The Pricelessness of Untampered Nature

Abstract

As the number of undisturbed natural areas decreases, human beings experience increasingly greater difficulty in refraining from tampering with those that remain. Man can be overwhelming, even in the places he dedicates to Nature and to natural values. Much of what passes for conservation practice is misguided activity. This may be prompted by a Conquest of Nature philosophy, a tradition for neatness, or a desire to be obvious. Nature should be left a few places in which to be spontaneous. In areas that have departed somewhat from their natural state, some manipulation may be desirable. The things that belong in an untampered, undefiled place should serve as the criteria for restoration of natural areas. Many years ago, a great university decided-through its appropriate committees -to do something constructive about its arboretum. The interest in the arboretum was there, an articulate interest-an interest sufficient to make money available. The land was the property of the university. It included the marshy edge of a lake, a natural bog, and a tract of possibly 10 acres of nearly virgin forest in some 60 acres of oakhickory woods. The stated emphasis in managing the arboretum was to be placed upon protection and planting. Land was to be cleared to make room for plantings, and trees and shrubs and flowers were to be planted and planted, in fulfillment of the foresters' and landscape architects' and horticulturists' dreams. Roads were to go here and there. The talked-about plans made no reference that I remember to the preservation of the wild values of undisturbed Nature that the arboretum already had. Actually, the arboretum proved to be as well administered for multiple purposes as any place of its kind of which I know. Regardless of this arboretum's man-made orderliness, its exotic plantings, and its showplace features, its special wild values were by no means forfeited to artificiality. Furthermore, plant communities that years before had been plowed up, cut away, or pastured out were restored by planting native plants, and these restorations were ingeniously carried out, to simulate natural revegetation. The nearly virgin forest may not be visited by as many people as the parts that are more easily accessible by road. It may not have as much public appeal as the colorful exotic plantings, nor as much as the formal gardens about a spring where people throw bread to a flock of tame mallards. Yet the forest remnant represents to me the most distinctive value of the