Wilderness

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This article is about wildland. For other uses, see The Wilderness and Wilderness
(disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Wildness or The bush.

Stephen Mather Wilderness forest in the U.S. state of Washington

Hammastunturi Wilderness in Lapland, Finland
Forrester Island Wilderness in the U.S. state of Alaska

Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that

have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not
under extensive agricultural cultivation.[1][2] The term has traditionally referred to terrestrial
environments, though growing attention is being placed on marine wilderness. Recent
maps of wilderness[3] suggest it covers roughly one quarter of Earth's terrestrial surface,
but is being rapidly degraded by human activity. [4] Even less wilderness remains in the
ocean, with only 13.2% free from intense human activity. [5]
Some governments establish protection for wilderness areas by law to not
only preserve what already exists, but also to promote and advance a natural
expression and development. These can be set up in preserves, conservation
preserves, national forests, national parks and even in urban areas along
rivers, gulches or otherwise undeveloped areas. Often these areas are considered
important for the survival of certain species, biodiversity, ecological
studies, conservation, solitude and recreation.[6] They may also preserve
historic genetic traits and provide habitat for wild flora and fauna that may be difficult to
recreate in zoos, arboretums or laboratories.

Contents

 1History
o 1.1Ancient times and Middle Ages
o 1.215th to 19th century
o 1.3Modern conservation
 2National parks
 3Conservation and preservation in 20th century United States
 4Formal wilderness designations
o 4.1International
o 4.2Germany
o 4.3Finland
o 4.4France
o 4.5Greece
o 4.6New Zealand
o 4.7United States
 o 4.8Western Australia
 5International movement
 6Extent
 7Critique
o 7.1Human–nature dichotomy
 8See also
 9References
 10Further reading
 11External links
o 11.1Definitions

History[edit]

Innoko Wilderness, Alaska, United States, in the summer

Ancient times and Middle Ages[edit]

From a visual arts perspective, nature and wildness have been important subjects in
various epochs of world history. An early tradition of landscape art occurred in the Tang
Dynasty (618–907). The tradition of representing nature as it is became one of the aims
of Chinese painting and was a significant influence in Asian art. Artists in the tradition
of Shan shui (lit. mountain-water-picture), learned to depict mountains and rivers "from
the perspective of nature as a whole and on the basis of their understanding of the laws
of nature … as if seen through the eyes of a bird". In the 13th century, Shih Erh Chi
recommended avoiding painting "scenes lacking any places made inaccessible by
nature".[7]
For most of human history, the greater part of Earth's terrain was wilderness, and
human attention was concentrated on settled areas. The first known laws to protect
parts of nature date back to the Babylonian Empire and Chinese Empire. Ashoka, the
Great Mauryan King, defined the first laws in the world to protect flora and
fauna in Edicts of Ashoka around the 3rd century B.C. In the Middle Ages, the Kings of
England initiated one of the world's first conscious efforts to protect natural areas. They
were motivated by a desire to be able to hunt wild animals in private hunting preserves
rather than a desire to protect wilderness. Nevertheless, in order to have animals to
hunt they would have to protect wildlife from subsistence hunting and the land from
villagers gathering firewood.[8] Similar measures were introduced in other European
countries.
However, in European cultures, throughout the Middle Ages, wilderness generally was
not regarded worth protecting but rather judged strongly negative as a dangerous place
and as a moral counter-world to the realm of culture and godly life. [9] "While archaic
nature religions oriented themselves towards nature, in medieval Christendom this
orientation was replaced by one towards divine law. The divine was no longer to be
found in nature; instead, uncultivated nature became a site of the sinister and the
demonic. It was considered corrupted by the Fall (natura lapsa), becoming a vale of
tears in which humans were doomed to live out their existence. Thus, for example,
mountains were interpreted [e.g, by Thomas Burnet[10]] as ruins of a once flat earth
destroyed by the Flood, with the seas as the remains of that Flood." [9] "If paradise was
early man's greatest good, wilderness, as its antipode, was his greatest evil." [11]
15th to 19th century[edit]
Wilderness was viewed by colonists as being evil in its resistance to their control. [12]
[13]
 The puritanical view of wilderness meant that in order for colonists to be able to live in
North America, they had to destroy the wilderness in order to make way for their
'civilized' society.[12][13] Wilderness was considered to be the root of the colonists'
problems, so to make the problems go away, wilderness needed to be destroyed. [12] One
of the first steps in doing this, is to get rid of trees in order to clear the land. [12] Military
metaphors describing the wilderness as the "enemy" were used, and settler expansion
was phrased as "[conquering] the wilderness". [12]
In relation to the wilderness, Native Americans were viewed as savages. [14] This
dehumanization gave colonists an excuse to feel no mercy when attacking and killing
Native Americans.[14] The relationship between Native Americans and the land was
something colonists didn't understand and didn't try to understand. [15] This mutually
beneficial relationship was different from how colonists viewed the land only in relation
to how it could benefit themselves by waging a constant battle to beat the land and
other living organisms into submission. [12] The belief colonists had of the land being only
something to be used was based in Christian ideas. [12] If the earth and animals and
plants were created by a Christian God for human use, then the cultivation by colonists
was their God-given goal.[14]
However, the idea that what European colonists saw upon arriving in North America
was pristine and devoid of humans is untrue due to the existence of Native Americans.
[16]
 The land was shaped by Native Americans through practices such as fires. [17] Burning
happened frequently and in a controlled manner. [16] The landscapes seen in the US
today are very different from the way things looked before colonists came. [16] Fire could
be used to maintain food, cords, and baskets. [16] One of the main roles of frequent fires
was to prevent the out of control fires which are becoming more and more common. [16]
The idea of wilderness having intrinsic value emerged in the Western world in the 19th
century. British artists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner turned their attention to
capturing the beauty of the natural world in their paintings. Prior to that, paintings had
been primarily of religious scenes or of human beings. William Wordsworth's poetry
described the wonder of the natural world, which had formerly been viewed as a
threatening place. Increasingly the valuing of nature became an aspect of Western
culture.[8]
By the mid-19th century, in Germany, "Scientific Conservation", as it was called,
advocated "the efficient utilization of natural resources through the application
of science and technology". Concepts of forest management based on the German
approach were applied in other parts of the world, but with varying degrees of success.
[18]
 Over the course of the 19th century wilderness became viewed not as a place to fear
but a place to enjoy and protect; hence came the conservation movement in the latter
half of the 19th century. Rivers were rafted and mountains were climbed solely for the
sake of recreation, not to determine their geographical context.
In 1861, following an intense lobbying by artists (painters), the French Waters and
Forests Military Agency set an "artistic reserve" in Fontainebleau State Forest. With a
total of 1,097 hectares, it is known to be the first World nature reserve. [citation needed]
Modern conservation[edit]
Global conservation became an issue at the time of the dissolution of the British
Empire in Africa in the late 1940s. The British established great wildlife preserves there.
As before, this interest in conservation had an economic motive: in this case, big game
hunting. Nevertheless, this led to growing recognition in the 1950s and the early 1960s
of the need to protect large spaces for wildlife conservation worldwide. The World
Wildlife Fund (WWF), founded in 1961, grew to be one of the largest conservation
organizations in the world.[8]
Early conservationists advocated the creation of a legal mechanism by which
boundaries could be set on human activities in order to preserve natural and unique
lands for the enjoyment and use of future generations. This profound shift in wilderness
thought reached a pinnacle in the US with the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964,
which allowed for parts of U.S. National Forests to be designated as "wilderness
preserves". Similar acts, such as the 1975 Eastern Wilderness Areas Act, followed.
Nevertheless, initiatives for wilderness conservation continue to increase. There are a
growing number of projects to protect tropical rainforests through conservation
initiatives. There are also large-scale projects to conserve wilderness regions, such as
Canada's Boreal Forest Conservation Framework. The Framework calls for
conservation of 50 percent of the 6,000,000 square kilometres of boreal forest in
Canada's north.[19] In addition to the World Wildlife Fund, organizations such as
the Wildlife Conservation Society, the WILD Foundation, The Nature
Conservancy, Conservation International, The Wilderness Society (United States) and
many others are active in such conservation efforts.
The 21st century has seen another slight shift in wilderness thought and theory. It is
now understood that simply drawing lines around a piece of land and declaring it a
wilderness does not necessarily make it a wilderness. All landscapes are intricately
connected and what happens outside a wilderness certainly affects what happens
inside it. For example, air pollution from Los Angeles and the California Central Valley
affects Kern Canyon and Sequoia National Park. The national park has miles of
"wilderness" but the air is filled with pollution from the valley. This gives rise to the
paradox of what a wilderness really is; a key issue in 21st century wilderness thought.
 A view of wilderness in Estonia

National parks[edit]

El Toro Wilderness within the Caribbean National Forest in Puerto Rico

The creation of national parks, beginning in the 19th century, preserved some especially
attractive and notable areas, but the pursuits of commerce, lifestyle,
and recreation combined with increases in human population have continued to result in
human modification of relatively untouched areas. Such human activity often negatively
impacts native flora and fauna. As such, to better protect critical habitats and preserve
low-impact recreational opportunities, legal concepts of "wilderness" were established in
many countries, beginning with the United States (see below).
The first National Park was Yellowstone, which was signed into law by U.S. President
Ulysses S. Grant on 1 March 1872.[20] The Act of Dedication declared Yellowstone a land
"hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of
the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for
the benefit and enjoyment of the people." [21]
When national parks were established in an area, the Native Americans that had been
living there were forcibly removed so visitors to the park could see nature without
humans present.[22] National parks are seen as areas untouched by humans, when in
reality, humans existed in these spaces, until settler colonists came in and forced them
off their lands in order to create the national parks. [22] The concept glorifies the idea that
before settlers came, the US was an uninhabited landscape. [22] This erases the reality of
Native Americans, and their relationship with the land and the role they had in shaping
the landscape.[22] Such erasure suggests there were areas of the US which were
historically unoccupied, once again erasing the existence of Native Americans and their
relationship to the land.[22] In the case of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite,
the 'preservation' of these lands by the US government was what caused the Native
Americans who lived in the areas to be systematically removed. [22]
Historian Mark David Spence has shown that the case of Glacier National Park and the
Blackfeet people who live there is a perfect example of such erasure. [22] The Blackfeet
people had specifically designated rights to the area, but the 1910 Glacier National Park
act made void those rights.[22][17] The act of 'preserving' the land was specifically linked to
the exclusion of the Blackfeet people.[22] The continued resistance of the Blackfeet
people has provided documentation of the importance of the area to many different
tribes.[17][22] The area is home to the Blackfeet people.[22]
The world's second national park, the Royal National Park, located just 32 km to the
south of Sydney, Australia, was established in 1879.[23]
The U.S. concept of national parks soon caught on in Canada, which created Banff
National Park in 1885, at the same time as the transcontinental Canadian Pacific
Railway was being built. The creation of this and other parks showed a growing
appreciation of wild nature, but also an economic reality. The railways wanted to entice
people to travel west. Parks such as Banff and Yellowstone gained favor as the
railroads advertised travel to "the great wild spaces" of North America. When
outdoorsman Teddy Roosevelt became president of the United States, he began to
enlarge the U.S. National Parks system, and established the National Forest system. [8]
By the 1920s, travel across North America by train to experience the "wilderness" (often
viewing it only through windows) had become very popular. This led to the
commercialization of some of Canada's National Parks with the building of great hotels
such as the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise.
Despite their similar name, national parks in England and Wales are quite different
from national parks in many other countries. Unlike most other countries, in England
and Wales, designation as a national park may include substantial settlements and
human land uses which are often integral parts of the landscape, and land within a
national park remains largely in private ownership. Each park is operated by its
own national park authority.
The United States philosophy around wilderness preservation through National Parks
has been attempted in other countries. [24] However, people living in those countries have
different ideas surrounding wilderness than people in the United States, thus, the US
concept of wilderness can be damaging in other areas of the world. [24] India is more
densely populated and has been settled for a long time. [24] There are complex
relationships between agricultural communities and the wilderness. [24] An example of this
is the Project Tiger parks in India.[24] By claiming areas as no longer used by humans,
the land moves from the hands of poor people to rich people. [24] Having designated tiger
reserves is only possible by displacing poor people, who were not involved in the
planning of the areas.[24] This situation places the ideal of wilderness above the already
existing relationships between people and the land they live on. [24] By placing an
imperialistic ideal of nature onto a different country, the desire to reestablish wilderness
is being put above the lives of those who live by working the land. [24]

Conservation and preservation in 20th century U