Pinchot would have been right in the early-mid 1800s, but by the time he was working for the Forest Service, conservation wasnt enough. Same for Muir and Leopold. Even today, what is there to preserve? There is very little land that can even be preserved. The Elwha River runs through Olympic national Park and was damned up decades ago. Taking the damns down doesn't serve the purpose of preservation, that is ecosystem restoration. The same goes for the areas mined and logged in the Porcupine Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains etc. Just a simple road in Yellowstone National Park, that sees very little traffic, can alter nearby plant communities and animal movement behavior. Ecosystem Restoration has a lot of brilliant minds working to understand the complexities of impaired ecosystems but the truth is, the expectation is not that impaired areas will ever regain full function. When 400 acres of old farm fields in Illinois is donated for a prairie reserve, it will never be the prairie it was when it was plowed 150 years ago.
Conservation is necessary for what Pinchot was trying to accomplish: sustainable timber harvest. Preservation is important to protect what little true wilderness remains. I'm not entirely sure where we stand today. Development, agriculture, climate change, invasive species, pathogens, altered disturbance regimes (etc.) all leave us in a place where we are just trying to keep the house of cards from coming undone. What the fuck do you call that?
