Today we face a grave and subtle conservation challenge--one which may affect our future more vitally than many a sensational subject of the daily banner headlines. The challenge is that of a soaring population, a shrinking allotment of space per person, and the gathering storm of conflict over how to apportion available space, how to stretch natural resources, how to preserve the quality of our environment.

Should our population continue growing, even at the present "declining" rate, it would double in about another four decades and then double again in less time than that. Ultimately, there would be no horizontal spread left in this land. We should have to start spreading vertically. What this would mean in terms of living conditions can be imagined, but the prospect is not a pleasant one. You can double-deck freeways, railroads, even whole cities. But you can't double-deck a park.

The greatest threat to quality living in this country is overpopulation and we need a lot more public education on this subject. What size population can this country reasonably and beautifully support? What should be the limits of environment for every region and every city?

In layman's language, the gist of a report made in January 1965 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science is that man has been using his power to alter his environment--with a blind pursuit of immediate objectives and a disregard of secondary effects that could endanger the very existence of life on this planet. It cites synthetic invasions of the web of life which add up to an appalling list of governmental and private errors. These errors range from the mistake in judging the holes which nuclear explosions in the stratosphere would tear in the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the earth to the unanticipated environmental contamination produced by indiscriminate use of pesticides.

The National Academy of Science's National Research Council has pointed out the relationship of diminished resources to a swelling population. In a report, The Growth of U.S. Population, published May 25, 1965, the Council's Committee on Population warns that "rapid population growth will create difficulties in reaching America's noble goals of optimum education of all, universal abundance, enriched leisure, equal opportunity, quality, beauty, and creativity."

That report examines the growing drain upon outdoor recreation facilities, nonrenewable resources, and living space, and attributes part of this drain to the growing number of people. It cautions further that while the rate of natural population increase in the United States at the moment is slackening, if present trends were to persist "in the very long run, continued growth of the U.S. population would first become intolerable and then physically impossible."

Others have warned against the disastrous pressure which could result from a constantly growing population--straining our resources and threatening to erode the very keystone of civilized life. "If we do not act soon," Sir Julian Huxley wrote recently, "man will become the cancer of the planet, destroying its resources and eventually his own future self."

Every present sign is urging us to reassess the material base on which we must support our increasing population. In a truly Great Society, conservation takes a new orientation, reaching out to encompass quality of total environment; considering the rivers that once graced and now too often disgrace our cities; pitting a critical eye and a creative brain against the mounting tide of litter and contamination; pondering how to stretch our resources to cover the demands of a mushrooming population while still preserving the quality of existence; respecting the rightful claims of creatures that inhabit many an obscure and threatened ecological niche. And, perhaps most significantly, it asks: "What will be the quality of our existence?"

For the conservation challenge of today is essentially one of quality. Technology holds the key to survival for years to come, if we are to believe the scientists. But what kind of survival. Glassed-in, air-conditioned living-boxes, with elbow-to-elbow barbecue pits and wall-to-wall frustrations hardly add up to quality, even though the pits are replete with steaks and the armchair table sports a box of chocolate creams.

I believe that Henry David Thoreau's decision to "live deliberately" -- to absorb the natural world around him, not merely through the senses into his physical being but into his deepest thoughts--to scorn artificiality and find richness in simplicity--is the nutrient of great culture and of a more peaceful world order.