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Monica Zabroski

Professor Holtzman

GIS: 3353

3 March 2014

Pinelands: A Natural History

"It is in the midst of this compromised and complex situation--the reciprocal

influences of a changing nature and a changing society--that environmental history

must find its home” (White 335). History is where humans learn from their mistakes

and when we mix that with the environment. J. Michael Martinez stated a very

significant fact about humans and their fierceness for the future. Martinez states

that, “Humans are magnificent creatures that can overcome boundaries and

impediments of the world, leaving the future limitless” (163). Humans progressed

from creating light with fire to extracting fossils fuels deep within the earth. Yet, our

advancement understanding and knowledge as left us facing traumatic effects upon

the environment. There is a new turn in the way we think of history. Instead of

everyday dilemmas and resolutions, history through eyes of nature involves the

interaction between us and the environment. Environmental history will give a better

perspective on the safety of human health caused by defecting the environmental

qualities that sustain life.

Concerns regarding the environment have gone back decades prior to

popular understanding. Martinez mentioned that, “Progressivism focused on curing

the social ills post-Civil War when members became frustrated with their economic

prospects of rural families” (163). Popular belief would have it that the counterculture

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movement was the starting history for protecting the environment. Indeed those

individuals gave time to focus on the life of nature, but it was the minds of many

Progressive thinkers including John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt. .

These men thought of nature and its future prior to the start of the twentieth century

and created the pathway for the protection of the environment. Roosevelt is known

by many as the “quintessential example of anthropocentric environmentalist”

(Martinez 58). Another man was John Muir and through his eyes, saw the

destruction that industrialization imposed on the environment including its natural

resources. His way of activism started with promoting and enhancing the America’s

National Parks system (Martinez 165). These two men did, fortunately worked

together to create the National Parks system in 1901 (Martinez 169).

Following the Roosevelt’s and Muir’s successes, Aldo Leopold whom was a

graduate of Yale, discussed and explained the interconnection of all things. “The

Land Ethic, simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils,

waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land” (Martinez 175). Leopold

stressed the importance of the connection between the interaction of humans and

the environment. Martinez explained that he created the community in which these

interactions took place: the watershed (177). A watershed, as defined by the

Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, is “that area of land, a bounded

hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their

common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that

they become part of a community.” A community of all living things are the key

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words of this passage. The interaction of living things are a concern for these

Americans and protection was needed.

Following the work of Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson made a huge movement

in environmental history when she wrote her book, Silent Springs. This book

changed the way modern Americans would think. She was a courageous woman

who did not mind fighting the chemical industry and in turn she raised many

questions that would stun Americans for decades. This book was released in 1962

and included the harmful issues centralized around the use of DDT, a major

pesticide at the time. The Natural Resource Defense Council, established in 1970,

presented the best way of explaining Carson and her book on their website. They

explained her work as this,

“The most important legacy of Silent Spring, though, was a new

public awareness that nature was vulnerable to human

intervention. Rachel Carson had made a radical proposal: that, at

times, technological progress is so fundamentally at odds with

natural processes that it must be curtailed. Conservation had

never raised much broad public interest, for few people really

worried about the disappearance of wilderness. But the threats

Carson had outlined -- the contamination of the food chain,

cancer, genetic damage, the deaths of entire species -- were too

frightening to ignore. For the first time, the need to regulate

industry in order to protect the environment became widely

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accepted, and environmentalism was born” (National Resource

Defense Council 1970).

Carson indeed paved the way many Americans looked at their lives and

their surrounding environments. Concern arose within every state and

began to establish standings where the government could not ignore.

America’s environmental concerns were finding their way to New Jersey.

During the 1970’s, the environment in New Jersey witnessed the most supreme act.

The National Parks Reserve of 1978 protected roughly 1.4 million acres of the Pine

Barrens or in governmental terminology the Pinelands. Howard Boyd puts into

context the brief history of the Pine Barrens prior to the establishment of the act as

saying,

“This area was considered by the first settlers as ‘barren’

because they were unable to raise their traditional vegetables and

crops in this sandy, acid soils of these regions. Today we know

these areas are not entirely barren for many forms of plant life-

such as members of the pine family, cranberries, and heath family

do well in this sandy acidic soils”(Boyd 2).

Yet, many years following there were many principle uses of the Pine

Barrens including hiking, canoeing, camping, photography, hunting, etc. All

these things were included when the Pinelands National Reserve of 1978

was established.

The Pinelands National Reserve of 1978 established the total governmental

ownership of 280,000 acres of the 1.4 million acres included within this reserve that

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would not ever be able to be touched or altered in any way that would affect the

integrity of the Pines’ and its unique ecosystem (Boyd 68). The protection of this

area must keep within the Comprehensive Management Plan which includes all the

details surrounding the importance and integrity of the pine, according to the New

Jersey Pineland’s Commission, which was approved by the United Secretary of

Interior in 1981 ( New Jersey Pineland’s Commission 1978).

The history of the United States paved the way of preserving hundreds of

thousands of acres of unique land in the Southern New Jersey area. This area

would protect wildlife, the seven trillion ton aquifer Kirkwood-Cohansey, and the

native human population and these that are all within the “Integrity of the Pines”

preservation implemented plan sand ideas. Even current issues evolve every day

that pressure the integrity of the Pinelands and which are thankfully pushed away by

the helping hands of the Pineland’s Preservation Alliance. This group established

during the early 1990s to help make sure that this unique piece of land and

legislature was being protected and followed. Recently this alliance is fighting

against South Jersey Gas whom are imposing details and a plan to construct a

pipeline throughout the Pineland’s (Pineland’s Preservation Alliance 1991). Each

and every day history is being fought for, protected, and enhanced. The environment

is part of the history that will be made and with the help of many beautifully hearted

people history can be preserved for its beauty, nature, and future.

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Boyd, Howard P. A Field Guide to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey: Its Flora, Fauna, Ecology,

and Historic Sites. Medford, NJ: Plexus Pub., 1991. Print.Works Cited

Martinez, J. Michael. American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy.

Boca Raton: CRC, 2014. Print.

"PPA Blog." Pine Barrens, New Jersey Pinelands Protection. Pinelands Preservation Alliance,

n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014. <http://www.pinelandsalliance.org/>.

"The Story of Silent Spring." Silent Spring Summary. National Resource Defense Council, n.d.

Web. 14 Feb. 2014. http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp

United States. Department of the Interior. Pinelands Commission. New Jersey Pinelands

National Reserve Act of 1978. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2014

http://www.state.nj.us/pinelands/images/pdf%20files/pinelandsprotectionact1.pdf

"What Is a Watershed?" Home. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

<http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/whatis.cfm>.

White,Robert "Historiographical Essay, American Environmental History: The

Development of a New Field," 54, Pacific Historical Review (1985): 297-335,

quotation on p. 335