The philosophies of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot.
Compare and contrast the philosophies of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" width_tablet="" width_phone="100%" width_last_edited="on|phone" max_width="100%"]| Subject | Computer Science | Pages | 14 | Style | APA |
|---|
Answer
The 19th Century brought about discussions on how to protect American wildlands best. None were more vocal on this matter than John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. The two environmentalists came up with contrasting philosophies that carry to this day as many others have followed in their ideals on American environmentalism. While Muir worked around preserving American wildlands, Pinchot championed environmental conservation, hence their contrasting philosophies, despite their common desire to protect open spaces.
John Muir campaigned for the preservation of American wildlands. Influenced by his immigrant and evangelical background, Muir advocated that open spaces should be left undisturbed as they represented God in nature (Duke, 2016). Through publications, articles, and speeches, Muir radically campaigned against the intrusion of man into these open spaces arguing that conservationists and foresters meddled with the way God intended nature to be, beautiful and undisturbed (Keel, 2020). Muir’s philosophy of forest preservation helped him lobby federal governments into preserving open spaces such as the Yosemite Valley and the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which became his legacy. This was possible through a congressional bill signed by President William McKinley in 1897 under the Forest Commission that set a precedent for the formation of the U.S. Forest Service.
On the other hand, Gifford Pinchot is known as the champion for American wildland conservation. Collomb (2019) states that Pinchot, through his travels to Europe, became educated on the philosophy of forest conservation. In this concept, Pinchot reasoned that the U.S. could economize the open-spaced public wilderness as a source of income to steamroll U.S. development (Keel, 2020). Developing and popularizing the conservation concept, Pinchot accomplished to change the narrative that open land that the federal government-owned could be used for grazing, mining, logging, agriculture, lumbering or other ways to improve the economy; rather than used as recreational land open to the public (Westover, 2016). Pinchot's conservationism garnered him the favour to his appointment as the first chief of the U.S Forest Service in 1905, carrying on the conservation philosophy to date.
Although Pinchot and Muir had conflicting philosophies on protecting American open spaces, the two's philosophies came to an alliance that is manifested to this day. Keel (2020) asserts that Pinchot and Muir's alliance ensured that the U.S. Forest Service land serves recreational purposes through hiking, hunting, skiing, and incorporating mining and lumbering in a controlled manner. Keel (2020) adds that national parks are supreme in protecting nature as God intended.
While Muir championed U.S. open space preservation, Pinchot advocated for conservation. Although the two environmentalists had different concepts in protecting nature, they are the forerunners of what the U.S. national parks and U.S. Forest Service symbolize today in their protection of forest and American wildlands through the alliance of the preservation and conservation philosophies.
References
|
Collomb, J.-D. (2019). Pushing for Efficiency: Gifford Pinchot and the First National Parks. Miranda, 19, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.20268 Duke, J. (2016). Three men in the wilderness: Ideas and concepts of nature during the Progressive Era with Recommended Citation (pp. 1–93). https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/222990431.pdf Keel, L. (2020). Frenemies John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. The National Endowment for the Humanities. https://www.neh.gov/article/frenemies-john-muir-and-gifford-pinchot Westover, R. H. (2016, May 22). Conservation versus Preservation? | US Forest Service. Www.fs.usda.gov. https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/conservation-versus-preservation
|