Preserving the nation

by Thomas Raymond Wellock

Wellock explores the international, rural, and industrial roots of modern environmentalism that emerged in the last half of the nineteenth century -- three related movements in response to a rapidly expanding economy and population that depleted the nation's resources, damaged land in rural areas, and blighted cities. The first group favoured the conservation and efficient management of natural resources for production. The second, the preservationists, sought to protect scenic and wilderness areas and to sustain the spirit of the nation's pioneer heritage and virility. The third group, the urban environmentalists, sought reform to control industrial pollution and retard urban decay. Politically powerful and widely admired, resource management overshadowed the other two movements until the 1950s. After World War II, the two less-powerful strands of the movement, preservationism and urban environmentalism, wove into one, as the accelerating effects of affluence, scientific discovery, Co