Editor's note: Areas set aside under The Wilderness Act draw frequent debate today over what uses are acceptable within officially designated wilderness. But how will we view wilderness in 2064, when The Wilderness Act notches its 100th birthday? That topic recently was explored by Jeff Rose and Dan Dustin for Park Science, a research and resource management bulletin of the U.S. National Park Service that reports the implications of recent and ongoing natural and social science and related cultural research for park planning, management, and policy. Mr. Rose recently received his PhD from the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. His research employs political ecology to examine public space and nature-society relations under neoliberalism. Dan Dustin is chair of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. The two granted Traveler permission to reprint their essay here.
Through The Looking Glass: What Value Will We See In Wilderness In 2064?
THIS QUESTION IS INCREASINGLY RELEVANT to people around the world as we enter the 21st century and look forward to the 100th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Domestic and international demographic projections portend a future filled with more people making more demands on Earth’s limited store of nonrenewable resources, a problem exacerbated by climate change (Dietz et al. 2003). The assumption that wilderness will always remain secure for its intended purposes rests on democratic processes and the will of the American people.
The National Park Service (NPS), the U.S. Forest Service (FS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are entrusted with the stewardship of our nation’s wilderness. One of their primary charges is to preserve wilderness’s “biophysical, experiential, and symbolic ideals” (Landres 2004, p. 9). Protecting wilderness for its multiple purposes, including biodiversity and recreation, is no simple task. Nevertheless, among these purposes the job of the National Park Service is to ensure that national park wilderness forever retains the relatively untouched character of which Thoreau spoke, while also serving as the “geography of hope” that Stegner (1992) imagined it to be.
The National Park Service and the other bureaus are obliged to ensure that the values of wilderness are upheld and that there will always be recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, cultural, and historical uses of wilderness as codified in the Wilderness Act. However, there is also a philosophical, spiritual, and political base upon which to guarantee the existence of wilderness as a reflection of our national conscience. As Roderick Nash (1967) teaches us in Wilderness and the American Mind, wilderness is socially constructed. Wilderness is our psychological response to untrammeled nature as much as it is untrammeled nature itself. It is a decidedly American creation infused with values that many Americans hold dear: a desire for freedom, privacy, solitude, independence, and self-reliance. Wilderness, in this sense, serves as a mirror unto ourselves. It reflects who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to become. But as the United States transforms into an increasingly urban, sedentary, and technologically dependent society, and as many of our children come to prefer the indoors over the outdoors (Louv 2008a; Pergams and Zaradic 2006, 2008; Zaradic 2008), who is to say wilderness will retain the same meanings, the same significance in 2064, as it does today?
Wilderness is our psychological response to untrammeled nature as much as it is untrammeled nature itself. It is a decidedly American creation infused with values that many Americans hold dear: a desire for freedom, privacy, solitude, independence, and self-reliance.
As the planet becomes more congested, as space for human habitation becomes scarcer, and as the appetite for resources intensifies, those physical places we call wilderness will become more and more enticing for their natural resources—be they oil, timber, coal, natural gas, uranium, copper, or other precious metals. Paradoxically, wilderness will also become more valuable as a scientific and ecological laboratory, as the best “baseline” against which to measure the advance of civilization. Despite claims that Earth has now entered the “anthropocene,” a geological epoch characterized by human impact (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), wilderness will likely remain the most unaffected of any natural areas in the United States, serving as an important classroom for ecological understanding.
From a broader perspective, wilderness will also be a test tube, a type of philosophical and material experiment in human restraint. Wilderness will likely be valued more as a wellspring, the headwaters from which pure water flows to quench the thirst of an increasingly parched country—especially west of the 100th meridian. But such a practical appraisal of the scientific value of wilderness leaves something to be desired, as there is much that escapes the caliper’s claw. Safeguarding wilderness will yield important health benefits to help sustain our species along with several furry, feathery, and flowery others. In this regard, there should be more to us, our sensibilities, our dreams, our spirituality, and to what it means to grow and develop as ethical human beings that manifests itself in our relationship with wilderness.
This brings us back to Nash’s (1967) claim that wilderness is more than a space or a place; it is a psychological state of mind. We see in wilderness what we will. We infuse it with our own meanings, and these meanings may change over time. Historically, the existence of wilderness symbolized our civilization’s capacity to exercise a modicum of restraint in its otherwise relentless march forward in the name of progress. In a spatial sense, wilderness has been a rare exception to the rule, a geographic concession to modesty doled out by a civilization rich in developmental and commercial hubris. It has been a gesture of humility, not unlike a Sunday morning offering following a week of considerable profitability. When it comes to the future of wilderness in the United States, one has to wonder what new concessions, what new gestures, what new offerings we will feel compelled to make in 2064.
Whatever we value in wilderness in 2064, it will not be the result of something that is thrust upon us from the outside—be it crowding, dwindling natural resources, climate change, or biodiversity loss. Rather our values of wilderness will be something we create from within. Wilderness will continue to mean what we want it to mean. Perhaps we will see wilderness much the same way as we envisioned it in 1964. But it is much more likely that our view of wilderness will change with evolving cultures, politics, and social norms. Wilderness in 2064 may well be a function of a highly urbanized, sedentary, technologically transfixed, stay-inside citizenry that embraces fundamentally different core values, a citizenry that is further disengaged from an intimate relationship with the natural world. Should such a future come to pass, then, as Stegner feared, something will have gone out of us as a people. A society increasingly detached from its biological moorings is in danger of thinking it no longer needs nature, much less wilderness. In the end, such a society risks making the mistake of assuming it controls nature and that nature plays only a supporting role in the human drama.
As poets, philosophers, and wilderness visionaries have trumpeted throughout our nation’s history, and as science now echoes as well, we humans are part of nature, after all, and our well-being ultimately depends on the welfare of the larger living and nonliving world around us. Ecology teaches us that wilderness—that intricately formed, wonderfully configured landscape of unfettered magnificence—is one of the most telling expressions of what nature and humankind look like when both are in robust health. While the nonhuman world might be healthy without human interference, a healthy society is a constant struggle that requires active engagement. A healthy ecosystem, one that includes both human and nonhuman systems working together, needs active and thoughtful management. The National Park Service is at the forefront of this vitally important work of integrating people into the wild nature that surrounds us. Louv (2008b) calls this “sacred work.” Indeed it is.
Comments
I agree that wilderness is what we make of it. But I also believe that we must teach the future generations of the importance of wilderness for it to be preserved for many years to come. However, in many years the meaning of wilderness may change as well. AL
The way I see it, wilderness is meant to be preserved for the sake of wilderness itself, not for the enjoyment of people. That many of us happen to enjoy wilderness is merely a happy accident. The Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA) has been introduced, and has failed, eight times over the years. The sticking points have been non-negotiable to the point of preventing compromise. Just how far can the land be compromised before it no longer qualifies as wilderness? The 300,000 acres of wilderness that would be created would be substandard, with motorized trails running right through the middle of it. And the 500,000 acres surrounding it will be overrun with motorized trails. The resulting nonwilderness will degrade the very essence of the Wilderness Act, not to mention set a precedent for the management of other wilderness areas. How is wildlife expected to hunt prey, protect themselves from becoming prey, find a mate, etc., if they can't hear over the din of ATVs? Wilderness needs to protected for its own sake and on its own terms, not on anthropocentric terms. This will become more and more important in future years as the human population grows and exerts ever more pressure on wilderness, which is why it is so important to protect wilderness now, while we still can.
I'm trying to decipher exactly what you mean by the last sentence. Municipal water comes from several sources - mostly watersheds and underground aquifers. While I suppose a lot of water here in California comes from places that either are designated wilderness or might be places that would be good candidates for wilderness designations, that's not the case in most of this country. For instance, even in the San Francisco Bay Area, Marin County gets most of its water from local sources. It's rainwater in local watersheds that fills up local reservoirs. The land around them is mostly farmland now, and is frankly far removed from anything that could be considered "wilderness" in even a figurative sense.
The precedent for all sorts of things is already there. It's not as if someone just came up with the idea of exceptions.
For instance, there's the Dusy-Ershim Off-Road Trail on Forest Service land. It actually splits the boundaries of the John Muir Wilderness and the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness areas.
http://jeep.off-road.com/jeep/trails/the-dusyershim-trail-13526.html
You think there's compromise? Here's the California Wilderness Act of 1984:
http://www.nps.gov/legal/parklaws/1/laws1-volume1-appendix.pdf
It's loaded with exceptions. In certain wilderness areas, the Forest Service is allowed to use motorized maintenance vehicles on existing fire roads. Certain areas areas were allowed to keep non-wilderness recreational opportunities. Others were allowed to maintain livestock grazing. Existing or previously proposed hydroelectric dams were allowed to remain and their operators were allowed to use motorized transportation for maintenance activities. All throughout the Sierra Nevada, there are natural and manmade lakes that were simply kept out of the wilderness boundaries. We're talking power boats, fully developed lodges, and developed campgrounds that that pre-date the wilderness designations. For example, here's a map of Convict Lake, which is right in the middle of the John Muir Wilderness. There was a Nature Valley granola bar commercial that featured it. It made it sound like it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was filmed at the Convict Lake Resort.
http://www.fishsniffer.com/maps/convict.html
Even in fully designated wilderness that isn't in NPS control, it's legal to hunt or go shooting out in the middle of the woods. Now the sound of gunshots isn't exactly what I'd think of as "wilderness characteristics", but it's all perfectly legal according to the law.
This article holds great importance for our society. I have wondered about many of the issues that were addressed above as I've worried about the future of our wilderness and even our desire to enjoy it. Above where it is mentioned that many of our children now prefer indoors over the outdoors, I have noticed this truth becoming more and more apparent. With the increases in technology in our society as a use for entertainment, people are forgetting not only the joys of exploring the natural world, but even the importance of personal conversation. My hope is that the world will soon revert to the simple pleasures of life and remember the beauty and peace that the natural earth has to offer us.
-CS
CS,
It's going to take effort to move folks away from their technology in order to make the change back to the simple pleasures in life. Remember, the vitual world is a lot easier to deal with. You don't have to exert yourself, sweat, get short of breath, get blisters, get frost bite or get covered in mosquito bites. In the virtual world, you can hike the Grand Canyon without leaving the comfort of your sofa. The challenge is getting people to move away from that comfort zone and realize that the rewards of the hike, ski, raft, pack trip into wilderness, in reality, are so much greater that in the virtual world. I'm afraid that if we as a society are not able to get people to make that connection, then wilderness, wild/natural systems will have no meaning and no value to future generations. So, take your kids, grand kids, friends kids, anybodies kids on some wilderness adventures. It will take personal involvement it keep wilderness and nature as something more than a thing we (people) control and simply serves, as Jeff Rose and Dan Dusten fear, "...a supporting role in the human drama."
This scares me a little bit. I
agree that everyone infuses their own meanings and ideals into wilderness, but
it is all so different. I imagine a world where everyone is fighting over
open land trying to capitalize off of it. I hope it does not come to
that, but I fear it will.
I'm with ya, ypw. That's the beauty of the Wilderness Act, that it was written with so much ambiguity to make it elastic enough to stretch over and mold around exception after exception. Stretch it too hard and too fast though, and just like silly putty, it will break.
Well - I'm not even sure it's all that wrong to put in all these exceptions. It's often highly controversial to assign wilderness designations because there are many people who will lose out on their previous uses. There are the business owners who would be told - well tough luck - you gotta leave. Without these exceptions, it could be impossible to designate certain areas as wilderness because there would be even more political opposition.
There's also some practical considerations. If a water district has already claimed a lake or built a dam, there is no way that Congress is going to say - well it's wilderness now and we'll just tear it down and leave you to find another place to impound your water. It would get stuck in the courts where they'd probably rule that the water rights are senior to the wilderness designation and can't be overturned. That's why there are so many wilderness designations where there's a dam here or an off-road trail there. Without the compromise, the alternative is that wilderness doesn't get designated at all or it correctly gets overturned by the courts.