I know modern liberals will be shocked and appalled to hear it, but I came to environmentalism via fishing and hunting, as many people from rural areas did and still do.

All this may be surprising for some readers, particularly for those who view hunting and hunting culture with distaste. Environmentally-conscious liberals are indeed often repulsed by the idea of forming political coalitions with people who, they may argue, are interested in animals only because they want to kill them. “If a person believes it is immoral to shoot and kill an innocent wild animal,” Dray observes, “no counterargument about hunting as a means of maintaining wildlife population levels or people getting back in touch with nature is likely to resonate.” But, as Dray also pointedly notes, the anti-hunting public has often proved unwilling to pick up the conservation slack: Attempts to extend Pittman-Robertson-style taxes to other outdoors gear, like hiking supplies, have all failed.

I remember talking with my grandfather when I was 5 or 6 about how we had to preserve the river and the forest so that other people would be able to enjoy them in the future, and how when we’d catch catfish we’d check to see if the fish was gravid and then if was, we’d release it rather than eat it. My grandfather, by the way, was an extremely staunch conservative. Yet even he recognized that the land and the water were held in trust for the future, and explained to me when I was that age how the Native Americans had lived there on that river for thousands of years without destroying it all, and we could too, if we tried.

Yes, that brand of conservatism really did exist once. It’s almost all gone now.