We Americans are proud of our country; the reasons for
our pride are as wide-flung and complex as the nation itself. But what if we
are asked, not why we think our country is great, but why it is unique?
Unique is a tougher sell. All the many things Americans have done first, best or biggest doesn’t imply that people of other nations have not participated in those same endeavors.
To be unique the accomplishment must not only be an original creation it also must stand over time in a character distinct and unmatched by subsequent imitators.
After much study I have parried down the list of candidates for American uniqueness to just two items.
First is our set of founding documents crowned by our national Constitution, and the organic principles of human rights we coded into governance by way of those documents.
Second is the preservation by national political will of large expanses of natural landscapes and wild ecosystems occupied by large, free-roaming populations of indigenous wildlife. This being done with a made-at-home, completely original system of governance applied within the framework of our Constitution and within the cultural norms of our evolving industrial society.
Indeed, the methods we used were so completely original that we had to invent a new word to describe them – conservation.
Only with our Canadian neighbors do we share this standard of uniqueness. And so closely bound are the conservation efforts of our two nations that one can simply describe this as one continental achievement, North American in character.
In the 224 years since the U.S. Constitution was enacted many another nation has imitated the process. Some worked, most didn’t. Not only was ours the first national Constitution - it remains the only one that has endured across centuries with its core principles still carrying the force of law.
Likewise, other countries have preserved some vestige of their pre-industrial environment; these usually take the form of small game parks, woodlands or similar remnant set-asides maintained solely for the pleasure of the wealthy or a ruling elite.
In fact, the first efforts of American wildlife conservationists were imitations of European feudal game parks. But then, as America followed the same path of resource depletion plowed by preceding societies, we came to a national agreement that the wilderness frontier was necessary for Americans to be Americans – the idea of being free always implied having space in which one can roam freely. Simultaneously, even as we brought wildlife to the cliff edge of extinction with a few species falling over, we came to the civil decision not to take that last fatal step for all remaining wild species that could be saved.
Instead, we kicked down the walls of human precedence and started saving wild lands and restoring vanishing wildlife – not just on a small scale for blueblood sport, or for zoo and museum display – but on a massive, continental scale measured in millions of acres and millions of animals with the intent that our permanent internal frontier would be enjoyed by all the people and their posterity.
Many nations can rival our tall buildings, and grand architecture – our universities, highways and medicine. But no other people has come close to preserving anything like the vast and accessible natural landscapes and unfenced, free-roaming wild animals great and small of the United States and Canada.
For example: In 1872,Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. Today, several nations have parks to equal or exceed the size of Yellowstone. But no other nation comes close to matching our immense National Park system of which Yellowstone is only one unit.
As important as its originality, and in common with the U.S. Constitution, is the endurance across time of our great North American act of conservation will. And nowhere else on the planet can 14 million citizens afford to buy a hunting and fishing license and also be free to go afield in wild places with good hope of success.
Yes, conservation means use – but wise use. Don’t let your use of the resource prevent it from being there ten generations in the future.
Even as our industrial civilization grows and our population expands we continue to preserve national forests, parks and monuments, prairie ranges, wildlife refuges and a dozen other versions of public natural lands and waters. If that is not a miracle of human civics pray tell what is.
I call this act of public will and democratic government the ‘Triumph of the Commons.’
But our conservation miracle was never a perfect feat. The miracle is continuously imperiled with the encroaching needs of people. And it is, and always was, unfinished and sometimes sorely flawed. Much work remains to be done.
The mission of Bull Moose Gazette is to bind the 19th Century roots of our North American Conservation system to the leaf and branch of the 21st Century.
Here will be today’s news, tomorrow’s challenges, essays, opinion and continuing recollection of what was done for us by generations before. Yes, our Triumph is an imperiled civic miracle and yes, it has been handed down to us both incomplete and flawed amid its splendid achievements. But, not only are we not dismayed by the challenge, we positively relish welding our link in the chain of conservationist generations.
So here we will tackle the work at hand as we stand our watch on the American conservation voyage.
Regardless of any controversy boiling in democracy’s hot kitchen, we will celebrate with pride the grand uniqueness that comes with being a conservation citizen of the United States or Canada.
Unique is a tougher sell. All the many things Americans have done first, best or biggest doesn’t imply that people of other nations have not participated in those same endeavors.
To be unique the accomplishment must not only be an original creation it also must stand over time in a character distinct and unmatched by subsequent imitators.
After much study I have parried down the list of candidates for American uniqueness to just two items.
First is our set of founding documents crowned by our national Constitution, and the organic principles of human rights we coded into governance by way of those documents.
Second is the preservation by national political will of large expanses of natural landscapes and wild ecosystems occupied by large, free-roaming populations of indigenous wildlife. This being done with a made-at-home, completely original system of governance applied within the framework of our Constitution and within the cultural norms of our evolving industrial society.
Indeed, the methods we used were so completely original that we had to invent a new word to describe them – conservation.
Only with our Canadian neighbors do we share this standard of uniqueness. And so closely bound are the conservation efforts of our two nations that one can simply describe this as one continental achievement, North American in character.
In the 224 years since the U.S. Constitution was enacted many another nation has imitated the process. Some worked, most didn’t. Not only was ours the first national Constitution - it remains the only one that has endured across centuries with its core principles still carrying the force of law.
Likewise, other countries have preserved some vestige of their pre-industrial environment; these usually take the form of small game parks, woodlands or similar remnant set-asides maintained solely for the pleasure of the wealthy or a ruling elite.
In fact, the first efforts of American wildlife conservationists were imitations of European feudal game parks. But then, as America followed the same path of resource depletion plowed by preceding societies, we came to a national agreement that the wilderness frontier was necessary for Americans to be Americans – the idea of being free always implied having space in which one can roam freely. Simultaneously, even as we brought wildlife to the cliff edge of extinction with a few species falling over, we came to the civil decision not to take that last fatal step for all remaining wild species that could be saved.
Instead, we kicked down the walls of human precedence and started saving wild lands and restoring vanishing wildlife – not just on a small scale for blueblood sport, or for zoo and museum display – but on a massive, continental scale measured in millions of acres and millions of animals with the intent that our permanent internal frontier would be enjoyed by all the people and their posterity.
Many nations can rival our tall buildings, and grand architecture – our universities, highways and medicine. But no other people has come close to preserving anything like the vast and accessible natural landscapes and unfenced, free-roaming wild animals great and small of the United States and Canada.
For example: In 1872,Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. Today, several nations have parks to equal or exceed the size of Yellowstone. But no other nation comes close to matching our immense National Park system of which Yellowstone is only one unit.
As important as its originality, and in common with the U.S. Constitution, is the endurance across time of our great North American act of conservation will. And nowhere else on the planet can 14 million citizens afford to buy a hunting and fishing license and also be free to go afield in wild places with good hope of success.
Yes, conservation means use – but wise use. Don’t let your use of the resource prevent it from being there ten generations in the future.
Even as our industrial civilization grows and our population expands we continue to preserve national forests, parks and monuments, prairie ranges, wildlife refuges and a dozen other versions of public natural lands and waters. If that is not a miracle of human civics pray tell what is.
I call this act of public will and democratic government the ‘Triumph of the Commons.’
But our conservation miracle was never a perfect feat. The miracle is continuously imperiled with the encroaching needs of people. And it is, and always was, unfinished and sometimes sorely flawed. Much work remains to be done.
The mission of Bull Moose Gazette is to bind the 19th Century roots of our North American Conservation system to the leaf and branch of the 21st Century.
Here will be today’s news, tomorrow’s challenges, essays, opinion and continuing recollection of what was done for us by generations before. Yes, our Triumph is an imperiled civic miracle and yes, it has been handed down to us both incomplete and flawed amid its splendid achievements. But, not only are we not dismayed by the challenge, we positively relish welding our link in the chain of conservationist generations.
So here we will tackle the work at hand as we stand our watch on the American conservation voyage.
Regardless of any controversy boiling in democracy’s hot kitchen, we will celebrate with pride the grand uniqueness that comes with being a conservation citizen of the United States or Canada.
~~ Ron Moody
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