Young Brunette Girl Outside In The Wild Nature

Two opposing factions had emerged within the environmental movement by the early 20th century: the conservationists and the preservationists. The conservationists (such as Gifford Pinchot) focused on the proper use of nature, whereas the preservationists sought the protection of nature from use. Put another way, conservation sought to regulate human use while preservation sought to eliminate human impact altogether.
The idea of protecting nature for nature's sake began to gain more recognition in the 1930s with American writers like Aldo Leopold, calling for a "land ethic" and urging wilderness protection. It had become increasingly clear that wild spaces were disappearing rapidly and that decisive action was needed to save them.
Global conservation became an issue at the time of the dissolution of the British Empire in Africa in the late 1940s. The British established great wildlife preserves there. As before, this interest in conservation had an economic motive: in this case, big game hunting. Nevertheless, this led to growing recognition in the 1950s and the early 1960s of the need to protect large spaces for wildlife conservation worldwide. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), founded in 1961, grew to be one of the largest conservation organizations in the world.
Preservation again came to the fore in the 1960s with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which was the genesis of the modern environmental movement. Major environmental groups such as the Sierra Club shifted from protesting to working with politicians to influence environmental policy.