthiessen, Peter. Wildlife in America. 3d ed. New York: Viking, 1987.

Reiger, John F. American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001.

Tober, James A. Who Owns the Wildlife? The Political Economy of Conservation in Nineteenth Century America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Eric William Boyle

See also Endangered Species .