Originally posted by Mithalwen:
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where as a naturist is something quite different again....
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Where I come from, a "Naturalist" means a "nudist." Like old Ben Franklin, only more sixties and hippie!
At any rate, Tolkien was an environmentalist. Even if you set the Ents aside, the fact that Sam was a gardener, (and, according to some letter or other, he was the real "hero" of
Lord of the Rings,) should be enough to convince you. The care and attention he took to revive the Shire after the "Scouring" should be enough by itself to convince anyone. If that's not enough, Tolkien's detailed description of the flora of Middle-Earth, like Elenor, and Niphrodel and Athelas not to mention all the others, should be enough.
Clearly, he loved trees and nature. His contemporaries, Peake, Eddison and (just a little later) C. S. Lewis did not include such detail as Tolkien did. Even in other genres, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald or even Faulkner never approached such attention. Perhaps Hemmingway, though that could be another thread by itself. The point is that Tolkien would never have bothered with such attention if it was not important to him.
Indeed, The Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, Fangorn and Treebeard might never have occured to him if he wasn't exceptionally attracted to nature and forests and little rivers. Even among the most exceptional Fantasy writers, not to mention the most "common" of them, like Terry Brooks, he was an exception, a stand-out. The more so because he was writing when the world of men thought that the earth, Nature, was "supposed" to be at their disposal, that it was there for them to use, and nothing more. It wasn't until the sixties (or maybe the late fifties!) that people started to notice the environment as something valuable in itself, and not just a commodity to be exploited.
As much as Tolkien seemed to resent the "hippie" movement's obsession with his work, it did get them thinking about the environment. I credit Tolkien as much as I do Jacque Cousteau and Marlin Perkins with a final attention to what was, at that time, a dying environment. Maybe even more-so. Tolkien, after all, reached everyone who read his work, not just the college-drop-out-commune freaks (some of whom are still practicing their chosen lifestyle.) Tolkien's attention to all the little details of Middle-Earth, including the flora and fauna, can only have started people thinking about it.
Was he a naturalist? Vatican forbid!!! Was he an environmentalist? Absolutly!