John Muir's Birthplace

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Content updated Tue, 20 Jul 1999 00:12:18 GMT

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Standard Bearer of the World Conservation Movement

A Scottish Voice for the Millennium

Programme of Supporting Events

The relevance of John Muir to Scotland and the World in the year 2000

"...the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Muir, naturalist, explorere, conservationist, authir, champion of the wilderness and proponent of our national parks... reminds us of our debt to thuis native of Scotland."

President Ronald Reagan proclaiming 21 April 1988 as John Muir Day

The fact that all of the ten books accredited to John Muir remain in print today, eighty five years after his death, speaks volumes about the relevance of his writings to our present situation at the end of the twentieth century. Muir did not complete his first book,The Mountains of California, until he was age 56, and he finished three others prior to his death in 1914. The remaining half a dozen books were edited from his journals and notes by his literary executor Frederic Bade.

Muir's historic achievements are an environmental beacon illuminating the dawn of the Third Millennium. Muir could not foresee the current issues of ozone depletion, global warming, deforestation, species extinction and coral death, but his conservation imperative cuts to the heart of current debates on the sustainability of the world's natural resources and systems.