The word "conservation" has a thrifty meaning. To conserve is to save and protect, to leave what we ourselves enjoy in such a good condition that others may also share the enjoyment. Our forefathers had
no idea that human population would increase faster than the supplies of raw materials: most of them,
even until very recently, had the foolish idea that the treasures were "limitless" and could "last forever".
Most of the citizens of earlier generations knew little or nothing about the complicated and delicate system
that runs all through nature, and which means that, as in a living body, an unhealthy condition of one part
will sooner or later be harmful to all the others.
Fifty years ago, nature study was not part of the school work; scientific forestry was a new idea; wood was still cheap because it could be brought in any quantity from distant woodlands; soil destruction and
river floods were not national problems; nobody had yet studied long-term climatic cycles in relation to
proper land use; even the word "conservation" had nothing of the meaning that it has for us today.
For the sake of ourselves and those who will come after us, we must now set about correcting the
mistakes of our forefathers. Conservation should be made part of everybody"s daily life. To know abou
t the water table in ground is just as important to us as a knowledge of the basic math formulas. We need
to know why all watersheds (上游集水区) need the protection of plant life and why the running current
of streams and rivers must be made to give their full benefit to the soil before they finally escape to the sea. We need to be taught the duty of planting trees as well as of cutting them. We need to know the
importance of big, grown trees, because living space for most of man"s fellow creatures on this planet is
figured not only in square measure of surface but also in cubic (立方体的) volume above the earth. In a
word, it should be our goal to restore as much of the original beauty of nature as we can.