Environmental History Final

Double cross hybrids

The most prevalent type of hybrid that was grown in the United States in the 1930's and 1940's is known as a double-cross hybrid. It acted to reduce agricultural biodiversity, as it relied on just a few high-yield varieties of each crop

Donora, PA

The town was the scene of the infamous Donora Smog of 1948. an air inversion trapped industrial effluent (air pollution) from the American Steel and Wire plant and Donora Zinc Works. Lots of people died but the whole truth about the bad air

Anti-Smoke campaign

Tried to clean up the air during the 20th century. Air pollution was becoming big

Adirondack State Park

Upstate New York, about 52% of the preserve is privately owned. The inclusion of human communities makes the park one of the great experiments in conservation in the industrialized world.

David Brower

Very well known environmentalist during the mid 20th century, he founded many environmental issues. In the 1950s and 1960s he served as the director of the Sierra Club. director of the Sierra Club in 1952 he joined the fight against the Echo Park Dam, which conservationist sucessfully ended and sierra club is accredited mostly for that.

Hydroelectric power

Water turned turbines that generate power. Major rivers were dammed and dammed repeatedly to create hydroelectric power.

Charles Darwin

a 19th century biologist best known for his accomplishments in Evolution. Coined the idea natural selection is driven by genetic variation. In 1859 he published the Origin of Species. Although not all his ideas were fully correct he was thinking in ecological terms (organic and inorganic beings)

National environmental policy Act

a United States environmental law that promotes the enhancement of the environment. NEPA grew out of the increased appreciation and concern for the environment that resulted from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Another major driver for enacting NEPA were the 1960s highway revolts, a series of protests in many American cities that occurred in response to the bulldozing of many communities and ecosystems during the construction of the Interstate Highway System.

Superfund

a United States federal government program designed to fund the cleanup of sites contaminated with hazardous substances and pollutants. Happened in 1980 in response to the threat of hazardous waste sites, typified by the Love Canal

Ecosystems

a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. First used by Arthur Tensely in 1935

New Left

a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of people who sought to implement a broad range of reforms on issues such as civil rights, gay rights, abortion, gender roles, and drugs, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on labor unionization and questions of social class

Central Intelligence Agency

a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence

DDT

a colorless, crystalline, tasteless, and almost odorless organochlorine known for its insecticidal properties and environmental impacts. First synthesized in 1874. After the war, DDT was also used as an agricultural insecticide and its production and use duly increased. The book claimed that DDT and other pesticides had been shown to cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds

Ernst Haeckl

a german scientist during the 19th and 20th century. He mapped the genealogical tree relating all life forms, phylogeny. He coined the term ecology- the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and their physical surrondings

biome

a large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, e.g., forest or tundra.

City Beautiful Movement

a late 19th and early 20th century movement intended to introduce beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. Inspired by the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in chicago(the white city), many people wondered why their cities don't look like that. An idea that a city could be clean and ordered. Implemented zoning laws and design rules

Earth Summit

a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. An important achievement of the summit was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.

Yellowstone

a national park located in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. In 1872, Ulysses Grant signed the law that created Yellowstone the first National Park

Yosemite

a national park spanning Northern California. Yosemite Grant, signed by Abe in 1864, was the first instance of park land being set aside specifically for preservation and public use by action of the U.S. federal government. set an example for yellowstone. Muir wrote scientific papers on the area's biology. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted emphasized the importance of conservation of Yosemite Valley.

relict species

a population or taxon of organisms that was more widespread or more diverse in the past

Earth First

a radical environmental advocacy group[1] that emerged in the Southwestern United States in 1979. The activists envisioned a revolutionary movement, with the goal to set aside multi-million acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew upon the concepts of conservation biology, which had been developing for over twenty years. Thought to be inspired by MonkeyWrenching. by 1980s really promoted and identified with Deep Ecology

Great Society

a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964-65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. The Great Society included several new environmental laws to protect air and water during the 1960s

Bituminous coal

a type of coal that was used as main source in the late 19th and early 20th century

Whole Earth Catalog

an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972. While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Steve Jobs compared it to google for the time period

Rachel Carson

an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. Published Silent Spring in 1962 which described the harmful effects of pesticides ont eh environment which lead to the ban of DDT.

Wilderness Society

an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States. Established 1935 by a group of eight men who would later become some of the 20th Century's most prominent conservationists. The Wilderness Act is considered one of America's bedrock conservation laws and was written by The Wilderness Society's. As one of the largest conservationist organizations in the country, the Wilderness Society has contributed to nearly all major designations of lands to be entered into the wilderness system.

Stewart Brand

an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Environmental Protection Agency

an agency of the federal government of the United States which was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. Created from 40 different beauros President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA and it began operation on December 2, 1970. Nixon signing of EPA televised "decade of the environment"

Deep ecology

an environmental movement and philosophy that regards human life as just one of many equal components of a global ecosystem. Coined by Naess in 1973, "the right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live and unfold than any other species."

World Bank

an international financial institution that provides loans to countries of the world for capital programs. It was created in 1944. it has been assigned temporary management responsibility of the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), focused on making renewable energy cost-competitive with coal-fired power as quickly as possible

International Monetory Fund

an international organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., of "189 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. Formed in 1944,

Kyoto Protocol

an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (a) global warming is occurring and (b) it is extremely likely that human-made CO2 emissions has predominantly caused it. As of 2016, the US is the only signatory that has not ratified the Protocol.

Yucca Mountain

as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste in the United States

yards vs lawns

1920s and 1930s yard- place of work, where you slaughter chickens, do your laundry lawn- green grass, trees, and flower beds

Bulldozer

1950s, emblem of suburban sprawl. Adam Rome wrote about it

Anne Gorsuch Burford

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Reagan during 1981-1983, She was a firm believer that the federal government was too big and powerful she slashed the EPA's budget by nearly a quarter and, according to a Washington Post story at the time, boasted that she had reduced the thickness of the book of clean water regulations from six inches to a half inch.

Annexation of Hawaii

America's annexation of Hawaii in 1898 extended U.S. territory into the Pacific and highlighted resulted from economic integration and the rise of the United States as a Pacific power

Kaibab Plateau

An Arizona the Kaibab deer are particularly important because of the changes in their population during the early 1900s. This particular fluctuation is a great example of population engineering and the effects humans can have on nature.

Zoning laws

An outcome of the City Beautiful Movement, it divided up the city into areas that could be used for different things.

Earth Day

April 22 1970. Urged by the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in 1969, Gaylord Nelson announced there would be a day dedicated to the earth. The largest grassroots demonstration in history 20 million people participated. This is often noted as the start of the Environmental Movement

Appropriate Technology

By the early 20th century, the term embraced a growing range of means, processes, and ideas in addition to tools and machines. By mid-century, technology was defined by such phrases as "the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment."

Federal Highway act

as enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. Eisenhower advocated for the highways for the purpose of national defense. In the event of a ground invasion by a foreign power, the U.S. Army would need good highways to be able to transport troops across the country efficiently. Created the Interstate Highway System

Lois Gibbs

Gibbs's involvement in environmental causes began in 1978 when she discovered that her 5-year-old son's elementary school in Niagara Falls, New York was built on a toxic waste dump. Gibbs organized her neighbors and formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association

Greenpeace

Group of 12 men on a voyage in Alaska during the year 1970. Protesting in the late 1960s, the U.S. plans for an underground nuclear weapon test in the tectonically unstable island of Amchitka in Alaska. (radical group)

Thomas Midgley

He was a key figure in a team of chemists that developed the tetraethyllead (TEL) additive to gasoline as well as some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). His work led to the release of large quantities of lead into the atmosphere as a result of the large-scale combustion of leaded gasoline all over the world

Woody Gurthrie

His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California, and learned their traditional folk and blues songs.

Samuel P. Haye

Historian who talks about how conservation fits into progressivism. Early 20th century

Charles Elton

book outlines the important principles of ecological studies of animal behaviour and life history, such as food chains, the size of food items, the ecological niche and the concept of a pyramid of numbers as a method of representing the structure of an ecosystem in terms of feeding relationships.

Arne Naess

coined the term "deep ecology" and was an important intellectual and inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late twentieth century. He thought environmental issues couldn't be solved through laws and regulations but through thinking about the relationship between humans and natural world

Aldo Leopold

considered the father of wild ecology, the moodle reading _______

Boulder (hoover) dam

constructed during the 1930s in the Colorado River, it provided the growing need for electric power

Central Park

designed in 1858 by Olmsted and Vaux, the park symbolized the importance of public parks in a time consumed by industries

Debt Crisis

during the 1990s 1.3 trillion dollars, Worldback in IMF lent more money, in order to repay the debts more land is turned into plantation

John Muir

early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States. in 1892 he created the Sierra Club. He led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks. He also wrote and his unique perspective inspired many

Arthur Tansley

english botanist, critic of Frederick Clements idea's. Introduced the word ecology in 1935. Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment

Sierra Club

founded in 1892 by John Muir, it is the nation's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization

Frederick Clements

he developed the theory of vegetation change to climax community. He published Plant Succession and Plant Indicators during early 20th century where he equated units of vegetation with individual organisms. Viewed the community as a distinct unit

Gaylord Nelson

he was the founder of Earth Day, which launched a new wave of environmental activism. Advocated social justice and environmental issues and basically started the environmental movement

Predatory Animal and Rodent Control Service

idea where control of predators, rodents, and even some birds is essential to protect important agricultural and pastoral interests or human health and safety

US Commission on Fish and Fisheries

in 1871 the Commission was established by Congress to gain better information about the nation's fish and wildlife resources. It was directed to study "the decrease of the food fishes of the seacoasts and lakes of the United States, and to suggest remedial measures."

Montreal Protocol Accords

in 1985 there is a huge hole in ozone over antartica as a result an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion. AKA CFCs. Agreed in 1987 and entered force in 1989.

Snail darter

involved the delay of the construction of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in 1973. The lawsuit stated that the Tellico Reservoir, to be created by Tellico Dam, would alter the habitat of the river to the point of wiping out the snail darter. The lawsuits slowed the construction of the Tellico Dam but did not stop it

Environmental Defense Fund

is a United States-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group founded in 1967. Successfully advocated against using DDT first locally then NY State, then nationally. Their study in Mississippi River help pass the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974.

Nature Conservancy

is a charitable environmental organization, headquartered in Virginia found in 1951.

Environmental Impact Statement

is a document required by NEPA for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An EIS is a tool for decision making. purpose: s to promote informed decision-making by federal agencies by making "detailed information concerning significant environmental impacts" available to both agency leaders and the public. During the 1970s

high-modernist ideology

is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world

Forest Reserve Act

is a law that allowed the President of the United States to set aside forest reserves from the land in the public domain. 1819

Glen Canyon

is a natural canyon in southern Utah and north-central Arizona in the United States. In the 1950s, with the proposal of a dam upstream of the Grand Canyon for water storage and hydroelectric power generation. In 1963, a reservoir, Lake Powell, was created by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, flooding much of Glen Canyon beneath water hundreds of feet in depth.

Strontium-90

is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission. Tested in the Baby Tooth Survey, found that babies after 1950s had more levels of this isotope in baby teeth than before 1950. The article was introduced to JFK and helped convince him to sign the partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

Technocracy

is a system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis of technological knowledge. William Henry Smyth invented it in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers"

Paul Ehrlich

is an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued

Dave Foreman

is an American environmentalist and co-founder of the radical environmental movement Earth First! industrial sabotage traditionally associated with labor struggles - would become the chief tactic of the Earth First! movement in the 1980s.

Al Gore

is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He held the first congressional hearings on the climate change, toxic waste, and global warming. whose work in climate change activism earned him (jointly with the IPCC) the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

National Park Service

is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations. formed in 1916 and Yosemite was transferred to that agency's jurisdiction

Organismic ecology

is an assemblage or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area and in a particular time. Clements developed a holistic (or organismic) concept of community.

Frederick Law Olmsted

Professional Landscaper who worked with Vaux, he designed some colleges and govt buildings but most importantly public parks. He designed Central Park in 1866 and tried to recreate the wilderness (little bit of everything) bordered park with trees, filled it with hills woods, walkways, ponds, fountains, managed landscape

Owens valley

Provides water to LA water aqueduct, the source of half of LA water. This made LA explode in size.

Envirocrats

Radical environmental group

Stewart Udall

Served under JFK and Lyndon B Johnson, Under his leadership, the Interior Department aggressively promoted an expansion of federal public lands and assisted with the enactment of major environmental legislation. Udall played a key role in the enactment of environmental laws. A pioneer of the environmental movement, Udall warned of a conservation crisis in the 1960s with his best-selling book on environmental attitudes in the United States, The Quiet Crisis (1963).

James Watt

Served under Reagan during early 1980s, he is often viewed as an anti environmentalist. Environmental groups accused Watt of cutting funding for enviro groups, wanting to elevate the land and water conservation fund, easing regulations of oil and mining,

Jane Adams

She was crucial to the reformation of clean streets and garbage disposal. She argued there were many health impacts from garbage and demanded a change. By 1905, there were clean streets.

Gifford Pinchot

is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal. He coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources. His leadership put conservation of forests high on America's priority list. Main conservationist during the early 20th century, butted head Muir

Endangered Species Act

is one of the few dozens of US environmental laws passed in the 1970s, designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation".

Levittown

is the name of seven large suburban developments created in the United States of America by William Levitt and his company Levitt & Sons, built after WWII the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments. It was 30 miles out from NYC

Boy Scouts 1910

large aspect is training young men in helping to conserve wildlife, energy, forests, soil, and water

Love canal

neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY. Infamously known as the host of a 70 acre landfill that served as the epicenter of a massive environmental pollution disaster that affected the health of hundreds of residents, culminating in an extensive Superfund cleanup operation. The school board was unwilling to close the school. This led to activism, fought toxic waste regulations, toxic waste superfund.

Monkey-Wrenching

nonviolent disobedience and sabotage carried out by environmental activists against those whom they perceive to be ecological exploiters. Came from Edward Abbey book in 1975, it is typically motivated by a regard for preservation of life and is ordinarily restricted to two forms: either to nonviolent disobedience or to sabotage that does not directly endanger others

Covert Vaux

partner with Olmsted, helped design central park in NYC. He introduced new ideas about the significance of public parks in America during a hectic time of urbanization.

Green Revolutions

refers to a set of research and development of technology transfer initiatives occurring between the 1930s and the late 1960s that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s

Progressivism

support for or advocacy of social reform in America during the 1890s to 1920s

Echo Park

the Dam was proposed in the 1950s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as a central feature of the Colorado River Storage Project. A compromise led to the abandonment of the Echo Park project in favor of Glen Canyon Dam on the main stem of the Colorado in lands that were not at that time protected.

Anti-litter Campaign

the entire anti-litter movement in the 1950s was initiated by a consortium of industry groups who wanted to divert the nation's attention away from even more radical legislation to control the amount of waste these companies were putting out. No longer was the focus on regulating production but what people were doing with the waste.

Riverside, Ill

the first planned community in the United States in 1869 by Frederick Olmsted and Vaux. Aspects: front lawns, storm drains were hidden, lots of curves, lots of green space. Increased other planned subdivisions around large cities, people thought it was healthier to live in suburbs

Sagebrush Rebellion

was a movement during the 1970s and 1980s that sought major changes to federal land control, use and disposal policy in the American West where, in 13 western states, federal land holdings include between 20% and 85% of a state's area. The supporters of this movement wanted more state and local control over these lands

Wise Use Movement

was a product of the Progressive Era, and included the concept of multiple use—public land can be used simultaneously for recreation, for timber, for mining, and for wildlife habitat. Anti environmental Movement, thought the government had too much control (late 20th century)

Edward Abbey

was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. He wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by enviro groups. He focused on threats in the southwest desserts,

Dorothea Lange

was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

Pare Lorentz

was an American filmmaker known for his movies about the New Deal. "The Plow that Broke the Plains" documentary of the story of the dust bowl also made the River for Roosevelt and has many recognitions.

Frederick Jackson Turner

was an American historian in the early 20th century, who formed the Frontier Thesis. He argued that the moving western frontier shaped American democracy and the American character from the colonial era until 1890.

Three Mile Island

was caused by a nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979 in Pennsylvania. It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.

Tetraethyl lead

TEL was mixed with gasoline (petrol) beginning in the 1920s as a patented octane rating booster that allowed engine compression to be raised substantially, which in turn increased vehicle performance or fuel economy. It was found to be an effective antiknock agent by Thomas Midgley

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

On August 5, 1963, representatives of the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere (signed by JFK) recognized as an important step in the control of nuclear weapons

Climax Community

Originated from Clements in the early 1900s a historic term for a biological community of plants, animals, and fungi which, through the process of ecological succession in the development of vegetation in an area over time, have reached a steady state.

Big Blowup

1910 fires that spread across Idaho, Montana, and Washington (American Northwest) It pushed forest fire issues into the public discourse, and led to new fire prevention and suppression policies, policies that still influence fire management around the world today.

Benard Fernow

Conservationist following Pinchot, Fernow is considered among the pioneers of forestry education in America, creating a curriculum at Cornell that was adopted at other Universities across the nation. early 20th century

Ron Arnold

Creator of the WiseUse Agenda, critics claim to see Arnold as promoting abuse of the environment

Appropriation doctrine

Developed in the western states, the first person to take a quantity of water from a water source for "beneficial use"—agricultural, industrial or household —has the right to continue to use that quantity of water for that purpose. the general principle is that water rights are unconnected to land ownership, and can be sold or mortgaged like other property.

Open space movement

Due to the rapid suburban sprawl in the 19th century, Americans became concerned. Therefor urban planning becomes a thing. Suburbs gave birth to open space movement

Back to the land movement

During the 1960s and 1970s people wanted to move out to rural areas. They felt out of touch with nature but the movement was also fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution.

The plow that broke the Plains

In 1936 the farm association hired Pare Lorentz to create a film that showed the natural and man-made devastation caused by the Dust Bowl.

kitchen debate

In 1959, the Soviets and Americans had agreed to hold exhibits in each other's countries as a cultural exchange to promote understanding. The model home in which the debate took place was furnished with a dishwasher, refrigerator, and range. It was designed to represent a $14,000 home that a typical American worker could afford

Oil Crisis

In 1973 and 1979 there was an oil disappearance in the middle east. It is a natural resource thats become crucial to human life.

Northern spotted owl

In 1990, the logging industry estimated up to 30,000 of 168,000 jobs would be lost because of the owl's status, which agreed closely with a Forest Service estimate. They were protecting owls at the expense of jobs- "are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?"

Wilderness Cult

In America, the rise of urbanization, coupled with the "closing" of the western frontier in 1890 stirred a more adament devotion to the wilderness. Americans began to fear losing their virtue with the passing of the wilderness. There was only one response: preservation.

qualitative liberalism

In the 1950s, Schlesinger engaged in a rhetorical campaign which attempted to provide liberals with a dramatic redefinition of themselves as a force in American politics based on the notion of "qualitative liberalism."

Chloroflourocarbons

In the late 1920s Thomas Midgley improved the process of synthesis and led the effort to use CFC as refrigerant to replace ammonia, chloromethane, and sulfur dioxide. Since the late 1970s, the use of CFCs has been heavily regulated because of their destructive effects on the ozone layer.

Riparian law

It is a system for allocating water among those who possess land along its path so basically water rights. all landowners whose properties adjoin a body of water have the right to make reasonable use of it as it flows through or over their properties.

Caroline Bartlett Crane

Known as "America's housekeeper" for her efforts to improve urban sanitation. She was a leader of the sanitation movement during the late 19th and early 20th century and ironically from Kalamazoo MI. She advocated better sanitation in slaughter houses and surveyed 62 cities for their problems and suggested ways to fix them.

Nuclear Waste

Large production of nuclear waste during the 1960s was displaced in many ways. Put into barrels and dumped into the ocean, put into pools int he ground and

the New Ecology

Term established in the 1980s describes the shift in ecology. Challenging systems ecology, it addresses the instability, disequilibria, and chaotic fluctuations that characterize environmental systems

Tellico Dam

The Tellico Dam case illustrates the United States' changing attitudes toward dams and the environment in the 1970s. Construction of the dam was delayed when the fish snail darter was discovered. Took it to court fighting a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act (1978).

"takings"

The concept of takings comes from the Fifth Amendment (see above), which prohibits the taking of private property by the government for a public use without payment of just compensation. When private property is "taken" by the government, the property owner must be fairly compensated.