Environmental History 51feet of white pine, leaving less than 6 billion board feet
standing in the whole state.
During the 19th century, many U.S. naturalists began
to voice concerns about conserving natural resources. John
James Audubon (1785–1851) painted lifelike portraits of
birds and other animals in their natural surroundings that
aroused widespread public interest in the wildlife of North
America (Figure 3.2). Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862),- Briefly outline the environmental history of the
United States. - Describe the contributions of the following people
to our perspective on the environment: John
James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, George
Perkins Marsh, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford
Pinchot, John Muir, Franklin Roosevelt, Aldo
Leopold, Wallace Stegner, Rachel Carson, Paul
Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Wangari Maathai. - Distinguish between utilitarian conservationists
and biocentric preservationists. - Explain how a systems perspective helps us
understand human impacts on the environment.
F
rom the establishment of the first perma-
nent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia,
in 1607, the first two centuries of U.S. his-
tory were a time of widespread environmen-
tal destruction. European settlers exploited land, timber,
wildlife, rich soil, clean water, and other resources that
had been used sustainably by native peoples for thou-
sands of years. The settlers did not recognize that the
bountiful natural resources of North America would
one day become scarce. During the 1700s and most of
the 1800s, many Americans had a frontier attitude, a
desire to conquer nature and put its resources to use in
the most lucrative manner possible.
Two characteristics of European settlers and their
descendants drove this unsustainable resource use: rapid
population growth and high per person consumption.
European settlements tended to be more densely popu-
lated than were those of natives, and settlers accumulated
more permanent material goods (houses, roads, wagons,
furniture, tools, and clothing).
Protecting Forests
The great forests of the Northeast were cut down within
a few generations of European settlement, and, shortly
after the Civil War in the 1860s, loggers began deforest-
ing the Midwest at an alarming rate. Within 40 years, they
had deforested an area the size of Europe, stripping Min-
nesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin of virgin forest. By 1897
the sawmills of Michigan had processed 160 billion board
Environmental History
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Courtesy Library of Congress/>>}iÀÃÊUÊ}ÕÀiÊΰÓÊ
This portrayal is one of 500 engravings in Audubon’s classic,
The Birds of America, completed in 1844. Shown are two male
Louisiana tanagers (also called western tanagers, top) and male
and female scarlet tanagers (bottom).