With environmental problems taking on increasing political importance, conservationists, quite naturally, are becoming increasingly political. This year saw the creation of two new groups radically different from existing conservation organizations.

Friends of the Earth is a militant political action group with a small but vocal membership composed in the main of youthful and strident Sierra Club people. Friends of the Earth will support and oppose candidates in next year’s congressional races, a marked departure for a national conservation organization. It is headed by the dynamic former director of the Sierra Club, David Brower, who led the small hiking club into national prominence and who in the opinion of many has himself all the markings of a promising political animal.

Florida’s Conservation 70’s is a unique combination of political and scientific expertise joined to grass-roots conservation zeal. It includes a fifty-man scientific task force to keep’both state legislators and the public informed of the environmental facts of life, and a second task force of politicians and concerned citizens who will hire a lobbyist in Tallahassee and submit their own package of proposals for the upcoming legislative session.