It wasn’t all about acquisition, however. By 1974, TNC was working in all fifty states, often in tandem with state and federal agencies. This new strategy of buying and preserving land caused the organization to grow rapidly. Six years later, it donated its first conservation easement, which restricts development rights on a property in perpetuity, on six acres of salt marsh, again in Connecticut. In 1955, the organization made its first purchase-sixty acres along the New York–Connecticut border. The Ecologists Union changed its name in 1951 to the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and embarked on a novel strategy: private land acquisition for ecological protection. But a growing number of scientists believed this strategy wasn’t sufficient any longer because it largely overlooked privately owned property-land that was rapidly being paved over in the postwar boom. Parks, forests, refuges, wilderness areas, and game preserves were the dominant means by which protection was provided to critical areas in the years leading up to World War II. The protection of biologically significant parcels of land had traditionally been the job of the federal government, state wildlife agencies, or private hunting and fishing groups. In 1946, a small group of scientists in New England formed an organization called the Ecologists Union with the goal of saving threatened natural areas on private land, especially biological hot spots that contained important native plant and animal species. An illustrative example is the rise and growth of the Nature Conservancy, a landmark nonprofit organization that is now one of the largest conservation groups in the world. Meanwhile, the rise of ecology and other environmental disciplines meant that data and scientific study could now complement, and sometimes supplant, the emotional and romantic nature of environmentalism. This became a pressing concern after the war as the suburban and exurban development of private land sped up considerably. Federalism, by definition, focused on public lands, which meant that one-half of the American West-its privately owned land-had been largely neglected by the conservation movement. This was no accident-these components represented important shortcomings of the previous two waves. The next wave of conservation, which stirred after World War II, had two principal components: an emphasis on science and a focus on private land.
0 kommentar(er)
