ABSTRACT
Nowhere has women's self-conscious role as protectors of the environment been better exemplified than during the progressive conservation crusade of the early twentieth century. Although that role has been rendered all but invisible by conservation historians, women transformed the crusade from an elite male enterprise into a widely based movement. In so doing, they not only brought hundreds of local natural areas under legal protection, but also promoted legislation aimed at halting pollution, reforesting watersheds, and preserving endangered species. Yet this enterprise ultimately rested on the self-interested preservation of their own middle-class lifestyles and was legitimated by the separate male/female spheres ideology of the nineteenth century aimed at conserving “true womanhood,” the home, and the child.
