Editorial | Republicans shouldn’t abandon their historic commitment to conservation

In the 1960s, Wisconsin’s two most prominent elected officials were conservationists.

One of them, Gaylord Nelson, the state’s junior member of the United States Senate and the initiator of Earth Day, was a Democrat.

The other, Warren Knowles, the state’s three-term governor and a leading figure in efforts to make the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources a comprehensive resource management agency that puts an emphasis on protecting the environment, was a Republican.

Nelson and Knowles disagreed on plenty of issues. But they came together on the question of conservation...