conservation – American Environments to 1893

May 8, 2014

More of the Same

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I was browsing the news recently and came upon the article, “The Landscape-Scarring, Energy-Sucking, Wildlife-Killing Reality of Pot Farming,” by Josh Harkinson. This article is about “your wilderness on drugs,” and describes how illegal ganja farmers in California nature preserves do great harm to the environment by damming streams, using rodenticides, and intimidating forest service officers. Because pot cultivation is still illegal in California, the government is unable to establish regulations or agricultural infrastructure tailored to the industry’s specific needs. I was drawn to this article because it touches on a lot of the themes we discussed in class this semester. The mostly illegal flow of capital resulting from the expansion of the marijuana industry has changed the landscape of the California wilderness. Like Justin mentioned in his post on Jacoby, the conservation movement in America has been a tale of binaries. In this tradition, we are now seeing a similar binary. The social measures keep marijuana illegal, which is also scientifically antithetical, now threatens scientific considerations in the form of damage to protected ecosystems. In the future I believe we will see histories much like Jacoby’s on this subject.

April 14, 2014

Class Conflict in American Environmental History

In Crimes Against Nature, Karl Jacoby looks at the American conservation movement in a more class-based way than many previous historians have. As he outlines in the epilogue, a big part of his argument is the way that the elites in control of ecological movements demonized and illegalized the environmental practices of poor, rural Americans in order to exert control over both them and the land. (194-195) As Justin notes in his post, the conservation movement seemed to create new norms of ecological practice that were favorable to those in charge. I also noticed something interesting about Jacoby’s research in the book’s preface. He says that he did not originally intend to focus on conflicts between those in charge of the state park movement and poor people breaking the law, but that he found so many instances of that happening in his initial research that he decided to change his topic around. (xv-xvi) He also says that his perception of such conflicts was that they only happened in third world countries in places like Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the conservation movements were led by European colonists. (xv)

This peaked my interest because of an African environmental history class I previously took at Davidson, where we learned a lot about such movements in colonized countries in Africa. Many authors we read argued, much like Jacoby does, that the Europeans in control of these countries used environmental policies to oppress the native Africans under the guise of a desire to protect resources. For example, colonists in South Africa prosecuted poaching quite severely and enacted rules banning natives from owning hunting dogs, claiming that their efforts were guided by a desire to protect hunted animals. Like Jacoby, I find it especially interesting how easily comparable the conservation movements of Africa and the U.S. are in regards to what it points out about the relationship between elites and non-elites. If one accepts Jacoby’s argument, then in this particular aspect of environmental preservation, there are legitimate comparisons to be made between the way elites treated poor Americans and the way Europeans treated Africans. I believe most people would be quite surprised to hear such a comparison be made. And ultimately, that sense of surprise is why I enjoyed Jacoby’s book. It was very interesting to see the American conservation movement studied in this new light, and I believe it represents a big corner being turned in the historiography of American history, both environmentally and in regards to class conflict.

April 14, 2014

A Subaltern Environmental History

Karl Jacoby’s Crimes Against Nature is a history that strives to take a look at the underbelly of the Conservation movement in American history. His “bottom-up” approach chronicles the evolution of a moral ecology which straddles the fence between official conservation standards and traditional ecological practices. I would say that this reminds me of the populist politics class I took last semester, except the fact these areas being conserved by the government were too sparsely populated for effective populist action. As a result, the conflict was very one sided and Jacoby notes that the history reflects this as an environmental crusade waged by the “pantheon of Conservationist prophets” (1).

Like Wade, I was also reminded of our discussions about the role of capitalism in shaping environments while reading this book. What I found most interesting about Jacoby’s take on this, however, is the unconventional intersection of morality and capitalism. In this class, the focus when discussing capitalism has been primarily the economic and ecological aspects. Unfortunately, the chances of morality and capitalism working together to create a better method of conservation as they remain “separate guiding stars in a dark night sky” (198).

April 14, 2014

Crimes Against Nature: Conceptions of Nature and Morality

Karl Jacoby, in his Crimes Against Nature, discusses the land set-aside during the conservation movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the “the law and its antithesis-lawlessness” (2). I found it interesting that the conservation movement began when American lawmakers redefined what was considered legitimate uses of the environment. The philosophies that shaped these lawmakers and their decisions trickled down to the ordinary folk and their interactions with the environment therefore changed. Jacoby refers to the moral universe that shaped the local transgression of conservation laws that gives historians a look into the beliefs and traditions of the people as “moral ecology” (3). Poaching, arson, and squatting take center-stage in Jacoby’s work on conceptions of nature and environmental crimes.

Jacoby argues that there is more to the traditional story about the elite imposing their ideas about nature on rural places and rural folk. The country folk did not ignorantly break the laws, but actually resisted conservation programs that threatened livelihoods and “fashioned a variety of arrangements designed to safeguard the ecological basis of their way of life” (193). Studying the formation of the Adirondack Park by New York State, the federal government’s attempts to manage Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon conservation plans, Jacoby shows how these actions impacted the resident peoples. With the involvement of the military, conservation schemes affected those living in and using the parks, such as those who desired to use the public land for hunting. Conservationists even opposed the supposed American rights to take timber, water, and minerals from the preserved lands. He points out that sometimes, “Americans have often pursued environmental quality at the expense of social justice” (198). In this way, the conservation movement challenged American republicanism and democracy, interfering with traditional conceptions of American rights and living.

An interesting myth that Jacoby also challenges is the myth that conservationists protected unchanging wilderness, when, in fact, conservationism transformed the countryside itself. Fire, hunting laws, and restocking wildlife helped transform the country in this way. With the transformation of nature, the Yellowstone Act of 1872, and the American obsession with claiming property, I agree with Anthony’s statement that these actions “reflect our obsession with fencing off and owning property and reflects our abuse of the world ‘natural.” Yellowstone Park, protected by conservationists, ironically prevented people from performing previously conceived “natural” actions. This irony echoes the discussion we often have in class: whether or not the actions of mankind can be considered natural or not. How do lawmakers and conservationists decide what is natural on one side of the fence when that action can occur without consequence on the other side? I find this absurd. Jacoby’s work made me ponder what is considered a “crime” and how “crime” is truly a man-made concept, easily impacted by lawmakers and evolving ideas about morality and the environment.

April 13, 2014

The Myths of Conservationism

After reading Karl Jacoby’s Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation I reached a similar conclusion as Brandon. In his post Brandon talks about how Jacoby was able to successfully present a viable alternative narrative to both the ideas of wilderness in relationship to mankind and the conservation movement as a whole. This alternative view was one that was put forward by middle and low income individuals rather than elites who had usually dominated the conversation. This dominance by elites was a major reason why the stories and beliefs of the lower class members of society were largey overlooked in historical analysis and is why Jacoby’s book was particularly attractive to me.

What I really appreciated about his book were the myths of the conservation movement that he presented in the epilogue. The conservation movement many times is labeled as an honorable movement. While many acknowledged that it was never as successful as was originally hoped, the original goals were pure. However, Jacoby with his myth busting aims helps the reader understand some of the flaws in the foundation of conservasionism.

The first myth was that the belief that rural folk who were squatting or poaching on the land “did as they pleased with the natural world.” (193) This was not true. Jacoby argued that these rural folk has a greater understanding of ecological preservation than those in the cities gave them credit for. They established systems so as not to harm beyond repair the environments on which they relied upon. This did not mean that rural folks did no harm or that their systems successfully brought order to chaotic situation. Instead Jacoby asserted that these rural folks should not be labeled as the enemy to the movement.

Another important myth that Jacoby tries to debunk is the idea of conserved spaces as natural. This is an idea that we have talked about on multiple ocassions this semester. Jacoby does a good job of revealing the manufactured nature of these “natural” conservatories. While conservationists argued that the protection of spaces from industrial and commercial interests would keep those spaces natural, Jacoby argued that the imposition of legal rules and the managerial role of state made the space inherently unnatural. The environment in these places was controlled and thus the natural processes of the area were not allowed to flow unimpeded.

The final myth that Jacoby discusses has to do with the belief that science and the state need to be used to protect the environment from the rural folk. Jacoby however, saw this flawed belief as revealing a hidden theme in conservation history. This was the promotion of environmental justice over social justice. The needs of people such as the squatters were overlooked in exchange for the protection of abstract notions such as wilderness and nature, ideas that can be perceived differerntly throughout the nation. It is also ironic that science was being promoted as a possible solution to natural degredation, for the rise of industrialism ( a result of both the natural and social sciences) was a major contributor to the deterioization of the environement that prompted a conservasion movement. With this perspective it should not have been the rural folk who were restricted but those who actually created the problem. By exploring these myths and presenting alternative perspectives Jacoby has done a good job of painting a greater picture of conservatism and revealing the unstudied aspect of the subject.