8 ms·

Nature’s Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back

86 points by Thevet 2y ago

amarcozzi 2y ago
When I worked for the U.S. Forest Service I strongly believed in expanding wilderness designations in the United States. There's something so compelling about the idea of supporting and conserving wild and untrammeled landscapes. I'd hazard that most Americans have never heard of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and think of the term "wilderness" as a vague description of a landscape characteristic rather than a rigid set of legal protections, and I bet that even fewer understand the scope of how many acres of land fall under these protections. It can be intoxicating to be in the know, and there are few things as satisfying as disappearing into the backcountry for a week or two and truly finding refuge from modern life. But, the author is fundamentally correct about the relationship between humans and natural areas. The untrammeled nature of officially designated wilderness areas is a myth. The degree of trammeling of course varies by area and over time, but it's there no matter where you look. To the extent that we continue to put stock in this concept of "untrammeled by man", we do a disservice to the history and continued existence of indigenous Americans. Also, we needlessly hamstring our own management actions which compound into real threats on the very thing the act set out to protect. Increasingly I think to myself "no more wilderness" and advocate for proposed wilderness study areas to have a management designation more closely aligned with their intended use: National Recreation Areas.
- yosefk 2y ago
  in practice, the current fight against conservation of nature (on the grounds of humans having lived in the given area or having influenced it - a popular argument today) will do nothing except destroying what's left of it. the fact that people once used to live "in nature" without doing major damage doesn't mean that today's people with access to today's tools are likely to live like that. regardless of the past, in the present, designating areas as off limits to people is the most likely way to preserve nature by far. (There might be a counterargument to this; I have not found it in the article)
  - ddulaney 2y ago
    I think the person you were replying to was making a slightly different point. They were talking about Wilderness as a legal designation in the US, as distinct from wilderness as a concept. When an area is designated as a Wilderness, that requires a certain style of management that might or might not be appropriate for the area and is very hard to change. More flexible management options are often a good thing, and there are lots of options for managing federal lands (NRAs, NCAs, etc) that don’t come with the strict rules of a Wilderness but are still pretty limited in what they allow. Non-Wilderness designations do mean having to place more trust in the people on the ground and the agencies involved. You might or might not think that’s appropriate. But what OC and the article both say is that we have to make those decisions with the mindset that “no management” isn’t the default or best option, and often people hear the word “wilderness” and assume that it is.
    - yosefk 2y ago
      It's a valid point, though I don't think the article says it (OC does.) The question is if changing the designation will actually do more good than harm. My skepticism here is completely uninformed and if there's a track record of beneficial changes then I am wrong
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  A national park is just a bigger version of one in a city
- mc32 2y ago
  Maybe the mythology is just a tool to get people on-board with the idea of preserving certain areas to the extent they are preserved. Some American Indians loathe the patronizing idea that they were/are nobles in-tune with nature. They may not have exploited nature with mechanized efficiency, but at least some tribes took what they needed when they needed without the hippie vision of harmonious balance and they engaged in violence and war when it made sense to do so —kind of like other groups of humans elsewhere.
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    [dead]
  - merely-unlikely 2y ago
    Some native tribes in the Northeast (and probably elsewhere but I know of them specifically) conducted controlled burns of large sections of forest to clear them for farming. There’s a theory the current state of the Amazon is the product of heavy cultivation. Hence its high quantity of edible plants. I’m not sure the degree of acceptance that theory has though.
- dkarl 2y ago
  I agree with everything you said, but I suffered a huge rush of blood to the head when you used the word "recreation." When I look at a government-managed area and see the word "recreation," I immediately think of 4-wheelers and motorboats, driven by people who have just drunk an entire ice chest full of beer, throwing trash out the window, possibly carrying firearms regardless of any rules. I think we need to think about management in a graded way, with different areas having different mandates and different policies, with different restrictions on usage, and all working together in a way that repairs what we have damaged, and working together with policies for land that isn't government-managed. However, we have to be prepared to stand up for restrictions that a lot of people aren't happy with. A lot of people aren't happy that we don't log and mine natural parks. If we give in to the "common sense" of people like that, on the reasoning that "nothing is truly wild," we'll lose the rest of what we have, and very quickly. The moment you use a word like "recreation" in connection with a federally-managed piece of land, people are going to assume it's for partying and drunk-operating noisy vehicles. And they're going to call you elitist and out-of-touch for pushing back. We absolutely need to fight those battles, even without a blind and absolute belief in "wilderness."
  - bytesahoy 2y ago
    If the challenge here is on conceptual framing of wild lands, if there were to be any movement from the word and concepts tied to "wilderness", why not something like "stewarded"? This recognizes, for example, historical Indigenous practices of managing land without allowing for plunder or party. Instead, it elevates wilderness as something to be protected, cherished, and looked after - also in opposition to the neglect of "wilderness".
    - dkarl 2y ago
      I used to love the word "stewardship" because I thought it would resonate with Christians. Over time I learned that it does resonate with Christians, but in a bad way: too many of them see stewardship as extremely temporary, and they feel like there's a deadline to make the most use of land before God blows the whistle and brings this realm of existence to an end. I no longer think that environmentalism can constructively engage with Christianity. It's always going to be a fight.
- mdgrech23 2y ago
  I know nothing about the issue but I hear recreational use and I immediately picture people driving 4 wheelers and dirt bikes through pristine land and I'm like nope.
  - aliasxneo 2y ago
    Another commenter said the same thing. I'm curious about the association because I spend a lot of time in my local state/national parks with recreational rules. I think I've run into a dirtbike once and never seen an ATV (although I see their tracks). I'm sure it's geo-dependent, but I wonder if there's a wider media narrative driving the association.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      I think it really has to do with what's near you and what you're used to. Nobody really cares about the four wheelers flying around on BLM land in the middle of the desert, but if the only "wilderness" near you is mostly ATV trails, it's not a fun place to hike. Those are often called "recreation areas" to distinguish them from places where no vehicles are allowed.
      - buttercraft 2y ago
        Yeah, it's inconsistent. I live near a national recreation area where mechanized travel is prohibited. Recreation includes camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing.
  - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    Consider that without allowing some of that kind of use, there might not be enough political willpower for more “hardcore” things like wilderness areas. It’s a delicate balance between preservation and access and you (politically) cannot have one without the other.
- davidw 2y ago
  As someone who loves long, mellow rides on my mountain bike, I'm conflicted about Wilderness areas. I like the idea of protecting more land, but the idea that you can ride horses into a Wilderness area, shoot an elk and pack it out, but can't push a stroller in (because wheels) or ride a bike seems kind of odd in terms of the impactfulness of those activities. I'd love it if things were mostly left up to local decision makers. Some trails aren't appropriate for bikes and that's fine, Wilderness area or no. Some trails within Wilderness areas would be no problem at all for bikes. And tactically, maybe environmentalists would gain some allies if they weren't trying to push cyclists out.
  - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    And despite all that, the FAA can still route a large percentage of all air traffic on approach to a major international airport right over the top of the “wilderness area”. Nothing like listening to few hours of planes on approach to SeaTac to spoil the whole “untrammeled by man” thing. (Not that I have a good solution to this problem. Air traffic noise abatement involves a ton of tradeoffs)
  - shawndrost 2y ago
    I too love biking in the woods. But I would oppose your specific policy prescription (leave it up to local decisionmakers) on the grounds that I would expect OHVs, loggers, etc to lobby against the aims of the current designation in small or big ways.
    - davidw 2y ago
      I don't think it's really a slippery slope. It's easy to say "no motor-powered vehicles", including eBikes. A horse is far more destructive to trails than bikes are. Even "no bikes except where allowed" would probably be fair. You could ask decision makers to designate a few trails as ok. It's very clear that Wilderness areas are not meant for commercial exploitation. I believe a few of them have grandfathered in grazing rights, perhaps to get them over the line politically, but that's about the extent of it and I would not expect that to change.
- ambicapter 2y ago
  > National Recreation Areas Pardon my french, but fuck no. I think "Wilderness" is a perfectly appropriate designation for the intended use of these lands-to keep man-made impact on them as little as possible. The fact that it's not "historically accurate" doesn't diminish the value of the label in its intended use.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- linguistbreaker 2y ago
  I feel designated wilderness areas (at least in my state, CO) could benefit from MORE regulation because they are trammeled to hell by cattle. Additional protections only improve these areas. Also, I did not realize the Wilderness designation had anything to do with indigenous Americans. Is that a thing?
  - sbierwagen 2y ago
    A forest turns solar energy into wood, locking up that energy in an inedible form. Grass, on the other hand, can be eaten by grazing animals and turned into meat. If you're living off the land but not farming, then you'd prefer it to be covered in grass instead of trees. Grazing animals can prevent grassland from reforesting by eating the tree shoots, but they can't knock down mature trees. There is some evidence paleoindians would burn down forests to expand grasslands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt Thus, in some parts of the US, you can stand on a hill, look out at miles of apparently untouched land without a single permanent structure, but is as artificial and manmande as a golf course, crafted from thousands of years of invisible labor.
    - pvaldes 2y ago
      > A forest turns solar energy into wood, locking up that energy in an inedible form. Grass, on the other hand, can be eaten by grazing animals and turned into meat. If you're living off the land but not farming, then you'd prefer it to be covered in grass instead of trees. Hem, not. This is not how it works. A very old, well cared apple tree can produce 800 Kg of apples a year. You can't breed a cow just using the grass growing in the same surface. It needs more space. A lot of animals eat leaves, twigs, fruits, and flowers of trees. The thicker the "layer alive" that can sustain animals the better. Trees are like the fat of the land. Rocky areas are like the skeleton of the land. Grasslands left unregulated enter very fast into a tragedy of the commons spiral by being invaded by cattle, sheeps and goats turning into rocky areas.
      - sbierwagen 2y ago
ourmandave 2y ago
[flagged]
- WhompingWindows 2y ago
  Non-sequitur. You want to be crushed to death in 900 F heat on Venus? Or frozen in no atmosphere on Mars? I doubt many people reading the journal Nature would view "the wild" and "wilderness" as referring an extreme environment or another planet. It's not like we're talking about the Marianas Trench or the inside of a volcano crater here either. It's about wilderness areas where people hope to see pristine nature, and how humans have tramped all over the world including what we now think of as "pristine".
  - mc32 2y ago
    Aren't there vast tracts of quite pristine nature in large swaths of Siberia? It may see a trapper or two in the Winter but I think that qualifies as pristine.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    >Non-sequitur. You want to be crushed to death in 900 F heat on Venus? Or frozen in no atmosphere on Mars?... non sequitur? You certainly spilled a lot of words seriously engaging with it, you gave it a lot of consideration, though you seem a little closed minded about the idea that other readers of Nature might not share your precise interests.
jMyles 2y ago
I cannot strongly enough suggest the book "Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources" by M. Kat Anderson. It was suggested to me in a comment here on HN, though I cannot now seem to find it by searching. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/tending-the-wild/paper https://www.ucpress.edu/books/tending-the-wild/paper
- ch71r22 2y ago
  I'm currently reading this book and it's incredible. It paints a picture of how rich plant and animal life was before contact with Europeans. It shows how Native Californians depended on and deeply understood every root, leaf, flower, and fruit of every plant in their area. It explains how Native Californians were responsible for preserving and enriching the wildlife around them -- doing controlled burns, pruning, managing animal populations, sowing seeds, etc. These areas weren't "wild" or "pristine" at all, they were carefully managed and densely populated by Native Americans for over 10,000 years. I think oftentimes we feel hopeless about our relationship to nature. We think if we touch it, we'll destroy it. Learning about how Native Californians lived shows how that's not inevitable at all.
  - jMyles 2y ago
    I was particularly moved by the importance of basket-weaving, and how many different aspects of ecological balance were kept by this one practice.
- leafmeal 2y ago
  I wonder if I can take credit for that :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838755 I can to this thread to talk up the book too!
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
I have yet to see a coherent philosophy that is able to differentiate between human communities and “the natural world” in a way that isn’t totally arbitrary The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary human made, and has no actual reflection on reality that I can tell Humans are not the only set of organisms to radically change landscapes - Ants, wasps, locusts and beavers perfectly demonstrate that. Humans are not the only set of organisms to be altruistic or communal Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all other animals, and that seems to be the only distinction that we make - eg boils down to might makes right, So I would love to hear somebody give me a proof of why this distinction in scale rather than kind, is actually a worthwhile ETHICAL differentiator, such so we can actually reason about what that difference implies in a way that doesn’t make artificial or arbitrary distinctions or appeal to self interests alone
- jszymborski 2y ago
  There are healthy, sustainable ecosystems, and there are unhealthy, unsustainable ecosystems. While ants, wasps, and beavers can change a landscape to benefit them in an unsustainable, unhealthy way that will lead to their destruction, I think you have to indulge a bit of wishful thinking to not realize they are less likely and less capable of doing so than humans. We'll need to set order in our own home before we look to the ants, the wasps, and the beavers.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    This doesn’t address my question whatsoever In fact, it muddies the question itself by distracting away from measurable criteria towards vague and general, broad sweeping conceptual ideas of “Unhealthy” “Unsustainable”
    - francisofascii 2y ago
      The absence of a defined criteria does not imply an ideal criteria does not exist. The ideal is somewhere between the two extremes, ants, wasps, etc. taking over the entire planet and ants vs ants/wasps becoming extinct. Through reason, analysis, etc. we can get closer to defining a more measurable criteria.
shreyshnaccount 2y ago
The concept of "pristine wilderness" is indeed a myth, shaped by Euro-American ideas of nature as something untouched by humans. Indigenous peoples have been actively managing and shaping landscapes for thousands of years, through practices like controlled burns, multi-cropping, and sustainable harvesting. However, colonial narratives of the "frontier" ignored this history, framing these lands as wild and uninhabited, which justified their conquest and later shaped early conservation policies. These narratives still impact our policies today. When we frame conservation as keeping nature "untrammeled by man," we erase indigenous histories and practices that have long sustained ecosystems. IMO, conservation efforts that aim to separate humans from nature often harm both, as seen in the forced removal of indigenous peoples from national parks. A more nuanced approach would recognize that human interaction with nature isn’t inherently destructive and that indigenous stewardship offers valuable lessons in sustainable land management. Embracing this perspective could lead to more effective conservation policies and a healthier relationship with nature, where human presence is viewed as potentially harmonious rather than inherently damaging.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  Pristine wilderness is not a myth, it's an ideal. It's an ideal appreciated by Europeans, but especially by Americans. We don't like people spreading to every single uninhabited nook & cranny and consuming every possible resource. America has a lot of uninhabited places. That's not an invitation for people the world over to consume and devour and combust and mine and destroy these places, as many of them have done to their own homes. You've seen the headlines plenty of times: declining populations of species, particularly insects, bees. The natural world deserves some refuge and respite from human colonization. We've cultivated crops and powerful technology, let's cultivate some wilderness too. Wild growth is beauty and temperance. It's saying, "I've eaten enough, that I don't need to eat this, let wild beauty flourish here." Do not strive to eat the world, eat just enough. Wilding and rewilding is an ideal.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    And indigenous populations were comparatively small, and there were vast areas they simply didn't go (or need to go). I think the wild needs the respect of Gimli toward the Glittering Caves - we can help it, we can improve it, but only slowly and carefully (partially because we don't know what we don't know).
bell-cot 2y ago
@dang? This item seems to show up on the front page, as "4 hours ago", but also be from Sept. 9th, and "4 days ago" when you look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com (Or does HN's Second-Chance pool go that far back?)
- bombcar 2y ago
  Sounds exactly like the second change pool (which can be manually triggered even longer than the automatic one).
throwaway4aday 2y ago
Setting aside land and limiting or not allowing development of it so that it can be publicly available for enjoyment of nature or hunting and fishing is a laudable endeavour. Banning all human presence and use of large swaths of land, on the other hand, is right up there with medieval Royal forest laws[0] and I suspect it serves the same purpose. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest
marssaxman 2y ago
A misleading title, of course - it cannot be brought back.
julienchastang 2y ago
In the further reading category: "Encounters with the Archdruid" by John McPhee, about David Brower, former director of the Sierra Club, and his advocacy for preserving wilderness areas "untouched" by humans. "Forests: A Very Short Introduction" by Jaboury Ghazoul, which explores how human presence, even in ancient times, has led to profound changes in landscapes for their benefit. "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann, which I’ve just started reading, hypothesizes that Indigenous peoples in the Americas actively transformed their environment to a much greater extent than previously believed. "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold since he is referenced in the article.
fractallyte 2y ago
An equivalent book, which covers the same topic, and which I consider to be one of the most influential books I've ever read: The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon (https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world) Unfortunately, the ebook version is rather difficult to buy outside of the US, but if you contact the author, he may be able to provide a copy. The part I found most haunting was what he termed 'the forgetting' - how, as we lose swaths of Nature, each new generation accepts it as normal, until we've forgotten what was lost. I also learned about the megafauna: giant animals that vanished in prehistory, coinciding with the arrival of humans to their habitats. Africans, Europeans, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines - it made no difference. Every tribe of humans wiped out the competition, in every continent. Highly recommended!
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago
  If Kindle isn't an ebook dealbreaker, it's available.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
I would like to see more land east of the Rockies and east of the Mississippi turned into protected federal land. So much of the western states (often more than 50% of total land area) is federal land. It feels like the easterners ruined their beautiful land and now want to tell us in the west how to live. Go spend on your own backyard and leave ours to us.
carapace 2y ago
> In order to safeguard a sufficient number of species to protect global biodiversity, including humanity, the late American biologist, E.O. Wilson and a new generation of scientists, ecologists, and conservationists concluded that we must set aside roughly half of Earth’s land and seas for nature, known as the principle of “Half-Earth.” https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-project/ https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-projec... It doesn't matter if we modified the ecosystems, it's still imperative to establish large regions of untouched ecosystems (as large as possible, as untouched as possible). Humans are very recent in the life of the planet and there's no a priori reason to assume that the things we do are sustainable for several hundred million years. The dinosaurs lasted, what?, three hundred million years? That's the figure to beat. Can the talking apes last longer than the big dumb lizards? So far most civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying the health of the soil. Merv was the most beautiful city in the world for a thousand years. Now look at it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzfGxVZiTpapqCC8A https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzfGxVZiTpapqCC8A It looks like Mars.

86 points by Thevet 2y ago

When I worked for the U.S. Forest Service I strongly believed in expanding wilderness designations in the United States. There's something so compelling about the idea of supporting and conserving wild and untrammeled landscapes. I'd hazard that most Americans have never heard of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and think of the term "wilderness" as a vague description of a landscape characteristic rather than a rigid set of legal protections, and I bet that even fewer understand the scope of how many acres of land fall under these protections. It can be intoxicating to be in the know, and there are few things as satisfying as disappearing into the backcountry for a week or two and truly finding refuge from modern life. But, the author is fundamentally correct about the relationship between humans and natural areas. The untrammeled nature of officially designated wilderness areas is a myth. The degree of trammeling of course varies by area and over time, but it's there no matter where you look. To the extent that we continue to put stock in this concept of "untrammeled by man", we do a disservice to the history and continued existence of indigenous Americans. Also, we needlessly hamstring our own management actions which compound into real threats on the very thing the act set out to protect. Increasingly I think to myself "no more wilderness" and advocate for proposed wilderness study areas to have a management designation more closely aligned with their intended use: National Recreation Areas.

yosefk 2y ago
in practice, the current fight against conservation of nature (on the grounds of humans having lived in the given area or having influenced it - a popular argument today) will do nothing except destroying what's left of it. the fact that people once used to live "in nature" without doing major damage doesn't mean that today's people with access to today's tools are likely to live like that. regardless of the past, in the present, designating areas as off limits to people is the most likely way to preserve nature by far. (There might be a counterargument to this; I have not found it in the article)
- ddulaney 2y ago
  I think the person you were replying to was making a slightly different point. They were talking about Wilderness as a legal designation in the US, as distinct from wilderness as a concept. When an area is designated as a Wilderness, that requires a certain style of management that might or might not be appropriate for the area and is very hard to change. More flexible management options are often a good thing, and there are lots of options for managing federal lands (NRAs, NCAs, etc) that don’t come with the strict rules of a Wilderness but are still pretty limited in what they allow. Non-Wilderness designations do mean having to place more trust in the people on the ground and the agencies involved. You might or might not think that’s appropriate. But what OC and the article both say is that we have to make those decisions with the mindset that “no management” isn’t the default or best option, and often people hear the word “wilderness” and assume that it is.
  - yosefk 2y ago
    It's a valid point, though I don't think the article says it (OC does.) The question is if changing the designation will actually do more good than harm. My skepticism here is completely uninformed and if there's a track record of beneficial changes then I am wrong
DiscourseFan 2y ago
A national park is just a bigger version of one in a city
mc32 2y ago
Maybe the mythology is just a tool to get people on-board with the idea of preserving certain areas to the extent they are preserved. Some American Indians loathe the patronizing idea that they were/are nobles in-tune with nature. They may not have exploited nature with mechanized efficiency, but at least some tribes took what they needed when they needed without the hippie vision of harmonious balance and they engaged in violence and war when it made sense to do so —kind of like other groups of humans elsewhere.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  [dead]
- merely-unlikely 2y ago
  Some native tribes in the Northeast (and probably elsewhere but I know of them specifically) conducted controlled burns of large sections of forest to clear them for farming. There’s a theory the current state of the Amazon is the product of heavy cultivation. Hence its high quantity of edible plants. I’m not sure the degree of acceptance that theory has though.
dkarl 2y ago
I agree with everything you said, but I suffered a huge rush of blood to the head when you used the word "recreation." When I look at a government-managed area and see the word "recreation," I immediately think of 4-wheelers and motorboats, driven by people who have just drunk an entire ice chest full of beer, throwing trash out the window, possibly carrying firearms regardless of any rules. I think we need to think about management in a graded way, with different areas having different mandates and different policies, with different restrictions on usage, and all working together in a way that repairs what we have damaged, and working together with policies for land that isn't government-managed. However, we have to be prepared to stand up for restrictions that a lot of people aren't happy with. A lot of people aren't happy that we don't log and mine natural parks. If we give in to the "common sense" of people like that, on the reasoning that "nothing is truly wild," we'll lose the rest of what we have, and very quickly. The moment you use a word like "recreation" in connection with a federally-managed piece of land, people are going to assume it's for partying and drunk-operating noisy vehicles. And they're going to call you elitist and out-of-touch for pushing back. We absolutely need to fight those battles, even without a blind and absolute belief in "wilderness."
- bytesahoy 2y ago
  If the challenge here is on conceptual framing of wild lands, if there were to be any movement from the word and concepts tied to "wilderness", why not something like "stewarded"? This recognizes, for example, historical Indigenous practices of managing land without allowing for plunder or party. Instead, it elevates wilderness as something to be protected, cherished, and looked after - also in opposition to the neglect of "wilderness".
  - dkarl 2y ago
    I used to love the word "stewardship" because I thought it would resonate with Christians. Over time I learned that it does resonate with Christians, but in a bad way: too many of them see stewardship as extremely temporary, and they feel like there's a deadline to make the most use of land before God blows the whistle and brings this realm of existence to an end. I no longer think that environmentalism can constructively engage with Christianity. It's always going to be a fight.
mdgrech23 2y ago
I know nothing about the issue but I hear recreational use and I immediately picture people driving 4 wheelers and dirt bikes through pristine land and I'm like nope.
- aliasxneo 2y ago
  Another commenter said the same thing. I'm curious about the association because I spend a lot of time in my local state/national parks with recreational rules. I think I've run into a dirtbike once and never seen an ATV (although I see their tracks). I'm sure it's geo-dependent, but I wonder if there's a wider media narrative driving the association.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    I think it really has to do with what's near you and what you're used to. Nobody really cares about the four wheelers flying around on BLM land in the middle of the desert, but if the only "wilderness" near you is mostly ATV trails, it's not a fun place to hike. Those are often called "recreation areas" to distinguish them from places where no vehicles are allowed.
    - buttercraft 2y ago
      Yeah, it's inconsistent. I live near a national recreation area where mechanized travel is prohibited. Recreation includes camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  Consider that without allowing some of that kind of use, there might not be enough political willpower for more “hardcore” things like wilderness areas. It’s a delicate balance between preservation and access and you (politically) cannot have one without the other.
davidw 2y ago
As someone who loves long, mellow rides on my mountain bike, I'm conflicted about Wilderness areas. I like the idea of protecting more land, but the idea that you can ride horses into a Wilderness area, shoot an elk and pack it out, but can't push a stroller in (because wheels) or ride a bike seems kind of odd in terms of the impactfulness of those activities. I'd love it if things were mostly left up to local decision makers. Some trails aren't appropriate for bikes and that's fine, Wilderness area or no. Some trails within Wilderness areas would be no problem at all for bikes. And tactically, maybe environmentalists would gain some allies if they weren't trying to push cyclists out.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  And despite all that, the FAA can still route a large percentage of all air traffic on approach to a major international airport right over the top of the “wilderness area”. Nothing like listening to few hours of planes on approach to SeaTac to spoil the whole “untrammeled by man” thing. (Not that I have a good solution to this problem. Air traffic noise abatement involves a ton of tradeoffs)
- shawndrost 2y ago
  I too love biking in the woods. But I would oppose your specific policy prescription (leave it up to local decisionmakers) on the grounds that I would expect OHVs, loggers, etc to lobby against the aims of the current designation in small or big ways.
  - davidw 2y ago
    I don't think it's really a slippery slope. It's easy to say "no motor-powered vehicles", including eBikes. A horse is far more destructive to trails than bikes are. Even "no bikes except where allowed" would probably be fair. You could ask decision makers to designate a few trails as ok. It's very clear that Wilderness areas are not meant for commercial exploitation. I believe a few of them have grandfathered in grazing rights, perhaps to get them over the line politically, but that's about the extent of it and I would not expect that to change.
ambicapter 2y ago
> National Recreation Areas Pardon my french, but fuck no. I think "Wilderness" is a perfectly appropriate designation for the intended use of these lands-to keep man-made impact on them as little as possible. The fact that it's not "historically accurate" doesn't diminish the value of the label in its intended use.
aaron695 2y ago
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linguistbreaker 2y ago
I feel designated wilderness areas (at least in my state, CO) could benefit from MORE regulation because they are trammeled to hell by cattle. Additional protections only improve these areas. Also, I did not realize the Wilderness designation had anything to do with indigenous Americans. Is that a thing?
- sbierwagen 2y ago
  A forest turns solar energy into wood, locking up that energy in an inedible form. Grass, on the other hand, can be eaten by grazing animals and turned into meat. If you're living off the land but not farming, then you'd prefer it to be covered in grass instead of trees. Grazing animals can prevent grassland from reforesting by eating the tree shoots, but they can't knock down mature trees. There is some evidence paleoindians would burn down forests to expand grasslands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_bison_belt Thus, in some parts of the US, you can stand on a hill, look out at miles of apparently untouched land without a single permanent structure, but is as artificial and manmande as a golf course, crafted from thousands of years of invisible labor.
  - pvaldes 2y ago
    > A forest turns solar energy into wood, locking up that energy in an inedible form. Grass, on the other hand, can be eaten by grazing animals and turned into meat. If you're living off the land but not farming, then you'd prefer it to be covered in grass instead of trees. Hem, not. This is not how it works. A very old, well cared apple tree can produce 800 Kg of apples a year. You can't breed a cow just using the grass growing in the same surface. It needs more space. A lot of animals eat leaves, twigs, fruits, and flowers of trees. The thicker the "layer alive" that can sustain animals the better. Trees are like the fat of the land. Rocky areas are like the skeleton of the land. Grasslands left unregulated enter very fast into a tragedy of the commons spiral by being invaded by cattle, sheeps and goats turning into rocky areas.
    - sbierwagen 2y ago

ourmandave 2y ago

[flagged]

WhompingWindows 2y ago
Non-sequitur. You want to be crushed to death in 900 F heat on Venus? Or frozen in no atmosphere on Mars? I doubt many people reading the journal Nature would view "the wild" and "wilderness" as referring an extreme environment or another planet. It's not like we're talking about the Marianas Trench or the inside of a volcano crater here either. It's about wilderness areas where people hope to see pristine nature, and how humans have tramped all over the world including what we now think of as "pristine".
- mc32 2y ago
  Aren't there vast tracts of quite pristine nature in large swaths of Siberia? It may see a trapper or two in the Winter but I think that qualifies as pristine.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >Non-sequitur. You want to be crushed to death in 900 F heat on Venus? Or frozen in no atmosphere on Mars?... non sequitur? You certainly spilled a lot of words seriously engaging with it, you gave it a lot of consideration, though you seem a little closed minded about the idea that other readers of Nature might not share your precise interests.

jMyles 2y ago

I cannot strongly enough suggest the book "Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources" by M. Kat Anderson. It was suggested to me in a comment here on HN, though I cannot now seem to find it by searching. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/tending-the-wild/paper https://www.ucpress.edu/books/tending-the-wild/paper

ch71r22 2y ago
I'm currently reading this book and it's incredible. It paints a picture of how rich plant and animal life was before contact with Europeans. It shows how Native Californians depended on and deeply understood every root, leaf, flower, and fruit of every plant in their area. It explains how Native Californians were responsible for preserving and enriching the wildlife around them -- doing controlled burns, pruning, managing animal populations, sowing seeds, etc. These areas weren't "wild" or "pristine" at all, they were carefully managed and densely populated by Native Americans for over 10,000 years. I think oftentimes we feel hopeless about our relationship to nature. We think if we touch it, we'll destroy it. Learning about how Native Californians lived shows how that's not inevitable at all.
- jMyles 2y ago
  I was particularly moved by the importance of basket-weaving, and how many different aspects of ecological balance were kept by this one practice.
leafmeal 2y ago
I wonder if I can take credit for that :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838755 I can to this thread to talk up the book too!

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

I have yet to see a coherent philosophy that is able to differentiate between human communities and “the natural world” in a way that isn’t totally arbitrary The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary human made, and has no actual reflection on reality that I can tell Humans are not the only set of organisms to radically change landscapes - Ants, wasps, locusts and beavers perfectly demonstrate that. Humans are not the only set of organisms to be altruistic or communal Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all other animals, and that seems to be the only distinction that we make - eg boils down to might makes right, So I would love to hear somebody give me a proof of why this distinction in scale rather than kind, is actually a worthwhile ETHICAL differentiator, such so we can actually reason about what that difference implies in a way that doesn’t make artificial or arbitrary distinctions or appeal to self interests alone

jszymborski 2y ago
There are healthy, sustainable ecosystems, and there are unhealthy, unsustainable ecosystems. While ants, wasps, and beavers can change a landscape to benefit them in an unsustainable, unhealthy way that will lead to their destruction, I think you have to indulge a bit of wishful thinking to not realize they are less likely and less capable of doing so than humans. We'll need to set order in our own home before we look to the ants, the wasps, and the beavers.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  This doesn’t address my question whatsoever In fact, it muddies the question itself by distracting away from measurable criteria towards vague and general, broad sweeping conceptual ideas of “Unhealthy” “Unsustainable”
  - francisofascii 2y ago
    The absence of a defined criteria does not imply an ideal criteria does not exist. The ideal is somewhere between the two extremes, ants, wasps, etc. taking over the entire planet and ants vs ants/wasps becoming extinct. Through reason, analysis, etc. we can get closer to defining a more measurable criteria.

shreyshnaccount 2y ago

The concept of "pristine wilderness" is indeed a myth, shaped by Euro-American ideas of nature as something untouched by humans. Indigenous peoples have been actively managing and shaping landscapes for thousands of years, through practices like controlled burns, multi-cropping, and sustainable harvesting. However, colonial narratives of the "frontier" ignored this history, framing these lands as wild and uninhabited, which justified their conquest and later shaped early conservation policies. These narratives still impact our policies today. When we frame conservation as keeping nature "untrammeled by man," we erase indigenous histories and practices that have long sustained ecosystems. IMO, conservation efforts that aim to separate humans from nature often harm both, as seen in the forced removal of indigenous peoples from national parks. A more nuanced approach would recognize that human interaction with nature isn’t inherently destructive and that indigenous stewardship offers valuable lessons in sustainable land management. Embracing this perspective could lead to more effective conservation policies and a healthier relationship with nature, where human presence is viewed as potentially harmonious rather than inherently damaging.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago
Pristine wilderness is not a myth, it's an ideal. It's an ideal appreciated by Europeans, but especially by Americans. We don't like people spreading to every single uninhabited nook & cranny and consuming every possible resource. America has a lot of uninhabited places. That's not an invitation for people the world over to consume and devour and combust and mine and destroy these places, as many of them have done to their own homes. You've seen the headlines plenty of times: declining populations of species, particularly insects, bees. The natural world deserves some refuge and respite from human colonization. We've cultivated crops and powerful technology, let's cultivate some wilderness too. Wild growth is beauty and temperance. It's saying, "I've eaten enough, that I don't need to eat this, let wild beauty flourish here." Do not strive to eat the world, eat just enough. Wilding and rewilding is an ideal.
- bombcar 2y ago
  And indigenous populations were comparatively small, and there were vast areas they simply didn't go (or need to go). I think the wild needs the respect of Gimli toward the Glittering Caves - we can help it, we can improve it, but only slowly and carefully (partially because we don't know what we don't know).

bell-cot 2y ago

@dang? This item seems to show up on the front page, as "4 hours ago", but also be from Sept. 9th, and "4 days ago" when you look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com (Or does HN's Second-Chance pool go that far back?)

bombcar 2y ago
Sounds exactly like the second change pool (which can be manually triggered even longer than the automatic one).

throwaway4aday 2y ago

Setting aside land and limiting or not allowing development of it so that it can be publicly available for enjoyment of nature or hunting and fishing is a laudable endeavour. Banning all human presence and use of large swaths of land, on the other hand, is right up there with medieval Royal forest laws[0] and I suspect it serves the same purpose. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest

marssaxman 2y ago

A misleading title, of course - it cannot be brought back.

julienchastang 2y ago

In the further reading category: "Encounters with the Archdruid" by John McPhee, about David Brower, former director of the Sierra Club, and his advocacy for preserving wilderness areas "untouched" by humans. "Forests: A Very Short Introduction" by Jaboury Ghazoul, which explores how human presence, even in ancient times, has led to profound changes in landscapes for their benefit. "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann, which I’ve just started reading, hypothesizes that Indigenous peoples in the Americas actively transformed their environment to a much greater extent than previously believed. "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold since he is referenced in the article.

fractallyte 2y ago

An equivalent book, which covers the same topic, and which I consider to be one of the most influential books I've ever read: The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon (https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world) Unfortunately, the ebook version is rather difficult to buy outside of the US, but if you contact the author, he may be able to provide a copy. The part I found most haunting was what he termed 'the forgetting' - how, as we lose swaths of Nature, each new generation accepts it as normal, until we've forgotten what was lost. I also learned about the megafauna: giant animals that vanished in prehistory, coinciding with the arrival of humans to their habitats. Africans, Europeans, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines - it made no difference. Every tribe of humans wiped out the competition, in every continent. Highly recommended!

CatWChainsaw 2y ago
If Kindle isn't an ebook dealbreaker, it's available.

ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago

I would like to see more land east of the Rockies and east of the Mississippi turned into protected federal land. So much of the western states (often more than 50% of total land area) is federal land. It feels like the easterners ruined their beautiful land and now want to tell us in the west how to live. Go spend on your own backyard and leave ours to us.

carapace 2y ago

> In order to safeguard a sufficient number of species to protect global biodiversity, including humanity, the late American biologist, E.O. Wilson and a new generation of scientists, ecologists, and conservationists concluded that we must set aside roughly half of Earth’s land and seas for nature, known as the principle of “Half-Earth.” https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-project/ https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-projec... It doesn't matter if we modified the ecosystems, it's still imperative to establish large regions of untouched ecosystems (as large as possible, as untouched as possible). Humans are very recent in the life of the planet and there's no a priori reason to assume that the things we do are sustainable for several hundred million years. The dinosaurs lasted, what?, three hundred million years? That's the figure to beat. Can the talking apes last longer than the big dumb lizards? So far most civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying the health of the soil. Merv was the most beautiful city in the world for a thousand years. Now look at it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzfGxVZiTpapqCC8A https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzfGxVZiTpapqCC8A It looks like Mars.