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| Marsh in his younger years. |
Some say that George
Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) was the father of the American Conservation Movement.
This is mostly because of his pioneering novel, Man and Nature, which was based on actual observations and increased
involvement within the push for a greater environmental awareness. A man of
great vision and insight, he tried to create an ideal way to cut down on
deforestation and prevent massive destruction of forests and landscapes from
happening.
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| Marsh's famous book. |
Marsh was born in 1801
on Mount Tom in Vermont. He was introduced to an already ruined environment at
an early age, as excess logging and farming combined with forest fires had left
once-lush forests almost completely bare. Marsh based most of his ideas on
ecological preservation on the places that he viewed in his own hometown,
places that were all victims of ecoterrorism and damage through a desire for
more resources.
When he first released
his book Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human
Action, in 1864, he expressed all his beliefs about environmental
preservation. The book is known for how it “recognized the interrelatedness of
human and environmental systems and provided one of the first discussions of
humans as agents of global environmental change.”
A revised addition of
the book, which was titled The Earth as Modified by Human Action: Man and
Nature, was released in 1874. In it, he tried to create a more in-depth
explanation as to his intentions in writing something like this, and to give
further meaning into his discussion of how we are not simply passive
inhabitants on the planet we live on.
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| An older, more heavily bearded Marsh. |
In addition to his writings
on environmental conservation, Marsh was also a linguist and a diplomat. He gave
speeches about his ideals and how mankind can work together to achieve them.
One of the more famous ones was his 1847 speech to a local agricultural society
in Vermont, where he warned farmers of overstepping their boundaries by
clearing away too many trees. Marsh was also widely travelled, and spent a long
period of his life gathering information on the agricultural patterns of other
places in both America and other countries.
He was very important in
the movement towards raising awareness about the conditions of the environment
because of his diplomatic ways, and how he provided evidence for a clear
argument against human-produced environmental damage.
Sources:
(Raven, Peter H., Linda
R. Berg, and David M. Hassenzahl. Environment: 8th. Somerset: John Wiley, 2012.
Print.)
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