"Understanding that sustainability is the ultimate issue will bring America face
to face with the political challenge of forging a sustainable society during the
next few decades. It is a challenge America can meet if we have the
leadership and political will to do so."
- Gaylord Nelson
Wisconsin has produced many pioneers in conservation and environmental protection.
Not all were born here. Not all made their most significant contributions here. But all were affected in enduring ways by the state's varied landscapes and cultural heritage.
The Nelson Institute draws special inspiration from three of Wisconsin's most notable environmental leaders: Gaylord Nelson (for whom we are named), John Muir, and Aldo Leopold. Each of these legendary figures left a distinctive mark on the environment and history of Wisconsin and on the world beyond its borders.
Muir immigrated as a boy with his family from Scotland not long after Wisconsin entered the Union. They settled on land about 40 miles north of Madison, where, despite the back-breaking rigors of farm work dawn to dusk, young John explored the countryside at every opportunity.
In the mid-1860s, Muir left the farm behind to enroll at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied for two-and-a-half years. Although he never earned a degree, in an autobiography written decades later, Muir praised the richness of his education in Madison.
An impromptu botany lesson from another student under a locust tree near North Hall, he said, "charmed me, and sent me flying to the meadows and woods in wild enthusiasm." The moment may have played a pivotal role in his life.
Muir went on to become a naturalist, explorer, writer, and America's foremost advocate of wilderness preservation. He founded the Sierra Club - one of the country's most influential environmental organizations - and lobbied successfully for the creation of the United States' national park system, the first of its kind anywhere and a model for others worldwide.
Leopold, an Iowa native and a forester by training, moved to Madison more than half a century after Muir's departure to become associate director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in 1924. He later resigned to pursue his real interest, game management and conservation. By the early 1930s he had become an authority on native game, a leading proponent of scientific wildlife management, and a professor at UW-Madison, where he founded the nation's first academic Department of Wildlife Management.
Like Muir, Leopold was a visionary. He ventured beyond the confines of his field to experiment with the revolutionary notion of restoring entire ecosystems damaged by human activity - both on his own land along the Wisconsin River and at the university's large arboretum.
Leopold's thinking eventually transcended ecology. His musings on the relationships between people and nature in his classic 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac, entered the realm of philosophy. A stirring series of nature essays leads to a thought-provoking discussion of ethics, the value of natural places, and finally, the need to extend ethics to nature and to cultivate in people what Leopold called an ecological conscience.
A Sand County Almanac became enormously popular in the 1960s and '70s as the American public grew concerned about pollution and other contemporary environmental problems. Many people consider Leopold the patron saint - and A Sand County Almanac, the Bible - of the modern environmental movement.
While Leopold redefined the field of conservation, Gaylord Nelson prepared for a professional career in politics. Born in the small northern Wisconsin town of Clear Lake, he set out at a young age to become a progressive in the mold of Wisconsin's "Fighting Bob" La Follette. He succeeded. Along the way, he also became one of America's most outspoken and effective advocates for environmental protection.
After earning a law degree from UW-Madison in 1942 and serving in the Navy during World War II, Nelson rose through the state's political ranks. As a state senator from 1949 to 1959, then as governor from 1959 to 1963, he repeatedly called attention and applied public policy to issues of land protection, wildlife habitat, and environmental quality.
His most far-reaching accomplishments occurred on a larger stage. Elected to the U.S. Senate in November 1962, Nelson became its leading environmentalist. He championed landmark laws including the Wilderness Act, the National Trails Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Environmental Education Act. He also introduced the first federal legislation to mandate fuel-efficiency standards in automobiles, control strip mining, and ban the use of phosphates in detergents as well as use of the pesticide DDT and the defoliant 2,4,5-T.
Throughout his career, Nelson respected and befriended colleagues on both sides of the political aisle. His integrity and determination, combined with his folksy, personable style, enhanced his success at building bipartisan support for his initiatives.
Nelson is best known as the founder of Earth Day. An astonishing 20 million Americans participated in the first observance on April 22, 1970. American Heritage magazine described the event years later as "one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy." Today, Earth Day is an annual observance that has grown to a week or more in many locales.
Upon leaving the Senate in 1981, Nelson continued his tireless campaign for environmental stewardship as chairman, then counselor, of The Wilderness Society. In frequent public appearances, he advocated protecting America's national forests, national parks, and other public lands from harmful development. He also called for population control and environmentally sustainable development.
Nelson, too, was a visionary, and his efforts on behalf of the environment brought him widespread admiration, affection, and acclaim. In 1995 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor. In 2002, the Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison was renamed in his honor.
Gaylord Nelson died in 2005 at the age of 89. His legacy of environmental leadership, alongside those of Muir and Leopold, lives on in the Nelson Institute.
For more information about Gaylord Nelson, see his book, Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise and his biography, The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson. Both are published by the University of Wisconsin Press, which also offers a variety of books by and about John Muir and Aldo Leopold.
See also the Gaylord Nelson Papers, 1954-2006, in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives; the historical society's Earth Day Gallery in Gaylord Nelson's Honor; and the society's files on The Modern Environmental Movement.