Wilderness Preservation Research Articles

Wilderness as Tourism Destination: Place Meanings and Preferences of Tourism Service Providers

The increase in wilderness use for nature-based tourism has complex implications for wilderness management. Tourism service providers play an important role in shaping tourism development trends, which can have an impact on wilderness. This stresses the importance of studying their perceptions and preferences regarding wilderness management. This study explores the meanings wilderness areas contain for tourism operators, the relationship of these meanings with wilderness management and development preferences, and the potential of place-based approaches to contribute to wilderness management. The study is based on 47 semi-structured interviews with tourism service providers offering services within or near the Icelandic Central Highlands, known for their vast, high-quality wilderness areas. The findings emphasize the importance of place meanings assigned by tourism service providers in shaping wilderness management preferences. The study highlights the usefulness of place-based management approaches, which can help identify potential conflicts between tourism and wilderness preservation, select proactive measures to minimize tourism’s impact on wilderness quality, and thereby facilitate sustainable tourism practices in wilderness.

Hargrove’s Ontological Argument for the Aesthetic Foundation of Wilderness Preservation

Hargrove’s ontological argument for Aesthetic Foundation of Wilderness Preservation was the extension of the thinking paradigm from human beings to moral consideration and aesthetic appreciation of wilderness. The thinking paradigm was based on the framework of traditional Western philosophy, which includes metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. In this article, I will examine Hargrove’s ontological argument by making a little comparison with the perspective of a Chinese philosophical framework. This paper will be divided into three parts. In the part I, I will summarize Hargrove’s ontological argument for natural beauty and environmental preservation. In part II, I will examine the metaphysical framework in Hargrove’s ontological argument. I argue it is the extension of Plato’s metaphysics of the ultimate reality to wilderness. In Part III, I will examine the ethical and aesthetic framework in his ontological argument. I point out Hargrove’s ethical framework comes from ethical rationalism and his aesthetic framework is the legacy of Plato’s aesthetics. By comparison, Chinese metaphysics stresses the process and Chinese ethics stresses care. The two different directions promote the aesthetic appreciation of agricultural land rather than wilderness.

Early Historic Appreciation of Landscapes, Their Value and the Contribution of Ansel Adam’s Photographic Art to Landscape and Nature Conservation

Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel published in 1690 was the first to present the modern meaning of the term paysage as the “aspect of a country, the territory that extends within sight”. The first landscape paintings were made in Flanders in the 15th century and depicted views of the countryside. Landscape painting of the sea and the mountains only became generalized in the 18th century, with forests and deserts becoming popular subject in the century that followed. In the 20th century, geography and ecology appropriated the meaning of landscape which then became the figuration of the biosphere integrated into a distinct territory compartment. The idea of an intrinsic value of wilderness and wild landscapes is quite recent and is based on the idea that all organisms must be protected and that the spiritual bonds that link human beings to the wild are indispensable to their mental health. Through an analysis of Ansel Adams’s letters, I hypothesize that his love for nature and his perception of how urgent it was to preserve the wilderness were the catalyst and foundation of his photographic process. Following Adams’s thinking, I propose here that landscape photography can be actively involved in nature conservation and wilderness preservation.

Use of the noise-free interval (NFI) metric to assess the disturbances of airborne vessel noise at Glacier Bay National Park

Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park preserves the seventh largest unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System, encompassing 2.6 million acres. Natural acoustic environments are significant to many of the unit's fundamental resources and values. Since 2001, the National Park Service has inventoried acoustic environments of Alaskan parks. One purpose is to document every noise-free interval (NFI) observed. NFI is defined as the time between human-generated noise disturbances. Aggregate properties of NFIs describe fragmentation of acoustic environments by noise. Median NFI estimated at parks in Alaska to date range from < 3 minutes to 16.7 hours, similar to other Arctic sites (0.5 to 13.0 hours, Stinchcomb et al. 2020). For the Glacier Bay Marine Management Plan Environmental Assessment, a geometric NFI model was developed using automatic identification system (AIS) derived vessel tracks. The NFI simulation results, along with NFI data from acoustic monitoring at the park, was then utilized to assess how changes to vessel quotas and vessel management strategies would potentially affect the NFI throughout the park. This paper will discuss the estimation and use of the NFI metric in protected natural areas, along with NFI modeling methods utilized for an environmental assessment at Glacier Bay.

The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of the National Parks by Dennis Drabelle (review)

Reviewed by: The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of the National Parks by Dennis Drabelle John Sandlos Drabelle, Dennis–The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of the National Parks. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 272 p. Frederick Law Olmsted may not be a household name in North America, but thousands of people are exposed to the footprint of his ideas about landscape and environment in city parks throughout the continent. Most famous as the designer of New York’s Central Park, Olmsted established a blueprint for city parks that brought nature to the urban core, preserving remnant woodlands, establishing cultivated plots of vegetation that were appropriate to the surrounding landscape, and above all else, creating spaces that were open to an urban public craving a natural oasis from the surrounding built environment. Through the direct influence of Olmsted’s landscape architectural firm, or many of his acolytes who trained there, literally hundreds of urban parks in North America have incorporated his key design principles. Even my somewhat remote hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland, hosts the very “Olmstedian” Bowering Park (designed in part by Canadian devotee Frederick Todd), which features lazy winding pathways, rustic pavilions, a curvy shoreline enclosing a bucolic duck pond, and a mix of gardens, fields, and forests that evoke a stroll through the countryside. If these city parks seem a far cry from big wild spaces, Dennis Drabelle’s The Power of Scenery makes a case for including Olmsted in the pantheon of conservation heroes—among them, Henry David Thoreau, George Catlin, and John Muir—who originally developed the idea of the national park. To make this argument, Drabelle focuses on Olmsted’s brief residency (1863–1965) in California as manager of the unsuccessful Mariposa gold mining venture. Here, he was appointed a commissioner of the Yosemite Valley land grant (which first designated the land a public reserve), penning a report on the Yosemite Valley that advocated managing the park along fairly strict preservationist lines, welcoming visitors to appreciate the natural beauty of the place but restricting the kind of commercial developments that had, according to Olmsted, defiled Niagara Falls. The report also called for an appropriation of funds from the state government to fund at least [End Page 209] some infrastructure for the newly envisioned Yosemite Park, but several other commissioners balked at the suggestion and urged the state governor to bury the report. Despite such suppression, Drabelle traces the dissemination of Olmsted’s ideas on the public preservation of natural reserves through the writer Samuel Bowles, who published sections of the Yosemite document in a popular book, Across the Continent, and advocated for the protection of Yosemite and Yellowstone region. According to Drabelle, then, one can follow a direct line from Olmsted’s visionary report to the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, Yosemite’s eventual designation as a national park in 1890, and the general promulgation of the national park ideal throughout the United States, Canada, and eventually the globe. Drabelle’s book will certainly be of great interest to anybody interested in the origins of the national parks. With vivid and lively prose, he skillfully weaves a portrait of the intellectual milieu that generated the national park movement, including America’s inferiority complex with respect to the great cultural monuments and cities of Europe (and hence the desire to create monuments out of nature), the growing aesthetic veneration of the sublime mountainous landscapes of the West, and the desire to retain public ownership of natural wonders as a hedge against their commercialization. Across the Continent succeeds at capturing the passion of the early national park advocates, mobilizing from a wealth of sources the words, deeds, and passions of the early wilderness preservation movement. Drabelle is somewhat less successful at putting Olmsted at the centre of this narrative. Much of the book’s storyline focuses intently on other aspects of Olmsted’s career: the early days designing Central Park, and later projects such as the creation of park landscapes at Niagara Falls and the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, all somewhat peripheral to his work on the national parks. Indeed, Olmsted...

U.S. wilderness in the 21st century: A scoping review of wilderness visitor use management research from 2000 to 2020

Now over twenty years into the 21st century, it is suggested that we are entering a new era of wilderness visitor use management (VUM). Yet, we lack a recent review of the literature assessing the latest research trends to advance wilderness VUM in a meaningful way. Accordingly, this research serves as both a review of the last twenty years of U.S. wilderness VUM research and a launching point into the next era. Our assessment adds to several previous benchmarks that demonstrate the progress of wilderness VUM research. This review evaluates trends in methodologies and themes of inquiry specific to VUM research in federally-designated wilderness over the past twenty years. The findings inform our discussion on emergent wilderness values and relevancy, approaches and settings of research, the evolving aspects of VUM in the wilderness, and the need for the synthesis of research across the National Wilderness Preservation System.

JOAN LA BARBARA AND THE NEW WILDERNESS PRESERVATION BAND, 1973–74

AbstractJoan La Barbara's involvement in the New Wilderness Preservation Band is an often cited but virtually unknown period of her history. And yet it may have been one of the most generative periods of her early career. Drawing upon archival documents, unreleased recordings and interviews, I narrate the history of the band, including La Barbara's early use of extended vocal techniques. I argue that her work in the band reflected a mode of collaborative authorship that is often lost in retellings of her history, and that her emergence in 1974 as a composer reflected a broader tension around authorship in bands and ensembles during these years.

Let Us Now Praise Mountain Lions: Revisiting Edward Abbey in the Santa Monica Mountains

More than 50 years have passed since Edward Abbey published Desert Solitaire—his persuasive tribute to the preservation of wilderness and wildlife, and over 30 years since he penned. In Praise of Mountain Lions: Original Praises (1984), Abbey predicted how hyper-urbanization and anthropogenic stressors would lead to habitat fragmentation and to an extinction vortex among mountain lion populations. In this essay, I engage in an interdisciplinary approach employing Edward Abbey’s esthetic theory, political ideologies, and polemic land ethic to examine the urgent plight of mountain lions struggling to survive today in the Santa Monica Mountains. It is my hope that the synthesis of Edward Abbey’s political admonitions will contribute to the emerging body of interdisciplinary environmental literary criticism and research to advocate for the protection of mountain lions in urbanized landscapes.

Exploring discrepancies between in situ phenology and remotely derived phenometrics at NEON sites

AbstractIn recent decades, the use of satellite sensors, near‐surface cameras, and other remote methods for monitoring vegetation phenology at landscape and higher scales has become increasingly common. These technologies provide a means to determine the timing of phenophases and growing season length at different spatial resolutions; coverage that is not attainable by human observers. However, in situ ground observations are required to validate remotely derived phenometrics. Despite increased knowledge and expertise there still remains the persistent challenge of reconciling ground observations at the individual plant level with remotely sensed (RS) phenometrics at landscape or larger scales. We compared the timing of in situ phenophase estimates (spring and autumn) with a range of corresponding remote sensing (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer [MODIS], visible infrared imaging radiometer suite [VIIRS], PhenoCam) phenometrics across five terrestrial sites in the United States' NEON (Harvard Forest [MA] [HARV], Onaqui [UT] [ONAQ], Abby Road [WA] [ABBY], Disney Wilderness Preserve [FL] [DSNY], and Ordway‐Swisher Biological Station [FL] [OSBS]) focusing on the 3‐year period from 2017 to 2019. Our main objective was to explore potential reasons for the observed discrepancies between in situ and RS phenometrics and to determine which technologies were better able to capture ground observations. Statistically significant relationships were strongest (p < 0.001) for spring phenophases, while the only RS phenometrics significantly correlated with in situ estimates of autumn phenophases were leaf fall (p < 0.01) and leaves (p < 0.000). In particular, root mean square error (RMSE) (mean bias error [MBE]) for MODIS‐Enhanced Vegetation Index‐2 band (EVI2), VIIRS‐EVI2, and PhenoCam‐green chromatic coordinate (GCC) derived early spring transition dates indicated overall differences of 21.7 days (−4.6 days), 28.4 days (−1.2 days), and 24.1 days (11.9 days) from in situ estimates of early leaf‐out dates. In autumn, RMSE/MBE was smallest (10.9 days/−2.2 days) between phenesse estimates (95th percentile date) of the latest date of in situ leaf fall and VIIRS derived end of senescence, compared to the equivalent phenometric derived from MODIS (13.5 days/7.7 days) and PhenoCam (GCC greenness‐falling) (13.8 days/−5.1 days). Overall, discrepancies between in situ and RS phenology related to scale, species availability, and the short duration of the time series (3 years). However, as the NEON project progresses these challenges are expected to be reduced as more data become available.

Support for wilderness preservation: An investigation of the roles of place attachment and environmental worldview

Wilderness areas worldwide continue to face a range of threats, however public support for wilderness areas is lacking. Similarly, there is a paucity of research literature pertaining to public support for federally-designated wilderness areas within the U.S. Borrowing from the broader pro-environmental behavior literature, the purpose of this investigation was to explore the role that individuals' environmental worldview and place attachment play in their support for wilderness. Specifically, we asked residents of the southeastern United States about their political and financial support for the management and continued protection of current wilderness areas. Data was obtained via an online panel of adults who had visited a protected natural area in the previous five years. Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis results revealed that place attachment partially mediated the relationship between environmental worldview and support for wilderness preservation. The data suggest that models of pro-environmental behavior, generally, and wilderness preservation, specifically, should include both a measure of general environmental beliefs and a measure of an individual's thoughts and feelings ascribed to a specific setting. • Wilderness area support is associated with a visitor's environmental beliefs and the bond they develop with the area. • Managers should continue to seek to understand the reasons for visitors' place attachment intensity levels. • Managers should continue to engage visitors with programs that increase visitors' place attachment to their wilderness area.

Blazing a Path to Wilderness: A Case Study of Impact Litigation Through the Lens of Legislative History

Litigation can be a catalyst for legislation. Legislative history can reveal just how influential litigation is. The legislative history of the laws to designate wilderness in the 1980s provides an object lesson. It demonstrates that litigation both pushed Congress to act and shaped the legislation Congress enacted. This is especially true of the watershed year of 1984. That year, Congress enacted more wilderness laws and added more wilderness areas to the National Wilderness Preservation System in more states than in any other year. The legislative history of the 1984 wilderness laws embedded in bills, hearings, committee meetings, committee reports, and floor proceedings, in conjunction with the legislative history of the various wilderness bills and laws considered, rejected, and passed from 1979 through 1983, reveal the significant impact a particular lawsuit had on Congress in 1984 and beyond. Specifically, a lawsuit grounded in the National Environmental Policy Act, taking advantage of a powerful precedent, prompted the preservation of the wilderness character of millions of acres of public land. To be precise: The lawsuit impelled Congress to designate more than 9.171 million acres in twenty-three states as wilderness from 1984 through 1989. Of that number, more than 7.335 million acres are managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Forest Service; more than 1.835 million acres are managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior through the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. This article uses legislative history to demonstrate how a strategic lawsuit sparked congressional action. It traces the litigation engendered by the Forest Service’s decision regarding roadless areas in national forests and the evolution of Congress’s response to that litigation, from the first lawsuit filed in 1979 to the last filed in 1983. In the process, it shows how legislative history can illuminate the underlying causes and policy choices that lead to legislation.

Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation

Indigenous territories represent ~45% of land categorized as wilderness in the Amazon, but account for <15% of all forest loss on this land. At a time when the Amazon faces unprecedented pressures, overcoming polarization and aligning the goals of wilderness defenders and Indigenous peoples is paramount, to avoid environmental degradation.

Fostering real-time climate adaptation: Analyzing past, current, and forecast temperature to understand the dynamic risk to Hawaiian honeycreepers from avian malaria

Various vector control options are increasingly being considered to safeguard forest birds in their natural habitats from avian malaria transmission. However, vector control options require localized deployment that is not logistically, ethically, ecologically, nor economically viable everywhere and all the time. Based on thermal tolerances of the sporogonic stages of avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum) parasite and its vector, the southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus), we examined the long-term weather trends for three high value, forest bird refuges (Alakai Wilderness Preserve on Kaua’i, Hanawi Natural Area Reserve on Maui, and Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on Hawai’i Island) to understand the temporal and site-specific differences of temperature-driven suitability for localized avian malaria transmission.On average, Alakai had mean ambient temperatures suitable for both the vector’s immature stage development and parasite sporogonic development most of the time (85.3%), indicating that observed variability in vector abundance or disease transmission may be driven by other factors. At higher elevation sites like Hakalau and Hanawi, current mean ambient temperatures suitable only for vector development prevail (91.7% and 96.6%, respectively), while mean ambient temperatures for both vector and parasite sporogonic development seldom occur (4.4% and 0% respectively). Our results not only show differences in the temperature suitability for transmission across elevation, but also different levels of vulnerability to avian malaria transmission with any additional projected increase in temperature. For instance, under a conservative warming scenario of 1.0 °C, the joint temperature suitability of parasite and vector development increases at higher elevation sites such as Hakalau (+35.8%) and Hanawi (+15.4%). While mean ambient temperatures suitable for both vector and parasite development already occur most of the time at Alakai, the occurrence also increases (+8.4%) as well under this conservative warming scenario.By linking current site-specific weather data to real-time weather forecasts, we developed a real-time avian malaria warning system to assist managers in identifying conditions when vector control is most needed at these three selected study sites. This online tool determines when conditions are likely to be suitable for local development of P. relictum and C. quinquefasciatus at Alakai, Hanawi, and Hakalau. This tool illustrates how managers can incorporate climate and current weather patterns into decision making without having to consider the uncertainties of long-term climatic and ecological projections.

Protected area stewardship in the Anthropocene: integrating science, law, and ethics to evaluate proposals for ecological restoration in wilderness

Every year, the four federal agencies that manage designated wilderness in the United States receive proposals to implement small‐ and large‐scale ecological restorations within the National Wilderness Preservation System. The combination of climate change with other landscape stressors is driving ecological restoration to be one of the single most important, challenging, and potentially litigious wilderness stewardship issues. In addition, different stakeholders may have strongly divergent views about what the right decision should be, and decisions need to go beyond routine technical and scientific analyses to incorporate a broader range of legal and ethical considerations. We present a framework based on a comprehensive, structured set of scientific, legal, and ethical questions to guide the evaluation of proposals for ecological restoration and other types of ecological intervention in wilderness. This framework of questions is a voluntary tool designed to increase communication and transparency among scientists, managers, and interested publics regarding the trade‐offs and uncertainties of ecological restoration, and promote informed public deliberation in managing the public resource of wilderness.

Reimagining a Place for the Wild ed. by Leslie Miller and Louise Excell

Reviewed by: Reimagining a Place for the Wild ed. by Leslie Miller and Louise Excell James Barilla Leslie Miller and Louise Excell, eds., Reimagining a Place for the Wild. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2018. 225 pp. Paper, $29.95. This essay collection was inspired by the inaugural Reimagine Western Landscapes Symposium in Montana's Centennial Valley, a gathering of writers, ranchers, artists, and environmental policy makers whose goal was to take stock of the current state of wildness in the American West and envision a future in which wild places endure and humans and other animals thrive. The location itself, in a remote corner of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, provides the backdrop for these questions as a place where ranching, wildlife conservation, and wilderness preservation are lived experiences. The result is a range of accessible and thought-inspiring perspectives that both reinforce the value of wildness and reframe longstanding debates over the value of wilderness and the presence of charismatic megafauna. The collection is grouped into four sections, each offering a different take on the possibilities and challenges of living with the wild in the Anthropocene. The first section, "Encounter: Understanding Human-Wildlife Connections," begins with an invocation of the familiar presence of charismatic megafauna [End Page 202] like wolves and grizzlies, while also challenging some of the easy assumptions that might accompany such encounters. In "Waiting for Wolves," for example, Jeremy Schmidt argues that wildness cannot disappear from a world in which antlions, "gram for gram vastly more ferocious than any grizzly," share space with other denizens of the urban and suburban wild, including humans (6). Julia Corbett attempts to reimagine the practices of sharing her residential neighborhood with the black bears that routinely arrive looking for bird feeders and concludes that a social science analysis of human attitudes toward wildlife doesn't entirely capture the deep-rooted human longing for connection with other species. "What we need," she argues, "is a cosmology that is able to see ourselves as just one species in a global circle of circulating hearts" (29). The essays in this section, and indeed throughout the collection, share an implicit critique of conventional, data-driven approaches to wild lands management, affirming instead the value of affective bonds, existential questions, and spiritual epiphanies that reductionist scientific approaches tend to avoid or dismiss. The second section, "Reimagine: Forging a New Ethic," steps back from the immediacy of personal encounters with wildlife to consider the ethical, spatial, and historical dimensions of western landscapes more broadly. Essays by Harvey Locke and Gregory E. Smoak situate the contemporary West as a space with roots that defy national borders and assumed timeframes. In "Beauty as a Foundation for Conservation Ethics," Kirk C. Robinson seeks to update Aldo Leopold's famous land ethic by promoting the aesthetics of "Beauty" as a defining characteristic of wild places. These ethical arguments confront the pragmatics of making a living in the wild in the third section, "Practice: Programmatic Approaches," which features reflections by ranchers like Yvonne Martinell, whose family has been working in the Centennial Valley for generations, and mining geologist Kerry C. Gee, who describes the restoration of tailings ponds and the need to deal with the legacy of mine waste contamination as an ongoing collaboration between different stakeholders. These essays reflect the strength of this collection, which lies in the breadth of voices gathered here. The diversity of perspectives and approaches would make it a good [End Page 203] fit for an introductory environmental studies course, where the practical, the philosophical, and the personal could all be explored. The final section, "Ethos: Wither Humanities," offers a starting point for an important conversation: what role will the humanities play in an era when the fundamental ecological and cultural parameters that once defined the West are changing. What to make, for example, of the one hundredth meridian, long seen as the ecological and cultural boundary between East and West, as changing rainfall patterns shift arid conditions eastward? As the conditions on the ground change, how will the culture of the West respond? "We have the data," Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy concludes, "but our community needs the stories" (219). This collection offers a heartfelt...

The Progressive Political Foundations of Edward Abbey’s Environmental Advocacy

For several generations of environmentalists, Edward Abbey has held an iconic position as an advocate for wilderness preservation and environmental amelioration. In an article published in Telos, Tim Luke acknowledges Abbey’s lasting influence: “Much of contemporary American environmental thought, implicitly or explicitly, circles around the literary corpus of Edward Abbey.” An articulate spokesperson, Abbey entertained, challenged, and inspired in both his writings and actions. He embodies and gives voice to those who value wild ecosystems and habitats because his advocacy derived from experience: backpacking, river running, meditating, peak bagging, and hanging out—in actual places. His narratives continue to assert the intrinsic value of such places as well as the essential need we have as humans to experience environments minimally disturbed by the impacts of modern industrial development.1 Those inspired by similar experiences are moved to understanding and to action by Abbey’s books, most memorably the classic essays of Desert Solitaire and the picaresque novel The Monkey Wrench Gang.

French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically by Stephanie Posthumus

Reviewed by: French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically by Stephanie Posthumus Jonathan F. Krell Posthumus, Stephanie. French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2017. Pp. 249. $61.00 CDN. In articles such as "Vers une écocritique française: le contrat naturel de Michel Serres" or "Engaging with Cultural Difference: The Strange Case of French Écocritique," Stephanie Posthumus has long been calling for a distinctly French ecocriticism, which would recognize cultural differences between the French and Anglo-American world. For example, American environmentalists tend to value the preservation of wilderness, untouched-or barely touched-by humans, whereas the French have emphasized "landscape preservation" (17), where culture implies cultivation, and thus includes farmland and the architectural patrimoine of rural France (17-19). Another difference is that in North America, ecocriticism owes much to environmental studies, whereas in France it has been shaped by a spatial, geographical approach: géocritique and géopoétique (21-22). As a bilingual Canadian well-read in both North American and European ecocritical studies, Posthumus is particularly well suited to the delicate task of delineating a French écocritique without tearing it away from its North American counterpart. She insists on the importance of considering both theory and fiction; therefore, her study is not purely about ecological themes, but is also a literary study, "attentive […] to the formal and structural elements of the literary texts in question" (23). She forms her analysis around four ecological concepts: subjectivity, dwelling, politics, and ends, exploring each concept by studying a philosopher and a fiction writer whose works illustrate the concept in question. In order to elucidate ecological subjectivity, Posthumus chooses Félix Guattari and Marie Darrieussecq; for ecological dwelling, Michel Serres and Marie-Hélène Lafon; for ecological politics, Bruno Latour and Jean-Christophe Rufin; and for ecological ends, Jean-Marie Schaeffer and Michel Houellebecq. Chapter One explores how the idea of "subject" has evolved in ecocriticism, as the human has lost its exclusivity as subject. Guattari's The Three Ecologies (1989)1 opposes "capitalistic subjectivity" and "articulate[s] subjectivity within three overlapping domains-the mental, the social, the environmental" (32), the latter of which must include "machinic ecology" (36). Darrieussecq's Bref séjour chez les vivants (2001) can be analyzed in the light of Guattari's three ecologies. The novel recounts the lives of a woman and her three daughters: teenage Nore lives with her mother in the Basque Country, Jeanne is married and living in Buenos Aires, and Anne is single in Paris. Guattari's social ecology helps the reader interpret the complex relationships among these four women. For instance, Anne, who has difficulty relating to her body, but instead is more comfortable envisioning the noosphere, or world of ideas, illustrates mental ecology; she imagines herself connected to the "worldwide consciousness," a [End Page 523] node of the "world's encephalic field" (44). Finally, regarding environmental ecology, Posthumus stresses the role of "watery landscapes" (48) in Darrieussecq's fiction. The oldest sister Jeanne drowns at the end of the novel, trapped as her car descends into a river. Like her brother who drowned as a boy, Jeanne too will become a hybrid, a human transformed into a creature of the waters. Marie, the protagonist of the "autofictional" novel Le Pays (2005), represents ecological subjectivity as proposed by Guattari. Her body is "porous," united with the environment, as Posthumus demonstrates: "Vos molécules se mélangent au ciel et à l'eau, la solitude se diffuse. Les mots et les choses s'écartent, la pensée ne suit plus, les signes se désamarrent; et le moi devient une grande béance pleine d'éau salée" (54). Chapter Two studies the theme of "dwelling" in the light of l'exode rural that has changed the role of the French paysan. Along with the sailor, the farmer represents for Michel Serres the human being most apt to undertake a "natural contract" with the world, since he has been forced to adapt to "constantly changing local conditions" (70). In The Natural Contract (1990), Serres moves from the local to the global, forging "a new relationship between global earth...

Mapping threats to wilderness character in the National Wilderness Preservation System

The National Wilderness Preservation System in the United States provides the greatest level of protection for the ecological and social values of lands held in trust for future generations. Although designated wilderness is the cornerstone of the US conservation portfolio, designation alone doesn't assure the protection of these areas, which are degraded by threats both inside and external to the area. This paper describes new methods for quantifying the location and cumulative magnitude of threats to wilderness, allowing agency managers and the public to evaluate whether the legal mandate from the 1964 Wilderness Act to “preserve wilderness character” is being upheld. These new methods have also been used in developing wilderness stewardship plans and analyzing the potential effects of proposed projects that would degrade wilderness character. The methods described here were developed and tested in seven wildernesses in a variety of ecological, geographic, and administrative settings, and are directly applicable to evaluating threats and improving the management of all 110 million acres of designated wilderness in the United States, as well as all areas that are increasingly recognized internationally as wilderness.

Using population viability analysis to evaluate management activities for an endangered Hawaiian endemic, the Puaiohi (Myadestes palmeri).

Evolution in the Hawaiian Islands has produced a unique avian assemblage. Unfortunately, many of these bird species are highly endangered or extinct. Despite numerous and increasing threats and great effort aimed at saving endemic birds, we lack basic science necessary for understanding many species of concern. One such species is the critically endangered Puaiohi (Myadestes palmeri), a rare songbird endemic to the island of Kaua‘i and the only remaining native thrush on the island. At present, the Puaiohi’s breeding population is estimated to be ~500 birds restricted to the Alaka‘i Wilderness Preserve. We collected demographic data from 2007–2012 and supplemented it with published sources. Using Vortex, we developed stochastic population models to represent Puaiohi population dynamics under current and potential management scenarios to determine management’s potential efficacy in aiding species recovery. Management scenarios modeled included rat control, habitat improvement, general survival facilitation, and provision of nest boxes. The model indicated a decline in abundance with a growth rate (r) of -0.267 under baseline conditions. Female and juvenile survival appeared to be the most influential parameters related to population growth and persistence, so management should focus on increasing female and juvenile Puaiohi survival. Rat control, even at more conservative levels, appeared to be the most effective method of increasing Puaiohi abundance. Our results indicate that practical, attainable management activities can increase Puaiohi and bring the species back from the brink of extinction. Such findings provide an example for other endangered species conservation efforts.

Proposed Release of Wilderness Study Areas in Montana (USA) Would Demote the Conservation Status of Nationally-Valuable Wildlands

Wildlands are increasingly lost to human development. Conservation scientists repeatedly call for protecting the remaining wildlands and expanding the land area protected in reserves. Despite these calls, conservation reserves can be eliminated through legislation that demotes their conservation status. For example, legislation introduced to the Congress of the United States recently would demote 29 Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) from the protections afforded by their existing status. The proposed legislation suggests that the 29 areas are not suitable for a promotion and future inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System based on decades-old local evaluations. Local evaluations, notwithstanding, it may be important to consider the value of lands from a national perspective. Without a national perspective, local evaluations alone may lead to overlooking the national significance of lands. With this in mind, I used five qualities of wildland value (wildness, intactness of night sky, lack of human-generated noises, intactness of mammals, and intactness of mammal carnivores of conservation concern) to compare the 29 WSAs to all national parks and wilderness areas located within the contiguous United States. The pool of 29 WSAs was similar to the pool of national parks and wilderness areas with respect to the five qualities assessed, and some of the WSAs were characterized by higher values than most of national parks and wilderness areas. This analysis demonstrates the national significance of the WSAs targeted for demotion of their existing conservation status. Such an approach could be used in future land management legislation and planning to ensure that a national perspective on conservation value is brought to bear on decisions facing federally-managed lands.