1909 North American Conservation Conference had
set the groundwork for multilateral agreements on
migratory species, and in 1916 the United States and
Canada signed a Migratory Bird Treaty.The Changing Landscape
Since the birth of the nation, human activity and
population growth had been changing the natural
landscape, but in the twentieth century, as the rate
of change increased markedly, many species of plants
and animals reached the brink of extinction. By 1914,
the passenger pigeon, which had once darkened the
sky and provided food for thousands of people, was
gone, and local oyster supplies for New York City
markets had dried up as result of pollution in the
city’s harbor.
In 1917, though, the attention of the United
States was directed to fighting World War I. Efforts
were made to fortify the shipbuilding industry and
to develop the infant aviation industry. As a result
of wartime demands, large numbers of people
found jobs in the industrial sector and moved to
the cities.organize a gathering of representatives from coun-
tries around the world at The Hague, but the pro-
posal garnered little interest because most of the
resource issues on his suggested agenda had already
been dealt with by the European nations.
Much of the government’s “conservation”
effort during the administration of Theodore
Roosevelt and for a decade thereafter was focused
on land reclamation and the building of dams and
reservoirs to supply the growing population of the
West, where water was a problem because much
of the region was arid or semiarid. A proposal to
flood the magnificent Hetch Hetchy Valley led to a
fierce battle between preservationists, such as John
Muir, and wise-use conservationists, such as Teddy
Roosevelt and Pinchot, that underlined a serious rift
in the rapidly growing conservation movement [see
Document 68]. Although the utilitarians—the wise-
use advocates—won, the fight brought the preser-
vationists together and galvanized the conservation
movement.
In the ensuing years, Roosevelt’s conservation
initiatives continued to bear fruit. Discussions at the
The Roots of the Conservation Movement, 1890–1919 69
Document 59: Forest Reserve Act (1891)
The clause establishing the U.S. Forest Reserve System was buried, as section 24, in a bill to repeal timber culture
laws. Following the passage of the bill by Congress, President Benjamin Harrison set aside 13 million acres of
forest land.[T]he President of the United States may,
from time to time, set apart and reserve, in any
State or Territory having public land bearing
forests, in any part of the public lands wholly
or in part covered with timber or undergrowth,
whether of commercial value or not, as public
reservations, and the President shall, by public
proclamation, declare the establishment of such
reservations and the limits thereof.
Source: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 26 (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892), 51st Cong., 2nd
sess, chap. 561, March 3, 1891, p. 1103.