• DOI:10.2307/3984376
• Corpus ID: 156015023

Wildlife Protection and the New Humanitarianism

@article{Mighetto1988WildlifePA,
  title={Wildlife Protection and the New Humanitarianism},
  author={Lisa Mighetto},
  journal={Environmental Review},
  year={1988},
  volume={12},
  pages={37 - 49}
}

• L. Mighetto
• Published 1 March 1988
• History
• Environmental Review

Theodore Roosevelt identified three sources of wildlife conservation in 1913: "the true sportsman, the nature lover," and "the humanitarian."' Although environmental historians have long recognized the motivations of the first two groups, they have paid little attention to the humane point of view. Because they devoted much of their effort to domestic animals, late nineteenthand early twentieth-century humanitarians are not readily associated with conservation.2 Yet their arguments for protecting wildlife represent a significant development in attitudes toward nature, for humanitarians attempted to extend the realm of ethics beyond humans. In doing so, they challenged assumptions that were pervasive in Western thought for centuries. Humane concern for wild animals has been overlooked in part because it differed from the approaches of other conservationists. To be sure, at the time Roosevelt made his observations, the boundaries between the groups were not altogether distinct; when it came to the plume trade, for instance, sport hunters and bird lovers could unite with humanitarians in their protests. Still, shooting game and watching birds were activities consistent with what Roderick Nash has called the "utilitarian" and "aesthetic" rationales for conservation-neither of which apply to humanitarians.3 Certainly it was the "useful and beautiful" animals that interested Theodore Roosevelt. To his mind, the protection of wildlife ensured that "unborn generations" would have game to hunt. "Wild beasts and birds," he claimed, "are by right not the property merely of the people of today."4 Other hunters similarly worried about the availability of future targets.5 But practicality prompted even that farsighted concern, for Roosevelt viewed hunting as a means to counter the increasing enervation of urban Americans. Shooting game, in his estimation, was part of the "strenuous life" which "cultivates that vigorous manliness" necessary to a soft, over-civilized nation. He was convinced that through wilderness hunting, turn-of-the-century Americans could regain the "hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution" of the pioneers.6 Roosevelt's own spiritual and physical health had been strengthened through contact with the outdoors. George Bird Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream, was more critical of his fellows. In his view, many sportsmen were simply "selfish," because they desired to "lessen the killing of