Evolution of the Environmental Movement

Essay by BlackholesunCollege, UndergraduateA+, December 2007

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History of the Environmental MovementThe Environmental Movement is one of great importance in our world today. It has been molded and shaped for over 200 hundred years now, possibly more. To fully understand this movement that is now taking claims as a revolution, we must see how it began, how and why it developed and changed over the years and what it has become, and accomplished. The Environmental movement has flourished more over just the past 3 decades more than in all the rest of its history. Although its awareness has been on a steady rise there is still a need to inform people of how important it actually is and how it will affect our lives for the next few decades, maybe even centuries.

There is some debate over the who, where, when, why and hows of the beginnings of the Environmental Movement. The earliest possible beginning is that which includes Reverend Nicholas Collins.

Collins is recorded to have asked the American Philosophical Society to help protect the birds of North America until science learned their role in the "oeconomy of nature" (Shabecoff). More understandably he did not want the birds to become extinct before their ecological role or niche was discovered. Although this was just a plea to a trusted group of people this action shows the human capability to realize that we can and do have a very large impact on the environment, and that we have the ability and knowledge to protect it. The other more universally accepted beginning is that which includes Daniel Boone, the hero of the wild, and John James Audubon, who at that time was just a recently married, quite unsuccessful shopkeeper. Audubon happened to like to draw birds and wild landscapes. Boone and Audubon met in the woods of Kentucky and...