A Passion for the Land: John F. Seiberling and the Environmental Movement (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Passion for the Land: John F. Seiberling and the Environmental Movement Zach Falck A Passion for the Land: John F. Seiberling and the Environmental Movement. By Daniel Nelson. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2009. 264 pp. Cloth $39.95, ISBN 978-1-60635-036-2.) This book examines the career of John Frederick Seiberling Jr., an eight-term congressman who became “as closely identified with the American wilderness as any other individual” (218). After condensing the Seiberling family’s fortunes and misfortunes and Seiberling’s first five decades of life into a single chapter, Daniel Nelson focuses on Seiberling’s service in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1987. The book details Seiberling’s leadership on land-use policy rather than discusses his positions on all environmental issues from the 1960s through the 1980s. Seiberling supported the expansion of the national park system, [End Page 141] including units in urban areas such as Scranton and Atlanta. He attempted to reform strip mining operations in Appalachia, and he fought against mining operations in western national parks. His tough negotiating helped make the Bureau of Land Management into a more conservation-conscious agency. Nelson, who has written about Alaska, thinks Seiberling’s most important work was his labor on committees that informed and shaped the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. In the 1980s, Seiberling chaired public lands subcommittees that established millions of acres of wilderness from West Virginia west to Washington state. Seiberling’s abilities to devise effective legislation and reach compromises were especially impressive in his last terms, when he dealt with Reagan appointees hostile to environmental protection and regulation. Compared with the wild expanses that Seiberling helped create, the 33,000 acre Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area—Ohio’s sole national park—seems miniscule. Nelson’s presentation of Seiberling’s participation in the movement to preserve open space in the Cleveland-Akron corridor is also a fine illustration of the complexities and contingencies of environmental politics. Seiberling persevered for years in conceptualizing a park, sustaining public interest, overcoming bureaucratic objections, enlisting the support of fellow legislators, and bringing the project to fruition. Most chapters cover one or two congressional terms. Nelson reconstructs them from Seiberling’s office papers and personal papers, published hearings, and the files of environmental organizations. The congressman’s unpublished manuscript memoir and interviews with Seiberling conducted by longtime staff member Loretta Neumann in the 1990s and Nelson in 2006 contain fascinating stories about the nature of politics. They are the basis of Nelson’s view that Seiberling’s rectitude inhibited him from fully exploiting Washington’s power networks. Since the book is about Seiberling’s role in national environmental policy making, local and state issues and politics are treated briskly, often as openings to or transitions within chapters. Nelson relies on the pages of the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer to handle them. Although the book contains many nice photographs of Seiberling and his family members, it does not include Seiberling’s photographs of the places he worked to save. Seiberling loved photography, and he often took his camera on official and personal travels. He used his 1971 photographs of Belmont County strip mines and his 1975 photographs of Alaska, among others, to persuade congressional colleagues to advance legislation. Reproducing and explaining some of these images would have enriched Nelson’s characterization of Seiberling’s passion for the land. The congressman thought Alaska’s wilderness areas could give Americans, especially young ones, “a sense of the order of the natural world so they don’t feel totally adrift in the chaotic world [End Page 142] of man’s own creation” (133). From an airplane, Seiberling perceived Alaskan landscapes as “abstract designs . . . absolutely beyond the wildest imaginings of Picasso or any other great artist” (137). A Wyoming ridgetop reminded Seiberling “of a Mozart piano concerto” (201). Nelson unearths but writes little about such remarks. Nevertheless, the book presents a clear picture of an independent-minded and thoughtful representative from Ohio devoted to protecting the nation’s public lands. Zach Falck Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2011 The Kent State University Press