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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 t

• 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