Driven Wild: Lessons from the First Century of American Wilderness Preservation

Paul Sutter has published widely on the American wilderness movement and the history of American environmentalism. Almost a century ago, a young forester named Aldo Leopold convinced his superiors in the Forest Service to set aside a portion go the Gila National Forest as the nation’s first designated wilderness area. In the century since, the National Wilderness Preservation System has grown to more than 110 million acres. Paul Sutter’s talk will focus on the surprising interwar origins of that system, and of wilderness advocacy, and what that neglected history might tell us about the future of wilderness.

Bio: Paul Sutter, Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the author of several books, including Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (2002) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (2015). He is series editor for Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books published by the University of Washington Press.