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Through books and films, Jacques-Yves Cousteau shared his close encounters with dolphins, sharks, whales and other sea creatures with armchair divers around the world. He was a showman nonpareil, as when he described his first scuba dive in his mellifluous French accent: "I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing." But the former French navy officer had a serious side. Cruising the oceans in his vessel Calypso, he became increasingly worried about their health and founded the Cousteau Society to sound the alarm.
ALDO LEOPOLD 1887-1948
As a young forester in the U.S. Southwest, Aldo Leopold shot a wolf. Reaching the mortally wounded animal, he recalled in his influential A Sand County Almanac, he watched "a fierce green fire dying in her eyes" and had a change of heart. Discarding the forest-exploitation ideas of his day, he advocated total protection of certain wilderness areas, including predators. Almanac, published posthumously, broadened this notion into what he called "the land ethic," which said in effect that anything harming an ecosystem is "ethically and aesthetically" wrong.
ANSEL ADAMS 1902-1984
His striking, pellucid black-and-white images of the American West make Ansel Adams' photographs instantly recognizable. But the San Francisco-born Adams, whose love affair with photography began on a vacation trip to Yosemite in 1916 with a Brownie box camera, had a grander goal: to save those glorious landscapes. As early as 1950, he warned against reckless lumbering, overgrazing and pollution. But his most persuasive arguments were visual--pictures that forever showed why such treasures as Yosemite and Yellowstone were worth protecting.
ACTIVISTS
BARRY COMMONER 1917-
Called the "Paul Revere of ecology" and featured in a 1970 Time cover story, Brooklyn-born biologist Barry Commoner was one of the first scientists to worry about a deteriorating environment; he established a pioneering ecological center at Washington University in St. Louis in 1966. A maverick in his science--he didn't initially accept DNA as heredity's master molecule--and a polemical writer (Science and Survival, The Closing Circle), he won 200,000 votes in the 1980 presidential race on the eco-based Citizens' Party ticket. At 82, he remains an active warrior for the environment.
WANGARI MAATHAI 1940-
Disturbed by shortages of firewood, the essential fuel for Kenya's poor, as well as growing soil erosion and deforestation, Wangari Maathai began a small tree-planting operation in Nairobi in the late 1970s. Composed largely of women, her Green Belt Movement quickly spread throughout Kenya and beyond. Then she turned to politics, including an unsuccessful run for President and protests against reckless development. When President Daniel arap Moi wanted to erect a 62-story office tower in Uhuru (Freedom) Park, a vital public space, her band of mothers and grandmothers forced the dictator to back down.
MEDHA PATKAR 1954-