Events and Dateline

• 1690 - Colonial Governor William Penn requires Pennsylvania settlers to preserve one acre of trees for every five acres cleared.
• 1748 - Jared Eliot, clergyman and physician, writes Essays on Field Husbandry in New England promoting soil conservation.
• 1828 - Carl Sprengel formulates the Law of the Minimum stating that growth is limited not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource. More Here
• 1859 - Publication of second edition of William Elliott's Carolina Sports by Land and Water (first published in 1846), an early example of the hunter-as-conservationist, a phenomenon which became increasingly important for conservationism.
• 1860- Henry David Thoreau delivers an address to the Middlesex (Massachusetts) Agricultural Society, entitled "The Succession of Forest Trees," in which he analyzes aspects of what later came to be understood as forest ecology and urges farmers to plant trees in natural patterns of succession; the address is later published in (among other places) Excursions, becoming perhaps his most influential ecological contribution to conservationist thought. See Walden
• 1864 - George Perkins Marsh publishes Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (revised 1874 as The Earth as Modified by Human Action), the first systematic analysis of humanity's destructive impact on the natural environment and a work which becomes (in Lewis Mumford's words) "the fountain-head of the conservation movement."
• 1866 - The term Ecology is coined (in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834-1919) in his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen.
• 1872 - The term acid rain is coined by Robert Angus Smith in the book Air and Rain.
• - US first national park, Yellowstone National Park.
• - Arbor Day was founded by J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City, Nebraska. It occurs yearlyon the last Friday in April in the US.
• 1876 - British River Pollution Control Act makes it illegal to dump sewage into a stream.
• 1892 - John Muir, (1838 - 1914), founded the Sierra Club.
• 1902 - George Washington Carver writes How to Build Up Worn Out Soils.
• 1903 - March 14, US President Theodore Roosevelt creates first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system), on Pelican Island, Florida.
• 1905 - The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution.
• 1909 - US President Theodore Roosevelt convenes the North American Conservation Conference, held in Washington, D.C. and attended by representatives of Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico, and the United States.
• 1918 - Congress approves the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which implements a 1916 Convention (between the U.S. and Britain, acting for Canada) for the Protection of Migratory birds, and establishes responsibility for international migratory bird protection.
• 1934 - Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act.
• 1935 - Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act.
• 1948 - World Conservation Union or International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. Founded in 1948, its headquarters is located in Gland, Switzerland.
• 1954 - Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act.
• 1961 - World Wildlife Fund (WWF) registered as a charitable trust in Morges, Switzerland, an international organization for the conservation, research and restoration of the natural environment.
• 1962 - Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.
• 1963 - World Conservation Union (IUCN) meeting drafts the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) More on the IUCN Here
• 1964 - Wilderness Act.
• 1966 - National Wildlife Refuge System Act.
• - Fur Seal Act.
• - Endangered Species Preservation Act.
• 1968 - National Trails System Act.
• - Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
• 1969 - National Environmental Policy Act including the first requirements on Environmental impact assessment.
• 1970 - Earth Day U.S.
• - US Environmental Protection Agency established.
• - Clean Air Act.
• 1972 - Marine Mammal Protection Act.
• - Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act.
• - Clean Water Act.
• - Ocean Dumping Act.
• - Coastal Zone Management Act.
• 1974 - National Reserves Management Act.
• - World population reached 4 billion
• 1975 - Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
• 1977 - Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
• - Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act.
• 1982 - Coastal Barrier Resources Act.
• - Emergency Wetlands Resources Act.
• - Tetra-ethyl lead phase-out was completed in the US.
• 1987 - World population reached 5 billion.
• 1988 - Ocean Dumping Ban Act.
• - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established
• 1990 - National Environmental Education Act.
• - European Environment Agency was established
• 1991 - The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was signed
• 1992 - The Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro
• - The Canadian government closes all eastern seaboard fishing grounds due to insufficient recovery of the stock.
• - Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency established.
• - The metaphor Ecological footprint is coined by William Rees.
• 1994 - United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
• - The first genetically modified food crop released to the market.
• 1995 - Scotland's Environmental Protection Agency established.
• 1997 - July, U.S. Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which stated that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations.
• - The Kyoto Protocol
• 1999 - World population reached 6 billion.
• 2005 - The Kyoto Protocol came into force on February 16

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