As I prowl libraries and book shops (physical and digital) seeking historical information about the California condor, I often encounter thought-provoking items that are about much more than the condor. That’s because the condor has long been employed as an example of the larger “crisis” involving humans and our environment.
For this post I consider 2 articles from the 1st half of the 20th century that show the long-standing environmental concerns of 2 thoughtful humans.
“The Price We’ve Paid for a Great Century” appeared as an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times for 29 September 1948. The title and timing of the article refer to the 100th anniversary of California’s becoming one of the United States.
Author Tom Cameron explains that California once hosted an abundance of trout, quail, beaver, deer, bear, and other animals. He notes that in the past
California condors … wheeled overhead, so numerous they provoked little comment. Now, there are fewer than 100 of these majestic birds …
The author’s concern is mainly that of the “sportsman” but there is more to his world than fish to catch and game to hunt:
… the depletion of fish and game does not mean that all is lost to present-day lovers of the wild. The mountains still rear their snowy peaks, with alpine meadows forming flowery lawns in the sky, thunderstorms furnishing a cannonade to remind man of his relative insignificance, and … the majestic sequoias, which were already thrusting their green spires heavenward was Cheops was building his pyramid …
Cameron’s final paragraph does indicate a rather narrow understanding of the causes of environmental problems, even given his focus on fishing and hunting:
We have lost much, but we still possess much in the way of natural resources. And if we discourage the tin-can tourist and educate the careless smoker in the mountains we should make a better record in the second century of Statehood.
H M Robinson’s “The Overdraft on Nature” was published in the 3 January 1903 issue of Forest and Stream. This publication described itself at the time as a “weekly journal of the rod and gun”.
Robinson begins his essay with the ideas of Xenophon, a philosopher and military expert of ancient Greece. Xenophon saw the hunting of animals as
a necessary part of a liberal education, an indispensable training for the soldier and a stimulus to patriotism, as well as contributing to health and happiness.
But Xenophon’s hunting was largely limited to hares because
[ancient] Greece, so far as the larger quadrupeds were concerned, was an exhausted land …
So Robinson wishes for
the reflection of Xenophon upon the wasteful selfishness which had stripped his country of its larger game …
Robinson elaborates:
If warnings there were of the inevitable limit of such selfishness, they must have been given long before Xenophon’s time, and disregarded, just as they largely have been in this country within the last fifty years. It is discouraging to think that in another half century … many of our larger wild animals will have passed so completely out of knowledge that some accomplished writer and sportsman may, like Xenophon, sing the praise of hunting the hare, as if larger game had never existed.
Robinson proceeds to discuss the losses of wildlife from North America. His examples from the avian world include the great auk, passenger pigeon, and California condor:
Of course not all the disappearances [of species] can be laid to the selfishness of the hunter. That of the California vulture, the largest bird on the northern continent, is due to its sharing the poison which farmers place in sheep carcasses to kill wolves and coyotes.
Nonetheless, Robinson concludes that
enough can be laid at [the hunter’s] door to show that he has, and is, making a heavy overdraft on animal and bird life …
… time may do much to restore the balance which [hunters] have destroyed, though in many ways the damage already done is irreparable.
It’s worth noting that Forest and Stream’s description of itself was sometimes broader than just “rod and gun”. An 1873 issue stated:
The object of this journal will be to studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural objects.
In 1912, the publication was describing itself as a “weekly journal of outdoor life, travel, nature study, shooting, fishing, camping, yachting”.
For me, the critical part of the articles by Cameron and Robinson is found in 2 of Robinson’s sentences. Please reread these words, but expand in your mind the author’s focus on game animals. Include the depletion of other resources, various forms of pollution, and the climate crisis:
If warnings there were of the inevitable limit of such selfishness, they must have been given long before Xenophon’s time, and disregarded, just as they largely have been in this country within the last fifty years. It is discouraging to think that in another half century … many of our larger wild animals will have passed so completely out of knowledge that some accomplished writer and sportsman may, like Xenophon, sing the praise of hunting the hare, as if larger game had never existed.
Those words, from over a century ago, send chills up my spine each time I read them.
Pseudogryps 