Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West

Mired as we are in many conservation and preservation issues, it can be good to know how it all started. George Bird Grinnell is that reminder. Born in New York in 1849 and dying there in 1938, he straddled the age of the closing of the western frontier and the beginning of the age of now: no frontier, easy travel, and recreational hunting. He saw pristine, and he saw it end, too, with melancholy and sadness. He saw an entire human culture done in and became personal friends with some of the victims. He founded conservation societies and magazines hoping to undergird a hunting culture with ethics and alert the public to what he saw ending. When that was not enough, he leaned on politicians to influence laws. As a naturalist and a hunter, he co-founded the Boone and Crockett Club and founded the Audubon Society. These disparate societies reflected an issue of the time—management through conservation or preservation, which was at the core of the Hetch Hetchy debate, and highlights a tension still present today. This is especially relevant for birds, down 3 billion since 1970 (Rosenberg et al. 2019). and hunted and watched by millions. Grinnell knew both sides; we could use him today.