Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Visual Culture in American Conservation History

Abstract

On the night of March 23-24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez veered out of its shipping lane and ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Eleven million gallons of oil contaminated the sound and coated twelve hundred miles of shoreline, killing birds, mammals, fish, and shellfish. More than fifteen years later, Exxon Valdez and images of oil-soaked seals, birds, and fish dead or gasping for life remain ingrained in the American collective memory and serve as a signal reminder of nature's fragility and the human capacity to devastate the physical environment at a point when further advances on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaskan oil reserves have become a key point of controversy in American politics. Another, less universally remembered oil spill afflicted the Pacific coast of Oregon, when the New Carissa ran aground near Coos Bay on February 4, 1999. The spill was far less severe--only seventy thousand gallons-but newspapers up and down the coast printed photographs of the beached Japanese tanker emitting flames and plumes of black smoke as rescue crews desperately tried to burn as much oil as possible before it seeped into the sea. In all, before the ocean ripped the New Carissa in two, two hundred thousand gallons of bunker and diesel oil had been burned, considerably reducing the potential extent of the damage to the sea and sea life. Ironically, in 1989, in the hours immediately following the Valdez's grounding and before the oil began to disperse, the suggestion of burning the oil was dismissed; Exxon could not afford to be seen to be acknowledging their responsibility for the spill and feared that images of the tanker engulfed in fire would constitute a public relations nightmare. The nightmare came anyway, as news reports showed countless images of nature in jeopardy, prompting public outrage and Congress's swift passage of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act.1 Exxon's reluctance to ignite the tanker stemmed from a visual idea of politics, public relations, and memory. Their public relations experts mistakenly