The Ecologist

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The Ecologist claims to be "the world’s most respected environmental affairs magazine..."

"Since it was founded in 1970 the Ecologist has helped set environmental and political agendas around the world by focusing on the root causes, not just the after-effects, of current events." [1]

As of September 2012 The Ecologist will be merged into Resurgence magazine. "The Resurgence Trust will publish Resurgence under the title Resurgence and the Ecologist, adding a new content to reflect the merger including a section on Green Living." [2]

History

In 2010 Peter Bunyard wrote: "The spur to getting the Ecologist off the ground was a 1969 article by Norman Lewis in the Sunday Times magazine, in which he described the terrible ethnocide of indigenous tribes taking place in the Brazilian Amazon.

"It was the time of the Villas Boas brothers in Brazil, who searched for uncontacted tribes, such as the Akreena Krore, so as to protect them from unscrupulous colonisers. No longer could anthropologists dispassionately detach themselves from the objects of their studies; consequently, spear-headed by the Amazon explorer, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Survival International - originally named the Primitive Peoples Fund - was established in offices on Craven Street, beside Charing Cross Station...

"Teddy was there at the forming of Survival International, as was Robert Allen who became the secretary of the fledgling organisation, and already Teddy was looking for collaborators for his idea of a radical new magazine that would challenge the orthodoxy of conventional wisdom in relation to the natural world and society. Once it was clear that the Ecologist was going to happen, Robert didn’t need much persuading, and not only did he play an essential role in the launch of the magazine in July 1970, but a year later became one of the main authors of the Ecologist’s groundbreaking environmental manifesto, A Blueprint for Survival.

"Meanwhile, Jean Liedloff, originally from New York, had settled in Primrose Hill, London. She had spent two years living with the Yanomami of Venezuela and subsequently wrote her book, The Continuum Concept, on childhood rearing as she had learnt it from her indigenous hosts.

"Liedloff met Teddy in Craven Street, and suggested that Teddy and I should meet, as indeed we did shortly afterwards. That for me was the beginning of my 40 year plus association with the Ecologist...

"As with many a magazine, trying to get the Ecologist published was an absolute nightmare. Teddy had no money and so had to persuade Jimmy, his brother, and his friend John Aspinall to help fund him, which they duly did, but barely enough for one issue, and that is how it continued down the years, the magazine never breaking even and always needing a top-up from somewhere...

"Initially, the first Ecologist office was in Craven Street, a floor above The Primitive Peoples’ Fund, but after the debacle with the Fleet Street guys, Teddy took the publishing of the magazine to his home in Kew. Then, in 1972, soon after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, we moved lock, stock and barrel, to Cornwall, to the Withiel Valley. ‘We’ was Teddy, Robert Allen, Mike Allaby and myself. Soon after the relocation, we engaged Penwells of Callington to print the Ecologist, a relationship which continued until the famous Monsanto issue of September 1998, when the Cornish printers took fright at the threat of being sued.

"That first issue of July 1970 had an article by the biologist Aubrey Manning of Edinburgh University on population, with no mincing of words that the natural world simply could not support an ever-expanding population of humans..." [3]

Associate Editors (1975)

Associate Editors (1993)

Criticism

  • Malcolm Draper and Gerhard Maré, “Going in: The Garden of England's Gaming Zookeeper and Zululand,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 29 (2), 2003.

Sourcewatch resources

Contact

Website: http://www.theecologist.org

References

  1. ↑ The Ecologist About, "About" web page, accessed April 22, 2009
  2. ↑ Resurgence Resurgence and the Ecologist, organizational web page, accessed June 14, 2012.
  3. ↑ Starting out: how Teddy Goldsmith launched the Ecologist 40 years ago, theecologist, accessed December 13, 2011.
  4. ↑ October 1975, The Ecologist, accessed November 13, 2009
  5. ↑ July 1993, The Ecologist, accessed November 13, 2009
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