"Conservation...can be defined as the wise use of our natural environment: it is, in the final analysis, the highest form of national thrift--the prevention of waste and despoilment while preserving, improving and renewing the quality and usefulness of all our resources."
President John F. Kennedy (1962 Conservation Message to Congress)
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During the great surge of urbanization in the past five decades the nation has turned its back on small-town America and the rich legacy concentrated in America's countrysides and rural communities. Thomas Jefferson would surely deplore our tendency to ignore these important "country things." Always worried about the corrupting influence of large cities, Jefferson held an almost mystical political conviction that the republic he helped found would be sustained in the long run by cohesive communities of yeoman farmers. "The small landholders," he wrote, "are the chosen people of God...in whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."
Now, even as the twentieth century winds to its close, many of us who were nurtured in rural surroundings continue to share Jefferson's beliefs about the contributions small communities make to our national life. But our concerns are intensified as experts inform us that the bulk of the U.S. population now resides in urban areas that lie within fifty miles of the nation's shorelines in a burgeoning megalopolis that is swallowing up most of the remaining rural areas along our coasts.
This unfortunate pattern of growth in our nation is leaving our cities in disrepair and our countryside in desecration. Leaving once flourishing cities behind, leaders of industry have built huge, sprawling corporate centers where farmers once worked the fields. Laying waste to still more of the countryside, developers have constructed huge, sprawling housing developments so the workers and their families could follow the jobs as they moved out of the cities. This undisciplined creed of reckless waste has become the code, and our nation's resources are systematically being raided in the name of economic progress.
With the passing of each year, our failure to preserve our open spaces has piled new problems on the nation's doorstep. Our natural ability to overpower the natural world has multiplied immeasurably our capacity to diminish the quality of the total environment, and while individuals may have reaped short-term profits, our nation has been saddled with a staggering environmental debt. Our water husbandry has typified these failures: At the same time that our requirements for fresh water were doubling, our national sloth more than doubled our water pollution. We are now faced with the need to build 10,000 treatment plants and to spend tens of billions of dollars each year to chemically treat waters that once ran pure and free.
Our failed stewardship is not for lack of opportunities to learn the lessons of waste. There was a time when the great herds of buffalo, the magnificent forests, and the rich topsoil of our central plains were treated as an endless bounty, and nature yielded to our taking. But nature has a good memory, and at times of her own choosing, has belatedly presented the bills for this waste and mismanagement to later generations, just as the bills for our generations will surely be presented to our own children.
With stunning suddenness, our buffalo herds had disappeared, our forests had been desecrated, and we faced the stark realization that there were limits to our bounty. Eventually, we began to acquire some of the rudiments of the land wisdom that we needed: we recognized that nature's laws are paramount, that science and research hold the keys to husbandry, and that government action is essential to save a permanent estate of wildlife and water and forests and parklands.
It is sadly ironic that we are so slow to learn these lessons of nature, apply them to our plans, and pass them on to the next generation. As inheritors of a spacious, virgin continent we have had strong roots in the soil and a tradition that should give us special understanding of the mystique of people and land. It is our relationship with the American earth--our birthright of fresh landscapes and far horizons-- that is being altered by what I have termed the quiet crisis. Unless we are to betray our heritage consciously, we must make an all-out effort now to acquire the public lands which present and future generations need. Only prompt action will save prime park, forest, shore line, and other recreation lands before they are preempted for lower uses or priced beyond the public purse.
Generations to follow will judge us less by our material conquests than by our success or failure in preserving in their natural state the waterways, wetlands, forests, and swamps that have superior outdoor recreation values. The quiet crisis demands a rethinking of land attitudes, a rekindling of the spirit of preservation, a deepening involvement by leaders of business and government, and a renewed search for methods of making conservation decisions which put a premium on foresight. Once we decide that our surroundings need not always be subordinated to payrolls and profits based on short-term considerations, there is hope that we can both reap the bounty of the land and preserve an inspiriting environment.
Beyond all plans and programs, true conservation is ultimately something of the mind--an ideal of humans who cherish their past and believe in their future. Our civilization will be measured by its fidelity to this ideal as surely as by its art and poetry and system of justice.
Jefferson's concept of communities of yeoman farmers may be irretrievably lost, yet one of our nation's richest resources today lies within the breast of those who embody the Jeffersonian ideal and refuse to stand idly by and watch the forces of planless sprawl proceed unchecked. Within each of the small communities that lie in the path of the juggernaut of unplanned expansion there have been individual, small-town Americans who want to preserve the environmental attributes that make their communities distinctive. Some of them have stood directly in the path and have said "No. These resources belong to the common wealth of our nation."
In one case, the willingness of ordinary citizens to protect their common lands led directly to the establishment of one of our most unique and important parcels of public land, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Without warning, the powerful Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced in December of 1959 that the world's largest jetport would be built in the Great Swamp of Morris County, New Jersey. This announcement was, in effect, a call to arms, and local citizens banded together, collected money, contacted political figures, and organized meetings with a zeal never before seen by the Port Authority. It was not long before the news of this activity reached Washington, where I was serving as Secretary of the Interior for President John F. Kennedy. An aide told me one day that a group of citizens in New Jersey had gone head-to-head with the Port Authority and wanted to thwart the jetport plans by creating a national park. When I asked that he characterize the nature of this fight, his analysis was short and precise: "It's uphill all the way, and you have to get involved."
In November of 1961, it was my privilege to address the Great Swamp Committee and some 600 guests where I promised to declare the area a national wildlife refuge when they reached their goal of 3,000 acres of land. Although some measure of success was to follow, it is regrettable that my words on that evening more than 30 years ago can still be applied not only to the Great Swamp, but to countless places across our land:
In a very real sense, what we are talking about tonight is the change in man which is being wrought by our urban culture and its pressures. When our ancestors came to America, they fought nature. The trees needed to be cut to clear the way for farms. The swamps had to be drained. The rivers and the streams had to be harnessed.
Today we are coming, I think, to realize that we have won our fight with nature all too well. The roads have been cut, the swamps have been drained, and too many of our rivers have been degraded from channels of beauty to the squalor of public sewers.
We are learning that the search of modern urban man is not for new ways to conquer nature but for ways to save the beauty of the out-of-doors so that, to use Robert Frost's words, man can gain new insight from "country things."
On May 29, 1964, I was again invited to the Great Swamp, this time to accept the land on behalf of the United States government, creating the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. I have always taken special pride in this project not only because of the courage and tenacity of the citizens who made it happen, but also because it opened a new page in history. Prior to this, the mention of a national park evoked the image of great vistas with thousands of square miles of mountains or desert or forest. But this was a swamp! A small, 55-square mile swamp in the middle of one of the nation's most populous states. It was to be the first national wilderness area east of the Mississippi, and has become a lasting tribute to our efforts to preserve the remaining oases of nature in our urban areas.
The denizens of the Great Swamp may have won their most significant battle, but 30 years later the war goes on with the relentless pressure to transform the surrounding open spaces and woodlands into parking lots, corporate centers, and mind-deadening housing developments. The argument, in most cases, is that the benefits derived from developing the land will be greater than the costs of maintaining it in its more primitive state. This argument may never have been valid, and it certainly is not valid in most cases today. The chapters in this volume detail the tremendous positive value of open space from a variety of different perspectives.
Appropriately enough, this volume is being produced by the Great Swamp Watershed Association on the site where one of the most significant battles against urban sprawl was waged. Although many of the examples are specific to this watershed, the lessons to be learned can be applied much more generally, and this volume will be useful to all citizens or government officials who want to plan a better future.
The Benefits of Open Space provides facts and arguments for those who want to protect and enhance the livability and appeal of their communities. For some, it will be an effort to stop the tide of commercial development that transforms quiet neighborhoods into clogged streets and crowded housing developments, creating an ever-increasing spiral of municipal costs. For others, it will be an effort to protect a water supply for tens of thousands of residents in the region. Still others may want to save a trout stream, or a pond, or the habitat of a salamander. In each instance, an essential tool will be the ability to demonstrate to municipal, state, and federal officials the fact that open space is not a liability, that it does not need to be "developed" to have value. On the contrary, it is almost always the case that the highest and most valuable use for the land is to leave it as it stands, preserved for future generations to enjoy.
As this volume suggests, we can even correct some of our previous errors, because there are many paths to rural renewal. Every town or region can initiate programs that will make it a more attractive place to live and visit right now and, more importantly, guarantee a sustainable future. Many small towns thrive today as "gateways" to parks or wildlife sanctuaries or historic places--and many communities have yet to discover and exploit the economic potential of natural or cultural assets that lie on their doorsteps.
As a result of citizen initiatives of the past several decades, hundreds of new park, wildlife, and historic areas have been identified and developed by our national, state, and municipal governments. As the homogenization of urban America has accelerated, vacationers have grown wary of the moneychangers who operate our ever-present tourist traps, and the lure of attractive small towns has increased as places to live and to visit. A new term, ecotourism, has become the clarion call of environmental planners across our nation. Rural areas that raise funds to preserve distinctive architectural and cultural qualities are making investments that will assuredly enhance the future of their communities. Moreover, every small town can plant trees and flowers--or preserve a marsh or forest or riverside park--that will add to its appeal and its direct economic value.
This volume outlines the many different reasons why towns at the edge of suburbia should fight for managed growth policies that respect nature's limits and exhibit reverence for the human environment created by earlier generations. The authors of this work suggest that communities would be wise to begin the inventories of their assets by listing open spaces and rural features and from this foundation, be assiduous in using a total environmental approach in developing their plans and projects. I suspect that some communities have buildings or trails or nature sanctuaries where they could recount the stories of explorers who first trod parts of the American earth. Perhaps others have overlooked opportunities to interpret nearby ruins, or to commemorate the lives and work of memorable literary figures. This heritage of the past may be their best guarantee of a sustainable future.
My own experience growing up in a rural area tells me this country needs small towns. We need close-knit communities because they are excellent places to rear our children. We need them as slow-lane refuges where people overwhelmed by urban stress can find quietude and peace of mind. We need them as an antidote that dramatizes the failures and shortcomings of American urbanization. We need them as laboratories of cleanliness where we can gather baseline data about environmental health. And we need the diversity they provide, as a reminder of the lifestyles and values of an older, perhaps saner, America.
We can have abundance and an unspoiled environment if we are willing to pay the price. We must develop a land conscience that will inspire those daily acts of stewardship which will make America a more pleasant and more productive land. If enough people care enough about the world outside their door to join in the fight for a balanced conservation program, communities will flourish, and this generation can proudly put its signature on the land.
It is ironic that today the conservation movement finds itself turning back to ancient land ideas of those who were here first; to the native American understanding that we are not outside of nature, but of it. From this wisdom we can learn how to conserve the best parts of our continent. In recent decades we have slowly come back to some of the truths that the native Americans knew from the beginning: that unborn generations have a claim on the land equal to our own; that humans must learn from nature, keep an ear to the earth, and replenish their spirits in frequent contacts with animals and wild land. And most important of all, we are recovering a sense of reverence for the land.
The Benefits of Open Space reminds us that each generation has a rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs. We can misuse the land and diminish the usefulness of resources, or we can create a world in which physical affluence and affluence of the spirit go hand in hand. We still have an opportunity to make history by creating life-giving, sustainable environments for our children. It is time for a new wave of conservation action in rural and suburban America. We must act--and learn to cherish and live in harmony with our past--because that is the only way truly civilized people can live.
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