This helped lead to the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, as well as the Wilderness Society in 1935 (which Leopold cofounded), a nonprofit whose missions is to protect natural lands by petitioning the government to designate them as federally protected wildernesses, historical sites, or national monuments. John Muir, a writer, philosopher, and naturalist, was struck by the spectacular and relatively untouched wildernesses of the west, and advocated for the creation of Yosemite National Park, which became first national park in America in 1890. The American bison was hunted almost completely to extinction, and the passenger pigeon was completely wiped out by 1914. During the 1800s, as industrialization swept westward, much of the landscape, as well as its plants and animals, were consumed by this flood of civilization. Leopold came of age just as Americans were beginning to consider that the wilderness was a nonrenewable resource in need of protecting.
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