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In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
The Centennial Return of Stewardship
to the Ecological Society of America
J. Baird Callicott
Abstract In 1917, Victor Shelford, a founder and the fi rst president of the
Ecological Society of America (ESA), formed and chaired the ESA's Committee for
the Preservation of Natural Conditions (CPNC), an advocacy arm of the organiza-
tion. Representing the Wilderness Society (WS), Aldo Leopold's efforts to form an
alliance between the two organizations were spurned by Shelford because the WS
encouraged the recreational use of wilderness reserves, thus altering their “primeval”
condition. Seized by positivist zealotry, in 1945 the ESA prohibited members of the
CPNC from advocacy activities and the committee disbanded in 1946. Shelford
formed the private Ecologists' Union in 1946, which became The Nature
Conservancy in 1950. In response to an intensifying global ecological crisis, the
ESA has latterly returned to the policy-oriented advocacy under the banner of
“Earth Stewardship” that characterized it during its fi rst three decades.” In addition
to the values of its fi rst president, Victor Shelford, the concept of Earth stewardship
also expresses the spiritual values that its thirty-second president, Aldo Leopold,
found in the scientifi c study of nature. The concept of Earth stewardship also returns
ecology to its fi rst organismic paradigm, for the Earth as a whole, Gaia, exhibits the
defi ning characteristics of a “superorganism.”
Keywords Advocacy
Leopold
Recreation
Superorganism
Shelford
Wilderness
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) was established in 1915. Victor Shelford
was its fi rst president, serving for the year 1916. Under Shelford's leadership, the
Committee for the Preservation of Natural Conditions for Ecological Study was
formed in 1917, chaired by Shelford himself (Anonymous 1917 ). In a paper titled
“Preserves of Natural Conditions,” Shelford reveals both the scientifi c and the phil-
osophical rationales for the preservation of natural conditions. He also reveals him-
self to be an active advocate of preservation: “The fi rst work [of the Committee] was
to make a list ['of preserved or preservable areas'] and when this had made some
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