Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 104

On the scientific side, Georges-Louis Buffon published 36 volumes
expounding on natural history. Under the leadership of Guy Crescent
Fagon, the Garden of Plants in Paris became a center of botanical research.
The Revolution of 1789 enshrined many features of the Enlightenment
as government law and policy. For example, it replaced the ancient system
of weights and measures with metric ones of kilograms and meters. At its
most extreme, the National Convention proclaimed a Cult of Reason to
replace Christianity. The Goddess of Reason was worshiped at the high
altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Although the Cult soon disappeared,
the French elevated the role of science. The Garden of Plants was enhanced
with a museum and a zoo. Georges Cuvier pioneered the field of paleon-
tology with his studies of fossils of elephants and mammoths. Analyzing
sedimentary rock in the Paris basin, he outlined the principles of stra-
tigraphy. Napoleon Bonaparte established the School of Mines, which
advanced the science of geology. Louis Pasteur discovered the germ theory,
and Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium. The post-Revolutionary
period advanced the importance of the technical expert: the technocrat.
In 1835 scientific societies addressed the issue of how the decrease in
songbirds resulted in the increase of insects and recommended protecting
birds. The League of Ornithology began in 1892. The government estab-
lished the National School of Water and Forestry in 1824 and enacted
a forestry code three years later. Some conservation began in colonies
sooner than at home. Experimental ecological protection began on the
Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, 7 and in Africa the government
worked to preserve the rhinoceros, giraffe, monkey, and elephant.
In 1854 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire established the Zoological
Acclimatization Society in Paris, the first organization in the world to
worry about damage to animal habitats. It later became the National
Society for the Protection of Nature. In 1906 this group helped found the
Friends of the Elephant, and in 1912 the League for the Protection of Birds.
In 1926 the Acclimatization Society laid the basis of the first nature reserve
in the Camargue at the delta of the Rhone River designed to protect the
animals and plants in their natural setting. Later, it sponsored reserves in
the Pyrenees and the Alps, areas that eventually became national parks.
The government passed the 1930 National Heritage Act to protect natural
as well as cultural sites. In 1960 it passed a law providing for a national
park system. In the 1950s and 1960s France became concerned with air
and water pollution, passing an air pollution control act in 1961 and a
water act in 1964.