The Fifth Wave (Part Two)
The Third Wave
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. This was no accident—these components represented important shortcomings of the previous two waves. 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 became a pressing concern after the war as the suburban and exurban development of private land sped up considerably. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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