Arthur Carhart (1892 -1978), America's first
champion of wilderness, the first Forest Service landscape
architect, and the most popular conservation writer of mid-century
America, won none of the titan status of his contemporary Aldo
Leopold. A political maverick, he refused to side with any major
advocacy group and none has made him its saint. Carhart was a
grassroots thinker in a top-down era.
Arthur Carhart, the first biography of this Republican
environmentalist and major American thinker, writer, and activist,
reveals the currency of his ideas. Tom Wolf elucidates Carhart
's vision of conservation as "a job for all of
us," with citizens, municipal authorities, and national leaders all
responsible for the environmental effects of their decisions.
Carhart loved the local and decried interest groups - from
stockmens' associations to wilderness lobbies -
as cliques attempting blanket control. He pressured land management
agencies to base decisions on local ecology and local partnerships.
A lifelong wilderness advocate who proposed the first wilderness
preserve at Trappers Lake, Colorado, in 1919, Carhart chose to
oppose the Wilderness Act, heartsick at its compromises with
lobbies.
Because he shifted his stance and changed his views in response
to new information, Carhart is not an easy subject for a biography.
Wolf traces Carhart's twists and turns to show a
man whose voice was distinctive and contrary, who spoke from a
passionate concern for the land and couldn't be
counted on for anything else. Readers of American history and
outdoor writing will enjoy this portrait of a historic era in
conservation politics and the man who so often eschewed politics in
favor of the land and people he loved.
eISBN: 978-1-60732-045-6
Subjects: History, Environmental Science
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