History of Ecological Sciences, Part 62: Saving Habitats and Managing Wildlife in the United States and Canada before 2000
2019; Ecological Society of America; Volume: 100; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1002/bes2.1546
ISSN2327-6096
Autores Tópico(s)Indigenous Studies and Ecology
ResumoInformed fisheries and wildlife management are applied branches of ecology. The history of fisheries management, forest management, and range management are omitted here; it deserves a separate discussion. Wildlife management occurs most effectively where habitat has been preserved. When both of these endeavors have reached a level of some sophistication, they can potentially be united in ecosystem management. Guiding examples are cited just before the conclusion. The earliest human migrants and settlers to the Americas came from Asia in the centuries before 1000 B.C. Some of them, who may have arrived by boat, apparently settled along the north Pacific coast and gradually increased and spread southward and eastward. Their main food would obviously come from the seashore. Others moved inland and were already big-game hunters when they came across the Bering land bridge that was exposed during ice ages, when the sea level was significantly lower than it is now. What they found were large mammals which had had to deal with wolves and mountain lions, but had no inherent fear of humans, whom they had never encountered before. These large mammals were easily slaughtered by hunters who had learned hunting for more elusive prey (Martin and Wright 1967, Martin and Klein 1984, Mac Phee and Schouten 2018). Traditional wisdom in Christian Europe stated that species do not become extinct, because that would indicate that God was imperfect in his creations. That belief persisted until around 1800, despite extinctions being known before then. In 1598, Dutch explorers first visited the Mascarene Islands, known earlier to Arab and Portuguese, and named the largest Mauritius. Plump flightless dodos (Raphus cucullatus) inhabited that island, and its kin, larger, also flightless, solitaires (Pezophaps solitaria) inhabited the other two islands, Réunion and Rodriguez (Greenway 1967:120–126, Halliday 1978:56–67, Cheke and Hume 2008, Barrow 2009:50–56). When Englishmen visited Mauritius in 1627, no humans lived there. They ate a dodo and found it distasteful. A dodo was brought alive to London in 1638 and caused a sensation. In 1681, an English ship visited Mauritius and recorded the last account of a live dodo. Solitaires lived into the 1700s before they also died out under the impact of human settlers. German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709–46) discovered in 1741 on a Russian Expedition, at Bering Island in the North Pacific, the Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas; Stejneger 1887, 1936, Hultén 1940:295–296, Trefethen 1975:44, Egerton 2008:43–50, 2012:94–96). It was hunted (for food) to extinction in 1768 by Russians in the fur trade. Knowledge of its extinction reached Europe some years later. In retrospect, one sees that a generalization was already possible: Vertebrate species which evolved on isolated islands are vulnerable to extinction when their islands are invaded by humans. Fossils of trilobites, belemnites, and ammonites were already known in Europe, but since they all seemed to be oceanic animals, no one could say they were no longer living at the depths of some sea (Kolbert 2014:24). Mammoth bones were also known, from Siberia, but again, Siberia was a vast unknown to European naturalists, and so nothing definite could be said about their current status. In 1739, a French army officer, Charles le Moyne, led a war party of 400 Frenchmen and Indians down the Ohio River (Kolbert 2014:25). Near where Cincinnati is now, they saw huge bones lying in a marsh at what is now Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky. Men took away a tusk, thigh bone, and some heavy teeth. Le Moyne found them interesting and had them brought along. In New Orleans, they were shipped to Paris, and Louis XV added them to his Cabinet du Roi, where naturalists examined them. They were unable to decide what kind of animal they represented. About that time, similar bones reached London, where the queen's physician, William Hunter, decided they represented an American elephant, different from Siberia's mammoth, and later named mastodon. France's foremost naturalist in mid-1700s, Comte de Buffon, knew that elephant bones were found in both Europe and North America. He speculated in Animaux communs aux deux continens (1761) and further in De la dégénération des animaux (1766) that when the same kind of animal is found in both Europe and North America, the American form is smaller and less vigorous than the European form, since the European form would have degenerated when it left healthy European conditions for less healthy American conditions (Buffon 1761:IX, 101–127, 1766:XIV, 311–374, 1954:380–385, 394–413, Egerton 2007:152–155, 2012:84–86, Dugatkin 2009:21–25). He also knew there was evidence that both continents had at times been under the sea, and he suggested, therefore, in Époques de la nature (1778), that these northern elephants might have drowned at such a time (Buffon 1954:170). Thomas Jefferson had an early interest in nature and so read Buffon's comments on America, with disgust (Barrow 2009:15–39, Dugatkin 2009:ix–xii, Thomson 2012:62–73). A Frenchman asked him to write a report on his country, and a desire to challenge Buffon was one of his motives for writing Notes on the State of Virginia (1787). He devoted 14 pages (in a modern edition; 1984) to evidence he had collected to refute Buffon. It included quantitative data in three tables (Jefferson 1984:172–175), and he also, while American minister to France, obtained a moose skin and antlers from New Hampshire which he presented to Buffon, with the expectation that he would be willing to offer a correction in a later volume of his Histoire naturelle. Buffon never did, as he died before issuing another volume, and Jefferson's skin and antlers are now lost (Dugatkin 2009:89–100, Thomson 2012:68–69). Further, Jefferson, when he sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the newly acquired Louisiana Territory (which doubled the size of the United States), asked them to search for American elephants (Kolbert 2014:27–28). Dr. William Goforth of Cincinnati had reported his discovery of very large bones nearby at Big Bone Lick (Cutright 2003:26). Meriwether Lewis and William Clark therefore visited Goforth, and with him Big Bone Lick, and Lewis wrote a lengthy letter on 3 October 1803 to Jefferson describing what they saw (Jackson 1962:126–132). Yes, the bones proved that elephants had once roamed North America, but no, Lewis and Clark did not find any living, as they crossed the continent to the Pacific. Nor did anyone else later find any alive. France's leading vertebrate anatomist, Georges Cuvier, published Mémoire sur les espèces d'éléphants vivantes et fossils (1796, 1806, 1997), which distinguished two living species and two fossil species (Coleman 1964:119, Smith 1993:19, 52, Rudwick 1997:13–18, Barrow 2009:39–42, Egerton 2010:23–25, Kolbert 2014:28–44). Elephants are large and usually slow-moving, so their prehistoric disappearance, perhaps at the hands of early hunters (not floods), did not raise alarms that it might also happen with smaller species. True, beaver had steadily disappeared progressively, going from America's east coast toward the Midwest, as Native American hunters were motivated by fur traders to take more beaver than needed to satisfy their own desires, but beaver were still abundant in the vast West, and fur companies were quick to follow on the heels of Lewis and Clark with plans to exploit western beaver (McClung 1969:57–59, Trefethen 1975:41–54, Stewart 1978:41–47). During the 1830s, beaver hats for men were fashionable in Britain and Europe, and with that high demand, beaver soon became scarce in the West, and fur companies either found other ways to keep going or went out of business. During the 1860s, there were still ~153,000 pelts sent annually from Canada to London (Stewart 1978:45). In the 1860s, New York state lawyer-naturalist Lewis Morgan published his excellent The American Beaver and his Works (1868); his discussion of beaver dams, lodges, canals, trails, and subsistence may be considered an early contribution to beaver ecology. His chapter on trapping beaver discussed fur company data on numbers of pelts sold, but the beaver did not yet seem rare enough for him to raise an alarm. The beaver hat went out of fashion in the 1840s, which ended the high demand for pelts abroad. The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) in the north is superficially similar to penguins; parallel evolution of species occurred, though they lived a world apart (Greenway 1967:271–291, Halliday 1978:67–76 + plate 3, Mowat 1996:17–39, Fuller 1999:60–85, Barrow 2009:61–66, Kolbert 2014:55–66). Ironically, its genus name is Pinguinus. Like penguins, it lived along coasts and ate fish, and over time lost the ability to fly and had few, if any land predators before humans appeared. It lived along northern regions of the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Scandinavia. Like penguins, on land they were potential meals waiting to be dispatched with a club. Unfortunately, the Great Auk was valued not only for its meat, but also for its thick layer of fat and for its feathers. On 5 July 1785, George Cartwright on Funk Island, Newfoundland noted: "It has been customary…for several crews of men to live all summer on the island for the purpose of killing [Great Auks] for the sake of their feathers…If a stop is not put to that practice, the whole breed will be diminished to almost nothing" (quoted in Burnett 2003:4). The last individuals were killed in 1844 for collectors, who sold some of them to museums. This was an historical example from which an obvious conclusion emerged that humans could indeed exterminate a species. American bison/buffalo (Bison bison) lived in gigantic herds easily observed on American prairies and plains (Haines 1970:156–164, 188–200, Roe 1970:334–520, Lott 2002, Barrow 2009:93–96). They inhabited most of what became the contiguous United States, and some of Canada, in 1600; Lott (2002:167–169) cited Ernest Seton's estimate that bison numbered 60 million before the European invasion, that there were only 40 million by 1800, 20 million by 1850, and Lott cited William Hornaday's estimate of 4 million by 1870. Before Native Americans on the Great Plains obtained horses from Spanish invaders, they killed bison by driving them over cliffs or by other means, but bison did not dominate their economy. However, with horses by 1700, Native Americans on the Plains could kill bison when they wanted, and they wandered with the bison, living in teepees. Those with horses prospered, their populations slowly increased, and both Native and Euro-Americans gradually became a threat to the sustainability of bison (Lott 2002:170–179). After the Civil War, industrial America began building railroads that spanned the continent, east to west, and settlers who did not wait for railroads went west in wagon trains that included a few cattle and horses. Native Americans sometimes resisted these invasions, but usually they were outgunned. An exception occurred on 25 June 1876, when George Armstrong Custer (1839–76) impatiently led a U.S. Army into battle at the Little Big Horn River, Montana Territory, before two other armies were in place for a coordinated attack. Native Americans were more numerous and better armed than Custer expected, and they slaughtered him and his army (Connell 1984, Welch 1994). However, that only delayed their fate—being confined to reservations (Gibson 1980:463–5112, Wilson 1998:247–285). When the first transcontinental railroad, Union Pacific, was being built, it hired William Cody to supply fresh meat for its construction crew, and "free" bison was his obvious choice (Carter 2000:93–94). He claimed to have slaughtered 4,280 of them between 1867 and 1868 and earned his nickname, "Buffalo Bill." After the railroads were completed, eastern upper-class hunters rode excursion trains out to the plains, and often shot bison from railroad cars; bison bodies were left to coyotes (during daytime), and wolves (at night). Even more were killed by commercial hunters, who sold hides for either robes or leather belts for industry. The U.S. Government not only did nothing to stop these practices, the U.S. Army gave upper-class hunters powder and lead, because the Army believed if there were no bison herds to follow, Native Americans were more likely to remain on their reservations. By the 1870s, U.S. citizens were complaining about the waste of bison by fellow citizens, and Congress passed a hunting limit, which President Grant vetoed (Haines 1970:205). The 1882–83 commercial hunt was the last, because afterward there were too few bison left for a profitable hunt, though some hunters (for almost two decades) gathered bison bones left from previous hunts and sent them east by the railroads, to make fertilizer. In 1886, the directors of the U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C., decided the museum needed a bison group, and sent the head taxidermist, William T. Hornaday (1854–1937) out west to collect specimens (Haines 1970:206–207). He shot 28 of the very few remaining in the United States and selected six of them for display. That seems very irresponsible. However, his experience awaked his interest in saving bison from extinction (Barrow 2009:108–114, Bechtel 2012, Dehler 2013). No one warned at the time that what had happened to Steller's sea cow, the dodo, and the great auk might also be the fate of the bison if the government did not insure their protection. A few westerners took home calves orphaned by the hunt and raised them (Stewart 1978:31–33). Bison were almost exterminated, but small herds remained in the United States and Canada. In 1905, Hornaday and others founded the American Bison Society to breed them and save their populations in national and state parks and national wildlife refuges (Barrow 2009:index). Donald Goddard published (1995:124–157) a collection of Hornaday's conservation writings. In 1907, Canadian Government bought a private herd of bison and transferred them to Buffalo National Park (Alberta, now Canadian Forces Base Wainwright; Loo 2006) Four American species of birds became rare, then extinct east of the Mississippi River, in late 1800s and early 1900s: Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), and Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido), per Matthiessen (1987:285–302). First to go was the Labrador Duck, which bred along the coast from New England into southern Canada (Wilson 1877:III, 14–15, plate 69, Greenway 1967:173–175, Halliday 1978:103–104 + plate 7, Cokinos 2000:279–304, Barrow 2009:131). It wintered south to Chesapeake Bay. It ate small fish, shellfish, mollusks, and seaweed. It apparently was never very abundant, and it was hunted during winter. There is some argument about whether the last one known was shot in 1875 or 1878. It was soon forgotten, except by some students of birds, since it had never been widely known when living. The Passenger Pigeon was quite different; it was primarily a deciduous forest species, and the most numerous bird species in America, if not the world (Schorger 1955, Greenway 1967:304–311, Halliday 1978:87–95 + plate 5, Cokinos 2000:195–278, Barrow 2009:96–100, Fuller 2014, Greenberg 2014). Like bison, gigantic flocks wandered from one region to another without a regular migration pattern. They ate acorns, nuts, and other seeds. Red oaks produced acorns during spring when passenger pigeons nested, and white oaks produced acorns in the fall. Consequently, white oak forests became more numerous than red oak forests. Native American predation on passenger pigeons before they obtained guns was inconsequential, and that was probably also true for Euro-Americans while their populations were low, but as cities grew, market hunters appeared, with guns and nets, who easily shot or netted many of them for city markets (Trefethen 1975:63–65). In the 1870s, bird collector Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1914), aware the species was in decline, collected one at his family home at Oyster Bay, Long Island (Lunde 2016:63). By the 1880s, their numbers were in sharp decline. Pigeons had long been raised in cages in Europe, so their decline in America need not have led to their extinction. However, there was no plan to save them, perhaps because they had been so numerous, and when they disappeared, one might assume they were still in a distant location. The last time a flock was seen in 1907; President Theodore Roosevelt reported on 18 May seeing seven birds at his presidential retreat, Pine Knot, Albemarle County, Virginia (Greenberg 2014:173–174). The last living individual died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Four factors led to its extinction: railroads, telegraph, market hunting, and logging of deciduous forests. The Carolina Parakeet was the United States' only parrot. It was the only one of these four species not hunted mainly for food, though those killed may have been eaten. Its range stretched from the Eastern states to eastern Colorado (Greenway 1967:322–327, Halliday 1978:96–100 + plate, Cokinos 2000:15–58, Snyder 2004, Barrow 2009:127–130). In prairie states, it lived in woods along banks of rivers and streams. It ate seeds, and commonly took them from fruit on trees, which was intolerable to those who depended upon orchards (their consumption of cocklebur seeds was appreciated.) They lived in flocks, though not on the scale of Passenger Pigeon flocks. When one parakeet was shot, the natural response of the others was to come to its aid, which meant that many others were also shot. Their attractive appearance led some people to keep a pair in a cage, so there was no more reason for them to become extinct than for Passenger Pigeons. But like Passenger Pigeons, there was no rescue plan to prevent their extinction. The last one known alive died at the Cincinnati Zoo, in the same cage as the last Passenger Pigeon had, four years later, 1918. The Heath Hen story was different. First, there were two disjunct populations of the prairie chicken, besides the main population on the prairies and plains. One was the Heath Hen population in New England, and the other was the Atwater coastal population in Louisiana and Texas (Cokinos 2000:131–193, Barrow 2009:263–268). As the human population grew, the Heath Hen population declined until the only population left was on Martha's Vineyard. Their decline was due both to the loss of habitat from human modifications, and because they were shot to be eaten. Ornithologist Alexander Wilson (1766–1813), who called the species "pinnated grouse," and drew from a specimen he shot on the Barrens of Kentucky (the prairie population; Wilson 1877:I, 401). Even after the Martha's Vineyard population was officially protected, poaching continued. Massachusetts had first passed a law protecting them in 1830, but without funds to enforce it. On 18 May 1916, a strong wind blew a fire to cover over twenty square miles that included a state Heath Hen reservation (Hamerstrom 1994:116). Before the fire, there were about 2000 of them. In 1917, there were about 175. The Vineyard Gazette published an obituary on the Heath Hen on 21 April 33. There had been an active effort to prevent its extinction in the wild, but apparently no captive breeding and release program. Wildlife threatened or extinct were not limited to large mammals and birds, but included fishes, amphibians, reptiles, insects, and plants (Matthiessen 1987:285–302). Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, which enabled citizens to buy federal land at an affordable price. The General Land Office's surveys became important for these sales. George Perkins Marsh (1801–82) was the son of a lawyer in Woodstock, Vermont. As a boy, he enjoyed nature and was moved by the clear-cutting of nearby forests, followed by erosion, wildfires, and flooding, and later, too little restoration (Curtis et al. 1982, Lowenthal 2000, Trombulak 2001). He studied law and entered into a partnership in 1825, which went well until his partner died in 1832. He struggled on for another decade before giving up and running for Congress, where he served from 1843 to 1849, strongly opposing slavery. He also helped turn James Smithson's bequest to the United States into the Smithsonian Institution. He then entered the U.S. Diplomatic Service as Ambassador to Turkey and later to Italy, where he died. What he saw in both countries was human impact on the environment over more than 2000 years. He joined that in his mind with his childhood memories of Vermont forests being turned into wastelands. The result was the first founding treatise of the environmental movement: Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864). Its introduction discussed environments which he had seen around the Mediterranean Sea, followed by chapters on Extirpation of Vegetable and Animal Species, The Woods, The Waters, The Sands, and Projected or Possible Geographical Changes by Man. Americans had other things on their minds in 1864, but the Civil War was almost over, and then, they contemplated how to rebuild a better nation. Physician, forester, and statistician Franklin B. Hough (1822–1885), from Martinsburg, New York, was in charge of the 1870 U.S. Census, from which he found evidence of a decline in availability of timber (Steen 1976:9–20, Curran 1997, 1999). In 1875, a meeting was held in Chicago to organize the American Forestry Association (AFA). Its members collected statistical information on forests, timber production, reforestation, and it also published descriptions of commercially important trees. Hough was an active member, who advocated founding of schools of forestry. In 1876, members encouraged Congress to establish an office to oversee the U.S. forests. Congress created a special agent position in the Department of Agriculture (USDA), to which Hough was appointed. He traveled widely and published a Report on Forestry (1877, 650 pages). In 1881, a Division of Forestry was established in the Department of Agriculture, with Hough the chief in 1881–83. He published Elements of Forestry (1882), the first such textbook in America. It included chapters of ecological relevance, on soils, climate, reproduction, fires, and insects. Hough left a legacy worthy of a father of U.S. Forestry, but his successor, Nathaniel Egleston, was only a time server, for three years (Steen 1976:20–21). The Forest Service published a commemorative volume, 100 Years of Federal Forestry (1976), by William Bergoffen. Bergoffen had appropriate words for Hough (1976:20) and did not mention Egleston. Egleston was relieved to be replaced in 1886 by professional forester Bernhard Fernow (1851–1923). Fernow had attended Prussia's Forest Academy at Muended and then worked in Prussia's Forest Service for seven years (Rodgers 1951, 623 pages, Belonzi 1997, West 1999, Mazel 1996). He came to America to attend the 1876 meeting of the American Forestry Association, which was undoubtedly an excuse for him to rejoin his American fiancée, whom he married, and became an American citizen (Steen 1976:23–25). As America's first professionally trained forester, he became the AFA's executive secretary, 1883–95. He served as the third chief (1886–98) of the U.S. Division of Forestry, USDA (Steen 1976:index). However, America's forests were administered by the Department of Interior until transferred to USDA in 1905. In 1898, Fernow became the first dean of the New York State College of Forestry, at Cornell University. However, that only lasted until 1903, when the New York Governor vetoed funds for the College, because he disagreed with one of Fernow's programs. In 1907, Fernow became the first head of the Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Canada. At a local level, officers at the Halifax Garrison, Nova Scotia, encouraged urban sportsmen to organize a Game and Inland Fishery Protection Society in 1852 (Loo 2006:14). Their concern to prevent unrestrained hunting and fishing was so impressive that by 1884, local government authorized its members to enforce wildlife laws. Was that the first provision for enforcing such laws in North America? The Hudson Bay Company had received a royal charter in England in 1670, and it was managed well enough to have persisted ever since. During the 1800s, it had considerable influence around Hudson Bay and beyond, and it was concerned that trappers who provided it with beaver furs not trap all the beaver and have the fur trade disappear as a business, as happened in the States. It gained a sophisticated understanding of how to maintain beavers and the fur trade, and it had the influence to succeed at it (Loo 2006:15). American railroads were soon followed by Canadian railroads, which impacted western Canadian wildlife as it had further south. American Progressives were preaching reform, and their writings had some influence in Canada. Provincial governments saw that game laws were ineffectual without game wardens to enforce them, and they hired them. Three successive men in the wealthy New York Roosevelt clan became concerned about habitat preservation (without the term, which came later); they were not fathers and sons, yet their life spans overlapped, and they were all lawyers-politicians-authors. First was Robert Barnwell Roosevelt (1829–1906). He enjoyed hunting and fishing, which was his exposure to over-hunting, over-fishing, and decline in habitat quality (Harmond 1997, 2009b). He expressed those concerns in three early books: Game Fish of the Northern States of America and British Provinces (1862); Superior Fishing: or the Striped Bass, Trout, and Black Bass of the Northern States (1865); and Game Birds of the Coasts and Lakes of Northern States of America (1866). He was elected to Congress from New York City, 1871–73, and he became an enthusiastic supporter of the new U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries (Reiger 2001:index). In 1877, he became president of the New York Association for the Protection of Game, which regularly lobbied New York State Legislature on behalf of wildlife. Two more Roosevelts (presidents) are discussed below. John Muir (1838–1914) was born in Dunbar, Scotland; in March 1849, his father and three of his seven children (including John) sailed to America to find a farm; his wife and four other children would sail when he found a place to live. They bought a farm in south-central Wisconsin, in Marquette County, on a lake they named Fountain Lake (Melham 1976:24–37, Clarke 1980:2–27, Turner 1985:36–50, Leshuk 1988, Strong 1988:85–110, Cammarata and Sterling 1997, Dillon 1999b, Worster 2008:13–66, Zuzworsky 2009). The farm was in an isolated area, and John educated himself. He was also very inventive, and in 1960, he exhibited some inventions at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair, in Madison. (Melham 1976:34–41, Clarke 1980:26–31, Turner 1985:78, 89–91, Worster 2008:72–73). They were impressive enough to get him admitted to the University of Wisconsin's preparatory school, and from that into the university itself (Turner 1985:89–91, Worster 2008:72–73). He stayed through the school year 1862–63, where he studied geology, botany, and developed his ability to write. He also attended lectures by Professor Ezra Carr, who taught chemistry and natural history. They became friends, and later Muir also became friends with Carr's wife, Jeanne (Turner 1985:index, Worster 2008:76–81). Ezra Carr was an education reformer, which the University administration did not like, and he was dismissed in 1867. The Carrs left for California, from where they corresponded with Muir. John's younger brother, Dan, being a pacifist, had traveled to Canada to evade being drafted into the Union Army, and eventually John joined him. In 1866, they began work at a small family woodworking mill, which appreciated John's inventive ability. Later, Muir returned to the United States and found work at a woodworking factory in Indianapolis. One day, he was making repairs and his file slipped and pierced his right eye. An ophthalmologist told him to stay in a dark room for several weeks and his eyesight should return (Melham 1976:40–44, Clarke 1980:50, Worster 2008:96–113). He did, and while awaiting recovery, he rethought his goals in life. After recovering in fall of 1867, he walked 1,000 miles to Cedar Key, Florida, on the Gulf Coast (Melham 1976:42–73, Hunt 2012), and from there he sailed to San Francisco, via Cuba, New York City, and the Isthmus of Panama (Melham 1976:76, Clarke 1980:51–58, Worster 2008:145–148). He had heard of Yosemite [State] Park, and in 1868 he walked 100 miles to it, and felt he had reached home. He worked herding and shearing sheep, but he disapproved of them there because of the damage their hoofs did to the soil and their grazing did to the low-level vegetation (author's note: When I visited Yosemite Valley at the end of August 1956, sheep were still there!) Muir turned to writing articles to express his concerns, which were influential, and later he also published books. He had charisma, so when his readers met him, they increased their admiration for his defense of nature from human destruction, and for his fervor in his self-appointed mission. By 1864, Yosemite Valley had attracted enough tourists to require some supervision, yet the Federal Government which owned it was preoccupied by the Civil War. Therefore, California Senator John Conness proposed to Congress that the valley be given to California for a state park, which was a new idea (Duncan 2009:8). Congress agreed and transferred about 60 square miles for the first state park in history to California. Perhaps that was an improvement, but Muir was unimpressed by its upkeep when he arrived four years later. By 1870, a unique semi-volcanic geological wilderness area at the Yellowstone River had also attracted the interest of explor
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