[HN Gopher] Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring ...
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Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back
Author : Thevet
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-09-09 05:24 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| amarcozzi wrote:
| 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 the idea of supporting and
| conserving wild and untrammeled landscapes. I'd hazard that most
| Americans have never heard of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and
| think of the term "wilderness" as a vague description of a
| landscape characteristic rather than a rigid set of legal
| protections, and I bet that even fewer understand the scope of
| how many acres of land fall under these protections. It can be
| intoxicating to be in the know, and there are few things as
| satisfying as disappearing into the backcountry for a week or two
| and truly finding refuge from modern life.
|
| But, the author is fundamentally correct about the relationship
| between humans and natural areas. The untrammeled nature of
| officially designated wilderness areas is a myth. The degree of
| trammeling of course varies by area and over time, but it's there
| no matter where you look. To the extent that we continue to put
| stock in this concept of "untrammeled by man", we do a disservice
| to the history and continued existence of indigenous Americans.
| Also, we needlessly hamstring our own management actions which
| compound into real threats on the very thing the act set out to
| protect. Increasingly I think to myself "no more wilderness" and
| advocate for proposed wilderness study areas to have a management
| designation more closely aligned with their intended use:
| National Recreation Areas.
| yosefk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| A national park is just a bigger version of one in a city
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bytesahoy wrote:
| Unfortunately you're right about that, as much as I like
| the word disconnected from those views, preconceptions
| about earth's apocalyptic doomsday may instead lend to
| "careful plunder", in a "stewardly manner". Okay, how
| about "Natural Sanctuaries" and the "Bureau of Land
| Kinship"? That may emphasize the sacredness of the land
| itself rather than the tending of it, which is more open
| to interpretation.
| dkarl wrote:
| Making anything sacred outside of Christianity (and other
| established religions) offends more people and makes the
| fight harder. I think we should concentrate on practical,
| inclusive arguments about the environmental, ecological,
| educational, and experiential benefits of keeping large
| areas of land free from development and industrial
| exploitation, and create a hierarchy of management from
| maximally protected / minimally exploited areas down to
| fully exploited areas that have little ecological value
| but provide a different value such as timber production
| or recreation.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| I always liked the name of the Bureau of Land Management
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| If you have been to any national parks recently I think you
| would understand the "recreation area" designation. The most
| accessible parks are now so crowded it no longer feels like a
| wilderness. Just streams of people trying to experience rare
| places. A place like Zion gets 9.5 million visitors a year.
|
| Even "leave no trace" outdoor practices leave some trace.
| Multiply that by the number of visitors and the impact is
| obvious.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| Accessibility is probably far and away the strongest effect
| on human impact to areas rather than any legal
| designations.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Which Park Services improves as traffic increases with
| the mission of reducing impact.
| dkarl wrote:
| I was in Sequoia National Park last week. All parking was
| absolutely full, people were parking illegally all over the
| place, traffic was slowed to a crawl because people were
| walking on the park roads trying to get to where they
| wanted to go, and there was a 45 minute wait for park buses
| because of a traffic accident.
|
| We need more places like that, especially since we're
| becoming more urbanized, and kids are growing up without
| access to less-developed areas. Granted, there are a lot of
| unique places like Sequoia and Zion that can't be
| replicated, but every landscape has its own charms.
| samschooler wrote:
| We do have that. A designated "Wilderness Area" is the most
| strict classification. Restrictions in these areas (which
| cover large majorities of our national parks) are:
|
| - No motorized vehicles
|
| - No permanent buildings - this even means bathrooms and bear
| boxes many places. Stephen Mather Wilderness (North Cascades
| National Park) is currently doing surveys asking about if
| they should install more of them or add more bathrooms.
|
| - Limited trail signage
|
| - No "trammeling" which essentially means: don't mess with
| natural processes.
|
| These Wilderness Areas are very different from Federal
| Recreation Areas, yet you can still "recreate" in a
| Wilderness area seeking solitude and nature.
|
| https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb52701.
| ..
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I would like someone who understands both backcountry
| hiking and Ultima Online to discuss the term trammeling,
| please.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >possibly carrying firearms regardless of any rules
|
| _Carrying_ long guns is legal on all BLM land. Discharging
| them may be restricted in some areas, though.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| jMyles wrote:
| I cannot strongly enough suggest the book "Tending the Wild:
| Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's
| Natural Resources" by M. Kat Anderson.
|
| It was suggested to me in a comment here on HN, though I cannot
| now seem to find it by searching.
|
| https://www.ucpress.edu/books/tending-the-wild/paper
| ch71r22 wrote:
| I'm currently reading this book and it's incredible.
|
| It paints a picture of how rich plant and animal life was
| before contact with Europeans. It shows how Native Californians
| depended on and deeply understood every root, leaf, flower, and
| fruit of every plant in their area. It explains how Native
| Californians were responsible for preserving and enriching the
| wildlife around them -- doing controlled burns, pruning,
| managing animal populations, sowing seeds, etc. These areas
| weren't "wild" or "pristine" at all, they were carefully
| managed and densely populated by Native Americans for over
| 10,000 years.
|
| I think oftentimes we feel hopeless about our relationship to
| nature. We think if we touch it, we'll destroy it. Learning
| about how Native Californians lived shows how that's not
| inevitable at all.
| jMyles wrote:
| I was particularly moved by the importance of basket-weaving,
| and how many different aspects of ecological balance were
| kept by this one practice.
| leafmeal wrote:
| I wonder if I can take credit for that :)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23838755
|
| I can to this thread to talk up the book too!
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I have yet to see a coherent philosophy that is able to
| differentiate between human communities and "the natural world"
| in a way that isn't totally arbitrary
|
| The distinction between wild or natural is completely arbitrary
| human made, and has no actual reflection on reality that I can
| tell
|
| Humans are not the only set of organisms to radically change
| landscapes - Ants, wasps, locusts and beavers perfectly
| demonstrate that.
|
| Humans are not the only set of organisms to be altruistic or
| communal
|
| Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy all
| other animals, and that seems to be the only distinction that we
| make - eg boils down to might makes right,
|
| So I would love to hear somebody give me a proof of why this
| distinction in scale rather than kind, is actually a worthwhile
| ETHICAL differentiator, such so we can actually reason about what
| that difference implies in a way that doesn't make artificial or
| arbitrary distinctions or appeal to self interests alone
| jszymborski wrote:
| There are healthy, sustainable ecosystems, and there are
| unhealthy, unsustainable ecosystems.
|
| While ants, wasps, and beavers can change a landscape to
| benefit them in an unsustainable, unhealthy way that will lead
| to their destruction, I think you have to indulge a bit of
| wishful thinking to not realize they are less likely and less
| capable of doing so than humans.
|
| We'll need to set order in our own home before we look to the
| ants, the wasps, and the beavers.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This doesn't address my question whatsoever
|
| In fact, it muddies the question itself by distracting away
| from measurable criteria towards vague and general, broad
| sweeping conceptual ideas of "Unhealthy" "Unsustainable"
| francisofascii wrote:
| The absence of a defined criteria does not imply an ideal
| criteria does not exist. The ideal is somewhere between the
| two extremes, ants, wasps, etc. taking over the entire
| planet and ants vs ants/wasps becoming extinct. Through
| reason, analysis, etc. we can get closer to defining a more
| measurable criteria.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| We can engineer more sustainable food production systems at
| multiple levels. Would you consider terracing a whole
| mountain to maximize water use to be sustainable? The initial
| impact is quite destructive but the result is a more
| sustainable and persistent food producing ecosystem. We can
| also use the natural landscape but cultivate the species that
| grow in the ecosystem (food forest).
|
| I believe we are meant to be the gardeners of the planet.
| Improving available food in an ecosystem invites more living
| things. It is a positive feedback loop. If we focused on
| building closed loop ecosystems that also provide food and
| materials we could be a benefit to all life. Focusing on not
| changing the "wild" is a negative view. We are the expert
| species at forming our environment. We should shape it so it
| provides for us and the rest of the critters.
| francisofascii wrote:
| It is simple as, biodiversity is preferable to a monoculture.
| The specifics of achieving that is murky and may seem
| arbitrary, but the overall goal is pretty clear. Humans are the
| only organisms that can reason about it, so human should act
| like the "adults in the room" and practice stewardship to
| maintain some level of biodiversity, regardless of what was
| human caused or non-human caused.
| 7952 wrote:
| I think there are more precise definitions, but it requires
| more understanding. You can talk about protecting native
| species and there are moral arguments for that. Although I am
| not sure how much that actually drives people. For many nature
| seems to be an almost religious topic with binary views routed
| in self interest. You just have to talk to solar or wind
| objectors to realise that.
|
| I live in the UK and the situation is pretty extreme. People
| love nature passionately. But most of what people view as
| natural is degraded farmland. The National Parks are all
| landscapes that only exist directly from human intervention
| (usually sheep, grouse, mining, forestry). And many of the
| protected areas have people living in them that get outsized
| property prices and endless tourism.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I'm on the fence about whether I agree with this. The way I see
| it, if you look at beavers, ants, or trees, they change the
| landscape but they do it based on behaviors that are encoded in
| their genes. That means a beaver can create a lake, but its
| descendants have to be able to live with that using the same
| slow-changing genetic programming, otherwise they die off. With
| humans, we can adapt new ways to live in the altered
| environment, even if it would have been incompatible with the
| lives of our ancestors. If we kill off all the salmon and
| whales, for example, within a generation or two we can pivot to
| factory-farmed chicken and petroleum. Once we've tapped that
| out we can do soy protein and windfarms.
|
| I say I'm on the fence because on a longer time scale, that
| kind of mental adaptation might not be that much different from
| genetic adaptation and we'll still have to find equilibrium or
| die out.
|
| As far as the ethics question goes, if we use the most basic
| model and say that the ethical thing is that which promotes the
| most "good-life-years per capita" versus "bad-life-years per
| capita", where capita means one of the sentient residents of
| the planet, there are a few ways to look at it:
|
| 1. Ethics is just a fiction that humans have made up to support
| the prisoners' dilemma style of cooperation game we play, and
| there's no real answer.
|
| 2. The billon or two twilight years of our planet are better
| spent in rough equilibrium, where tigers exist, but most
| animals get some time to stretch in the sun, nuzzle their
| young, etc.
|
| 3. Life in equilibrium is actually cold, brutal, and short for
| most of the sentient animals involved, so providing a higher
| level of comfort for a population of ten billion people is
| better, even if it eventually crashes.
|
| 4. The experience of a human counts more than that of an
| animal, so a high human population with a decent standard of
| living for a long enough time pushes the needle past what a
| much longer natural equilibrium would achieve.
| throwanem wrote:
| I saw you palm that card! Utilitarianism is anything but "the
| most basic model" of ethics. If you want to argue from it, do
| so honestly rather than try to smuggle it in as an unexamined
| postulate.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Do you have another model that changes the answers?
| throwanem wrote:
| Do you care first to justify the assertions you made on
| the back of yours? I realize it's a common utilitarian
| habit to believe the quantification they do is meaningful
| outside the purely reflexive sense, but that is a belief,
| requiring as much substantiation as any other before it's
| taken to model anything about the world.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I don't think I actually asserted anything, but let me
| give a shot at explaining:
|
| The model is that higher values of G/B are better, where
| G is good years per capita and B is bad years per capita,
| so the ethical thing to do is maximize G and/or minimize
| B. I called this "basic" because even though it tends to
| fall apart when scaled up, I think it captures what most
| people think of ethics. It's good for making tactical
| decisions about things like "should I punch that guy" or
| whatever.
|
| For #1, where ethics would be just a fiction we made up
| to support a social game, what I mean is: People in a
| group have to play a prisoners' dilemma game where they
| find a balance of cooperation and sharing of resources.
| One way to reach that balance is to assume good will and
| treat others like you want to be treated. (Right up until
| someone violates that, then it's hyperbolic response
| time...) If ethics is just something people made up to
| get everyone to maintain that balance, then higher G/B
| being better is rooted in the same fiction.
|
| For #2: My definition of G and B included good and bad
| experiences by animals, not just people. That means it's
| possible that over a billion years or so you could still
| achieve higher G/B by going back to a "natural" world
| inhabited by sentient but less intelligent animals.
|
| For #3: It could be that the G/B in a natural world would
| actually be lower than if it was dominated by humans,
| because several billion people being able to live out
| their lives before the crash could result in a big enough
| G value to outweigh the eventual suffering.
|
| For #4: If life as a human counted more towards G than
| the same amount of life as a beaver, then it could be a
| force multiplier for #3.
| throwanem wrote:
| All of which follows from this assumption, which I'll
| grant you were slightly more overt about than the one I
| criticized:
|
| > The way I see it, if you look at beavers, ants, or
| trees, they change the landscape but they do it based on
| behaviors that are encoded in their genes.
|
| Having neatly begged the question of whether a
| distinction between "human" and "nature" has meaning - in
| the direction that it does, and on the basis of an
| understanding no more current than the behaviorism of the
| 1930s and 40s - you then proceed into the implications of
| a lot of arithmetic manipulations whose relevance you
| have declined to establish. So the complexity is wasted,
| at best without meaning and at worst deceptive by giving
| the impression of valid reasoning where none exists.
| (Soundness without validity isn't worthless, but where
| you aim to describe reality it certainly becomes so.)
|
| To be clear, I don't assume you set out to deceive anyone
| here or anywhere else. But I have seen the identical
| technique on occasion deliberately used to that end, and
| much more often seen people so enthralled with the
| complexity of their reasoning as to totally overlook the
| vacuity of the premises from which it proceeds - not
| always, but mostly, and certainly by all appearances
| here.
|
| This doesn't render the method totally useless; in my
| experience, people who hew strongly to it do a good if
| overly verbose and probably inadvertent job of explaining
| their own ethical judgment of the world. The trouble is,
| that's all it's any good for.
| autoexec wrote:
| No one cares that humans and wasps and beavers all change the
| landscape over time. What makes humans exceptional is that we
| can decide _how_ we change the landscape, understand the
| impacts, and can choose which impacts on nature are desirable.
| Animals don 't have the ability to really consider the impacts
| of their actions on the world around them, but we do which
| imparts onto us a higher level of responsibility.
|
| We've already poisoned every living thing and every source of
| water on the planet with toxic "forever" chemicals we created.
| They're in the rain that falls. The body of every newborn
| creature is polluted by them before they draw their first
| breath. That's just so fundamentally different from "But look
| at this ant hill" that it's hard to imagine why anyone can't
| see what sets humanity apart or would consider that difference
| to be an arbitrary distinction.
|
| We're capable of causing more harm. We're capable of
| understanding the harms that we cause in ways other animals
| simply aren't. We're also capable of deciding not to cause
| harm. We're capable of intentionally making different choices
| that can help protect and preserve the environments we live in.
| Our deliberate choices and their impacts on the world compared
| to the actions and outcomes of every other animal on the plant
| is about as far from an arbitrary distinction as it gets.
| vundercind wrote:
| > The distinction between wild or natural is completely
| arbitrary human made
|
| Well--the distinction seems perfectly natural, then.
| gspencley wrote:
| > Humans are the only animal who have the ability to destroy
| all other animals,
|
| Even that is only theoretical. Let's say that we were to wipe
| out a great amount of life on earth with a thermonuclear war or
| something, a lot of life would remain, even if we are talking
| about bacteria and other microorganisms. But even deep sea life
| that exists below a certain depth would likely remain largely
| unaffected.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| The concept of "pristine wilderness" is indeed a myth, shaped by
| Euro-American ideas of nature as something untouched by humans.
| Indigenous peoples have been actively managing and shaping
| landscapes for thousands of years, through practices like
| controlled burns, multi-cropping, and sustainable harvesting.
| However, colonial narratives of the "frontier" ignored this
| history, framing these lands as wild and uninhabited, which
| justified their conquest and later shaped early conservation
| policies.
|
| These narratives still impact our policies today. When we frame
| conservation as keeping nature "untrammeled by man," we erase
| indigenous histories and practices that have long sustained
| ecosystems. IMO, conservation efforts that aim to separate humans
| from nature often harm both, as seen in the forced removal of
| indigenous peoples from national parks. A more nuanced approach
| would recognize that human interaction with nature isn't
| inherently destructive and that indigenous stewardship offers
| valuable lessons in sustainable land management. Embracing this
| perspective could lead to more effective conservation policies
| and a healthier relationship with nature, where human presence is
| viewed as potentially harmonious rather than inherently damaging.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Pristine wilderness is not a myth, it's an ideal.
|
| It's an ideal appreciated by Europeans, but especially by
| Americans. We don't like people spreading to every single
| uninhabited nook & cranny and consuming every possible
| resource. America has a lot of uninhabited places. That's not
| an invitation for people the world over to consume and devour
| and combust and mine and destroy these places, as many of them
| have done to their own homes.
|
| You've seen the headlines plenty of times: declining
| populations of species, particularly insects, bees. The natural
| world deserves some refuge and respite from human colonization.
| We've cultivated crops and powerful technology, let's cultivate
| some wilderness too. Wild growth is beauty and temperance. It's
| saying, "I've eaten enough, that I don't need to eat this, let
| wild beauty flourish here." Do not strive to eat the world, eat
| just enough.
|
| Wilding and rewilding is an ideal.
| bombcar wrote:
| And indigenous populations were comparatively small, and
| there were vast areas they simply didn't go (or need to go).
|
| I think the wild needs the respect of Gimli toward the
| Glittering Caves - we can help it, we can improve it, but
| only slowly and carefully (partially because we don't know
| what we don't know).
| dkarl wrote:
| I feel extremely conflicted reading something like this. On one
| hand, everything you said is technically true. On the other
| hand, when I think of who benefits politically from debunking
| the myth of wildness, it's the people who want to allow
| unlimited private exploitation of public lands, log and mine
| national parks, and act like any place with rocks and trees is
| of equal value to any other place with rocks and trees.
|
| In truth, the idea of wilderness is a useful heuristic that
| simplifies incredibly complex questions about the functioning
| of ecosystems and their worth to us.
|
| Labeling it a myth is a way of destroying its value as a
| heuristic without offering any replacement, leaving people
| unable to explain and defend policies that prevent unchecked
| commercial exploitation of public lands.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Acknowledging prior indigenous use of the land doesn't
| necessarily have to lead to an undesirable free for all of as
| you say "unlimited private exploitation of public lands."
| There is another way.
|
| Recognizing Aboriginal Title of traditional lands and joint
| lands management can be a way to control and limit
| exploitative uses of lands in a way which also recognizes
| traditional (generally a lot lighter!) land uses.
| bell-cot wrote:
| @dang? This item seems to show up on the front page, as "4 hours
| ago", but also be from Sept. 9th, and "4 days ago" when you look
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com
|
| (Or does HN's Second-Chance pool go that far back?)
| bombcar wrote:
| Sounds exactly like the second change pool (which can be
| manually triggered even longer than the automatic one).
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Setting aside land and limiting or not allowing development of it
| so that it can be publicly available for enjoyment of nature or
| hunting and fishing is a laudable endeavour.
|
| Banning all human presence and use of large swaths of land, on
| the other hand, is right up there with medieval Royal forest
| laws[0] and I suspect it serves the same purpose.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest
| marssaxman wrote:
| A misleading title, of course - it cannot _be_ brought back.
| julienchastang wrote:
| In the further reading category:
|
| "Encounters with the Archdruid" by John McPhee, about David
| Brower, former director of the Sierra Club, and his advocacy for
| preserving wilderness areas "untouched" by humans.
|
| "Forests: A Very Short Introduction" by Jaboury Ghazoul, which
| explores how human presence, even in ancient times, has led to
| profound changes in landscapes for their benefit.
|
| "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by
| Charles C. Mann, which I've just started reading, hypothesizes
| that Indigenous peoples in the Americas actively transformed
| their environment to a much greater extent than previously
| believed.
|
| "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold since he is referenced in
| the article.
| fractallyte wrote:
| An equivalent book, which covers the same topic, and which I
| consider to be one of the most influential books I've ever read:
| The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon
| (https://www.jbmackinnon.ca/the-once-and-future-world)
|
| Unfortunately, the ebook version is rather difficult to buy
| outside of the US, but if you contact the author, he may be able
| to provide a copy.
|
| The part I found most haunting was what he termed 'the
| forgetting' - how, as we lose swaths of Nature, each new
| generation accepts it as normal, until we've forgotten what was
| lost.
|
| I also learned about the megafauna: giant animals that vanished
| in prehistory, coinciding with the arrival of humans to their
| habitats. Africans, Europeans, Native Americans, Australian
| Aborigines - it made no difference. Every tribe of humans wiped
| out the competition, in every continent.
|
| Highly recommended!
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I would like to see more land east of the Rockies and east of the
| Mississippi turned into protected federal land. So much of the
| western states (often more than 50% of total land area) is
| federal land.
|
| It feels like the easterners ruined their beautiful land and now
| want to tell us in the west how to live.
|
| Go spend on your own backyard and leave ours to us.
| carapace wrote:
| > In order to safeguard a sufficient number of species to protect
| global biodiversity, including humanity, the late American
| biologist, E.O. Wilson and a new generation of scientists,
| ecologists, and conservationists concluded that we must set aside
| roughly half of Earth's land and seas for nature, known as the
| principle of "Half-Earth."
|
| https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-projec...
|
| It doesn't matter if we modified the ecosystems, it's still
| imperative to establish large regions of untouched ecosystems (as
| large as possible, as untouched as possible). Humans are very
| recent in the life of the planet and there's no _a priori_ reason
| to assume that the things we do are sustainable for several
| hundred million years.
|
| The dinosaurs lasted, what?, three hundred million years? That's
| the figure to beat. Can the talking apes last longer than the big
| dumb lizards?
|
| So far most civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying
| the health of the soil. Merv was the most beautiful city in the
| world for a thousand years. Now look at it:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/CzfGxVZiTpapqCC8A It looks like Mars.
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