Fairfield Osborn

A naturalist like his father before him, FAIRFIELD OSBORN has been President of the New York Zoological Society since 1940. His interest in wildlife led, as it so often does, to an increasing vigilance towards its preservation, and this in turn to an ever-deepening concern for the conservation of all life-supporting natural resources. As the President of the Conservation Foundation, he has spread its gospel to every state in the Union, and in his two books, Our Plundered Planet (1948) and the newly issued The Limits of the Earth, he has challenged the theory that the earth is capable of supporting unlimited numbers of people.

“The misuse of forests, grasslands, wild life, and water sources in the United States is the most violent and the most destructive story in the long history of civilization,” says FAIRFIELD OSBORN. Are we to continue on the same dusty, perilous road once traveled to its dead end by other mighty nations? Can we, among other things, tolerate assaults on our public lands at the very time when we are trying to feed the world? President of the New York Zoological Society, Mr. Osborn is leading the drive for conservation on a national scale. His new book, Our Plundered Planet, will be published by Little, Brown this spring.

Ever since his expulsion from Eden, man has lived by this ruthless pattern of land use: Cut, burn, plant, destroy, move on. But the planet is no longer big enough, says FAIRFIELD OSBORN, for this kind of plunder. With a world population of more than two billion we have barely enough forests, water sources, and arable soil for subsistence and no new lush lands to conquer. But suppose the population reaches three billion. President of the New York Zoological Society, Mr. Osborn is leading the drive for conservation on a national scale. His forthcoming book, Our Plundered Planet, is a shocking report on how far spoliation has gone the world over.