The fact that native people have been displaced from their lands in the name of conservation isn’t news to all, but this is an elegant and erudite piece of writing — and a good distillation of that troubling history — all the same. Mark Dowie, a decorated journalist and former editor & publisher of Mother Jones, sheds light on the tortured semantics of the words “nature” and “wilderness,” and how conflicting views of wild nature created a rift between indigenous people and misguided conservationists for over a century.
disclosure: I work on the MIT Press Reader, where the article — an excerpt from Dowie's book "Conservation Refugees" — is published. We're a non-profit press and the Reader is a space where we post excerpts, essays, and interviews with our authors.
However well written, it's frustrating to see an otherwise thoughtful work disregard the benefits of protecting public lands under the Wilderness Act, which is to the best of my knowledge the only robust means of doing so.
Sure, but there's nothing special about that land specifically. You could take any land, even within a city and do the same. It would return to nature pretty quickly.
Return to the "natural" state might take much longer than you anticipate - my favourite example is that the lands that the Aztecs and the Mayans used for farming still haven't returned to the same state as the surrounding jungle, despite being left alone and undisturbed for literally several centuries.
Uhhh, i didn't say to a natural state. I said "to nature". The same way that the land protected to the example hasn't returned to a natural state. You can't get back to a natural state, it's been massively disturbed by humans.
And there are vastly larger areas of public lands that are not protected under the Wilderness Act (Forest Service, and BLM lands) where human activity is still allowed. These could be managed in some way like the article advocates.
I think that is article is a good one if one takes away from it the idea that humans have had an influence over almost all of the Earth's landmasses for thousands of year. The idea of wilderness, meaning a place where humans don't influence nature, is recent and probably partly stems from the depopulation of western North America from European diseases before Europeans began exploring the region. See the Louis and Clark expedition.
I don't believe the article adequately addresses intensive industrial uses, e.g. oil and gas leases[1], which are potentially permitted on other categories of federally managed lands.
It's also fairly disingenuous to claim that human activity is not allowed in wilderness areas: I'll be camping in a gorgeous wilderness area in Colorado this weekend.
> He filled thousands of human-free negatives with land he knew the Miwok had tended for at least four thousand years. And he knew that the Miwok had been forcibly evicted from Yosemite Valley, as other natives would later be from national parks yet to be created, all in the putative interest of protecting nature from human disturbance.
The history of the conservation movement is rich white people screwing over poor brown people due to romantic notions of wilderness.
Lest we think it is in the past, look at the current conservation movement and endangered species. If you look at the land animals most people want to save, these are mostly in areas where a lot of poor brown people live. The brown people are the ones who have their development curtailed and have to live with lions killing their cattle, elephants trampling their crops, etc.
I've heard similar complaints about John Muir. People get very, very touchy when you say bad things about John Muir.
Having read Tending the Wild, I'm inclined to think that at least some of their complaints have merit. California 'wilderness' was considerably curated by communities that moved back and forth from foothills to shoreline with the seasons (are you 'semi-nomadic' if you keep moving between the same handful of locations?)
This notion of 'curation' in the article and in your comment stretches credulity.
Aboriginals were not in a position to 'curate' or 'manage' much at all. Aside from some rare controlled burns here and there - they didn't have the capacity to 'curate' vast areas of land.
More reasonably, their 'industrial footprint' was small by virtue of their near lack of modern industrialisation and their small population.
They were light on the land, but let's not construe that with some kind of 'caretaker' moniker - this is a romanticism of another kind entirely.
Finally, because aboriginals were present in some areas does not abnegate the notion that they were essentially pristine, i.e. this is not some kind of false romanticisation of the land by Westerners, rather, a mischaracterisation. Lacking a large agricultural base, large scale domestication of animals, an industrial base, large cities or even large populations, it's fair to suggest that such areas were in fact, by and large, pristine - certainly relative to the West.
Treatment of aboriginals by whatever policy is an altogether different question.
While that may be a factor at times it goes back before race was a relevant factor due to local homogenized scope and "white" as a construct not existing yet.
Look at medieval poaching laws from hunting being an aristocratic privledge. Poaching has been considered villainous in the past and present for completely different reasons. A "rich playground" aspect has long been there and that isn't limited to even the West. It is a warrior elite among agrarians thing really.
If you go to a place like Desolation Wilderness, one of the reasons they can keep it feeling like wilderness is by enforcing fairly strict rules on visitors. In particular, the rules around where you can hike, where you can camp, where you can start a fire, and what sorts of activities you can do there.
In areas where the government doesn't enforce so many rules, there will be recreational vehicles, hunting, logging, all sorts of other disruptive activities.
So ironically, the only places that can still feel like wilderness are the places where the government takes some action to keep it that way.
It just seemed ironic to me because I once naively thought that the wilderness was an area where nobody did anything, and the government didn't enforce any rules. Then I got some handout with a big list of forbidden activities and realized, the government puts a lot of rules on the wilderness.
There seem to be far fewer rules on the national forests. As a result it feels less wild because there are more people there doing non-wild things like riding ATVs.
There's a finite amount of land in say, the USA. The way the public land managed is not so wishy-washy for sure. Perhaps it's easier to understand when you live (like me) in a State where 1/3 of the land is Public - you start getting very familiar with all the different designations and what they all mean. It's a little archaic.
People who advocate for small government often fail to realize many purposes of government such as this. Another purpose is literally to protect us from enslavement by our fellow countrymen/countrywomen/countrypersons.
There is a tremendous amount of conservation effort from many privately funded, non-profit organizations. One could make a convincing argument that The Nature Conservancy, WWF, Sierra Club, et. al. do more work protecting our wildlife and wilderness areas than the government's neglected BLM land.
Perhaps small government advocates prefer philanthropy over authority?
Who is wielding more power? The petroleum industry, or the orgs you mention...?
Government needs to be at least as big as the corporations it seeks to regulate, or things get squirrely. This is obviated by problems like campaign finance, Trump, fossil fuel subsidies, etc.
> Government needs to be at least as big as the corporations it seeks to regulate
Why?
Does the board need to be as large as the company?
Seems like this would eventually lead to (or read as), "The government needs to be at least as big as the sum of the corporations it seeks to regulate".
The petroleum industry, even the largest individual corporations, wields more power than any NGO.
I agree that things get squirrelly when corporations (or NGOs, even) wield more power than governments. That's most obviously an issue when large global corporations mess with small countries. Or small states in the US, for that matter.
While it's also an issue even in the US overall, one hopes that antitrust enforcement would kick in before total domination.
I'm happy to beg the State to come thin (log) the land next to me. I'd hate to see how overgrown and unhealthy it would be if it were up to the Sierra club and friends.
The government isn't great at managing forests, but if had my way it would already be done.
And how exactly do you propose the Sierra Club enforce its decisions? Sharp words and a stern glare?
A government brings with it the ability to actually enforce laws, and I think there are sufficient examples in world history as to why the ability to enforce is just as important, if not more, as the ability to legislate. That's partly why we now have the Constitution instead of still using the Articles of Confederation.
> So ironically, the only places that can still feel like wilderness are the places where the government takes some action to keep it that way.
This is really only true of places that are easily accessible. The are plenty of places that would feel like "wilderness" that have far fewer restriction and little to no enforcement.
Agreed. Regulations like keeping fires/campsites at least 100 feet from roads are important. A casual glance at rules like this feel overbearing, but without them, the whole feeling of the park would shift.
Wilderness Areas in the US are sort of like the John Wayne preservation act in that they seek to preserve this idea of the "wilderness" from our imaginations.
Ok: ride in with a string of horses, shoot an elk with a rifle, and pack it out.
Not ok: push a baby stroller around because ...wheels!
That said, they're a good way of preserving areas.
Baby wearing is definitely a thing. I much prefer carrying around my kid in a pack or sling to pushing her in a stroller. She seems to prefer it as well.
> “The time has come to rethink wilderness,” Cronon begins his essay. He goes on to challenge the widely held and decidedly romantic notion of environmentalists that “wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.”
The article doesn't contain many facts to support or refute this idea. For a lot of them, check out the books 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann.
Spoiler: the lands we think of as having been pristine prior to arrival by Europeans were in fact heavily manipulated and in some cases densely populated.
warning -- the phrase "without humans" is an invocation of primal fears and anger amongst every sort of human mind that reads it.. It is a fairy-tale story intro, like "Once upon a time" .. the truth is, close to eight billion humans now live in every corner and crevice of this Earth.. there is no comparison to that, that is rational; instead we labor under stories like this..
I recommend MacKinnon's The Once and Future World, which talks about the world before our population exploded and overtook the world. It's shocking how much more untouched nature there was, or however I should describe it.
Fish were so dense in the ocean that boats would come to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. Coral reefs several stories high and miles long. Lions roaming North America larger than in Africa. Armadillo-like animals the size of cars. Plenty more.
I think about this whenever I hear someone complain that windmills "spoil the natural landscape". There isn't a natural landscape - not anymore. Those pretty green fields and hedgerows you see in rural areas? As artificial as the Hoover dam, and as destructive to the former ecosystem. Unless you're putting windmills in Yellowstone National Park, you're not ruining anything that wasn't already ruined.
(Also, it's ironic that despite the amount of criticism on aesthetic grounds they catch, compared to most things that generate power windmills are virtually ecologically invisible.)
Aesthetic complaints seem to be largely nostalgia/conservatism based - anything new and functional is called ugly at first because they aren't used to it.
See how the Eiffle Tower and trains were called ugly and now tearing it down would be unthinkable and old steam engines are considered picturesque.
48 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threaddisclosure: I work on the MIT Press Reader, where the article — an excerpt from Dowie's book "Conservation Refugees" — is published. We're a non-profit press and the Reader is a space where we post excerpts, essays, and interviews with our authors.
I think that is article is a good one if one takes away from it the idea that humans have had an influence over almost all of the Earth's landmasses for thousands of year. The idea of wilderness, meaning a place where humans don't influence nature, is recent and probably partly stems from the depopulation of western North America from European diseases before Europeans began exploring the region. See the Louis and Clark expedition.
It's also fairly disingenuous to claim that human activity is not allowed in wilderness areas: I'll be camping in a gorgeous wilderness area in Colorado this weekend.
[1] https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas...
The history of the conservation movement is rich white people screwing over poor brown people due to romantic notions of wilderness.
Lest we think it is in the past, look at the current conservation movement and endangered species. If you look at the land animals most people want to save, these are mostly in areas where a lot of poor brown people live. The brown people are the ones who have their development curtailed and have to live with lions killing their cattle, elephants trampling their crops, etc.
Having read Tending the Wild, I'm inclined to think that at least some of their complaints have merit. California 'wilderness' was considerably curated by communities that moved back and forth from foothills to shoreline with the seasons (are you 'semi-nomadic' if you keep moving between the same handful of locations?)
Aboriginals were not in a position to 'curate' or 'manage' much at all. Aside from some rare controlled burns here and there - they didn't have the capacity to 'curate' vast areas of land.
More reasonably, their 'industrial footprint' was small by virtue of their near lack of modern industrialisation and their small population.
They were light on the land, but let's not construe that with some kind of 'caretaker' moniker - this is a romanticism of another kind entirely.
Finally, because aboriginals were present in some areas does not abnegate the notion that they were essentially pristine, i.e. this is not some kind of false romanticisation of the land by Westerners, rather, a mischaracterisation. Lacking a large agricultural base, large scale domestication of animals, an industrial base, large cities or even large populations, it's fair to suggest that such areas were in fact, by and large, pristine - certainly relative to the West.
Treatment of aboriginals by whatever policy is an altogether different question.
Look at medieval poaching laws from hunting being an aristocratic privledge. Poaching has been considered villainous in the past and present for completely different reasons. A "rich playground" aspect has long been there and that isn't limited to even the West. It is a warrior elite among agrarians thing really.
In areas where the government doesn't enforce so many rules, there will be recreational vehicles, hunting, logging, all sorts of other disruptive activities.
So ironically, the only places that can still feel like wilderness are the places where the government takes some action to keep it that way.
https://wilderness.net/learn-about-wilderness/key-laws/wilde...
There seem to be far fewer rules on the national forests. As a result it feels less wild because there are more people there doing non-wild things like riding ATVs.
There is a tremendous amount of conservation effort from many privately funded, non-profit organizations. One could make a convincing argument that The Nature Conservancy, WWF, Sierra Club, et. al. do more work protecting our wildlife and wilderness areas than the government's neglected BLM land.
Perhaps small government advocates prefer philanthropy over authority?
Government needs to be at least as big as the corporations it seeks to regulate, or things get squirrely. This is obviated by problems like campaign finance, Trump, fossil fuel subsidies, etc.
Why?
Does the board need to be as large as the company?
Seems like this would eventually lead to (or read as), "The government needs to be at least as big as the sum of the corporations it seeks to regulate".
I agree that things get squirrelly when corporations (or NGOs, even) wield more power than governments. That's most obviously an issue when large global corporations mess with small countries. Or small states in the US, for that matter.
While it's also an issue even in the US overall, one hopes that antitrust enforcement would kick in before total domination.
The government isn't great at managing forests, but if had my way it would already be done.
A government brings with it the ability to actually enforce laws, and I think there are sufficient examples in world history as to why the ability to enforce is just as important, if not more, as the ability to legislate. That's partly why we now have the Constitution instead of still using the Articles of Confederation.
This is really only true of places that are easily accessible. The are plenty of places that would feel like "wilderness" that have far fewer restriction and little to no enforcement.
Ok: ride in with a string of horses, shoot an elk with a rifle, and pack it out.
Not ok: push a baby stroller around because ...wheels!
That said, they're a good way of preserving areas.
The article doesn't contain many facts to support or refute this idea. For a lot of them, check out the books 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann.
Spoiler: the lands we think of as having been pristine prior to arrival by Europeans were in fact heavily manipulated and in some cases densely populated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News
Fish were so dense in the ocean that boats would come to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. Coral reefs several stories high and miles long. Lions roaming North America larger than in Africa. Armadillo-like animals the size of cars. Plenty more.
I did a couple video essays on it:
- http://joshuaspodek.com/your-daily-environment-009-the-once-...
- http://joshuaspodek.com/your-daily-environment-010-the-once-...
(Also, it's ironic that despite the amount of criticism on aesthetic grounds they catch, compared to most things that generate power windmills are virtually ecologically invisible.)
See how the Eiffle Tower and trains were called ugly and now tearing it down would be unthinkable and old steam engines are considered picturesque.