"If future generations
are to remember us with gratitude
rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology.
We must leave them a glimpse of the world as
it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."
-President Lyndon
B. Johnson (Upon
signing of the Wilderness Act, 1964)
hmm, my issue is not with the quote but the bit that follows. We may cynically suspect that the this act was "...for the use and enjoyment of the American people." however the quote does suggest a more profounder sense of duty and guardianship regardless of "..the use and enjoyment of the American people."...In fact the very term wild (as opposed to our national parks) does suggest to me that the American people can not 'tame' it for their enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteDamon
This phrase [or similar] .the use and enjoyment of the American people."... would be necessary to get it past the senate[or whatever body it is]. In the 90’s there was a lot of debate about the changing perception of and role of ‘Wilderness’ areas in the USA.
ReplyDeleteJohn
I do know that the Wilderness Society, of which Aldo Leopold was a founding member, did not have "the use and enjoyment of the American people." in mind, when they drafted the act. For example consider this definition of wilderness from the Act itself:
ReplyDelete“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
The act explicitly denies the American's the enjoyment of the wilderness (unless they hiked) by banning all roads. That is : "...there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act".
Some cunning lawyers have attempted to argue that any man made path (under RS2477 1866) is a road in order to get the wilderness areas declassified, as wilderness areas do not have roads. These lawyers must of been paid a huge amount of money to come up with this argument. Frankly I don't get how they are able to succeed in this, even with RS2477. Its a bit like saying that because someone is smoking in a public area, it is no longer a public area because no one is allowed to smoke in a public area....Its insane!!!!!
Why am I singing the praises of what even I must admit is a rather limited act, is because I would wish to see our National Parks meet this albeit minimal standard.
Before you refute me, I fully accept that for the act to of been passed through congress it would have had to be sold as some kind of means of ensuring "the...enjoyment of the American people." by some kind of recreational or tourist revenue type argument and that its deeper green sentiments have been diluted into merely preserving places that look nice or attract tourists or had been deemed as having no financial value anyway.
I know nothing about the shenanigans of the American lawyers and politicians, but many of the wilderness ideas and the debate about the changing perception of and role of ‘Wilderness’ areas in the USA to which I referred earlier can be found in:
ReplyDelete‘The Idea of Wilderness’, Max Oelschlaeger 1991
‘The Great New Wilderness Debate’, J. Baird Callicott 1998.
Later books dealing with the issues are:
‘The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate’ by Michael P. Nelson and J. Baird Callicott 2008;
‘American Wilderness: A New History’ Michael Lewis (Editor) 2007.