Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation

Karl Jacoby's Crimes against Nature is an unsettling study of early conservation, one that reminds readers that battles to save nature were also battles to colonize places and people. The book revisits the classic stories of the Ad-irondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon, but its focus on local conditions renders a far more ambiguous perspective. “Telling the tale of conservation in this manner,” Jacoby explains, “inevitably produces a narrative at odds with standard discussions of the movement. National policy makers fade into the background, while local actors seize the foreground.” The result is a sobering view into a “hidden history” of bigotry, oppression, and state building. This is a subversive story, make no doubt, but it is less antagonistic than critical of conservation's long-ignored social consequences. Histories “from the bottom up” have come late to the field of environmental history, and it is no wonder. Of the few that take...