George Perkins Marsh and Conservation in Vermont

George Perkins Marsh grew up in the foothills of Mount Tom in Vermont.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Vermont landscape was a shadow of the wild forestlands that had once covered the state. Geographer Harold Meeks estimates that Vermont was 95 percent forested in the 1760s. But by 1790, potash and pearlash - used to manufacture and process glass, soap and wool and made by burning hardwood - were Vermont's leading export items. Farmers routinely felled large swaths of woods to create cropland and pasture. On Mount Tom, farming, timbering and the effects of fire had left little forest cover on the slopes by the time George Perkins Marsh was born in 1801 and it only got worse over the time of his life.

He went to Congress in 1840 and in an 1847 speech to a local Vermont agricultural society, he warned farmers that they continued clearing the land of trees at their own peril and described responsible forest management practices already in use in Europe. By regulating when and how many trees were cut, timbermen and farmers could improve the health of the forest and nearby agricultural land.  He had seen the permanent destruction of previous fertile land in Europe, and he did not want that to happen in Vermont.

Marsh wrote a book, 'Man and Nature', published in 1867, summed up the observations that he had made throughoput his adult life and the interventions that he had made on the land that he had grown up on.  He initiated the reforestation of Mount Tom and the sustainable use of forest land. In the book, which is now considered the inspiration for the modern conservation movement, Marsh compared the destruction wrought on Vermont's landscape to the deforestation he had seen in Europe. By conjuring up images of Ancient Rome, Marsh showed how long-lasting the effects of environmental harm could be. He argued that man inevitably causes change to the natural world and it is up to him to decide whether it will be for the better or the worse. Humans had to be stewards of nature, he wrote, and make choices that would benefit the health of the entire natural world. He also noted the change in climate that had happened over the course of recorded time, and noted that man needed to be a better steward of the land.  He was well ahead of his time, and if you go to Vermont today you can see how wildly successful he was.