Concepts in Conservation of Land, Water, 
and Wildlife’ 
By Ira N. GasrieExson, President, Wildlife Management Institute 
[With 3 plates] 
Conservation is the wise use of our 
natural resources. Conservation is not 
a process of locking up those resources 
and keeping them for future use as is 
sometimes charged, but a concept of 
using wisely, and with care, those re- 
sources with which this land was 
originally endowed. These resources 
can be divided into two broad groups: 
the mineral or nonrenewable _re- 
sources, which can be conserved only 
by utilizing them wisely and without 
waste, and the organic or renewable 
resources which, if properly managed, 
can continue to produce indefinitely 
things of value for the human race. 
It is with this latter group that con- 
servationists are now chiefly con- 
cerned. In the past there have been 
many conservation programs. ‘There 
have been abroad groups promoting 
the conservation of forests, wildlife, 
soils, and, most recently, waters. 
There are many smaller groups inter- 
ested in single phases of wildlife con- 
servation. Each of them has been 
more or less successful in proportion to 
the popular appeal and to the strength 
of the forces behind it. There are 
still many groups which are primarily 
interested in individual problems, but 
there is a growing public understand- 
ing of the fact that the conservation of 
all renewable resources is inextricably 
1 Reprinted by permission from The 
Technology Review, vol. 50, No. 3, January 
1948, with added illustrations from Outdoor 
News Bulletin. 
intertwined and that it is difficult, if 
not impossible, to pick out any one 
element and carry on a conservation 
program for that alone without affect- 
ing, for good or evil, some other im- 
portant elements. 
Americans are proud of the fact 
that their energy and initiative have 
developed a great country in record 
time. ‘There is no similar instance is 
history of a virgin land being developed 
into a great agricultural and industrial 
nation in so short a period of time. 
While there is much in this record of 
which the nation may well be proud, 
our achievements have been accom- 
panied by an appallingly wasteful and 
destructive utilization of basic re- 
sources. Virgin forests were cut, piled, 
and burned in order to make way for 
the plow; for years timber was, and 
still is, too often cut with shocking 
wastefulness of the present crop and a 
complete lack of concern for future 
forest growth. Land that never should 
have been farmed was broken; vast 
drainage schemes were promoted at 
public expense even when such 
schemes could have nothing but ill 
effects on the local and national 
economy. 
Into this wastefulness the three 
elements of ignorance, stupidity, and 
greed have entered conspicuously. 
It can be said charitably that in the 
earlier days much of the waste was 
due to ignorance. With present-day 
knowledge of the past waste of the 
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