Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Why are wilderness areas under threat
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Why are wilderness areas under threat
Due to the exponential increase in human populations over the past century, many untouched wilderness have become in danger of being wiped out. It is very important that these areas are protected so as to maintain the delicate balance between nature and mankind. The above policy seems to very cogent, but it cannot work in all situations and for all nations; I therefore find this policy to be lacking in numerous areas. The policy may be felicitous to nations that are already well developed economically, but for less developed nations it may not be as germane. The policy also neglects to differentiate between different kinds of wildernesses and just speaks of wildernesses as one big subject. The policy if implemented in a nation that is well developed economically will as said earlier help to maintain the delicate balance between man and nature. However in a nation who’s economy is vestigial, some sacrifices may need to be made to stimulate economic development. It would be inexpedient for such a nation to pass up on an opportunity to make economic gains. China in the past three decades has been hailed for its continued economic progress, but China during …show more content…
The policy calls for preservation of wildernesses, this would make sense in the case of a forest, but not so much for a desert. Why would u want to preserve a desert? Many deserts are prime areas for the development of renewable energy, especially solar energy, as deserts receive huge amounts of sunlight. Many large solar power plants are currently in operation in deserts in the United States and Spain. These power plants have the effect of reducing the dependence on fossil fuels which produce greenhouse gases that may harm the environment. The policy does not take all these things into consideration and therefore great opportunities to preserve many environments may be pasted
Although Leopold’s love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.
The wild is a place to push yourself to the limit and take a look at who you truly are inside. “Wilderness areas have value as symbols of unselfishness” (Nash). Roderick Nash’s philosophy states that the wilderness gives people an opportunity to learn humility but they fight this because they do not have a true desire to be humble. Human-kind wants to give out the illusion that they are nature lovers when in reality, they are far from it. “When we go to designated wilderness we are, as the 1964 act says, "visitors" in someone else's home” (Nash). People do not like what they cannot control and nature is uncontrollable. Ecocentrism, the belief that nature is the most important element of life, is not widely accepted. The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer depicts a young boy who goes on an exploration to teach himself the true concept of humility. Chris McCandless, the protagonist, does not place confidence in the universal ideology that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, anthropocentrism.
the idea of the wild and its importance and necessity of human interaction with the wild.
Despite protecting millions of acres of wilderness, this act provided for the numerous groups of people affected by the establishment of this law. Stipulations regarding the use of protected lands by private landowners were made. People living inside the park lands were guaranteed the right to subsistence hunting and fishing, as well as the guaranteed access to their lands. This right of access is the main concern for this argument, as it is a major management issue for park officials and land owners alike.
Time and time again it has been seen that human interaction with his/her environment and it’s ecosystems has shown to be increasingly arrogant and self-serving. These endless accounts are proven by the amount of important biological diversity that is being lost to the surrounding environment due to these threats of human development and population growth. There are two forms of these losses of diversity by human hand: direct and indirect. Direct losses would be the destruction of an area needed for human requirements be it social or economical. Examples of these losses would be housing, agriculture, and others. Indirect losses would be those caused by the destruction of an area also needed for the same requirements but the area’s commodities which are valued, water, food, land in general, is needed elsewhere. These losses are few in number compared with those of direct losses yet they are of the greatest importance. They are important because they involve the removal of resources of an area in which other inhabitants are dependent upon. A great example of this regrettable indirect expansion is the loss of the rich habitat of the area known as Owens Valley.
He believes that the wilderness has helped form us and that if we allow industrialization to push through the people of our nation will have lost part of themselves; they will have lost the part of themselves that was formed by the wilderness “idea.” Once the forests are destroyed they will have nothing to look back at or to remind them of where they came from or what was, and he argues everyone need to preserve all of what we have now.
John Muir once said, “Where one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” His understanding of the connection of nature to the world would be helpful regarding today’s ethical issue of clearcutting happening in Tongass National Forest. Firstly, this practice involves completely clearing an area of trees, regardless of the shape and usability. Then, the remaining scrub and brush are just burned off which leaves smoky haze for several days. Tongues Nation Forest is considered the “crown jewel” of America’s forest because it is the home to 800 years old trees, black and brown bears, wolves, bald eagles, Sitka black-tailed deer, moose, humpback, whales, orcas, sea otters, Steller sea lions. However, Sealaska, the largest private land owner in the Southeast Alaska wants to invade the forest through clear cut logging.Clearcutting or clearfelling can have serious environmental impacts. Abrupt removal of shady shield trees will
Unmanaged or poorly managed use of pastures can led to damage of ecosystems. The current practice of changing forest into pasture lands is causing considerable damage. The Maasai of East Africa provide us with an example of properly managed pastures. The Maasai burn brush to create pasture land, when the herd must be moved so that the pasture can regain its strength, other animals such as deer and small wild pigs enter the fallow fields, thus creating another resource of food for them. The governments of Kenya and Tanzania took about 75% of the Maasai lands to use for tourism. The land soon began to grow over and the brush took over. The large game that the government was counting on to create revenue from the tourists began to leave to find more suitable land. The governments are slowly giving the Maasai people their land back in hope that their properly managed pastures can bring the large game back.
A population control method that has achieve environmental sustainability is China’s one-child-policy which was incorporated into Chinese society in 1990 which made is compulsory that mothers only have one child. The policy was incorporated because the government realized that if birth rates stayed the same, as they were pre-1990, then the country would head into famine. The policy resulted in 400 million fewer births and averted the famine. The population policy that the Chinese took on did achieve environmental sustainability because as China develops economically, their population will require a larger ecological footprint; and with one tenth of china’s 120 million hectares of arable land contaminated, the reduction of population benefited the country environmentally and led to slower and more sustainable development. Economists have viewed the one-child policy, as a necessary regulation to control what was China’s exponential population growth, which helped relieve resource scarcity, water supply, renewable energy sources, and environmental pollution.
In Thinking Like a Mountain, the author, Aldo Leopold, writes of the importance of wildlife preservation through examples of the symbiotic relationship of animals and plant-life with a mountain. He asks the reader to perceive the processes of a mountainous environment in an unusual way. Aldo Leopold wants the reader to "think" like a mountain instead of thinking of only the immediate, or as the hunter did. Taking away one feature of an ecosystem may eventually destroy everything else that that environment is composed of. Nature and wildness is essential for the well being of life on this earth.
The majority of this piece is dedicated to the author stating his opinion in regards to civilization expanding beyond its sustainable limits. The author makes it clear that he believes that humans have failed the natural environment and are in the process of eliminating all traces of wilderness from the planet. Nash points out facts that strengthen his argument, and quotes famous theologians on their similar views on environmental issues and policies. The combination of these facts and quotes validates the author’s opinion.
Many years ago, people saw the wilderness as a savage wasteland, but today, it is viewed as “the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” (Cronon) He discusses this changed point of view by stating the difficulties that society will have rectifying environmental ailments if it stops viewing wilderness as “a dualistic picture in which the human is completely outside the nature.” (Cronon) This is understandable because humans rely on others to create opinions, and they do not know how to form their own thoughts and solutions to issues such as environmental ones. Therefore, it is with great importance that humans begin to learn how to formulate their own thoughts and share those personal thoughts with others, such as sharing solutions about environmental
Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
Described by Simmons (1974) protected landscape is a non-consumptive resource: the crop is of a visual nature and when this has been taken in by the consumer; the source remains the same and it is the aim of the management to perpetuate this attribute. It is the duty of the NPAs (and their governing body ANPA) to promote methods of sustainable development, which is commonly achieved by each NPA having a ‘balanced membership’, consisting of local people and those representing the national interest by virtue of their individual knowl...
Leopold defends his position the advent of a new ethical development, one that deals with humans’ relations to the land and its necessity. This relationship is defined as the land ethic, this concept holds to a central component referred to as the ecological consciousness. The ecological consciousness is not a vague ideal, but one that is not recognized in modern society. It reflects a certainty of individual responsibility for the health and preservation of the land upon which we live, and all of its components. If the health of the land is upheld, its capacity of self-renewal and regeneration is maintained as well. To date, conservation has been our sole effort to understand and preserve this capacity. Leopold holds that if the mainstream embraces his ideals of a land ethic and an ecological consciousness, the beauty, stability and integrity of our world will be preserved.