Laurance Rockefeller And Capitalist Conservation

[Magda Hassan]

Laurance Rockefeller And Capitalist Conservation

by Michael Barker

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"Laurance Spelman Rockefeller... was, in fact, Mr. Conservation, the man who had done more than any other living American to place outdoor issues -- recreation, beauty, national and state parks, environmental education, a responsible combination of development and conservation -- clearly on the public agenda."
—Robin Winks, 1997 (1)

(Swans - October 19, 2009) The late Laurance Rockefeller (1910-2004) is often regarded to be one of America's most influential elite conservationists, and in 1991 he was rewarded by President George H. W. Bush with the Congressional Gold Medal for contributions to conservation and historical preservation. The fourth son of the heir to the Standard Oil Company empire, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Laurance, in the words of his official biographer, Robin Winks, was Mr. Conservation. Having served as the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from 1958 until 1968, in some way or form Laurance tended to be involved in "[m]ost of the great conservation battles of the mid-1960s." Yet despite the high level of influence welded by the Rockefeller family more generally, Laurance is "barely present in most" books recording the Rockefellers work. (2) Therefore, this article will critically examine his environmental activities throughout the 1960s and question the authenticity of his popularly celebrated environmental image.
Following closely in his father's footsteps, Laurance inherited John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s two main environmental advisors, Fairfield Osborn and Horace Albright, as his own mentors. (3) Two conservation organizations that Laurance was heavily involved with were the Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc. (the foundation set up by his father, which he became head of from 1947), and the American Conservation Association, which he helped create in 1957. Laurance also played a key role in supporting the Conservation Foundation in its formative years -- an organization that was set up in 1948 by Fairfield Osborn and his assistant Samuel H. Ordway, Jr. -- and he served as the organization's trustee and "personal underwriter." (Laurance's annual gifts alone averaged $50,000 a year throughout the 1950s and 1960s.) These "conservation" interests, along with his position at the head of a key philanthropic body (the Rockefeller Brothers Fund), placed Laurance in a prime position to influence the subsequent development of the new wave of environmentalism that would soon sweep across the United States and the world.



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