Ethics and the Great Muir/ Pinchot Debate

As an environmental studies major, you learn - in almost every class- about the debate between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. Muir was a preservationist who was the founder of the Sierra Club and Pinchot was the first director of the Forest Service. In Ramachandra Guha's piece, both Muir and Pinchot were brought up which caused me to think about them in a more philosophical way than I normally do, as I think about this great men often. I think it is funny to mention that though Muir and Pinchot had a rivalry in how to deal with the lands of the United States, they were actually really good friends until they got into a huge public argument in the lobby in a Seattle hotel about the grazing of sheep on mountains and the destruction,or lack thereof depending on whose view you are taking, and never spoke again. But looking at there views on the environment as preservation (Muir) v. conservation (Pinchot), isn't that in all essence just a ethically debate about an anthropocentric view on the environment versus an non anthropocentric one? Muir wanted to preserve the land, just to preserve the land, just to have it. Pinchot wanted to protect the environment in order to use it for human gain through the means of logging, grazing, ect. Isn't this in all reality just a debate about how we should look at the environment? I never have thought about it in those terms before, and I am really glad I did- it has given me a new outlook on two men I thought I knew almost everything about.