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Native Americans called the place the “bad lands” because traveling through the landscape was so difficult.  The name stuck as ranchers, farmers and other settlers attempted to carve a living from the land.  Perhaps the best use of the region was settled when it was declared a national monument on January 25, 1939, by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The badlands region of southwestern South Dakota served as home to several Native American groups for as long as 11,000 years.  Their descendants were the Lakota Indians who still live in the region.  Most Native American lands were appropriated by the federal government for granting to homesteaders in the late 1800s.  Conflicts began, including the famous battle at Wounded Knee (which is not in the park itself, but about 45 miles south).

After the turn of the century, homesteading began in earnest.  Changes in federal law expanded the size of a homestead from the traditional 160 acres to 640 acres, acknowledging the inability of a small tract to support a family.  Life was hard, with dry summers, brutally cold winters and strong winds at all times.  During the Dust Bowl years, farming became so difficult that most families abandoned their lands or sold them back to the federal government.

During this time, the idea of preserving the lands gained attention.  In various stages, plans for a national park or monument were developed and passed.  The creation of a park was pushed most vigorously by South Dakota Senator Peter Norbeck, also known for his commitment to wildlife and waterfowl in particular.  The Badlands National Monument was officially created by the proclamation of President Roosevelt on January 25, 1939 (later, in 1978, the monument was reclassified as Badlands National Park).

The park covers approximately 240,000 acres of highly eroded hills surrounded by a mixed-grass prairie ecosystem.  The area was covered by an ancient sea that disappeared gradually, depositing sediments until about 28 million years ago.  Because of this history, Badlands contains exceptional fossil beds, serving as the nation’s most productive site for mammalian fossils from the Oligocene.

The early arguments over whether Badlands should be a national park or monument revolved around access for recreational visitors—it was a hard place to get to.  Today, however, it has become a popular site.  From a low of about 10,000 annual visitors during World War II, annual visitation is now around 1 million.

The park is notable for a fauna that is well adapted to life in such harsh conditions.  Although both American bison and pronghorn antelope were extirpated, they have been reintroduced and are thriving.  Of particular interest is the endangered black-footed ferret, which has suffered because of habitat loss, declines in their prey (especially prairie dogs), and disease.  Populations have been re-introduced into Badlands National Park as part of the recovery plan that is based entirely on captive breeding and establishment of carefully protected populations.

References:

Mattison, Ray H. and Robert A. Grom.  1968.   History of Badlands National Monument.  Badlands Natural History Association.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/badl/index.htm.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

National Park Service.  Badlands.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/badl/learn/nature/mammals.htm.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

US-Parks.com.  Badlands National Park History.  Available at:  http://www.us-parks.com/badlands-national-park/history.html.  Accessed January 24, 2018.

A 1937 George Gershwin hit song starts this way:  “A foggy day in London town, had me low, had me down; I viewed the morning with alarm, the British Museum had lost its charm.”  Perhaps the museum lost its charm for Gershwin, but the rest of the world remains enchanted.  The museum opened to the public on January 15, 1759, and amazes nearly 7 million people every year.

The British Museum was the first national museum in the world.  It was founded in 1753, when the will of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), a successful London doctor, bequeathed his collection to the British people (in exchange, actually for 20,000 British pounds).  He had begun collecting while traveling as the personal physician to the governor of Jamaica.  His main interest was natural history, and he brought back 800 species of plants and animals, many alive, from that voyage.

He never stopped collecting.  He also acquired collections of others, accumulating more than 71,000 objects, mostly natural history, during his life (the Enlightenment Gallery at the museum represents the way an 18^th Century museum looked, with an overwhelming preponderance of natural specimens displayed as objects of curiosity).  His library exceeded 50,000 volumes.  His collections filled up his house in the Bloomsbury district of London, across the street from the current site of the library, and then the house next door.  He eventually had to move to the Chelsea district to find a home with sufficient space (his home was on the square that now bears his name).

From the beginning, the museum was free and open to the public, a service to “all studious and curious Persons.” Its doors have remained open since then, except during the two world wars in the 20^th Century. About 5,000 people visited the museum in 1759; nearly 7 million now visit each year, making it the most popular attraction in the United Kingdom.

But that tells just part of the story.  As the museum became more and more popular in the late 1800s, and as the collections continued to grow and diversify, the facilities became overly crowded.  Consequently, a new building was constructed in the South Kensington district of London to house the natural history collections.  That building opened in the 1880s, splitting the attendance between the sites.  Now run as the independent Natural History Museum (read more), it attracted about 4.6 million visits in 2016.   The British Library, which was part of the museum until 1973, also attracts more than 1 million visitors annually.  In all, then, nearly 13 million people visit the British Museum and its offspring every year.

The British Museum itself is now primarily a cultural and archeological museum, known for outstanding exhibits including the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon friezes (which may be on their way back to Athens).  But its role as the conservator of the natural history of the world during the age of exploration helped shape our understanding of natural selection, evolution, biodiversity, ecology and conservation.  It will never lose its charm.

References:

British Museum.  The Museum’s story—General History.  Available at:  http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/the_museums_story/general_history/sir_hans_sloane.aspx.  Accessed January 15, 2018

The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was incorporated on January 12, 1895.  It has become the largest and most influential preservation organization in England, in a sense the British equivalent of the U.S. National Park Service.  According to the Trust’s 2020-21 annual report, the trust protects 780 miles of coastline, 250,000 hectares of land (1.5% of the entire land surface of England), more than 500 properties (structures and nature preserves), and nearly 1 million catalogued historical artifacts.  The Trust’s properties hosted more than 20 million visits during the year.

The National Trust owes its existence to the efforts of Octavia Hill, a pioneering social reformer of the late Nineteenth Century.  Hill came from a family of advocates for the poor, and she followed in their footsteps.  On behalf of fellow reformer John Ruskin, she managed a set of broken-down tenements in what is now the Marylebone section of London, where she rented to poor women and also provided them with job training, actual jobs and cultural exposure.  By the 1870s, she housed and watched over the social development of 3,000 tenants.

But she also realized that the poor needed parks and open spaces.  Actually, she understood that everyone needed such spaces, and that they were fast disappearing as London developed.  She reasoned that “a few acres where the hill top enables the Londoner to rise above the smoke, to feel a refreshing air for a little time and to see the sun setting in coloured glory which abounds so in the Earth God made” was a tonic for the harried life of the salesperson as well as the foundry or textile worker.  And she particularly abhorred the reality that city parks were becoming increasingly gated, available only to those who could afford to live around their perimeters.  One of her first projects was to stop a portion of Hampstead Heath, the renowned London park, from being developed.

So, together with colleagues Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, she organized the National Trust as a public charity.  The trust’s purpose was to “promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest.”  Anyone who has visited a park or country estate in England owes much to the passion and persistence of Olivia Hill.

References:

National Trust.  2021.  National Trust annual report 2020/2021.  Available at:  http://www.nationaltrustannualreport.org.uk/. Accessed January 9, 2023.

YMCA George Williams College.  Octavia Hill, housing and social reform.  Available at:  http://infed.org/mobi/octavia-hill-housing-and-social-reform/.  Accessed January 11, 2017.

Rand Aldo Leopold was born on January 11, 1887.  Before the end of his much-too-short life (he died at 61, in 1948), he would write the book, A Sand County Almanac, that has become the philosophical bible for conservationists.

Leopold was a child of the field and forest.  He and his brother accompanied their father into the woods as often as possible, first to observe nature and later to hunt its products for the table.  But he was equally at home in the library or music room, learning the ways of books and ideas from his mother.  The combination served him well as he grew to be known as the father of wildlife management.

He trained as a forester and took his first professional job with the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico.  He led timber surveying crews, measuring the forest for its production of wood.  He loved the grandeur of the environment, as well as the grandeur of the task—toting up billions of board-feet of lumber available for utilization.  Like all foresters in the early decades of the 20^th Century, he believed that forests were for logging—a utilitarian approach to nature.

But when a serious illness required that he give up the physically challenging job of a field forester, his outlook began to expand and mature.  With a supervisory job in the Forest Service’s regional office in Albuquerque, he had the opportunity to visit many national forests and see the damage that uncontrolled grazing and logging inflicted on the environment.  Soils eroded, productivity declined, wildlife disappeared.  What was needed was a new profession, one that combined the laws of nature with the needs of people.

He eventually took a promotion to the Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin.  The job didn’t suit him, however, and after a few years, at the brink of the Great Depression, he resigned from the government to do something else.  But what to do?  He had lots of ideas, but no one to pay him for them.

After a period of unemployment, he secured a temporary job.  He was hired by a sporting organization to survey the status of wildlife populations around the country, report on the conditions and make recommendations for improvement.  Within a short time, the task was narrowed to a survey of just the Midwestern states.  In two years, he visited hundreds of field locations and talked to even more landowners, hunters and government officials.  His final report, published in 1931, became the first comprehensive assessment of the deplorable state of wildlife populations in the United States.  It established Leopold as the “father of wildlife management.”

Now, Leopold knew where his future lay.  He was immediately hired by the University of Wisconsin as the nation’s first professor of wildlife—a position he held until his death.  He trained hundreds of students, oversaw the restoration of thousands of acres of degraded farm and forestland, and wrote the first wildlife textbook.

Along the way, he bought a little farm outside of Madison.  The farm had been badly abused, but together with his wife and daughters, Leopold restored it.  They converted the only building on the farm, an old chicken barn, into a barely habitable cabin.  That cabin gradually acquired the name of “The Shack,” and is now a rough-hewn mecca for conservationists the world around.

As Leopold restored the land, he wrote essays about the experience, chronicling the events on a month-by-month basis.  He also wrote essays about his earlier years in the West and an evolving perspective on how to manage the earth sustainably.  After years of writing and rewriting and rejections by publishers, he finally secured a contract for the publication of A Sand County Almanac.

Regrettably, he did not live to see the book printed.  While helping fight a grass fire at a neighboring farm in 1948, he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 61.

But his family carried through on the editing process, and A Sand County Almanac was published posthumously the next year.  Although it wasn’t a popular book at the time, its re-issue as a paperback in 1970 made it the popular treatise we know today.  Without doubt, A Sand County Almanac is the most widely read environmental narrative of all time.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies.  Island Press, Washington DC.

Which American presidents did the most for the environment?  The gold goes to Teddy Roosevelt and the silver—remarkably—to Richard Nixon.  But the bronze medal for environmental presidents should go to the 39^th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

            James Early Carter Jr. was inaugurated as the U.S. President on January 20, 1977.  Just four months later, on May 23, he addressed the Congress with a major policy agenda on the environment.  Following the flurry of legislative activity during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Carter committed the executive branch to join the effort:

“Intelligent stewardship of the environment on behalf of all Americans is a prime responsibility of government. Congress has in the past carried out its share of this duty well–so well, in fact, that the primary need today is not for new comprehensive statutes but for sensitive administration and energetic enforcement of the ones we have. Environmental protection is no longer just a legislative job, but one that requires–and will now receive-firm and unsparing support from the Executive Branch.”

In his address, Carter outlined a seven-point agenda for his administration.  He spoke to the need to control pollution and protect health; assure environmentally sound energy development; improve the urban environment; protect natural resources; preserve natural heritage (including wildlife); address the global environment; and improve implementation of environmental laws.  The address is stunning in its detail, for example, listing 1303 miles of river to be added to the Wild and Scenic Rivers System and proposing an additional 20 for study. 

            Carter came to his environmental mission honestly.  He grew up in Plains, Georgia, in a rural Baptist family that taught the Bible message of stewardship of the earth.  As a farmer, he learned to understand that if you helped nature, nature helped you.  He went off to the Naval Academy and became a nuclear engineer.  During his active duty working on atomic submarines, Carter was sent to Canada to help when a nuclear power plant on the Chalk River near Ottawa had an accidental partial meltdown.  He realized then how close modern society could come to nuclear disaster, a lesson that stayed with him in his approach to energy security—and nuclear weapons—as president.

            By the end of his presidency, Carter had accomplished much of his agenda.  He grew the EPA budget, despite a weak economy, and aggressively dealt with the Love Canal and Three Mile Island disasters.  Carter combined a group of energy programs into the Department of Energy, and he established the first gas mileage standards for vehicles.  In the closing months of his presidency, he worked with the lame-duck congress to pass and sign several important laws, including establishment of the Superfund idea, which has helped restore nearly 400 of the nation’s most toxic locations.  He also signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which provided 157 million acres of Alaskan lands protection as national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges and national forests.

            Carter believed in renewable energy.  His environmental message to congress, he said:

 “The transition to renewable energy sources, particularly solar energy, must be made. But it will take time. Meanwhile we should satisfy our energy needs from existing sources, both fossil and nuclear, in a safe and environmentally acceptable way….. The decisions we make about energy in the next few years will influence the environment of our country for generations.”

To walk the talk, he installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. He turned down the thermostats in the building and told his staff to wear sweaters.  In the midst of the energy crisis, he turned off the Christmas lights on the White House grounds.

            Carter’s legacy as an environmental president is enormous, and even the ideas that he started and were abandoned later have come back strongly.  For examples, almost as soon as Reagan moved into the White House, he had the solar panels taken down.  They are back now, the work of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and solar energy today across the country produces as much electricity as would 50 nuclear power plants.

References:

Carter, Jimmy.  1977.  The Environmental Message to the Congress, Ma 23, 1977.  The American Presidency Project.  Available at:  http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7561.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

Milnes, Arthur.  2011.  Jimmy Carter’s exposure to nuclear danger.  CNN, April 5, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/05/milnes.carter.nuclear/index.html.  Accessed May 22, 2018. 

Peak, Chris.  2015.  Which presidents are the greenest in U.S. history?  Nation Swell, September 16, 2015.  Available at:  http://nationswell.com/greenest-u-s-presidents/.  Accessed May 22, 2018.

I’m sure you think the date of 1965 is a typo.  Surely the site where two railroads met to create a transcontinental route, on May 10, 1869, didn’t wait nearly a century before being made into a park.  It is not a typo.

            The Golden Spike was the last stake driven into a railroad tie linking the United States from East to West with a fast, comfortable and safe transportation system (at least in mid-19^th Century terms).  Instead of taking months to cross the continent, now the trip took a week.  The Central Pacific Railroad built eastward from Sacramento, while the Union Pacific Railroad built westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa.  The two lines met at Promontory Summit, not far from present day Ogden, Utah.  Leland Stanford, President of the Central Pacific, drove the spike into the ground at 2:47 PM on May 10, 1869.  An inscription on the spike read, “May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world.”  The unity of the country referred to healing the wounds from the Civil War.

            The golden spike was replaced by an iron spike, the railroad began operating, and the place was forgotten—especially after a 1903 bypass made that section of track obsolete.  The tracks were dug up and recycled during World War II, and ranchers reused the ties. One woman, Bernice Gibbs Anderson, however, did not forget.  A poet, historian and newspaper journalist, Anderson argued for decades that the spot deserved more than a single lonely stone pillar.  Eventually, a private park was established, and, on July 30, 1965, the federal government took over, declaring it a national historical site (later renamed as a “park”).  The National Park Service has re-built a section of track, and two replicas steam engines meet there, reprising the famous photo of 1869.  More than 100,000 visitors trek to the location annually.

            The park is wonderful, but the event is the real big deal.  When the railroads met, the North American frontier closed.  Horace Greeley’s admonition to “go West, young man,” didn’t work any longer—because people from the West were coming East to greet you.  No longer did an unknown, unexplored, unexploited wilderness lie beyond the sunset.  Now the West was no longer inexhaustible, but it had limits.

            In a way, the driving of the Golden Spike could be called the beginning of conservation in the United States.  People began to take notice of the condition of natural resources.  The U.S. Fisheries Commission formed in 1871, to look into the decline of commercial fisheries.  Yosemite was made a state park in 1864, and the first national park was created at Yellowstone in 1872..  The ideas of evolution took hold (remember, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859), a first step in the foundation of ecological science.  John Muir roamed around California, noting the over-exploitation of the landscape.  In Europe, similar rumblings were beginning in fisheries, forestry and land use.

            The driving of the Golden Spike, therefore, meant two different things.  First, this symbolized the end of the trail for a frontier that seemed endless in expanse and natural resources.  But second is the beginning of the trail leading to conservation.  And, as Bernice Gibbs Anderson expressed in her poem, Lure, the second is more interesting:  “The end of the trail, its mystery gone, is featured so often in story and song; But as long as the lure of the unknown will be, it’s the beginnings of trails that appeal to me.”

References:

Barry, Keith.  2012.  May 10, 1869:  Golden Spike Links Nation by Rail.  Wired, October 10, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0510transcontinental-railroad-completed/. Accessed April 7, 2020.

Klein, Maury.  2012.  The significance of Golden Spike Day.  Oxford University Blog, May 10, 2012.  Available at:  https://blog.oup.com/2012/05/the-significance-of-golden-spike-day/. Accessed April 7, 2020.

National Park Service.  Bernice Gibbs Anderson, Mother of the Golden Spike.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/bernice-gibbs-anderson.htm. Accessed April 7, 2020.

National Park Service.  The Last Spike:  History at a Glance.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/the-last-spike-history-at-a-glance.htm.  Accessed April 7, 2020.

Curt Gowdy, renowned sports broadcaster and host of the outdoor show, The American Sportsman, was born on July 31, 1919 (died 2006).  In the age before specialization in sports reporting, Gowdy sat behind the microphone for professional baseball, football and basketball games and championships, along with many college contests.

            Gowdy, however, was first and foremost an outdoorsman.  He grew up in rural Wyoming, son of the man he called the best fly-fisherman in the state.  “We had free access to primetime fishing and hunting.  The outdoors was a way of life for me.”

            He developed the idea for and hosted the long-running television sports show, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, that showcased a variety of sports during its Saturday afternoon airing.  In 1964, Gowdy filmed a segment for the show of him and famous fisherman Joe Brooks angling for brook trout in the Argentine mountains.  The segment was a hit, and almost immediately ABC created a new show built around outdoor recreation—The American Sportsman, hosted by Curt Gowdy.

            The show ran for twenty years, airing more than 200 episodes during the winter months on Sunday afternoons.  It is the most successful outdoor recreation show of all time, earning a creel full of industry awards, including four Emmys.  The show focused on fishing and hunting experiences involving Curt Gowdy and celebrities from entertainment, politics and sports.  As Gowdy remembered, people often stopped him on the street to tell him that he “started me fishing or hunting when I was a boy.”  For millions of Americans, The American Sportsman was their window on the natural world.

            Gowdy, who was called “The Cowboy” by his colleagues, was a committed conservationist. He is a member of the Conservation Hall of Fame International.  He served on the boards of directors for Trout Unlimited and the International Game Fish Association.  Convinced that the popularity of fishing was too great to sustain fish populations, he advocated for catch-and-release fishing that kept captured fish alive.

            To honor his work and memory, the State of Wyoming established the Curt Gowdy State Park in 1972.  The 11,000-acre park lies above 6450 feet in elevation.  Gowdy loved it, saying “It has two beautiful lakes, hiking trails, camping boating, fishing and beauty.  It has everything I love.  What greater honor can a man receive?”

References:

FamPeople.com.  Curt Gowdy:  biography.  Available at:  http://www.fampeople.com/cat-curt-gowdy_4.  Accessed July 31, 2017.

Michigan Sportsman.  2006.  Farewell to an American Sportsman.  Available at:  https://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/threads/farewell-to-an-american-sportsman.128923/page-2#post-1087518.  Accessed July 31, 2017.

Moran, Ken.  2002.  At 80, Gowdy Still The American Sportsman.  New York Post, February 3, 2002.  Available at:  http://nypost.com/2002/02/03/at-80-gowdy-still-the-american-sportsman/.  Accessed July 31, 2017.

Beatrix Potter, author of the classic children’s story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was born July 28, 1866.  Although she is famous for her many children’s books, which she both wrote and illustrated, she also became a leading British conservationist of the Lake District landscape.

            Potter was born and raised in London, the daughter of wealthy and socially traditional parents.  She was educated at home, raised to become a wife, mother and keeper of the household.  But Potter had other plans.  When her family vacationed during summers, first in Scotland and later in the English Lake District, she fell in love with the country.  She and he brother reveled in the rolling hills and dramatic waters of the Lake District and delighted in keeping pets of all kinds, from domestic animals to frogs and insects. 

            She was a keen observer of the animals’ appearance and habits and the landscapes in which they lived.  She wrote stories about them and drew their images in watercolor.  Her creativity was matched by the accuracy of her work.  So realistic were her drawings that she eventually produced scientific illustrations of plants and, especially, of her favorite organisms—fungi.

            Potter was also an entrepreneur.  She began writing stories and when her original story—The Tale of Peter Rabbit—was turned down by several publishers, she had 250 copies printed herself.  An insightful editor realized the quality of her work—charming, but not overly cute—and published the book in 1902 (since then, more than 5 million copies have been sold, and loved and cherished by children everywhere).  She developed and sold a doll of Peter Rabbit—the first character doll ever produced.  She also licensed and sold pottery, clothing, calendars and other book-related merchandise.  Potter wrote and illustrated 33 books in her lifetime, making her both famous and wealthy.

            She used her wealth not for luxury—her country homes never had electricity or indoor plumbing—but to conserve the countryside she loved so much.  The Lake District had always attracted tourism, but after World War I, the attention grew exponentially.  Potter knew that large-scale development of the land would destroy the fragile hillside ecosystems, a quaint combination of natural and cultivated habitats.  So, she began buying farms.  First smaller properties, including her beloved Hill Top Farm (now a museum), then larger properties that would allow a unified landscape to survive and thrive.

            Her entrepreneurial spirit spilled over into her farming.  She learned how to farm, restored the productive capacity of her lands and became an expert breeder of sheep.  Her farms and fortune prospered, even as her ability to write and publish books waned.  She was particularly dedicated to preserving the traditional Herdwick sheep, the breed that was best adapted to the cold environment and varied forage of the Lake District.

            She became a close confidant of the founders of the National Trust, the English non-profit organization that owns and manages historic properties and natural areas.  She donated all her property—15 farms totaling 4000 acres—to the National Trust, an estate valued at about $20 million at her death in 1943 ($300 millon today).   Her proviso:  that the properties remain exactly as she left them, down to the furniture and wall covering she left.  Most importantly, that proviso assured that the Lake District landscape would remain the same charming landscape that generations have loved for its natural beauty and cultural significance. 

References:

Beatrix Potter Society.  About Peatrix Potter.  Available at:  https://beatrixpottersociety.org.uk/about-beatrix/.  Accessed July 28, 2017.

Lear, Linda.  2017.  Beatrix Potter:  A Life in Nature.  Available at:  http://www.bpotter.com/Default.aspx. Accessed July 28, 2017.

National Trust.  Beatrix Potter’s early life and books.  Available at:  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/beatrix-potter-gallery-and-hawkshead/features/beatrix-potters-early-life-and-books. Accessed July 28, 2017.

Thomson, Keith Stewart.  2007.  Marginalia:  Beatrix Potter, Conservationist.  American Scientist 95(3):210-212.  Available at:  http://www.jstor.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/stable/pdf/27858956.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa434bf2c67f89b4a712b13db0f7f46da. Accessed July 28, 2017.

Victoria and Albert Museum.  Biography of Beatrix Potter.  Available at:  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/biography-beatrix-potter/. Accessed July 28, 2017.