The Wilderness Blog

The 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage is a wilderness wonk’s fantasy, a weeklong whirlwind of PowerPoint presentations, data dumps, and impassioned pleas for conservation. After attending just two days of it (and even with a kayaking interlude in the Chugach mountains), my head is throbbing, my mind overloaded, and I think the only thing that will help me unwind is a long vacation in the wilderness.

In the meantime, though, there’s some pretty amazing stuff going on around the world on the wilderness conservation front. As Peter Seligmann, CEO and chairman of the board of Conservation International, said yesterday morning, we have come to a period of “unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented urgency� for conservation. The time is now, Seligmann implored the crowd of hundreds from around the world, "to elevate conservation to its rightful place among global leaders and make wilderness a core global value." [more]

The Wilderness Blog

The day after the House Resources Committee voted 26 to 12 in favor of legislation that would seriously weaken the Endangered Species Act, Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt spoke in Boulder about the need for a radically new form of federal and local land use planning. Babbitt's new book Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America, assesses the "ongoing destruction of the national landscape" and calls for a national land use plan that puts the environment first. Amazingly enough, Babbitt seemed optimistic that such a thing is possible—though, he emphasized, "Not in this session of Congress, not under this President." [more]

Inside the Network

You've probably noticed some changes this week here at New West, mostly on the city pages. Here's the rundown:

The Wilderness Blog

Thirty Alaskan small business owners received federal loans for companies affected by the 9/11 attacks, according to Anchorage Daily News. It may seem strange that a bush plane operator in North Pole, Alaska, could qualify for 9/11 aid. But with people across the country suddenly terrified and bracing for economic blows, the appeal of trip to the wilderness on a tiny plane apparently shrank, and his business needed help. It’s just one example of the interconnectedness endemic this teeming cultural ecosystem that is the United States.

This is slightly off the wilderness topic, but bear with me, because it’s very much about environmental policies in general. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. [more]

The Wilderness Blog

It's been almost two weeks since the "Re-wilding North America" essay began raising hackles around the world (including on New West), prompting headlines like "North America, Home to Lions and Elephants." But this whole idea of "Pleistocene re-wilding"--which is really a sort of extreme version of the species re-introduction programs that have brought wolves, lynx, and other animals back to the West and are supported by groups like the Rewilding Institute—raises some fascinating questions that have been ignored in the ensuing scare over elephants running amok in Wal-Mart parking lots. Can you truly "re-wild" a place, and if so, is that more or less important than attempting to preserve the few wild places that remain? And, as Josh Donlan himself asks, "Will you settle for an American wilderness emptier than it was just 100 centuries ago?" [more]

The Wilderness Blog

I was sitting in a bar in Anchorage the other night, talking to a very interesting man. We'd had several drinks and I'm assuming our conversation was off-the-record, so I'll just call him Pete for now. Pete has lived in Alaska for most of his life, spent more than a decade with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, has represented the state in many international treaties and has been a major player in ocean fisheries governance. He's highly sensitive to industry, but he's also deeply concerned with conservation issues. He's worked for Democrats and Republicans, for environmentalists and big business. He's seen most of Alaska's wilderness, several times over, and he can rattle off tantalizing backcountry itineraries faster than you can figure out how to spell them.

So after he'd drained his gin and tonic, I asked Pete if he thought we should drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. [more]

Policy and Principle

Wilderness has special status in this country, both psychically and legally, and so the question of whether mountain biking or skiing or other activities should be permitted in wilderness areas is in some ways unique. The Wilderness Act of 1964 recognized a need to keep some parts of the country off-limits to development, "in order to insure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural conditions" (Section 2(C)).

This explicit reference to preservation amounts to a recognition of the intrinsic value of wilderness—meaning that wilderness has an inherent value, beyond anything we might be able to do with it or use it for. [more]

The Wilderness Blog

I’ve just returned to Reykjavik after a week traveling around Iceland, through dramatically varied landscapes: glaciers and their flat, wide outwash plains; rolling tundra; barren, rock-strewn moonscapes; wetlands spilling onto lava fields framed by steaming vats of boiling mud; snow-spattered mountains looming over fjords. Weather can change in minutes from 65 degrees and sunny to 50 degrees with whipping wind and rain. It’s a lot to absorb in a week, though a few cappuccinos in a smoke-filled coffeehouse should help me digest. I’m looking forward to two days in civilization to wash clothes and send email before heading out for a backpacking trip across highland wilderness.

Out into nature, back to civilization. Out. Back. Rare is the civilized person who does not think this way, regardless of how much she might love and care for nature. [more]

The wilderness Blog

Yesterday I drove east—counterclockwise—on Iceland’s Ringroad, from Reykjavik to a small harbor town called Hofn about seven hours away if you’re not stopping every few minutes to gape at the scenery. Mountains jump out of the plains, which in places are huge expanses of black sand—10,000 years of glacial sediment accumulation. Peeking through the jagged rocks are edges of the glacier, which covers 1900 square miles. Ice falls up to 15 miles wide coat the slopes all the way down to where the vegetation begins on the flat plain below. Between wide avenues of sharply scored ice the mountains end in steep grassy hills. Further east, arctic terns raise their chicks next to a lagoon teeming with little icebergs, some of which are as large as a small boat.

It’s an awe-inspiring landscape, and appears as wild as anything I’ve seen. But is it wilderness? [more]

Writing about wilderness makes one thing very clear: It's tricky to separate wilderness from other environmental issues, and from broader Western issues in general. Start talking about mountain biking in wilderness areas and you're immediately drawn into discussions of open space use, growth and sprawl problems, decision-making processes, environmental politics, and on and on and on. [more]