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John Muir was perhaps this country's most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist. He taught the people of his time and ours the importance of experiencing and protecting our natural heritage. His words have heightened our perception of nature. His personal and determined involvement in the great conservation questions of the day was and remains an inspiration for environmental activists everywhere. Also he was knowing as A Father of the Natinals Parks.
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President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. which gave citizens or future citizens up to 160 acres of public land provided they live on it, improve it, and pay a small registration fee.
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Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action challenged the general belief that human impact on nature was generally benign or negligible and charged that ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean had brought about their own collapse by their abuse of the environment.
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It was the first National Park of the United State. President Grant signed the bill into law on this day in 1872. The Yellowstone Act of 1872 designated the region as a public “pleasuring-ground,” which would be preserved “from injury or spoilation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within.”
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It became the first federal law protecting wildlife. It enforces civil and criminal penalties for the illegal trade of animals and plants. Today it regulates the import of any species protected by international or domestic law and prevents the spread of invasive, or non-native, species.
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Established by an executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903, Pelican Island was the first national wildlife refuge in the United States. It was created to protect egrets and other birds from extinction through plume hunting.
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Leopald was one of the early leaders of the American wilderness movement. He was also a wildlife manager, naturalist, wilderness advocate, scientist, philosopher, and visionary. He is best known as author of A Sand County Almanac and for his views on environmental ethics, where he proposed a new way of thinking and acting toward the land.
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Congress approves the American Antiquities Act, authorizing the President to establish national monuments to protect archaeological sites. The Antiquities Act was the first U.S. law to provide general legal protection of cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on Federal lands. After a generation-long effort, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act on June 8, 1906.
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President Taft sent a letter to Congress asking that it create an office of national parks. That law was passed in the chamber on July 1, 1916 The law stipulated that the new service was to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and…leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
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A United States federal law that provides for the regulation of grazing on the public lands (excluding Alaska) to improve rangeland conditions and regulate their use.
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An agency of federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior which is dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats.The mission of the agency is "working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
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The amendment established an exemption from the food additive definition and requirements for substances "generally recognized as safe" by scientific experts in the field, based on long history of use before 1958 or based on scientific studies. New food additives would be subject to testing including by the "Delaney clause". The Delaney clause was a provision in the amendment which said that if a substance were found to cause cancer in man or animal, then it could not be used as a food additive.
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The Clean Air Act of 1963 was the first federal legislation regarding air pollution control. It established a federal program within the U.S. Public Health Service and authorized research into techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution.
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Enacted in 1969 and signed into law in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon, NEPA requires all federal agencies to go through a formal process before taking any action anticipated to have substantial impact on the environment.
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Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,”
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The OPEC oil embargo was a decision to stop exporting oil to the United States. On October 19, 1973, Since the embargo, OPEC has continued to use its influence to manage oil prices.
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Is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservationThe U.S. Supreme Court called it “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species enacted by any nation.
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The Safe Drinking Water Act was established to protect the quality of drinking water in the U.S. This law focuses on all waters actually or potentially designed for drinking use, whether from above ground or underground sources.
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Is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild, and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants.
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Is the public law that creates the framework for the proper management of hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste. The law describes the waste management program mandated by Congress that gave EPA authority to develop the RCRA program.
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It wasn't until a somewhat unusual, and rather grotesque, event took place that the federal government took up the pollution control cause and passed laws not only to control pollution, but to clean it up.
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Is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, infamous as the location of a 70-acre, landfill that became the site of an enormous environmental disaster in the 1970s. Decades of dumping toxic chemicals harmed the health of hundreds of residents; the area was cleaned up over the course of 21 years in a Superfund operation.
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Provides a Federal "Superfund" to clean up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment.
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The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel. The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.
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The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion. It was agreed on 16th September 1987, and entered into force on 1st January 1989.
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To designate certain lands in the California Desert as wilderness, to establish the Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and the Mojave National Monument, and for other purposes.
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The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a manmade disaster that occurred when Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The Exxon Valdez oil slick covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales
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The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that aimed to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the presence of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. The essential tenet of the Kyoto Protocol was that industrialized nations needed to lessen the amount of their CO2 emissions.
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considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8 percent to 31 percent larger in volume than the previous largest is regarded as one of the largest environmental disasters in American history.
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Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil more than doubled in January 2020 compared with the previous year,[6] the Amazon rainforest biodiversity is huge and is the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia.[7] Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest may influence the climate worldwide.
