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This thread is to discuss the existence of wilderness areas as a necessary part of the environment, and how much environmental movements should focus on the preservation of wilderness as a main policy point. What is wilderness. "Wilderness" is a hard term to define. In the United States, there is a law defining wilderness, but even it is vague. The Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964 posted:“an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” In general, a wilderness area is an area where there is no human habitation, and also no visible signs of human technology or a,,griculture. In the US, wilderness areas are usually also considered to be two miles away from any road, including a gravel or access road. Wilderness areas have more or less complete ecosystems, including the presence of apex predators. Wilderness in the United States I know a lot more about wilderness in the United States, in part because the United States has an administrative framework for "wilderness", based on the 1964 Wilderness Preservation act. In the US, Wilderness areas are designated areas inside of other federal lands that are kept in an almost pristine condition. They can be administered by four different federal agencies, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. They generally have to be kept free of all human settlement or construction, although there are a few exceptions, either necessary for safety or research, or structures that were present before the wilderness designation (there are airstrips in the Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness). In the US, probably half of the Wilderness acreage is in the State of Alaska. Outside of Alaska, they are located in the Pacific and Rocky Mountain states, with some wilderness areas in the northern great lakes and northern New England. The largest wilderness areas east of the Mississippi are in wetlands in Florida and Georgia. There are also some small insular areas that are designated wilderness, such as Monomoy in Massachusetts. There are also some areas that are fit to be designated as wilderness areas, but haven't been so yet. For example, 90% of Yellowstone National Park qualifies, but for whatever reason, it is not officially a wilderness. Wilderness around the world. I don't know as much about the protection framework, but areas of low human habitation around the world also include Northern Canada, Siberia, northern Scandinavia, the Sahara Desert, the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan Plateau, much of Australia and Amazonia and Patagonia. There are also many areas of insular wilderness across the globe. I am curious about what the legal and cultural attitude towards these areas of wilderness is, or whether they are wilderness at all. I know that the Australian outback is uninhabited, but if it is heavily used for ranching, it might not be a wilderness area at all. Notice that many of these areas are also in places with low biodiversity, low biomass, or both. Most of the prime areas of high biodiversity had their natural character overwritten by human habitation and agriculture before history even begin. Why is wilderness important? Why it is important: 1. It protects biodiversity, complete communities, and endangered species. There are some species that can only exist in an undisturbed habitat. This is especially true of megafauna and apex predators. Human intrusion into wilderness areas tends to scare off or destroy megafauna, as well as introduce invasive species that can often destroy an ecosystem. 2. It prevents the slippery slope of development. Once a wilderness area has a structure even as simple as a picnic shelter, more people want to visit, then they will want a road going closer, then a paved road, then a lodge, then its a ski resort. I don't know how historically true this is, but the threat of development leading to destruction of a natural environment seems to be a natural one. 3. Less tangibly, it just provides an experience that can't be reached elsewhere Why it might not be important: 1. As large scale climate change reaches the crisis point, potentially disrupting life for billions of people and destroying habitat across the world, the need to protect a few areas as pristine seems like tokenism. Wilderness areas aren't necessary good for the world eco system, and a managed forest might be a better carbon sink than a wild forest. 2. Because wilderness areas are hard to get to, they can have a lot of outside environmental impact. Someone who goes into the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Northern Montana might "leave no trace" there, but if they flew from Boston to Denver to Kalispell and then rented a SUV to drive there, they still created a lot of traces. Wilderness areas could be seen as just playgrounds for the rich, when a more modest network of natural, but not wild areas might provide more habitat and more access at less environmental cost. Conclusion This debate is part of a larger debate, about whether environmentalism is a scientific, or philosophical position. Do we judge the preservation of the environment by scientific methods, such as PPM of CO2, or through subjective measurements of "naturalness"? Should we take a technocratic approach where we manage the environment, or is the entire point of the environment that we should leave it alone? I am also interested in what experiences people have with wilderness areas, and how they are viewed in their culture. Added: the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Protected Areas Categories: https://www.iucn.org/theme/protected-areas/about/protected-areas-categories And a list of Wilderness areas in Europe: http://wilderness-society.org/european-wilderness-register-database/ A list of Wilderness areas in Europe, and other areas under IUCN classification. glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 18:21
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I found this video fascinating, because it shows that apex predators (and megafauna in general) are not just a decoration that is dropped onto a landscape. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q Basically, this video shows how adding wolf packs back to Yellowstone altered the landscape itself, through a long chain of ecological interactions. The idea that the landscape is an unchanged backdrop for animals is incorrect, animals actually do shape the terrain. This is one of the reasons why a wilderness area with megafauna and predators can do something that scattered parcels of semi-wilderness can't do.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:24
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The environment needs to be more like rest stops out west and less like rest stops in the east. If you know what I'm sayin.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:25
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Speaking as someone who's currently working with USFWS, I'm gonna go with... yes
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Jun 7, 2017 18:33
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Burt Buckle posted:The environment needs to be more like rest stops out west and less like rest stops in the east. If you know what I'm sayin. Well, I've actually been doing some research. Adirondack Park in New York State is a large park, but it also has a population of over 100,000 people, and it has roads and hotels, etc. But if it manages to preserve forests, protect water quality, and have populations of some megafauna (such as black bears), does it matter that it isn't preserved in a totally natural state? I didn't know this, but I used to go to Adirondack Park every night, when I lived in Vermont just across the river from its eastern edge. At the time, I never thought of it as a park, but if it serves all of the functions of a park, is it a park?
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Jun 7, 2017 18:41
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glowing-fish posted:Well, I've actually been doing some research. The primary purpose of a park is for recreation-for people to go there, appreciate nature, use the land for camping, fishing, hunting, that kind of stuff. Other areas, like wildlife refuges, can be used for recreation, but it's not the primary purpose. You can go to a refuge and hike, camp, or fish (Depending on that refuge's policies), but administrative decisions that relate to those activities are secondary to those made for preserving habitats and wildlife.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:44
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glowing-fish posted:I didn't know this, but I used to go to Adirondack Park every night, when I lived in Vermont just across the river from its eastern edge. At the time, I never thought of it as a park, but if it serves all of the functions of a park, is it a park? Are you saying you didn't know that it was a park or you didn't know that you went there every night? To answer your question a park is a state of mind, not a physical place.
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Jun 7, 2017 18:46
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I think it's critical to protect wilderness since once an area has been developed by humans it is extremely difficult to impossible to un-develop it. The bottom line is that even a very large and technologically developed human population does not need to exploit every square inch of the world to support itself, and indeed doing so has negative consequences for society. It isn't tokenism to set aside some of the very few remaining patches of pristine wilderness so that they can be studied and enjoyed; it is making the most minimum acknowledgement possible that maybe we neither need to nor should gently caress up every single place on this earth. If you want to focus on what's best for the world ecosystem, then to a good approximation anything that requires or encourages further human intrusion into any ecosystem is bad. Managed forests might be better for CO2 capture, but if we end up having to develop all of the worlds forests and rainforests to this end the impact to the world ecosystem would be catastrophic. If we give any single poo poo about the "world ecosystem", we need to learn how to simply leave substantial amounts of the planet alone. To your second point...maintaining true wilderness almost by definition requires management of human access. In practice this is done either by making access difficult enough, and having territories vast and remote enough that human access is automatically limited, or by having use quotas. I mean even the most popular wilderness areas rarely see more than a few dozen humans per day in peak season. When the amount of traffic is that low, it doesn't matter how people transport themselves there, the overall environmental impact is obviously negligible. You do touch on an important point in that if wilderness is your only category of protection you either end up very limited access to nature or high costs or both, but that is the function of things like national parks. Indeed many wilderness areas comprise the backcountry of national parks. So you have a situation where lots of people can funnel into Yosemite valley, many (but fewer) can hike up Half Dome, fewer still may visit Tuolomne Meadows and the high country, fewer still venture into the surrounding backcountry, and in the 200 miles of mountains between Yosemite and King's Canyon you have a series of designated wilderness areas that on any given day may have just a few people in them (and outside of the summer they generally have none). I think this sort of multi-tiered system works best, where you have easy access to star attractions in land that is modestly protected, and as you expand outwards and upwards, roads become more sparse then vanish, and protection becomes more strict. It doesn't even require much active management or quotas, because the things that most tourists want to see are easily accessible, and even in the absence of quotas exponentially fewer people will visit a place if they have to hike long distances or climb to get there.
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Jun 7, 2017 19:15
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Yah
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Jun 8, 2017 01:28
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Define 'world'.
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Jun 8, 2017 02:01
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Speaking as someone who's currently working with USFWS, I'm gonna go with... yes What type of wildlife do you work with? One thing is, a lot of wildlife seems to adjust quite well to the presence of humans. Like Canada Geese will settle in a lake that is right next to a free way, and don't care. Other wildlife is very sensitive to habitat intrusion. So raccoons are not impacted negatively by human buildings (and in fact benefit from them), while wolverines, much similar animals, are very sensitive to habitat change. (As well as climate change)
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Jun 8, 2017 04:01
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glowing-fish posted:What type of wildlife do you work with? Gonna disagree with you on this one. I can't keep wolverines out of my garbage at my house (live in Wisconsin).
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Jun 8, 2017 04:06
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Burt Buckle posted:Gonna disagree with you on this one. I can't keep wolverines out of my garbage at my house (live in Wisconsin). Are you a Mexican soviet invasion force?
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Jun 8, 2017 04:10
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glowing-fish posted:What type of wildlife do you work with? Visitors 
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Jun 8, 2017 04:28
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I think an interesting question related to this is: should we attempt to keep the "wilderness" most like it was pre-civilization or help it change to a healthier biome in our impacted world? Nowhere on earth is unimpacted, so how do we decide what wild means with that in mind? Is it better to try and save the forest or instead focus on creating a healthier chaparral on the same land?
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Jun 8, 2017 06:08
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Burt Buckle posted:Gonna disagree with you on this one. I can't keep wolverines out of my garbage at my house (live in Wisconsin). According to a quick wikipedia search, wolverines have only occasionally been spotted in Michigan, for them to be common in Wisconsin would be...quite interesting ecologically. (Map of Gulo Gulo habitat):  There were 12 confirmed wolverine sightings in Wisconsin in the 1800s, 2 confirmed sightings between 1900 and 1930, and there has not been a confirmed wild wolverine in Wisconsin for over 80 years: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/documents/reports/rarecarnobserv2.pdf glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jun 8, 2017 |
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Jun 8, 2017 06:57
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Alright, you caught me. I was the one getting into Burt Buckle's trash dressed as the Wolverine! I am in a desperate situation because no one is paying into my patreon.
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Jun 8, 2017 14:03
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There are two versions of "wilderness" to consider, from a forestry perspective. You can either do absolutely nothing and let all the weedy poo poo live, or you can work to minimize it so hardwoods thrive. Or, they planted millions of seedlings in the wake of Mt. St. Helens, another example of a "setting things in motion" approach. Long term it has brought animals back, ecology, etc. But still a different ecology than what would have slowly arisen out of it untouched.
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Jun 8, 2017 16:18
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Peetown Manning posted:There are two versions of "wilderness" to consider, from a forestry perspective. You can either do absolutely nothing and let all the weedy poo poo live, or you can work to minimize it so hardwoods thrive. Or, they planted millions of seedlings in the wake of Mt. St. Helens, another example of a "setting things in motion" approach. Long term it has brought animals back, ecology, etc. But still a different ecology than what would have slowly arisen out of it untouched. I love the upper Gippsland wilderness (if you can call it that), here in Victoria, Australia. Unfortunately so does the lumber industry. And I can see why. Millions of decent trees. But it's a river catchment area supplying millions of people with water, and just as many with food. It's vibrant, full of life. It's gorgeous! The rocks, the rivers...you can wander forever! And when you get high enough in winter you get snow! Also you can duck into a certain part of the river and emerge covered in leaches, which...isn't a selling point most of the time. Also there is a substantial population of the Eastern Brown, the world's 2nd deadliest snake, in the area. It's kinda stupid to just try and consume more and more land to support more and more people. All it does is delay the problems for a few more decades.
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Jun 8, 2017 16:36
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In certain situations, invasive species are the weeds minimizing traditional hardwood forests and other "wilderness'. Often the invasive species came from agricultural/industrial gently caress-ups of man, so why not get in there and help the old forest survive? This isn't necessarily for the purpose of lumber. Those trees are keystone species and their saplings will not survive without human action. Even the Native Americans clear cut in the Eastern U.S., so it isn't exactly just a runaway practice of modernism. We just need ways to address the scale. 20 Blunts fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jun 8, 2017 |
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Jun 8, 2017 16:53
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Kudzu will save us from the creeping growth of the Old Woods.
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Jun 8, 2017 16:57
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Peetown Manning posted:Even the Native Americans clear cut in the Eastern U.S., so it isn't exactly just a runaway practice of modernism. We just need ways to address the scale. Yeah, don't put too much faith in the practices of native peoples. If humans are being stupid and destroying our environment now, why is that attitude any different to what we were thousands of years ago? The people of my land used fire to burn the land, to make way for animals to graze. Over time it transformed the ecology to be one built upon fire. Relying upon human-caused fire. Luckily they didn't have modern technology. Ooh! What if they did!
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Jun 8, 2017 17:13
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glowing-fish posted:There were 12 confirmed wolverine sightings in Wisconsin in the 1800s, 2 confirmed sightings between 1900 and 1930, and there has not been a confirmed wild wolverine in Wisconsin for over 80 years: Who is the authority that confirms wolverine sightings because I need to talk to them immediately.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:50
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yeah
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Jun 8, 2017 18:52
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Burt Buckle posted:Who is the authority that confirms wolverine sightings because I need to talk to them immediately. WDNR but are you certain it isn't a fisher, badger or woodchuck? A photo would actually be a big deal.
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Jun 8, 2017 18:57
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Of course the world will carry on even as a barren rock with no life left on it, which on a long enough timeline is certain. The more relevant question is do Humans need Wilderness? I don't know if we really need it but it is rare and awesome and I believe that makes it valuable.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:03
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OP, you asked about whether environmentalism is an objective scientific field or a subjective philosophical field, but I would say there's no reason it can't be both, and many reasons why it MUST be both. It's pretty hard to argue that wilderness has nothing to teach scientists; even elementary school kids understand that nature inspires inventions and scientific discoveries. And it's also hard to argue that wilderness has nothing to offer us in the way of spiritual enlightenment or, at the very least, psychological relief; there are endless accounts in literature and art, philosophy, religion and just plain old contemporary recollection to support this idea. My point is that both kinds of environmentalism are very well documented, and a given person may take more from one column than the other, but that doesn't change the fact that both are useful and important. I'm not an expert or a park ranger or nothing, but I can speak from personal experience that having access to local national forests and parks (Roosevelt and Rocky Mountain, respectfully) has been important to my health and my prosperity. Hiking with friends on a nice weekend away from the loud and dirty city where I work is medicine as far as I'm concerned. Whether that medicine directly affects my body chemistry through reactions in my skin/lungs/guts or reactions in my brain kinda seems irrelevant; either way it has definitely helped me as a citizen to have shared, protected spaces to recreate in, and that in turn has helped me contribute more to society. Now, the bigger questions of "should the individual's good health be an important priority of the state?", "how does the citizenry's health affect economies?", and "how far does the state's responsibility to maintain health standards go?", these are the subjects of debates we in the US have endlessly. In this respect wilderness preservation for the purpose of objective scientific inquiry is certainly an easier thing to sell people on: the next big tech wave might be based fundamentally on phenomena or trends observed in a wilderness area, that's a perfectly believable scenario we've seen play out innumerable times already. But that doesn't mean the subjective kind is invalid, it just means our culture doesn't recognize it formally yet.
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Jun 8, 2017 19:07
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Peetown Manning posted:In certain situations, invasive species are the weeds minimizing traditional hardwood forests and other "wilderness'. Often the invasive species came from agricultural/industrial gently caress-ups of man, so why not get in there and help the old forest survive? This isn't necessarily for the purpose of lumber. Those trees are keystone species and their saplings will not survive without human action. I don't think they clear cut, as much as they burnt the forests regularly? It is true that there is almost no "pristine" wilderness, because all these areas have had human interaction for thousands of years.
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Jun 8, 2017 21:20
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Biodiversity seems more desirable than having lots of acreage two miles from a road (when that acreage is mainly parched scrubland). A robust ecosystem needs a lot of contiguous territory, though. These ecoducts are a pretty nifty idea. 
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Jun 8, 2017 22:19
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Phyzzle posted:Biodiversity seems more desirable than having lots of acreage two miles from a road (when that acreage is mainly parched scrubland). A robust ecosystem needs a lot of contiguous territory, though. These ecoducts are a pretty nifty idea. A youtube video on the same subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cO9NXD3Ynw Someone who knows more about wildlife behavior might be able to explain this, because some large animals can live fairly close to human habitation or roads and not seem to mind, while others will be spooked by even a hint of humans.
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Jun 8, 2017 23:23
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Yes Op, it does.
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Jun 9, 2017 01:01
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idk but we're gonna find out soon enough!
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Jun 9, 2017 02:05
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glowing-fish posted:I don't think they clear cut, as much as they burnt the forests regularly? I was just reading a history of the pre-colonial situation with Native Americans and was taken back that they too practiced large-scale forestry. I would assume they actually cut quite a bit down because they built some major settlements leading up to the European presence. My point in bringing this to the thread was simply that our idea of "pure" wilderness may be misguided, and with measured forestry techniques we can benefit from some natural resources without destroying them entirely. Aka, protect hardwood trees, allow their canopies to develop en masse, and greater ecological diversity may result from this human interaction.
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Jun 9, 2017 02:40
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parcs posted:idk but we're gonna find out soon enough! A big proportion of the world's wilderness is in places where the population and development aren't increasing. Northern Canada and Siberia are not places that are going to have a horde of suburban tract housing and McDonalds going up any time soon. (Even though mining in Canada is obviously an issue) A lot of these wilderness areas are more under threat from climate change than from being bulldozed over.
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Jun 9, 2017 03:28
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I think, in our interest, we shouldn't make lots of big sudden changes to our environment. But almost nothing on earth is pristine and untouched by man, or even just untouched by time, so preserving wilderness as it happens to be when we notice it just for its own sake is not that valuable, imo.
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Jun 9, 2017 16:35
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As someone who worked in the Americorps with the Utah Conservation Corps, the world definitely needs wilderness. Not just for the biodiversity, but for preserving the unique environments that can be found like Bryce Canyon where you can hear geological processes take place in the morning.
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Jun 9, 2017 17:26
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achillesforever6 posted:As someone who worked in the Americorps with the Utah Conservation Corps, the world definitely needs wilderness. Not just for the biodiversity, but for preserving the unique environments that can be found like Bryce Canyon where you can hear geological processes take place in the morning. But there are areas, like Bryce Canyon, that are not wilderness, but are still mostly preserved. Bryce Canyon has a pretty good network of forest service roads, so there probably isn't many places in the park that are more than a mile from a road. So the question is, would Bryce Canyon be better preserved without those roads? Is it necessary to keep a place like that without any structures at all?
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Jun 9, 2017 18:21
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glowing-fish posted:Someone who knows more about wildlife behavior might be able to explain this, because some large animals can live fairly close to human habitation or roads and not seem to mind, while others will be spooked by even a hint of humans. isn't a big problem with roads/highways that they cut off migration routes and poo poo like that?
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Jun 10, 2017 01:51
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I worked with a guy who was bitching about a wildlife bridge going up in Arizona. "A million dollars for a bridge for animals!" He shut up about it when I asked how many species should go extinct for his convenience. Burt Buckle posted:Who is the authority that confirms wolverine sightings because I need to talk to them immediately. Are you sure you aren't seeing badgers or raccoons?
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Jun 10, 2017 02:24
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Doorknob Slobber posted:isn't a big problem with roads/highways that they cut off migration routes and poo poo like that? Depends on the road, and depends on the animal. A wilderness area is totally roadless. Most National Forests might be considered "wild", but they have a network of roads. But these are single lane gravel roads that might see one vehicle a day. So that isn't going to cut off migration. But even a lightly traveled, paved country road is going to disturb a lot of animals, and it cuts their habitat into pieces. For some animals, more than others. That is one of the questions about "wilderness", especially in the public mind. People can drive out on a country road, see lots of trees, see lots of animals, and think that they are in a wilderness area, even though they are in an area that has a heavy, yet subtle, impact from human development. The fact that there are a lot of deer in an area is itself a sign of human interference: it means we've driven away the apex predators and the deer are breeding to a level they wouldn't in the wilderness.
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Jun 10, 2017 05:11
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