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But, What Has Happened? Environment engineering, or more 

 simply, conservation, in the United States, has been recognized by 

 thinking and social-minded people as a necessity ever since colonial 

 days. No general attempt was made to apply it until recent years. 

 The impression in the public mind that American resources were 

 inexhaustible, coupled with "rugged individualism" and the "get 

 rich quick" motive, led to ignoring conservative management of 

 resources. 



The climaxes of forest, prairie and plain were destroyed. The 

 process is graphically and tersely described as "ax, plow, cow, 

 desert." The twin processes of erosion and vegetative deterioration 

 go hand in hand, each encouraging and stimulating the other. Un- 

 less man reverses the process, the destruction will, (and has) set the 

 affected areas back decades, and in many cases hundreds of years. 



Regardless of degree of damage, problems result. The task of 

 restoring the vast total of injured areas to something near the 

 virgin level of productivity, or above it, is a primary problem of the 

 United States and many other countries. There are special prob- 

 lems related to the total problem, and how they may be solved is 

 another field of study. Our attempt thus far has been to see the 

 need for solving them, to state principles for sustaining the climax 

 when it is restored or created, to suggest how at least further de- 

 terioration of the landscape may be prevented and how its restora- 

 tion must be approached. 



