The Savior Of The Seas
A really nice read by Neil Swidey in todays Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
Here's the thing about bold strokes of conservation: There are always lots of logical reasons why they shouldn't happen, at least not right then.
n 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law creating Yellowstone National Park. The idea -- preserving an unspoiled ecosystem that yawned across more than 3,000 square miles -- was at the time radical to the point of being preposterous. How else to explain why it would be a new country just emerging from a Treasury-depleting civil war that would step forward to create the world's first national park? Yellowstone happened only because it had a few relentless visionaries pushing for it and not many other people paying much attention. The massive new park received no federal funds, forcing its unpaid superintendent to moonlight at another job.
It is impossible to imagine another Yellowstone being created today. There'd be so many private landowners and moneyed interests bickering about it that it would never get past its first public hearing.
In fact, there aren't many great swaths of unspoiled green earth left to be preserved. The blue stuff is our best hope now, and nobody gets that better than Greg Stone.
