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Florence Miriam Bailey, American ornithologist and activist, is born on this day in 1863.

Bob Marshall, forester and founder of the Wilderness Society, is born this day in 1901.

On International Women’s Day, we remember the women whose movement became a major force for environmental reform as early as the 1870s. From the stream surveys of Ellen Swallow Richards to the full Progressive Movement within a generation, millions joined civic organizations and, under the banner of “municipal housekeeping,” extended their roles from domestic chores to a much broader concern about their communities and environments. Their contributions were vital in civilizing and improving the horrific conditions created by the industrial revolution and the philosophies of social darwinism and unregulated capitalism.

Environmental Defense Fund is incorporated on this day in 1967 in Brookhaven, New York.  The group was the first to specialize in combining scientific research with environmental law, and succeeded in stopping indiscriminate DDT spraying in the mid-1960s when petitions and legislative hearings proved ineffective.

Activist Bombed  On this day in 1990, Earth First! forest activist Judi Berry suffers a car bombing in Oakland, California.  She was subsequently accused, by the FBI, of planting the bomb herself. However, a 2o02 lawsuit led to damage awards of $4 million. A documentary film,   Who bombed Judi Bari?  was released in 2012.

 Sierra Club founded on this day in 1892 by John Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson and William Colby, among 182 charter members.  The idea, said Muir, is  “to do something for the wilderness and make the mountains glad.” The club’s first campaign is to keep Yosemite National Park boundaries from being reduced.

US Congressman George Perkins Marsh helps start the American conservation movement on this day in 1847 with a speech to the Agricultural Society of Rutland, Vt.  He said: But though man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action.   In 1864, Marsh will publish Man and Nature: or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.

Rainbow Warrior bombed on this day in 1985 in Auckland harbor, New Zealand, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. The operation was personally approved by French President Francois Mitterand. Two French agents with the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) were caught and convicted of arson and murder, sentenced to ten years in prison. Eleven others were not charged, including the leading agent in the bombing, Louis-Pierre Dillais.  Last spotted, Dillais was an executive in the U.S. subsidiary of Belgian arms manufacturer FN Herstal and living in McLean, Virginia.  More information is available from  Democracy Now.

Mother Jones, one of America’s most effective labor organizers at the turn of the 20th century, was born this day in Cork, Ireland, in 1830. From the 1890s through the 1920s, Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones led strikes, protests and picket lines in coalfields and industrial centers across the US. She was especially opposed to child labor and exploitation of women. Industrialists called her the most dangerous woman in the country, but her reply was often: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” Her autobiography is available in text format and also as a Librivox podcast.

David McTaggart, one of the founders of Greenpeace, was born on this day in 1932 in Canada. He was the chairman of Greenpeace International from 1979 to 1991. McTaggart got involved because (according to his Greenpeace biography) “he was outraged with the French Government’s decision to cordon off a vast swath of international waters in order to conduct their nuclear testing program in the Pacific. He renamed his 12.6 meter sailing craft “Greenpeace III” and sailed to the zone surrounding Moruroa Atoll. McTaggart observed international law in establishing his anchor position, but ignored the French Government’s unilateral declaration of the area as a forbidden zone. The presence of his boat, at a position downwind from the planned blast, forced the French government to halt its test. A French Navy vessel eventually rammed the boat to end the embarrassing situation. McTaggart repaired his boat and returned a year later. He was physically beaten by French military personnel, who denied the charge, claiming that McTaggart’s ship had already left the area. One of McTaggart’s crew had photographed the beating, however, and the film, which was smuggled out of French custody with the crewmember, proved the French had been lying. The photographs were widely published, and the story drew further criticism to the French nuclear testing program.” He retired and was killed in a car accident on March 2001 near his home in Italy. Te Vaka dedicated the song “Sei Ma Le Losa” to McTaggart.