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Show 12 unexplored is environmental journalism in Utah history. While some researchers have looked at aspects of Utah ' s history through an environmental lens, the history of cnviroruncntal journalism has been overlooked. Utah Environmental History Utah's environmental his1ory provides context for how the press has covered environmental issues in the state. This context is, to a degree, the history of the word conservation. There is no clear definition of the word. But, understanding the history of the conservation movement and how the word has been used in the West throughout the twentieth century is crucial to understand press coverage of environmental issues. Conservation worked its way into the land-policy lexicon in the late 1890s in the context of reclamation projects in the West. 25 However, a movement with a goal of radical change in federal land policy adopted the word to describe its efforts. This movement was championed early on by Gifford Pinchot, who sought to tum public land policy from the tradition of dispersing resources among private holdings to one that maintained federal control of public land. Pinchot defined conservation in the paradigm that "the first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon. The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the benefit of the people who live here now ... . The natural resources must be developed and preserved for the benefit of the many, and not merely for the profit of the fcw." 26 25 Samuel P. /lays, Conservarion ond the Gosp el of Effic iency : The Pro1v essi1'f! Conser valion Mo vement, /890-/ 920 (Ncw York: Athcncum, 1975), 5. 26 Gifford Pinchot. The Fig ht/or Conservation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 42,44. |
