ABSTRACT
The conservation movement arose in Gilded Age America alongside Populism. It was founded by men like John Muir who sought to preserve wilderness for the masses of ordinary people rather than the privileged. Muir recognized that large corporate interests attacked efforts to preserve wilderness by professing concern about the impacts of conservation on the common person rather than their profits. Cattle ranchers in Wyoming opposed the expansion of Glacier National Park, arguing that they were victims of government tyranny. Three sagebrush rebellions ensued among cattle ranchers in the West. Goldwater and other Republicans initially embraced environmentalism. Yet, as the OPEC oil embargo struck, they became more critical of the “command and control” approach to environmental regulation and began to sympathize with the 1970s sagebrush rebellion. Meanwhile, opponents of the antinuclear movement began to describe environmentalists as part of an entitled “new class.” This was the seedbed of right-wing sham eco-populism. While Goldwater and other Republicans continued to support conservationist and environmental measures, the Reagan administration appointed people overtly hostile to the regulatory missions of the EPA, the BLM, and the Department of the Interior to oversee these agencies.
