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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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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:10 |
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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VideoTapir posted:Have roads created genetically distinct populations of small animals and plants yet? More it creates inbreeding animals that can become genetically vulnerable: https://www.livescience.com/42500-cougar-inbreeding-habitat-fragmentation.html This is especially true the larger the animal gets, and needs more territory. A large population of deer can exist in a suburban forest area. That isn't true of apex predators, who need a couple square miles of territory between them.
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Jun 10, 2017 19:07
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El Perkele posted:Also from forestry, agriculture, habitat fragmentation, mining, suburban encroachment, climate change -induced habitat and ecosystem shifts, population movements in the next 100 years and other little things and so on but w/e If you look at the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavat, they don't really have much of a risk from agriculture or suburban encroachment, although mining is an issue in some of those places. I am guessing that if, in the next 100 years, the Yukon's population increases even to one million people (an increase of about 30 times the population size), that we will have other problems to worry about. Climate change is tremendous, but there are large chunks of the world that don't have to deal with population pressure.
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Jun 12, 2017 17:15
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Fog Tripper posted:
I am not trying to be pedantic about this, but it is kind of the point of the post. Nothing North of Leesburg, Virginia has been wilderness for 200 years, maybe 300 years. Given the density of Native American settlement there, and its closeness to a major waterway, possibly for a thousand years.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:10
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Squalid posted:Lol glowing-fish I don't believe you are capable of ever resisting an opportunity to be pedantic. I think it is necessary to differentiate between wilderness and nature, mostly because people who have never been in a wilderness area seem to literally not be aware that it exists. I know that there is not a perfectly objective definition of what a "wilderness" is. I know that all "wilderness" areas are impacted by human activities, and that even very urban places have some wild species living in them. I also know that areas that have gravel roads but not settlement are probably not that much different than areas that are designated wilderness. But yes, there is an objective difference between an area that has climax forests, a complete ecosystem with little or no invasive species, megafauna, and no obvious human structures, and an otherwise natural area that has these things. The problem is, if you have never been in a wilderness area, you drive 2 hours to uncle Bob's house, you see he has 20 acres of trees and that there are deer on his property, and that is wilderness, and you don't realize that there actually is something called wilderness. To call this a pedantic distinction is like if someone wants to take LSD for the first time, and you tell them to be careful, and they say "oh, its okay, I've smoked marijuana a lot, and its the same thing". It might seem like an odd analogy, but its actually pretty fitting: the difference between a natural area, like the Adirondacks, and a wilderness area, like the Selway-Bitterroot, is basically the difference between smoking a few hits and watching some Star Trek episodes, and taking 200 mcg of LSD and spending 12 hours realizing that nothing is real or will ever be real. glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 14, 2017 06:18
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Squalid posted:We can draw our arbitrary lines wherever we want, the trick is making them useful. That's the important take away. So, for example, with roads, here is why roads make a difference. Maybe it doesn't matter whether the road is 2 miles away or 3 miles away, but the presence of roads do make a difference. Construction of a road, even a gravel road, means that there is going to be heavy equipment moving in to construct and maintain the road. It also provides a very good channel for invasive species to enter a wild area. Weeds will follow the disturbed ground of a road. And, in general, even if the species aren't invasive, a road is a cut in the landscape. The construction and existence of roads leads to soil erosion and compaction. This can disturb water flow, pollute and sediment streams, etc. The existence of roads leads to noise pollution and human presence, which can scare away some shyer species. I mean, all of these things are on a scale, and invasive species exist without roads, there is sedimentation and stream degradation from natural erosion, but in general, just laying a gravel road that might see 10 cars a day across a national forest does change it, in ways that can be objectively measured. I mean, the title of this thread is "Does the World need Wilderness?". "No" is a good answer to that, but the idea that there is no important distinction between wilderness areas and anything green avoids the question. Its like I posted a thread asking who likes heavy metal music and you were posting "YEAH! JON BON JOVI ROCKS!" and then arguing that hey, there are guitars and drums, that is like a heavy metal. I mean, it is something, but its not what we are talking about.
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Jun 14, 2017 17:46
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Fitzy Fitz posted:The classic definition of wilderness will need to be discarded soon. Management of all land is increasingly important because natural processes cannot adequately cope with climate change and international spread of introduced species. There's really no going back at this point. There are some situations where managing a landscape for purposes of mitigating climate change would be different for managing it for the benefit of biodiversity and wildlife: a densely packed forest is going to handle more carbon, but is probably going to be unfavorable for landscape and wildlife. (An open canopy allows greater biodiversity in understory flora, some animals like bighorn sheep prefer open woodlands over forests) But the other question is: how exactly do you suggest that the landscape to be "managed"? The Selway-Bitterroot wilderness, for example, is 2000 square miles, with no roads. Even fighting fires there is often skipped just because there is no way to get people in. What type of headcount would you need to "manage" it?
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Jun 14, 2017 18:16
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Burt Buckle posted:I myself have never been in a wilderness area and I am skeptical of its existence. If wilderness exists how come I haven't seen it? Can you imagine a band that was HARDER than JON BON JOVI? That is obviously impossible.
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Jun 14, 2017 18:16
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CyclicalAberration posted:To illustrate this point and others from this thread, should the Isle Royale National Park/Wilderness Area save their wolves ? Last winter the National Park Service announced they'd prefer to reintroduce them. There's been years of debate between people who believe the point of the park should be minimal-human impact wilderness vs the people who want to preserve the current ecosystem. The preservation opinion opens up several other questions too. Which ecosystem should the park preserve? Before the arrival of man the island had lynx and caribou and it was the previous actions of men that lead to their extirpation and arguably the introduction of moose and wolves in the 20th century. It's also not clear that wolves can survive long term without human assistance because of the reduction in ice bridges to the island. Just from a biological point of view, it doesn't seem to be a good idea. From my wide research on the matter (reading a wikipedia article), it seems that wolves are not native to the island and it is too small to contain a stable population of an apex predator. Someone who knows more about this might be able to comment better, but it seems that apex predators have a non-linear relationship to population size. You might be able to sustain a pack of 40 wolves on an island twice the size of Isle Royale, but the genetic bottleneck gets too small on Isle Royale. One of the main reasons for preserving wilderness is that solid chunks of undisturbed habitat seem to be necessary as a core for some animals to breed and maintain their populations. Even when they can go and live in semi-wilderness areas, they need wilderness to replenish their populations.
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Aug 4, 2017 02:57
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call to action posted:This is total nonsense, there is a huge amount of value to well-established ecosystems. And please don't bother me with the "wellll really there's no such thing as good or bad when you think about it, maaan" moral relativism idiocy. I am trying to see what type of imperialist would need to insist that not having non-native wolves living on Isle Royale is a necessity to empire. Somehow if the island falls to the lynx instead of the wolves, global capitalism is saved from the inevitable march of history. Like, maybe if I am the Elerian Empire and I need to form an alliance with either the Mrrshan or the Bulrathi?
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Aug 4, 2017 04:45
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:10 |
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As the flood waters of Harvey start to recede, and the damage starts to be calculated, the topic of wilderness becomes more relevant. Earlier on in this thread, someone said that most wilderness areas in the United States are in the Western mountains and basins, which are not actually that biodiverse, and that protecting the southeastern ecosystems is more important. This is also probably true from the viewpoint of environmental and natural disaster protection. Between Brownsville Texas and New Orleans, there is only one wilderness area: in the Lacassine Wildlife Refuge near Lake Charles, Louisiana. None of the Texas coast is in wilderness areas. Upstream from Houston, there are no real wilderness areas, although there is a national forest that is not wilderness (lots of roads and buildings in it). It might seem like a silly thing to argue about the need to preserve pristine wilderness in light of such a terrible disaster, but it shows why a seemingly abstract subject is very important: Wilderness areas on the coast catch waves. They help stop the storm surge. Wilderness areas inland catch rainwater and prevent the most disastrous flooding. Its true that places don't need to be total wilderness to do this: its not like putting a single lane gravel road on a barrier island is going to ruin its ability to block waves. But development in coastal areas and inland encourages more development, which leads to erosion. Every road or campground built in a forest takes away the ability of the ground to catch and hold water. As well as, more obviously, people living in barrier islands are putting themselves more directly in the path of danger, and when settlements in barrier islands get destroyed, it can leave a lot of environmental damage. Would it be politically feasible and environmentally beneficial to return gulf coast barrier islands to a wilderness state?
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Sep 1, 2017 17:28
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