Nature's Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World

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Introduction

One accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment to Kenya’s forests; one was murdered for protecting the forests of Brazil. One proclaimed his message in drawings on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers; one made his statement in waders on the banks of the Nisqually River. One walked thousands of miles on a lifelong journey of self-discovery; one seldom left her suburban Maryland home. One directed our attention to the natural rhythms of a small Wisconsin farm; one asked us to consider the entire globe as our backyard.

This book profiles the lives of eight great conservationists. A few are well known to people everywhere—ask anyone to name a famous conservationist or environmentalist, and the names of John Muir and Rachel Carson are sure to come up. Some names might ring a bell—Aldo Leopold, Wangari Maathai, and Gro Harlem Brundtland—but the reason might be harder to remember. And the names of Ding Darling, Billy Frank Jr., and Chico Mendes will be new to most readers. My goal is to bring their stories—their highs and lows, their admirable traits and human weaknesses, their triumphs and failures—to all who are interested in making the world a bit better through conservation. Their stories are tributes, of course, but more importantly they are examples of what each of us might be and do on behalf of the sustainability of our world—as an ally to nature.

This book is loosely patterned after another book of short biographies. In 1954, Senator John F. Kennedy was bedridden after back surgery. His back, already weakened and battered throughout his early life, was especially damaged during World War II when the small Navy vessel he captained—PT-109—was rammed and sunk by a larger Japanese ship while the PT boat was on night duty in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy heroically led his surviving crewmen to safety on a small island, where they were rescued several days later. A decade after his wartime injury, Kennedy’s back needed extensive surgical repair—and months of recovery time. Kennedy used his time as an invalid to research and coauthor the book Profiles in Courage, along with Theodore Sorensen, his colleague and lifelong advisor.¹ Their book tells the stories of eight United States senators who risked their offices and careers to stand up for what they believed—even when those beliefs were unpopular. The authors announce in the preface that they have attempted to set forth their lives—the ideals they lived for and the principles they fought for, their virtues and their sins, their dreams and their disillusionments, the praise they earned and the abuse they endured.² Profiles in Courage won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957. I read the book as a teenager—it was intended for young readers—and found the stories inspirational.

Throughout my career, I have wanted to write a similar book to portray the lives of individuals who have made a difference for our natural environment. Conservation is still a young field—most accounts mark its birth at Teddy Roosevelt’s 1908 Governors’ Conference on Conservation—and thus our history is still tied closely to the actions and accomplishments of specific persons. And as broadly enacted public policy, both in the developed and developing world, conservation is even younger. In many parts of the world, considerations of conservation are still just beginning to emerge as significant elements of how we govern our lives.

My decision to include lives from a continuum of conservation fame is purposeful. I asked many people to give me suggestions for persons to include. Most rattled off a list of the usual suspects, like John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, and Aldo Leopold. However, once the lives of a few were told (of the more famous, I chose John Muir and Aldo Leopold), the stories of the others seemed redundant, as did those of many of the other prominent leaders of the early conservation movement. Some colleagues suggested names that reach further back in history—George Perkins Marsh, for example—or that evoke a more philosophical tradition, like Emerson and Thoreau. While these names are important as precursors of conservation, I have chosen to stick closer to the actual practice of the field—people who rode the trails, dug the holes, and planted the trees on their way to making a national or international impact. Equally important was moving beyond the mainstream of American conservation to represent a fuller diversity of contributions. Because all people, everywhere, have a role in conservation, three biographies feature stories from Africa, South America, and Europe.

Regardless of how, where, or when these eight individuals lived, they truly did create the concepts of conservation by which we live today. Each was—or is, in the case of Gro Harlem Brundtland—a pioneer in some aspect of conservation, environmentalism, or sustainability. Their accomplishments vary, of course. Some occurred long ago, like John Muir’s successful campaign for the establishment of Yosemite National Park. Others are much more recent, like Billy Frank Jr.’s David-and-Goliath campaign to gain recognition for treaties that assured Native American fishing rights. However, as in both those cases, the specific result led to replication of the impact in park after park and fishery after fishery, not only in the United States but also around the world.

Several leaders are known mostly for boiling down the wisdom and experience of a lifetime of work into a signature written volume: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac grace the bookshelves of professional and avocational conservationists around the world. In Gro Harlem Brundtland’s case, her impact is represented in just twenty-two words—the universally accepted definition of sustainability. These accomplishments have no specific action or target, but they inspired new perspectives that have revolutionized public policies, private decisions, and personal attitudes.

Some of these conservation leaders made their mark through sheer hard work. Wangari Maathai huddled on the ground with her fellow Kenyan wives and mothers to plant more than 50 million trees. Chico Mendes tramped the trails of the Amazonian rain forest to support communities of rubber tappers and the trees on which they depend. Because of Maathai and Mendes, forests remain and thrive on the great continents of Africa and South America, under the spotlight of public awareness and the protection of conscientious governments.

And then there is Ding Darling, who defies categorization. A political cartoonist who loved wildlife, Darling used his editorial privilege to tell the story of environmental degradation on the front pages of scores of daily newspapers. Then, in a gesture of monumental humility (and perhaps with an underlying dose of hubris), he went to Washington to do something about it. Less than two years later, the United States had a functioning wildlife refuge system and a mechanism—the duck stamp—that has paid to keep it going.

When I began this project, I wondered what the lives of these eight great conservationists might have had in common. Perhaps, I thought, each was a biologist, educated in the emerging discipline of ecology. Indeed, some of them were: Wangari Maathai earned a doctorate in biology, Gro Harlem Brundtland is a medical doctor, and Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold each held master’s degrees. Ding Darling eventually earned an undergraduate degree, and John Muir gave it the old college try for a couple of years. But Billy Frank Jr. and Chico Mendes seldom saw the inside of a school. So a formal education—especially higher education—doesn’t seem to be a requirement to create conservation.

Do wealth and social standing play a dominant role? Gro Harlem Brundtland and Aldo Leopold both came from money and status, but it seems that more fundamental values were at play as well; both grew up in homes dominated by concerns of ethics and integrity rather than worries about getting ahead of the next person. John Muir’s family actually threw away its prominent status in Scotland to establish a new, rough-hewn life in Wisconsin; eventually Muir became a wealthy man, but it most certainly was not his primary intention. The others—Ding Darling, Rachel Carson, Wangari Maathai, Billy Frank Jr., and Chico Mendes—were all people of modest means. Although Ding Darling and Rachel Carson became successful, their financial comfort was much more a by-product of their accomplishments than a route to them.

Were they all adventurers who set out to escape from the constraints of everyday life? That describes John Muir to a large extent and Aldo Leopold a bit. But most were ordinary folks living in ordinary surroundings: Wangari Maathai in Nairobi, Ding Darling in his Iowa newspaper office, Rachel Carson in the Washington suburbs, and Gro Harlem Brundtland in downtown Oslo. Billy Frank Jr. and Chico Mendes lived and worked where they were born. Most of these leaders, however, did have a refuge where they could get away—a Florida cottage for Darling and one in Maine for Carson, and a famous little farm for Leopold. John Muir enjoyed a not-so-cozy hideaway that became Yosemite National Park. So, perhaps, having one foot in civilization and another in nature does keep a conservationist motivated and grounded.

Were they all scientists? Far from it. In fact, I consider only one—Aldo Leopold—to be a professional conservationist. Rachel Carson worked as a scientist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, but had resigned to be a full-time author well before her significant conservation contribution, Silent Spring, was even imagined. The others were all amateurs—a cartoonist, medical doctor, union organizer, commercial fisherman. Wangari Maathai was a tree-planter, a sort of modern day Johnny Appleseed. And John Muir just called himself a tramp.

The absence of a stereotypical life pattern shouldn’t really be a surprise. Of course their lives followed different paths from different beginnings and with different purposes. Like all of us, these are complex individuals, each of whom had her or his own story. But aside from their demographic differences, I see that three common characteristics flow through each of their lives: passion, persistence, and partnerships.

Passion

All eight were fired from within by a passion to understand, protect, and enhance our environment. For some, the passion started from infancy. Rachel Carson was raised by a mother who believed that nature was the best teacher—and she raised her daughter to be a keen observer of nature. Aldo Leopold spent his youth hunting with his father, but the more important part of every outing was the simple experience of nature. For others, the passion grew with the coming of age. Ding Darling and his brother rode their horses at breakneck speed across the unbroken prairie, immersing themselves in the wonder of their surroundings. John Muir slipped into nature as often as possible in order to escape a repressive home life as a boy in Scotland and a young man in Wisconsin. Gro Harlem Brundtland always enjoyed nature, but gradually she became conscious of its importance as her education broadened. For Wangari Maathai, Chico Mendes, and Billy Frank Jr., however, nature was just where they lived and how their families made their livings.

Yet each came to realize that the relationship between humans and nature needed attention. Wangari Maathai and Ding Darling saw the beauty and bounty of their memories erased by careless destruction of farmland. Chico Mendes rebelled as Amazonian rain forests were cleared and burned for cattle ranches, and he applied a unique form of protest to confront the devastation. Rachel Carson heard the stories of wildlife death caused by the aerial spraying of pesticides, and although she didn’t want to get involved, she felt compelled to right the wrongs she was observing. John Muir and Aldo Leopold understood the utilitarian benefits of nature, but they also realized that overuse was worse than underuse; a generation apart from each other, they fought for the protection of lands as parks or wilderness areas. Billy Frank Jr. and other Native American commercial fishermen knew the truth from their personal experience—too much harvest this year means too few fish next year. And Gro Harlem Brundtland grew to understand the links between the human condition and environmental conditions on a worldwide scale as chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development.

Wangari Maathai expressed the need for passion in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 2004:

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace: there can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space.³

Persistence

Passion may be necessary for accomplishment, but it is not sufficient. Many lives burn brightly for a short time and then fade as the fuel of passion runs low. Life, as some would say, gets in the way. Each of the lives recounted here, however, also reveals the essence of persistence as a condition of success. By studying a person’s entire life—not just their pinnacle achievements, like A Sand County Almanac or a Nobel Peace Prize—we can see their struggles, failures, courage, and persistence shining through.

John Muir straddled a world between nature and industrialism as a young man, but when an accident left him temporarily blind, his decision to commit himself to nature, not commerce, was a commitment that would last his entire life. Severe illnesses threatened Rachel Carson’s ability to work every day of her adult life, yet she continued the painstaking task of creating Silent Spring. Billy Frank Jr. was imprisoned more than fifty times in his struggle to acquire the Indian fishing rights guaranteed in treaties with the US government; he didn’t give up, never tiring of the battle and finding some other way to make a living. After years of complaining about how incompetent the federal government was, Ding Darling swallowed his pride and went to work for a man he abhorred—President Franklin Roosevelt—just so he could advance the cause of conservation. Friends warned Chico Mendes and Wangari Maathai again and again to stay away from the dangerous movements they had created, but neither would give up the cause—a cause Mendes paid for with his life. And Gro Harlem Brundtland and Aldo Leopold just kept at it, landing and losing positions, suffering defeats as well as victories, project after project, over lifetimes of accomplishments, large and small, on behalf of us