As Uganda developed her environment management endeavours into a fullyfledged sector in the mid-1980s, with the Government introducing an entire environment ministry and setting up an institutional framework that trickled down to the common man, one part of the process that proved challenging was creating awareness of the concerns across stakeholders. Yet sensitisation of the different stakeholders was a necessity if at all the endeavours were to succeed. A journalist who entered the information trade about that time soon provided a solution to the challenge.

The late Sir Ndyakira Amooti decided to dedicate his efforts in journalism almost exclusively to environmental issues, creating awareness about Uganda’s environmental issues, among all stakeholders through his media coverage of the various aspects of the cause.

He in the process became Uganda’s first Environment journalist, globally-celebrated and he garnered numerous awards for his work. He had contributed immensely to the success of the country’s environmental cause by the time he died in
1999.

Reporting on and analysing environmental issues When he joined Uganda media in the mid-1980s, there was no journalist concentrating on reporting on environmental issues in the country.

So when he occasionally reported on and wrote about them (while working like a freelance writer for newspapers as The Topic, The Uganda Times and The People he became the first journalist to report extensively on environment issues and was the only environment journalist in the country for most of the time he practised. In 1987 he joined the New Vision, and there he dedicated himself almost exclusively to covering the country’s environmental issues.

It was at the New Vision that he most worked to raise the public’s environmental consciousness and tackle public ignorance about the need to protect the country’s natural resources.

Since the paper became the country’s leading English daily with a large readership shortly after he joined, his campaign reached far and wide.

Through a combination of feature stories and exposés, he uncovered many cases of wrongdoing and thereby spurred the Government to take action. Among the many causes he wrote about, were the endangered mountain gorillas, the forests of Bwindi, illegal mining, wrongful draining of swamps and poaching. When Uganda suddenly became a major transit point for wildlife smugglers, Ndyakira alerted the world about the problem.

In September 1994, he helped two Americans undercover wildlife agents mount a sting operation at Entebbe Airport. Putting himself at risk, Ndyakira exposed the smuggling of endangered chimpanzees and African great grey parrots (both endangered species protected by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species [CITES) by airport personnel, game officers and businessmen.

Ugandans became concerned about wildlife trafficking and as a result, authorities began arresting many smugglers. While reporting on the upland forests of Bwindi, home to a group of rare mountain gorillas, one of the world’s most endangered species, Ndyakira exposed illegal mining, poaching and tree-cutting. Ndyakira’s exposé led the Parliament to change Bwindi from a forest reserve to a national park.

In 1997, he teamed with Prof. John Okedi and Dr.Aryamanya Mugisha (then NEMA executive director and deputy executive director) to fight off a plan to spray Lake Victoria without an environmental impact assessment. Shortly before his death he averted the Government action to degazette a unique forest for use by industry. Many times he did his activism to protect the environment at the risk of his own safety and in defiance of wealthy offenders who tried to bribe him into silence.

Awards:

Amooti’s dedicated and consistent activism for the environment fetched him recognition and awards from across the world.

In 1995 he was awarded the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme, awarded to outstanding environmentalists. The same year he was knighted by Netherlands’ Prince Benhard, becoming ‘Sir’ as he was made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark. That same year he received a letter of commendation from the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip.

In 1996, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest and most prominent prize for a grassroots ordinary individual working for the good of the environment. At the World Wetlands Day in 2008, he was honoured with a memorial lecture.

Creating Awareness among Children:

Ndyakira went as far as working to inculcate environmental awareness among children. He wrote a series of environmental books meant for young people to help them understand the need for environmental appreciation and protection right from an early age. He published the children’s book What a Country Without Animals.

In 1998, and later published the books What a Country Without Birds, What a Country Without Grasslands and What a Country Without Wetlands. The books are about environmental issues, written for children from nine to 12 years.

After the World War II, Brower returned to his job at the University of California Press, and began editing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946. He managed the Sierra Club annual High Trips from 1947 to 1954. Brower was named the first executive director of the Sierra Club in 1952, and joined the fight against the Echo Park Dam in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument. Taking advantage of his background in publishing, Brower rushed This is Dinosaur edited by Wallace Stegner with photographs by Martin Litton and Philip Hyde into press with publisher Alfred Knopf. Conservationists successfully lobbied Congress to delete Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River Project in 1955, and the Sierra Club received much of the credit. Brower began Sierra Club Books’ Exhibit Format book series with This is the American Earth in 1960, followed by the highly successful In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with color photographs by Eliot Porter in 1962. These coffee-table books sold well and introduced the Sierra Club to new members interested in wilderness preservation. Brower published two new titles a year in the series, but they began to lose money for the organization after 1964, though many claim they were the primary cause of the Club’s extraordinary growth and rise to national prominence. Financial management began to be a bone of contention between Brower and the Club’s board of directors.

Building on the biennial Wilderness Conferences which the Club launched in 1949 together with The Wilderness Society, Brower helped the Club win passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Brower and the Sierra Club also led a major battle to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. In 1964, Brower organized a dory river expedition led by Martin Litton with Philip Hyde and author Francois Leydet. The trip led to the book Time and The River Flowing which galvanized public opposition to the dams. In June 1966 the Club placed full-page ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post asking, “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?” The campaign brought in many new members. The Internal Revenue Service announced it was suspending the Club’s 501(c)(3) charitable organization status. The board had set up the Sierra Club Foundation as an alternative for tax-deductible contributions, but revenues to the Club dropped, despite victories in blocking the Grand Canyon dams and a considerable increase in membership.

As annual deficits increased, tension grew between Brower and the Sierra Club board of directors. Another conflict grew over the Club’s position on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant planned for construction by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) near San Luis Obispo, California. The Club had played a major role in blocking PG&E’s plan for a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay in the early 1960s, but that campaign had centered on the earthquake danger from the nearby San Andreas Fault, not out of opposition to nuclear power itself. The Club’s board of directors had voted to support the Diablo Canyon site for the power plant in exchange for PG&E moving its initial site from the environmentally sensitive Nipomo Dunes. In 1967 a membership referendum upheld the board’s policy. Brower had come to believe that nuclear power was a dangerous mistake at any location, and he publicly voiced his opposition to Diablo Canyon, in defiance of the Club’s official policy.

Sierra Club board elections in the late 1960s produced sharply defined pro- and anti-Brower factions. In 1968 Brower’s supporters won a majority, but in 1969 anti-Brower candidates won all five open positions. Brower was charged with financial recklessness and insubordination by two of his former close friends, photographer Ansel Adams and board president Richard Leonard. Brower’s resignation was accepted by a board vote of ten to five.

Eventually reconciled with the Sierra Club, Brower was elected to the board of directors for a term from 1983 to 1988, and again from 1995 to 2000. Brower was deeply concerned about issues of overpopulation and immigration – which was a major factor leading to his resignation in protest from the board of directors in 2000. “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us,” he said, “and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.” Some of his views with regard to population control were quite controversial. For example, he once stated that, “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

In 1962, Nelson was elected to the U.S. Senate where he represented Wisconsin for 18 years. He authored legislation to create a national hiking trails system, and the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail System. He also sponsored or cosponsored several key pieces of environmental legislation, including the Wilderness Act. His efforts led to bedrock environmental laws such as the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act.

Wilderness Society Years

After leaving the Senate in January, 1981, Nelson continued his fight for the planet’s health as counselor of The Wilderness Society. He was involved with a wide range of land preservation issues, including elimination of logging subsidies, protection of national parks, and expansion of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Recalling the First Earth Day

Senator Nelson recalled the first seeds of Earth Day, in 1962. “That year an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, something that would put the environment into the political spotlight once and for all.”

The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to go on a national conservation tour.

“As it turns out, President Kennedy liked the idea and in September, 1963, he began a five day, eleven state tour talking about conservation. But President Kennedy’s tour did not succeed in making the environment a national political issue, as I had hoped.”

“Six years later, during anti-Vietnam War protests called teach-ins, the idea for Earth Day suddenly occurred to me,” Nelson remembers. “Why not organize a huge grassroots demonstration – a teach-in – that would focus on what was happening to our environment?”

On April 22, 1970 the first Earth Day was a success, fulfilling Senator Nelson’s goal of “a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.”

An estimated 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day. Each year since, Earth Day has been observed around the world.

Mendes was born Francisco Alvo Mendes Filho in the Acre Province of Brazil in 1944. He followed the path set by generations of his family and became a rubber trapper, sustainably harvesting sap from rubber trees weekly and drying the sap to form rubber. Mendes also supported himself and his family by gathering and selling nuts and fruits from the rain forest land which he had inherited from his father. These practices are common sources of income for Brazilians of the region; not only are they sustainable, but they allow much more money to be made per acre than would be possible through cattle farming on the same land.

Many Brazilians, however, attempted to make large short-term profits by chopping down trees and converting forest lands to cattle pastures. In fact, in 1988, 30 million acres of forest were destroyed for such purposes. The Brazilian government encourages this through tax benefits and direct subsidies for cattle ranchers, as well as by building cattle roads through forests.

Mendes sought to defend the forest by political means which involved reaching both the Interior Ministry and the citizens. Mendes also helped establish forest reserves. This automatically made him an enemy of cattle ranchers, especially one Darli Alves da Silva. In 1988, Mendes was assassinated. Massive protests followed, forcing the government to investigate and eventually to arrest Darli da Silva, his son Darci Pereia, and their ranch hand, Jerdeir Pereia. Other local ranchers are still being investigated for possible involvement in Mendes’ premature death.

Pinchot began work as a consulting forester, and soon was appointed to the then new National Forest Commission, which was set up by the U.S. Department of the Interior. It was because of this commission that President Grover Cleveland chose to add a number of additional forest reserves, making their total acreage 21 million.  However, Pinchot saw these lands as for public use, not as locked reserves, and much of the commission disagreed.

Pinchot then became head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Forestry, which later became the Bureau of Forestry.  With the help of President Theodore Roosevelt, this division won the right to operate the forest reserves.  This marked the beginning of the U.S. Forest Service and the national forest system. Pinchot also influenced Roosevelt in setting aside more forest for reserves, but with the election of President Howard Taft, he fell out of favor and was fired.

In his lifetime, Pinchot also helped set up the Society of American Foresters, and served two terms as Governor of Pennsylvania.  In this role, he helped smooth the scars left from the Great Depression, setting an example for President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps through the emergency work camps he formed.

Pinchot’s style gradually changed, becoming less utilitarian, but holding true to his goal to make the country the best possible place for its residents and their descendants, both ecologically and economically.

Through his work, Pinchot caused the differentiation between conservationists and preservationists, even arguing with John Muir at one point over whether or not to use water from a natural reservoir in California.  He supported human development and gain, but also saw the distinction between use and abuse.  Pinchot’s ideas about the environment as a whole remain with us to this day, as well as the acres and acres of forest he toiled to set aside. Gifford Pinchot died in 1946.

His specific achievements are numerous. Perhaps his greatest contribution was his work for conservation. During his tenure in the White House from 1901 to 1909, he designated 150 National Forests, the first 51 Federal Bird Reservations, 5 National Parks, the first 18 National Monuments, the first 4 National Game Preserves, and the first 21 Reclamation Projects. Altogether, in the seven-and-one-half years he was in office, he provided federal protection for almost 230 million acres, a land area equivalent to that of all the East coast states from Maine to Florida.

Roosevelt is remembered for environmental work in other areas as well; these include soil and water conservation, preservation of forests, and areas for recreation.  He made many people aware of the conservation issues both through his pioneering work as President and through numerous writings in which he recounted his various environmental expeditions.

Theodore Roosevelt created a strong role model for environmentalists of the future. He used his political skills to influence people and to help the cause of conservation, consistently focusing on the state the environment and on its effect on future generations.

Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and “Yankee” love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life’s true essential needs.

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist. Though Civil Disobedience seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government – “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government” – the direction of this improvement points toward anarchism: “‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” Richard Drinnon partly blames Thoreau for the ambiguity, noting that Thoreau’s “sly satire, his liking for wide margins for his writing, and his fondness for paradox provided ammunition for widely divergent interpretations of ‘Civil Disobedience.’” He further points out that although Thoreau writes that he only wants “at once” a better government, that does not rule out the possibility that a little later he might favor no government.

Originally, Hill was not officially affiliated with any environmental organization, deciding by herself to undertake the act of civil disobedience. Soon, Hill was actively supported by Earth First!, among other organizations and volunteers.

Since her tree sit, Hill has become a motivational speaker (holding some 250 events a year), a best-selling author and the co-founder of the Circle of Life Foundation (which helped organize We The Planet, an eco-friendly music tour) and the Engage Network, a nonprofit that trains small groups of civic leaders to work toward social change.

On July 16, 2002, Hill was jailed in Quito, Ecuador outside the offices of Occidental Petroleum, for protesting a proposed oil pipeline that would penetrate a virgin Andean cloud forest that teems with rare birds. “The cloud forest is stunning,” said Hill. “It’s this deep, lush green, spangled with explosions of red, yellow and purple from the flowers, birds and insects. But the environmental destruction we saw along the pipelines that had already been built was horrendous.” Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa commented, “The little gringos have been arrested, including the old cockatoo who climbs trees.” Hill was later deported from Ecuador.

In 1956 and 1957, Abbey worked as a seasonal ranger for the United States National Park Service at Arches National Monument (now a national park), near the town of Moab, Utah. Abbey’s held the position from April to September each year, during which time he maintained trails, greeted visitors, and collected campground fees. He lived in a house trailer that had been provided to him by the Park Service, as well as in a ramada that he built himself. During his stay at Arches, Abbey accumulated a large volume of notes and sketches which later formed the basis of his first non-fiction work, Desert Solitaire.

In the 1960s Abbey worked as a seasonal park ranger at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the border of Arizona and Mexico.

On October 16, 1965 Abbey married Judy Pepper, who accompanied Abbey as a seasonal park ranger in the Florida Everglades, and then as a fire lookout in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Judy was separated from Abbey for extended periods of time while she attended the University of Arizona to get her master’s degree. During this time, Abbey slept with other women-something that Judy gradually became aware of, causing their marriage to suffer. On August 8, 1968 Pepper gave birth to a daughter, Susannah “Susie” Mildred Abbey. Ed purchased the family a home in Sabino Canyon, outside of Tucson. Judy died of leukemia on July 11, 1970, an event that crushed Abbey, causing him to go into “bouts of depression and loneliness” for years. It was to Judy that he dedicated his book Black Sun. However, the book was not an autobiographical novel about his relationship with Judy. Rather it was a story about a woman with whom Abbey had an affair in 1963. Abbey finished the first draft of Black Sun in 1968, two years before Judy died, and it was “a bone of contention in their marriage”.

Desert Solitaire, Abbey’s fourth book and first non-fiction work, was published in 1968. In it, he describes his stay in the canyonlands of southeastern Utah from 1956-1957. Desert Solitaire is regarded as one of the finest nature narratives in American literature, and has been compared to Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Thoreau’s Walden. In it, Abbey vividly describes the physical landscapes of Southern Utah and delights in his isolation as a back country park ranger, recounting adventures in the nearby canyon country and mountains. He also attacks what he terms the “industrial tourism” and resulting development in the national parks (“national parking lots”), rails against the Glen Canyon Dam, and comments on various other subjects.

Carson began her career as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her financial security and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the republished version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. Together, her sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life, from the shores to the surface to the deep sea.

In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring, while met with fierce denial from chemical companies, spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy-leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides-and the grassroots environmental movement the book inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.