Historically Speaking: Democracy Helped Seed National Parks

Green spaces and nature preserves have long existed, but the idea of protecting natural wonders for human enjoyment has American roots.

The Wall Street Journal

March 3, 2022

Yellowstone, the world’s oldest national park, turned 150 this month. The anniversary of its founding is a timely reminder that democracy isn’t just a political system but a way of life. The Transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau was one of the earliest Americans to link democratic values with national parks. Writing in 1858 he declared that having “renounced the king’s authority” over their land, Americans should use their hard-won freedom to create national preserves for “inspiration and our own true re-creation.”

There had been nature reserves, royal hunting grounds, pleasure gardens and parks long before Yellowstone, of course. The origins of green spaces can be traced to ancient Egypt’s temple gardens. Hyde Park, which King Charles I opened to Londoners in 1637, led the way for public parks. In the 3rd century B.C., King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka created the Mihintale nature reserve as a wildlife sanctuary, prefiguring by more than 2,000 years the likely first modern nature reserve, which the English naturalist Charles Waterton built on his estate in Yorkshire in the 1820s.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park, 1920. GAMMA-KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

The 18th century saw a flowering of interest in man’s relationship with nature, and these ideas encouraged better management of the land. The English scientist Stephen Hale demonstrated the correlation between tree coverage and rainfall, leading a British MP named Soame Jenyns to convince Parliament to found the Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve in 1776. The protection of the Caribbean colony’s largest forest was a watershed moment in the history of conservation. Highly motivated individuals soon started conservation projects in multiple countries.

As stewards of their newly independent nation, Americans regarded their country’s natural wonders as places to be protected for the people rather than from them. (Niagara Falls, already marred by development when Alexis de Tocqueville visited in 1831, served as a cautionary example of legislative failure.) The first attempt to create a public nature reserve was at the state level: In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act, giving the land to California “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation.” But the initiative lacked any real oversight.

Many groups pushed for a federal system of national parks. Among them were the Transcendentalists, environmentalists and landscape painters such as George Catlin, Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, but the ultimate credit belongs to the geologist Ferdinand Hayden, who surveyed Yellowstone in 1871. The mass acclaim following his expedition finally convinced Congress to turn Yellowstone into a national park.

Unfortunately, successive administrations failed to provide sufficient funds for its upkeep, and Yellowstone suffered years of illegal poaching and exploitation. In desperation, the federal government sent the U.S. Army in to take control of the park in 1886. The idea proved to be an inspired one. The military was such a conscientious custodian that its management style became the model for the newly created National Park Service in 1916.

The NPS currently oversees 63 National Parks. But the ethos hasn’t changed since the Yellowstone Act of 1872 set aside 2 million pristine acres “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” These words are now engraved above the north entrance to the park, an advertisement, as the novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner once wrote, that national parks are “absolutely American, absolutely democratic.”

Historically Speaking: A Legacy of Tinderbox Forests

Long before climate change exacerbated the problem, policies meant to suppress wildfires served to fan the flames

The Wall Street Journal

August 19, 2021

This year’s heat waves and droughts have led to record-breaking wildfires across three continents. The fires in Siberia are so vast that smoke has reached the North Pole for what is believed to be the first time. In the United States, California’s Dixie Fire has become the largest single fire in the state’s history.

Humans have long wrestled with forest fire, seeking by turns to harness and to suppress it. Early European efforts to control forest fires were tentative and patchy. In the 14th century, the Sardinians experimented with fire breaks, but the practice was slow to catch on. In North America, by contrast, scientists have found 2000-year-old evidence of controlled burnings by Native American tribes. But this practice died out with the arrival of European immigrants, because of local bans as well as the expulsion of tribes from native lands. As a consequence, forests not only became larger and denser but also filled with mounds of dead and dried vegetation, making them very susceptible to fire.

Disaster struck in the fall of 1871. Dozens of wildfires broke out simultaneously across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, and on Oct. 8, the same night as the Chicago Fire, a firestorm engulfed the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing an estimated 1,200 people (and possibly many more). The fire was the deadliest in U.S. history.

ILLUSTRATION: ANTHONY FREDA

Early conservationists, such as Franklin Hough, sought to organize a national wildfire policy. The U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905 and was still figuring out its mission in 1910, when the northern Rockies went up in flames. Fires raced through Washington, Montana and Idaho, culminating in what is known as the “Big Blowup” of August 20 and 21.

One of the U.S. Forest Service’s newly minted rangers, Edward C. Pulaski, was leading a team of 45 firefighters near Wallace, Idaho. A firestorm surrounded the men, forcing Pulaski to lead them down a disused mine shaft. Several attempted to go back outside, believing they would be cooked alive in the smoke-filled mine. Pulaski managed to stop the suicidal exodus by threatening to shoot any man who tried to leave. To maintain morale, he organized a water bucket chain to prevent the blankets covering the exit from catching fire. Pulaski’s actions saved the lives of all but five of the firefighters, but his eyesight and lungs never recovered.

The Big Blowup destroyed more than 3 million acres in two days and killed at least 80 people. In response to the devastation, the Forest Service, with the public’s support, adopted the mistaken goal of total fire suppression rather than fire management. The policy remained in place until 1978, bequeathing to the country a legacy of tinderbox forests.

Nowadays, the Forest Service conducts controlled burns, known as prescribed fires, to mitigate the risk of wildfire. The technique is credited with helping to contain July’s 413,000-acre Bootleg Fire in Oregon.

Fire caused by the effects of climate change will require human intervention of another order. In the Bible’s Book of Isaiah, the unhappy “sinners of Zion” cry out: ‘”Who of us can live where there is a consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” Who, indeed.