The Hudson River School was an active North American artistic movement between about 1825 and 1880, formed by a group of New York- based landscape painters, whose aesthetic vision represented a synthesis between the principles of Romanticism and Realism. The group was not formalized but united in a spirit of brotherhood; some of them toured inland, belonged to the same clubs, and worked in the same building in the area now known as Greenwich Village. The starting point of interest for his works was the region of the Hudson Riverand the surrounding mountains, whence the name of the school, but by mid-century its members broadened their horizons to portray the western United States and, some of them, even distant regions such as the Arctic, Europe, the Orient and South America.
The first references to the name of the school appear only in the 1870s, although it is not known exactly who coined it, and at that moment, when the prestige of the group began to decline, had a pejorative sense. Its painters reflect basically three important impulses of the United States of the nineteenth century: discovery, exploration and conquest, within a pastoral and bucolic perspective, where humans and nature coexist peacefully, with a detailed and sometimes idealized treatment. His artists generally believed that nature was the ineffable manifestation of God, although painters varied in the depths of their religious convictions. They were inspired by the philosophies of theSublime and Transcendentalism, the work of artists European as Salvator Rosa, John Constable, William Turner and especially Claude Lorrain, and shared a reverence for the natural beauty of America with writers American contemporaries such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The Hudson River School represented a high point in the long process of recognition of the American territory and construction of its image, which had begun in colonial times with the work of explorers, naturalists and artists, native and foreign. It is also considered the most important romantic expression in American painting, the first genuinely national school of painting and the most remarkable movement in all nineteenth-century art in the United States.
Overview
At the turn of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century was the central interests of European romantic painters representing the transcendent in nature, accompanying the evolution of philosophical thought of the time. Rousseau spoke of a return to a primitive world untouched by progress, Burke, Kant and Diderot elaborated the theory of the Sublime, poets like Blake, Byron and Shelley rejected rationalismand the order of civilization saying that nature, plus the healing power of the imagination, could lead people to a transcendence of their daily life, and that creativity could be used to transform the world and regenerate their spirituality. In the American context, Audubon, Wordsworth and Thoreau while decantavam the divine majesty of the national scene, were aware of the social and economic transformations of the period and feared by the degradation of the natural environment due to the acceleration of colonizing the West process. Thoreau was inspired by the ideas of Goethe and other European poets, and in the philosophy of Kant filtered by the Englishman Coleridge, reacting against the rationalist and antireligious principles of the East Coast trading elite, the main incentive for expansion inland, and against Puritan asceticism, which viewed the world as essentially evil. He placed nature as the image of spiritual and ideal truths, and as the prime source of inspiration, and therefore worthy of preservation. Already Emerson saw no incompatibility between the mystical communion with nature and its exploitation by man, understanding that it was the basis of human comfort. Your compliment of progresscontributed to the society of the time overcoming any concerns about the destruction of the landscape throughout this developmental process, although it has significantly fostered interest in its representation in art. This body of ideas known as Transcendentalism, influenced many writers, poets, politicians and artists in the first half of the nineteenth century, leading to the view that “America was a nation of Nature”, whose beauty, unlike the thoroughly exploited, altered and civilized environment of Europe, was in its wild condition, a source of nationalistic pride, and the work of colonization was often compared to the achievements of classical heroes.
In the iconographic field, according to Tim Barringer, since the independence the history of the United States followed a conscious project of construction of image and national identity. Success in England’s withdrawal, the happy institution of the democratic system, and the strength of economic development following these events fueled the cultivation of a doctrine of exceptionality for the characterization of the nation, a doctrine which sought to assert national unity, internal contradictions – especially with regard to the slavery question. In this context, the official narrative of United States history reached the status of an epic, consummated in the notion ofManifest Destiny, and a fundamental part of this narrative was its materialization through visible symbols, where the artists’ competition was requested. As Henry Tuckerman put it in 1867,
Our atmosphere of Liberty, of material activity, joviality and prosperity, should animate the virile artist. Here he has a privileged ground, as the Old World does not, and from that he must work confidently… Academic conventions, patronage the deference aroused by the great examples, does nothing to subjugate the artist’s aspirations, or make him lose his faith in himself, or dull his ideal of excellence… Let the American artist fly above national problems… that liberally use all the resources that surrounds him, and that he be faithful to himself – and he can work miracles. ”
Thus, in the absence of a Parthenon, a Notre Dame Cathedral or a St. Peter’s Basilica, lacking royal dynasties and long-standing ancestral traditions that define other nations, and possessing only a gallery of heroes too recent to have risen to the level of myth, in the United States the emblemmost significant and recognizable aspect of the homeland was its own landscape, which was exalted vigorously. Hence landscape painting, which until then, despite the efforts of the colonial artists, had only had a limited impact on the general public, and still could not compare with the European results either in terms of technical quality or in fact a symbol powerful tradition, to acquire a primacy not found in European art, where historical painting was the most prestigious genre, passing the largely virgin nature of the country to be seen as an even more faithful mirror of the immaculate world of Rousseau than the European scene, and his portrayal as a self-portrait of society and a positive civilizing power.
Parallel to the patriotic background, the connection between landscaping and transcendentalist philosophy was strengthened, as Thoreau dreamed of wishing to replace the American religion with the direct cult of the immanent God in nature, and as Emerson thought by stating that “the painter you should know that the landscape has beauty for your eyes because it expresses a thought of kindness. ” Besides its obvious concern with transcendental led critics like Anne Hollander to say that the production of the Hudson River School can be considered the true sacred art US, and Barbara Novak, perhaps the most learned scholar of the School, to call them “priests of the natural church. ” This general tendency to enthusiastic encomium of nature and landscape introduced a new note in the history of American painting, but not annulled his old penchant for realistic description of the issues because the public believed that the painter did not to be a servile imitator of nature, but also should not give too many wings to his personal fantasy, seeking to preserve the clarity and palpability of the facts represented, and that “the work of God should not be obscured”. From this dialogue between opposing and complementary needs and principles was born the original romantic-realistic synthesis of the Hudson River School.
The patronage, literature and art circuit
The immense success that the artists of the Hudson River School could not have happened without the existence of a mature art system. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought great prosperity to New York City, where they had their base of operations, and it became a fashion requirement for large investors and traders to display their wealth by competing with one another for generous patronage. Not only did they keep large private collections but they also made special orders for the painters and subsidized their improvement in Europe. Only in this way did the principal representatives of the School be able to study with masters of international renown and gain a technical resourcefulness without which their ideas could not materialize.
Part of his success also derived from the earlier preparation of the general taste for the appreciation of the Hudson River landscapes in painting by the mass circulation of a popular literature that focused precisely on this scenario. Produced by a group of writers who became known as Knickerbocker writers, from a character in Washington Irving’s fictional novel about New York history, written in 1809, they made the Hudson River panorama, with its folklore, its history, and its characteristic types, and almost two decades before Thomas Cole ‘s first artistic trip to the region, a literary topic of extraordinary appeal, suffice to say that the Knickerbocker writershave achieved a fame as vast in literature as the landscapers of the Hudson River School in painting.
At the same time as the market was growing, the entire art system benefited, and its products could reach a considerable audience, which was being educated through broad access to important exhibitions. Historical records show that in the 1840s the consumption of art by the population through the visit to exhibitions was already impressive, reaching 250,000 visitors per year in the halls of the New York Art Union, including children and factory workers, at a time in which the population of the city did not reach the 500 thousand inhabitants. Added all preparatory cyclical factors and enablers described so far, not so admires the enormous fascination that the production of the Hudson River School had on the population, the enthusiasm with which it was received by the critics and the importance it had in encouraging colonization and consolidation of American nationalism.
Precursors
Among the European artists who became references to artists at the Hudson River School were Salvator Rosa, William Turner and John Constable, but Claude Lorrain was especially important, establishing an efficient and expressive formal model for landscaping. A local forerunner of the school was William Guy Wall, a well-educated Irishman when he began his vogue for the Hudson and surrounding countryside, and the other was Washington Allston, who had conducted formal surveys where the stain, color, and “atmosphere” played a preponderant role, as did the French Romantics at the same time, and his style was a step toward the work of one who is generally regarded as the founder of the School of the Hudson River, Thomas Cole.
Thomas Doughty was the first American artist to decide to pursue a career exclusively devoted to landscaping. More importantly, the first to choose the local scenario as the preferred theme, when up until then the copy of conventional European models was the rule. Until the appearance of Thomas Cole was seen as the first among local landscapers, and then his work was overshadowed by his and considered imperfect. Nonetheless, his production had a significant impact on Cole. When he first saw his canvases they appeared to him as a revelation, dealing with the theme he was seeking to define for himself, a theme”which for every American should be of the deepest interest… his own land, his beauty, his magnificence, his sublimity – all his own.” And how unworthy of his birthright would be if he turned his eyes from her and closed his heart ! “.
The consolidation of visual rhetoric
Thomas Cole
Cole, a practically self-taught English painter who had arrived in America in 1818, boarded a steamer and climbed the Hudson River in the fall of 1825, stopping at the western point at the beginning of the Catskill Mountains on the western side of New York State, where he ventured to paint the first landscapes of the area. The first news of their work appeared in the November 22, 1825 edition of the New York Evening Post, which reported the admiration they caused in a well-established artist, John Trumbull, who declared himself”delighted, and at the same time mortified. This young man was able to do without any education what I can not offer after 50 years of practice. ”
Asher Durand
Asher Durand belonged to the same generation as Cole, and was his close friend and one of his early discoverers. While Cole lived, Durand was considered the second in prestige in landscaping, but after his death became the leader of the new generation. He began his career as an amateur, and to a certain extent his position in relation to art was an antithesis to that of Cole. While it had to be forcibly brought to realism, it had to abandon its pragmatism and objectivity to assimilate a little poetry and atmosphere. He attempted to emulate Cole’s style, meeting the demand for a dose of ideal feeling in painting, and when he presented his screen Soul Matesin 1849, dedicated to Cole’s memory, his reputation as the best landscaper of the time was firm, but from then on he found his way developing a practice of outdoor painting even more complete than that of his friend, still attached to certain conventions, and his studies of nature from 1850 onwards represent a vanguard in the realistic observation that was only parallel in Courbet’s work in France. The poetry of his work is produced, paradoxically, from this rigorous realistic observation, as a direct response to the subtle effects of light and atmosphere of the scene. Cole still had to “correct” the natural landscape to suit his idealistic conception, but Durand, when he found a suggestive scenario, saw no need for any alteration in what nature had provided, allowing painting to be structured from the pure natural form, prefiguring Cézanne’s approach.
Luminismo
Finally, another element that forms the language of the Hudson River School, which John Baur called luminism in his study of nineteenth-century American painting (American Luminism, 1954), a term derived from the highly expressive use these painters made light and its atmospheric effects. Analyzing the quieter landscapes, which translated an attenuated, less dramatic and more intimate version of Sublime, he believes that in them the light and transparency of the atmosphere serve not only to show their themes, but to reveal themspiritually to the viewer, an opinion that is shared by more recent researchers like Hollander and Novak. For them, this result is achieved through the annulment of the artist’s interpretive intermediation by the use of an impeccable and satin finishing technique that eliminates the traces of the brushstrokes and with it the personalistic gesture and the distraction of the pure materiality, offering as a “direct vision “of the natural spectacle, in a kind of” impersonal expressionism “whose effect is a pacifier and leads to higher contemplation, and which perfectly meets the desires of Transcendentalism.
Second generation
The second generation of the Hudson River School emerged after Cole’s untimely death in 1848, and found the path open, with an established visual language and the favor of critics and audiences guaranteed for the landscape genre. Economic progress interlinked the east and west coasts, facilitating the reach of more remote regions, political ideology invoked patriotism and celebrated the nation’s glory, Cole’s and Durand’s ethical basis for painting remained solid, and the stage was ready for the entrance of a generation of true explorer-artists, greatly expanding the regional boundaries of the original School. And solid was also the belief in the unity between God and nature, not being shaken even with the publication of the book Origin of the Species ofDarwin in 1859, whose evolutionary theorywas interpreted as an additional confirmation of God’s designs for the world. In fact, all new discoveries of science were subject to this kind of appropriation by the mystical idealism that nurtured the painting of the time, and at the same time reflected an even more accentuated, almost scientific interest in the details of the natural environment. The public was no longer content with mere suggestive delineations, and required descriptions of the peculiarities of sky, trees, rocks, rivers, and vegetation, which were not only a form of aesthetic pleasure but also a positive acquisition of trustworthy knowledge. The second generation of Hudson River School artists would achieve a unique and extremely successful mix of the two opposing sides represented by the realist Durand and the idealist Cole, from this taste for accuracy to the effect of grandiose and sublime,
Their appreciation for science had the effect of pushing painters further into the interior of the country, seeking new landscapes, propelling some, like Frederic Edwin Church, to travel to South America and the Arctic, in the same adventurous and curious spirit of true naturalists.
In fact Church was greatly influenced by naturalists like Darwin and Humboldt. He had copies of his scientific works and took them with him on his exploration and art journeys.
Albert Bierstadt was Church’s most important competitor, and it was one that widened its horizons beyond the Hudson River to Canada, Alaska, Bahamas, and the Rocky Mountains, especially working the Yosemite River Valley, when this region was virtually unknown to all. German by birth, had graduated in Dusseldorf, where there was an important group of romantics working, and his work was recognized by the European critic as a derivation of that school, in spite of its North American theme. His success was enormous, amassing considerable fortune and attracting the envy of other painters, who criticized the enormity of his canvases that overshadowed any other work when exposed side by side. But he was also the founder of a sub-school, sometimes known as the School of the Rocky Mountains, and Nancy Anderson considers him as the “inventor” of the landscape of the North American West. In his time, his style raised objections that suggested too much imagination, but even James Jarves, his most compelling modern critic, acknowledges that no one equaled him in representing the clarity and transparency of the American light and the firmness of his drawing.
Bierstadt today is taken with a typical example of the ideals that moved the American progress in his time: on the one hand was a poor immigrant who had managed to make fame and fortune in a new and challenging country, mirroring the idea very dear to the north- Americans of the self-made man, and on the other the large formats and high-flying epic treatment of magnificent scenes were soon recognized as the visual expression of the notion of Manifest Destiny.
But despite his concern for faithfulness to nature, repeating Cole’s example, neither Church nor Bierstadt, the two most popular names of the second generation, hesitated to alter the scenery to better compose the canvas. Harvesting material into sketches of the natural, and often using photographs as a memory aid, in the atelier adapted elements of reality with the first aim of providing a view of the general truths and the spirit of the panorama, rather than giving a literally accurate picture of the whole. Although the details of the composition were substantially correct, the scene as a whole was generally false. As James Jarves pointed out, they “idealized in composition and materialized in execution. ”
Other members
The other members of the second generation of the School did not win the vast popularity of Church and Bierstadt, but they did not fail to make significant and appreciated contributions in their time. And not all followed the principles of the Sublime aesthetic caught up with the enthusiasm of these two, working their subjects in more peaceful and contemplative atmospheres. Studies of the School in the same way are not consistent with each other in the list of painters who form the group, some being included by one critic but not by another. Thus, before we give a complete list, which could be subject to questioning, we will briefly mention those that are more or less consensually considered important members.
Sanford Robinson Gifford was a great name in School, and another great traveler, visiting Egypt and the Middle East. Although he had stated that artfully the trip had been a failure, it nonetheless sharpened his sensitivity to values of light and color. Born into a wealthy family, he received classical academic education in a colorful environment through Transcendentalist philosophy. Encouraged by his parents, he devoted himself to painting prepared to embrace portraiture and historical painting, but an excursion into the Catskill Mountains and admiration for Cole’s work made him change goals, beginning with landscaping, and favoring a mystical inspiration. Even its structuring of the scene obeyed its own symbology – the distant horizons represented the future life, the second level the intellectual interests, and the foreground the present state. On a second trip to England, he meets Ruskinand a debate on art and philosophy, and going to France he comes in contact with Millet, who arouses his enthusiasm for the French landscape school, without detracting from his aesthetic and philosophical convictions, continuing to believe that nature is divine revelation and that purely optical impressions, passive feelings and technical improvisations have no place in their representation.
Thomas Moran was an Englishman by birth. In his work he preferred the large dimensions and a freer approach to the subject, which would rather convey a general impression; for him Realism chained the imagination, but did not fail to give proper treatment to the details, in fact sometimes asked the advice of geologists and botanists to better represent the landscape. He worked in the Rocky Mountains, and his painting The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was used, along with other and more photographs, as evidence in the legal process of demarcating the area as the first national park in the United States.
Jasper Francis Cropsey was an admirer of Turner and especially of Lorrain. Of this he lent the model of composition to which he remained faithful throughout his life, which gave a sense of order to the disorganized nature. But he employed this formula, which lent itself to his temperament, with wisdom and freedom, attributing to him a new historical and conceptual sense. His technique incorporated the spontaneity of the watercolor, which he appreciated, adjusting the treatment to each type of represented object. He was a lover of his country and in his landscapes portrayed it with a feeling of nostalgia and reverence for its beauties.
John Frederick Kensett was not a great traveler, he was limited to the east coast area, but he treated wild nature sometimes with a pungent vein, in a hard light that made an almost surrealistic, dreamlike and nostalgic contrast with the surfaces of the ground and reinforced the feeling of vastness and solitude of the eras, but in others it presented the scene in a lyrical and calm way, showing its great sensitivity to the color and the atmosphere. He knew success in life and was a devoted supporter of his colleagues.
Samuel Colman was a student of Durand and a prolific landscaper, with over a thousand works identified, virtuoso in the watercolor, much admired by the public and eagerly sought by the collectors, accumulating a small fortune. Aggregating personality, he was a member of several artists’ associations. A frequent traveler, on his canvases he painted a vast diversity of themes, with a colorful and exquisite touch sensitive for atmospheric effects. In his trips to the East he produced scenes in which he captured the local exoticism. Focusing on the American scene, he left important work, an impeccable technique, where there is no trace of improvisation.
Thomas Hill, born in England, began as a painter decorating carriages. Later he joined the main group of the Hudson River School, traveling with them on their excursions. He made trips to Yosemite, where he built a studio and produced more than five thousand works on the area. His success was late, but considerable and profitable, selling jobs at high prices. Losing prestige along with the decline of the School, today its production has returned to be highly esteemed.
James McDougal Hart was born in Scotland and studied with the romantics of Dusseldorf. He developed a taste for the big canvases and managed to get rid of the sentimental influence of his German masters, gaining an objectivity in the treatment of the landscape and a freer technique, where the experience of contact with nature was expressed with lyrical and sincere bucolicism.
William Stanley Haseltine also studied in Dusseldorf, joining the colony of American painters who learned landscape landscaping there. Returning to the United States, he established his studio in the same building where several other painters of the School worked, beginning to adopt its principles, and acquiring a solid reputation as a landscaper of scenes of the east coast, appreciated by the great technical skill and accurate detailing. He traveled for many years in Europe, painting his scenes, which were also received with enthusiasm by the American collectors.
Thomas Worthington Whittredge, after abandoning his career as a merchant, initially devoted himself to the portrait, since it seemed to him a more promising field. Dissatisfied, feeling a wild nature appeal, and supported by friends, set out for Europe to perfect himself in Dusseldorf. He learned the technique, but did not imitate the style there, developing a simple and natural treatment. He stayed in Europe for about ten years, traveling and contacting celebrated artists. Returning to the United States in 1859, he made friends with the principal members of the Hudson River School, traveling with them from the interior. He approached a varied theme, ranging from the recesses of the woods to countryside, mountains and beaches. He also made paintings about indigenous peoples and some genre scenes. A very prestigious painter, he was president ofNational Academy of Design.
Decline and rehabilitation
Around 1870 the high concept that the school had enjoyed began to fade. The parochialism of New York painters, who dominated the scene until then, began to attack the parochialism of the public, and the taste of the public moved to less patriotic and more cosmopolitan themes, and European art was once again the center of attention. The style of the Barbizon Schooland the French Impressionists gained precedence among collectors, who preferred scenes that were more suggestive than detailed and realistic, and seemed more modern and secular than the romantic and transcendental idealism of the Hudson River School, which sounded unfashionable to them. Criticism also denigrated what began to be seen as a stereotyping of landscaping, which always seemed to show essentially the same scene, year after year, in a formula that had worn away and lost its appeal and vigor in both form and content. The growth of urban centers across the country had made those landscapes shown on overly familiar and nearby canvases, some were already within walking distance of the suburbs, the sense of virgin and remote nature had been lost, and news was needed to fuel the market. In the 1880s, the last representatives of the School, after having experienced glory and known wealth, saw at the end of their life their work not only fiercely criticized, but covered with ridicule, while others moved on to other aesthetic currents. When Church and Bierstadt died in 1900 and 1902, little attention was paid to the newspapers; the Hudson River School was forgotten.
Hudson River School painting remained scorned for much of the 20th century. His works were removed from exhibitions in museums and collectors no longer wanted to keep them in their private collections. In 1956 the building where many kept their workshops was demolished. In the 1960s curators and critics began to take an interest in that production again, at a time when ecological problems were beginning to become serious. In 1976, accompanying the celebrations of the bicentennial of independence, the history and artistic heritage of the country returned to the scene with force, and several exhibitions with their paintings were organized. Today its most prominent members are placed among the greatest artists of the United States, and some of the old studios, like those of Cole and Church in the Catskill Mountains, are today national patrimony. In 2009 a work by Thomas Moran was chosen to adorn the Oval Office of the White House.
Legacy
The style of the Hudson River School can be broadly described as a sort of “realistic romanticism.” While Romanticism typically seeks the expressiveness, drama, and warmth of personal emotion, the fantastic and the supernatural, Realism seeks the balance of objectivity and rational clarity that can easily become cold and impersonal. The main job of the Hudson River School was to find accommodation between these two extremes, harnessing each other’s strength and avoiding their weaknesses. The result was the formulation of a language that showed an exalted reality, emphasized at once universal and accessible to the individual, described and imagined, extracting the timeless from the limits of circumstantial. They gave the landscape a sensesuperior than pure visuality could offer on its own, affirming the power of the spirit and encouraging man toward a positive attitude toward life.
The Hudson River School was the most influential artistic movement in the United States in the nineteenth century, and the originality of its panoramic view of landscaping was unrivaled in Europe. The large number of works which produced became emblematic of American identity and a positive and harmonious relationship with nature, and after a decline in prestige during Modernism, recently recovered that prominent position of yore. The imagery created by the School was pointing as one of the aesthetics of the precursors of the theater of the twentieth century Christian, has become a model of landscape representation imitated by a number of other modern painters and photographers, is reproduced countless times in books, postcards, and other publications, and is now an integral part of the so-called ” American Dream.” Clark, Halloran & Woodford say that
“The landscape style of the Hudson River School surrounds us – in advertisements for everything from environmental activism to express coffee shops, to the photo albums and slide shows we created to remember our vacation. development of national culture, an aesthetic rhetoric that enables citizens to articulate the undetermined wild interior they are managing to inhabit in terms consistent with their aspirations. ”
But the iconography of the Hudson River School is not immune to criticism. Its enormous current popularity has also been seen as a factor in excluding other formulations and aesthetic standardization. But even more serious is the accusation made against his ideological program, from the rare human presence in the landscape and the untouched aspect of the environment, interpreted as if the painters wanted to ignore the fact that in his time the process of occupation of the territory was already charging a high price in terms of destruction of the natural environment and massacre of indigenous peoples.. The mere act of portraying a landscape symbolizes its appropriation by the human being, and it is well known that the success of Hudson River School landscaping between the public and criticism has acted as a stimulus for penetration into the interior. But practicing an idealistic aesthetic that did not denounce the deleterious effects of man on the environment, separated man from nature and sustained an ambiguous ethic of conquest and exploitation that subjected nature to the control and possession of the white man, being included in this concept of ” nature “were native peoples, in a posture that still survives in certain circles and that exerts a negative influence to the perfect integration of the multiracial North American society and encourages questionable political acts related to the ecological problematic.
Modernly the landscaping of the Hudson River School is generally read positively. Recent polls say that Americans prefer art broadly corresponds to the style description of this school, and the curator of Ala American’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Howat, which appear important examples of the School, considers that the main message of these paintings is that nature must be preserved. In fact, they were historically one of the forces for the emergence of the ecological movement there. This was confirmed already in the nineteenth century. The Yosemite Valley paintings produced by Church, Bierstadt and others motivated the United States government in 1864 to decree 100 acres of the state of California as a nature reserve, in order to be preserved for their scenic beauty, and in the same spirit, with the visual aid of the works of Moran, the congressmen were convinced to create in 1872 the Yellowstone National Park. Finally, the last buffalos screen, of Bierstadt, when registered for a hall of 1888, although rejected for technical and esthetic reasons, triggered a public debate on the destiny of the American fauna that led the government to initiate a census of the population of these animals with a view to the management and conservation of the species.
Source from Wikipedia