Environmental Science Timeline

Development of Environmental Organizations and Parks

United States Department of Agriculture

1862

Yellowstone Park established

1872

Sequoia National Park established

1890

Sierra Club founded

1892

Mount Rainier Forest Reserve

1897

Grand Canyon Park established

1908

National Audubon Society founded

1912

National Park Service founded

1916

National Parks and Conservation Association founded

1919

The Wilderness Society started

1935

The Nature Conservancy founded

1951

World Wide Fund for Nature founded

1961

Redwood National Park

1968

Greenpeace founded

1971

Rain forest Action Network founded

1985

Environmental Working Group founded

1992

National Environmental Trust founded

1995

USDA creates National Organic Program

2002

Environmental Disasters and Major Events

Giant Sequoia cut down in CA

1853

Second Industrial Revolution

1870 - 1914

Gifford Pinchot becomes the head of the Division of Forestry

1898

First national conference on industrial diseases held in Chicago

1910

Dam in Yosemite National Park completed

1923

100+ wildlife sanctuaries put under federal protection

1929

First of Dust Bowl storms

1933

Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945

U.S. ran first underground nuclear test

1957

The Cuyahoga River fire

1969

Chernobyl nuclear disaster

1986

Exxon Oil Spill

1989

Half of the world's rain forests destroyed

1990

Sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. coal plants reach 28 million tons

1990

Hurricane Katrina

2005

Largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry occurs in Gulf

2010

7 Billionth person born

2011

Fukushima nuclear power complex meltdowns

2011

Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan

2013

Tornadoes in the U.S. set a new record: 811

2013

Environmental Acts and Legislation

Chicago is the first U.S. city to create a local ordinance regulating smoke discharges

1881

The Wilderness Act passes

1964

Solid Waste Disposal Act

1965

Clean Air Act

1970

National Environmental Policy Act

1970

Reorganization Plan No. 3 (Birth of the EPA)

1970

Clean Water Act

1972

EPA bans DDT

1972

Marine Mammal Protection Act

1972

Endangered Species Act

1973

Safe Drinking Water Act

1974

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

1976

Montreal Protocol

1987

Ocean Dumping Ban Act

1988

Oil Pollution Act

1990

U.S. refuses to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity

1992

Kyoto Protocol drawn up

1997

Clinton declares 58 million acres off-limits to logging

2000

President Bush rejects the Kyoto Protocol

2001

CA enacts first cap on greenhouse gas emissions

2006

Major Publications and Reports

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

1854

John Muir starts publications about the Sierra Nevada

1872

The History of Standard Oil by Ida Tarbell

1904

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

1962

Joe Farman publishes discovery of ozone hole over Antarctica

1985

An Inconvenient Truth (documentary about Al Gore and global warming)

2006

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

2014