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Mechelle To E-Portfolio Paper Professor Mark Welsh (M&W 2:30-3:50) March 17, 2014 Preservation versus Conservation We can learn a lot from both John Muir the cofounder of Sierra Club and President Theodore Roosevelt. We must be able to give back to nature as much as we take. We need to learn to preserve our natural resources while still enjoying the land we live on. If we take everything away from the natural habitat that use to occupy the space they can either become endangered or extinct because they are not able to cope with the changes or they will just have to move to a different area, possibly our backyards or neighborhoods. The shortcoming that many may say Document 1 Wilderness should be Unspoiled: Muir has is that John Muir is too passionate about preserving the environment. Passion and love can cloud peoples judgments, but from passion and love, you can see his intense desire to want something to succeed. I do not believe John Muirs shortcoming makes his argument about preserving the environment less argumentative. I believe it helps persuade the reader towards preserving the environment versus conserving it with Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt has paved the way for protecting the environment but he sees a chance to protect the environment as a way to create revenue. He is a businessman at heart. In Document 2 Forest Land Has Multiple Uses: Roosevelt he states, Ten per cent of all the money received from the forest reserves goes to the States for the use of the counties in which

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the reserves lie, to be used for schools and roads. (Davidson, 618). It is beneficial to the surrounding counties but it interferes with the natural habitat and the wild animals that live in that area. Over time we will end up destroying the land we were conserving because how careless people are. Document 1 written by John Muir made a more compelling argument than Document 2 from Theodore Roosevelt. There are things you can always produce, and that is money. You cannot recreate the land that once use to be there or the animals that occupied the space. We have already altered enough land this plant has created for us. We as the keepers of this earth need to learn to preserve the natural state of this planet for others that follow after us to enjoy.

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Works Cited Davidson, James West, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff. "The Progressive Era." Experience history: interpreting America's past. Volume 2 ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 618. Print.