Introduction / 15agencies and private companies to employ scientists or, in the case of the British East India Company,
surgeons, many of whom had time to spare and wide scientific interests. One of the earliest
conservation experiments was begun in Mauritius in the middle of the eighteenth century by French
reformers seeking to prevent further deforestation as part of their efforts to build a just society.
Interestingly, they had perceived a relationship between deforestation and local climate change. In
the British territories, scientists also noted this relationship. Forest reserves were established in
Tobago in 1764 and St Vincent in 1791, and a law passed in French Mauritius in 1769 was designed
to protect or restore forests, especially on hill slopes and near to open water. Plans for the planting
and management of Indian forests began in 1847 (GROVE, 1992), the foresters being known as
‘conservators’, a title still used in Britain by the Forestry Commission.
At about the same time, Americans were also becoming aware of the need for conservation. George
Perkins Marsh (1801–82), US ambassador to Italy from 1862 until his death, wrote Man and Nature
while in Italy. Published in 1864, this book led to the establishment of forest reserves in the United
States and other countries, but it also challenged the then accepted relationship between humans and
the natural environment.^5 In 1892, Warren Olney, John Muir, and William Keith founded the Sierra
Club (www.sierraclub.org/index_right.htm), and the National Audubon Society (www.audubon.org/
), named after John James Audubon (1785–1851),^6 the renowned wildlife painter and conservationist,
was founded shortly afterwards.
While ‘wilderness’ has always implied hostility (and nowadays the word is often applied to certain
urban areas), to these early conservationists it also had another, quite different meaning. To them,
and those who thought like them, the word suggested purity, freedom from human interference, and
the place where humans may find spiritual renewal, although this idea was often combined, as it is
still, with that of economic resources held in reserve until a use can be found for them. It is tempting
to associate the spiritual view exclusively with European Romanticism, but it also occurs in non-
European cultures and, even in Europe, there were a few writers who saw wilderness in this way
prior to the eighteenth century.
Today, the love of wilderness and desire to protect it probably represents the majority view, at least
in most industrialized societies. Similarly, most people recognize pollution as harmful and will
support measures to reduce it, provided they are not too expensive or disruptive. As we have seen,
however, these are far from being new ideas or new attitudes. They have emerged at various times in
the past, then concern has waned. It may seem that public attitudes reflect some cyclical change, and
this may be not far from the truth.
When the possibility of famine was real, the most beautiful landscape was one that was well and
intensively farmed. When factory jobs were scarce and insecure, but for large numbers of people the
only jobs available, smoking chimneys symbolized prosperity. No one could afford to care that the
fumes were harmful, even that they were harmful to human health, for hunger and cold were still more
harmful and more immediately so. When the first European colonists reached North America, they
could make no living from the forest. They had to clear it to provide cultivable land, and they had to do
so quickly. It was only the wealthy who had the leisure to contemplate wilderness and could afford to
point out the dangers of pollution, with the risk that were their warnings heeded, factories might close.
Modern concerns continue to follow the cycle. The present wave of environmental concern began in
Britain and the United States in the 1960s, at a time of rising prosperity. It continued into the 1970s
and then, as economies began to falter and unemployment began to creep upwards, interest faded. It
re-emerged in the 1980s, as economies seemed to revive, then waned again as recession began to bite
hard. The fluctuations in public concern are recorded in the numbers of books on environmental
topics published year by year. In the early 1970s vast numbers appeared, but far fewer books were