| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kurkpatrick Dorsey. The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era. Foreword by William Cronon. (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books.) Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 311. $35.00.

Kurkpatrick Dorsey utilizes an impressive array of primary and secondary sources to lay bare the political and diplomatic history of three path-breaking North American wildlife treaties. During the Progressive era, the United States and Canada negotiated treaties on behalf of inland fisheries, North Pacific fur seals, and migratory birds. Dorsey explores each of these efforts in detail, comparing them as appropriate and concluding that "the ability of scientists and conservationists to shape the treaties and influence public opinion—in the face of economically driven opposition—determined the success or failure of all three agreements" (p. 4). 1

Part one is devoted to the ultimately unsuccessful effort to solve the problem of fisheries depletion in the common waters along the international boundary. The economics of depletion was a classic collective goods problem. For fishermen collectively, rational behavior would have been to exercise restraint in the harvest so as to preserve the fisheries upon which all relied. Without regulation, however, rational behavior for each individual fisherman was to catch every fish before someone else did. With the fisheries shared between the United States and Canada, effective regulation required international cooperation. A 1908 treaty appeared to establish a framework for that cooperation, but the fishing industry fought regulation, and absent the public sentiment for preservation that would later be generated on behalf of marine mammals and birds, the treaty was eventually abandoned. It had science on its side but not sentiment. . . .

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