Peter Wild

Within the literature of conservation, which in the past has been full of praises to nature’s beauty, Edward Abbey’s full-blown rage is what distinguishes him from others. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.25/download-entire-issue

Garrett Hardin’s confrontations with some of the most basic tenets of Western civilization have piqued racial minorities, sociologists, churchmen, political liberals and conservatives alike. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.18/download-entire-issue

John Muir, the legendary preservationist who wandered the Sierra Nevada, tends to be viewed as a hero dressed in simple guise; a closer look shows him as a complex man, like the rest of us capable of gloom and hesitation. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.16/download-entire-issue

Enos Abijah Mills, after years living primitively in the shadow of Colorado’s Long’s Peak, had a chance encounter with John Muir that apparently inspired him to work for the preservation of Colorado’s high Rockies. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.15/download-entire-issue

If anything characterizes Mary Hunter Austin, it is not the disparateness of social reprobation, ill health, or the constant searches of her life, but integration, the harmony of earth and man. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.11/download-entire-issue

In the second of a two-part series, author Peter Wild recounts how Gifford Pinchot tramped through the West and schemed with President Teddy Roosevelt, and ultimately became chief of 16 million acres of forest reserves. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.9/download-entire-issue

Gifford Pinchot is best remembered as the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, but he was also a man who for 20 years pined for his dead girlfriend, who astounded his own Republican party by appointing women and blacks to office, and who thought John Muir demented. The first in a two-part series about […]

Joseph Wood Krutch probably did more than any other writer to change society’s opinion toward what it had long looked on as undifferentiated wasteland — the deserts of the American Southwest. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.6/download-entire-issue

Aldo Leopold might have spent his life happily stuck in a romantic age — chewing tobacco with other Forest Service employees, camping in the ponderosa forests and killing the hated wolf — but he possessed two traits that raised him above the average: capacity for perception and the ability to change. Download entire issue to […]

If depression followed Bernard DeVoto as he left the West, it was a mood he eventually harnessed to drive his creativity and become one of the most controversial writers — and one of the most effective conservationists — of the mid-20th century. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.1/download-entire-issue

Steven Mather entered the Interior Department before the National Park Service existed, and helped consolidate the national parks under a strong mission of preservation. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/8.24/download-entire-issue

Though John Wesley Powell had enlightened ideas — such as dividing the West into states based on watershed boundaries — most of the reforms he proposed weren’t accepted during his lifetime. The second in a two-part series by Peter Wild. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/8.18/download-entire-issue

John Wesley Powell told the hard truth about the West, but his advice for a more considerate approach to westward expansion was widely scorned and largely rejected. The first in a two-part series by Peter Wild. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/8.17/download-entire-issue