International Journal of Wilderness: Volume 20, No 2, August 2014 by WILD Foundation

The WILD Foundation 717 Poplar Avenue Boulder, CO 80304 USA www . wild . org

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PAID Boulder, CO Permit No. 63

For Wilderness Worldwide www . ijw . org

Sponsoring Organizations Conservation International Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry The WILD 速 Foundation The Wilderness Society University of Montana, College of Forestry and Conservation and Wilderness Institute USDA Forest Service USDI Bureau of Land Management USDI Fish and Wildlife Service USDI National Park Service Wilderness Foundation (South Africa) Wilderness Foundation (UK) Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa) Wilderness Specialist Group (WCPA/IUCN)

Wilderness Science Perspective Wilderness Social Science Wilderness Fire Science Wilderness Economics

For the young conservationists in your family John Muir • Rachael Carson • Henry David Thoreau

Alaska’s Rugged Coast

Images of Conservationists series

Michael McBride

Illustrated by award-winning children’s book artist

“A captivating account of decades in the Alaska wilderness as Michael and Diana McBride literally respond to the “call of the wild”….destined to be not just an Alaskan classic but one of nature and wilderness writ large. A must for any Nature bookshelf.” —Tom Lovejoy, Founder of the Public Television series NATURE

7.95 US

6 pages • $2 over • 6 x 9 • 25

Hardc

Hudson

Rachel Carson

John Muir

Walking with Henry

The Story of a River

Preserving a Sense of Wonder

America’s Naturalist

Thomas Locker and Robert C. Baron

Thomas Locker and Joseph Bruchac

Thomas Locker

Based on the Life and Works of Henry David Thoreau

Also in Spanish ! Felipe the Flamingo Felipe, a young flamingo, is left behind when his flock migrates to find more food. As he awaits his parents he learns many life lessons. 101/2 x 71/2 • 32 pages • full-color illustrations • HC $12.95 PB version in Spanish $9.95

Sand to Stone and Back Again Nancy Bo Flood Photos by Tony Kuyper

in wilderness isolation. In the face of incredible hardships, the McBrides not only carried out their vision, but in the process built the world renowned Kachemak Bay

Alphabet Kingdom Lauren A. Parent Illustrated by mo mcgee This animal-centered alphabet book, offers an abundance of images and subtle surprises on every page. 10 x 10 • 40 pages • full-color illustrations • PB $8.95

The Journey of Wildlife and Art

A few copies of the Limited Edition are still available Hardcover, 10 x 9, 260 pages, color photos, $35us

“Boyd Norton has captured the magic of this ancient and majestic ecosystem. Through superb and deeply sensitive photographs and compelling accounts of his experiences there, he introduces its animals and people. Serengeti is profoundly moving—you will understand why it is so important to preserve this place for generations to come.”

Jane Goodall

founder, the Jane Goodall Institute and UN messenger of peace

Wildlife art of the vast region between Yellowstone National Park and the Arctic Circle

150 years of artistic genius

Tales from Native North America Gayle Ross and Joseph Bruchac This collection of traditional stories explores the significance of a young girl’s rite of passage into womanhood. Each of these stories originated in the oral tradition and have been carefully researched. Joseph Bruchac, author of the best-selling Keeper’s of the Earth series, and noted storyteller, has been entrusted with stories from elders of other native nations which ensures that the stories collected in this book are authentic. 6 x 9 • 128 pages • PB $9.95

A beautiful combination of photographs, drawings, and text illustrates the life cycle of sandstone in the landscape of the desert Southwest. Written for ages 4 and up. 81/2 x 81/2 • 32 pages • full-color photos • PB $9.95

Flying with the Eagle, Racing the Great Bear Tales from Native North America Joseph Bruchac In this collection of Native American coming-of-age tales, young men face great enemies, find the strength and endurance within themselves to succeed, and take their place by the side of their elders. Joseph Bruchac is the award-winning author of books for children and adults. 6 x 9 • 128 pages • PB $10.95

Gas Trees and Car Turds A Kids’ Guide to the Roots of Global Warming Kirk Johnson and Mary Ann Bonnell This colorfully illustrated book makes carbon dioxide, an invisible odorless gas responsible for global warming and plant growth, into something that can be imagined and understood by children. 7 x 10 • 40 pages • full-color illustrations • PB $9.95

Hardcover, 9 x 10.5, 144 pages color photos, $35us

This lavishly illustrated book celebrates 150 years of artistic genius and describes how art has played a central role in providing the inspiration to protect and conserve nature in one of the world’s best loved mountain regions, the Northern Rocky Mountains.

America’s Ecosystem series

Sue Hart Illustrated by Chris Harvey Children of all ages love these wonderful tales of the African bush. A timeless collection of memorable stories centered on lovable characters. 71/2 x 101/2 • 96 pages • full-color illustrations • PB $16.95

Things Natural, Wild, and Free The Life of Aldo Leopold Marybeth Lorbiecki Adventure—as a child Aldo Leopold was always loking for it as he wandered over the bluffs along the Mississippi with his dog, Spud. This led Leopold to become a forester, wildlife scientist, author, and one of the most important conservationists in history. Award-winning author Marybeth Loribiecki brings Leopold to life in this vivid new biography. Featuring resource and activity sections, a time line, a bibliography, and historic black-and-white photographs. 7 x 9 • 112 pages • PB $12.95

Parks for the People The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted Julie Dunlap Growing up on a Connecticut farm in the 1800s, Frederick Olmsted loved roaming the outdoors. A contest to design the nation’s first city park opened new doors for Olmsted when his winning design became New York’s Central Park, just one of Olmsted’s ideas that changed our nation’s cities. Award-winning author Julie Dunlap brings Olmsted to life in this memorable biography, featuring resource and activity sections, a time line, and a bibliography, as well as blackand-white historical photographs. 7 x 9 • 112 pages • PB $12.95

Each book is 9 x 9 • 48 pages • full-color illustrations maps and glossary • PB $11.95

A series of six books, each exploring a different biome, its plants, and its animals

To order or to learn more about other titles at Fulcrum Publishing, visit: 4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100 • Golden, Colorado USA 80403 Phone: +1 303-277-1623 • Fax: 303-279-7111

Tales of the Full Moon

Each book is 11 x 81/2 • 32 pages full-color illustrations • HC $17.95 Conservation Adventures series

The Girl Who Married the Moon

Jill Ker Conway,Illustrated by Lokken Millis

A remarkable story of pursuing a dream of living close to the land and raising a family

Wilderness Lodge that has become a model for eco-tourism everywhere.

Thomas Locker

To order or to learn more about other titles at Fulcrum Publishing, visit: 4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100 • Golden, Colorado USA 80403 Phone: +1 303-277-1623 • Fax: 303-279-7111

Journal of Wilderness

AUGUST 2014

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 2

FEATURES

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 36 Fifty Years of Wilderness Science

Editorial Perspective

An International Perspective

3 Take a Scientist to the Sauna!

BY STEVE CARVER, STEVE McCOOL, ZDENKA KRENOVA, MARK FISHER, and STEPHEN WOODLEY

A Great Way to Keep Science and Stewardship Working Together for Another 50 Years BY ALAN E. WATSON and H. KEN CORDELL

Soul of the Wilderness

4 Make the World a Wilder Place

WILD10, the 10th World Wilderness Congress Salamanca, Spain, 2013 BY VANCE G. MARTIN and MELANIE HILL

WILDERNESS DIGEST 43 Announcements

46 Book Reviews

46 International Handbook on Ecotourism EDITED BY ROY BALLANTYNE and JAN PACKER Reviewed by John Shultis

SCIENCE & RESEARCH 8 Wilderness Science

47 Nature’s Saviours: Celebrity Conservationists in the Television Age

A Historical Perspective

BY GRAHAM HUGGAN Reviewed By John Shultis

BY DAVID N. COLE

14 Wilderness Social Science

Responding to Change in Society, Policy, and the Environment

On the Cover

BY ALAN E. WATSON and H. KEN CORDELL

Main image:

20 The Contribution of Natural Fire Management to Wilderness Fire Science

Sunset at Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park,

BY CAROL MILLER

Utah, USA.

26 Valuing Values

Inset image:

A History of Wilderness Economics

An early spring thaw makes for a perfect after-

BY J. M. BOWKER, H. KEN CORDELL, and NEELAM C. POUDYAL

noon hiking opportunity and chance to recharge in Colorado’s Roosevelt National Forest outside Fort

Perspectives from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute

Collins, Colorado, USA. Photos © and courtesy of

34 The Wildland Research Institute

Morgan Heim, www.morganheim.com

BY STEVE CARVER, MARK FISHER, and ALISON PARFITT

Disclaimer The Soul of the Wilderness column and all invited and featured articles in IJW, are a forum for controversial, inspiring, or especially informative articles to renew thinking and dialogue among our readers. The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors. IJW neither endorses nor rejects them, but invites comments from our readers. —John C. Hendee, IJW Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

International Journal of Wilderness

International Journal of Wilderness The International Journal of Wilderness links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interested citizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management, and allocation strategies; education; and research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship. EDITORIAL BOARD H. Ken Cordell, Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, Athens, Ga., USA Lisa Eidson, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USA Greg Kroll, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Vance G. Martin, WILD Foundation, Boulder, Colo., USA Rebecca Oreskes, White Mountain National Forest, Gorham, N.H., USA John Shultis, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, B.C., Canada Alan Watson, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont., USA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Chad P. Dawson, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, N.Y., USA C0-Managing Editors Chad P. Dawson, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, N.Y., USA and Robert Dvorak, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Mich., USA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS John C. Hendee, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho, USA ASSOCIATE EDITORS—International Andrew Muir, Wilderness Foundation Eastern Cape, South Africa; Karen Ross, The Wilderness Foundation, Capetown, South Africa; Vicki A. M. Sahanatien, World Wildlife Fund, Minarut, Canada; Tina Tin, Consultant, Challes-les-Eaux, France; Anna-Liisa Ylisirniö, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland; Franco Zunino, Associazione Italiana per la Wilderness, Murialdo, Italy. ASSOCIATE EDITORS—United States Greg Aplet, The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colo.; James Barborak, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.; David Cole, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont.; John Daigle, University of Maine, Orono, Maine; Joseph Flood, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minn.; Greg Friese, Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC, Plover, Wisc.; Gary Green, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.; Kari Gunderson, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont.; Dave Harmon, Bureau of Land Management, Washington, D.C.; Bill Hendricks, CalPoly, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Cyril Kormos, The WILD Foundation, Berkeley, Calif.; Ed Krumpe, University of Idaho, Moscow, Id.; Yu-Fai Leung, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.; Bob Manning, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; Jeffrey Marion, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Christopher Monz, Utah State University, Logan, Ut.; Connie Myers, Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, Missoula, Mont.; David Ostergren, Goshen College, Wolf Lake, In.; Trista Patterson, USFS, Sitka, Alas.; John Peden, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Ga.; Kevin Proescholdt, Wilderness Watch, Minneapolis, Minn.; Joe Roggenbuck, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Keith Russell, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Wash.; Rudy Schuster, USGS, Fort Collins, Colo. International Journal of Wilderness (IJW) publishes three issues per year (April, August, and December). IJW is a not-for-profit publication. Manuscripts to: Chad P. Dawson, SUNY-ESF, 320 Bray Hall, One Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA. Telephone: (315) 470-6567. Fax: (315) 470-6535. E-mail: cpdawson@esf.edu. Business Management and Subscriptions: The WILD Foundation, 717 Poplar Ave., Boulder, CO 80304, USA. Telephone: (303) 442-8811. Fax: (303) 442-8877. E-mail: info@wild.org. Subscription rates (per volume calendar year): Subscription costs are in U.S. dollars only—Online access $35; online access and printed journal $50; online access and printed journal (Canada and Mexico) $62; online access and printed journal (international) $74. We do not offer an agency discount price. No refunds. All materials printed in the International Journal of Wilderness, copyright © 2014 by the International Wilderness Leadership (WILD) Foundation. Individuals, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to make fair use of material from the journal. ISSN # 1086-5519.

Submissions: Contributions pertinent to wilderness worldwide are solicited, including articles on wilderness planning, management, and allocation strategies; wilderness education, including descriptions of key programs using wilderness for personal growth, therapy, and environmental education; wilderness-related science and research from all disciplines addressing physical, biological, and social aspects of wilderness; and international perspectives describing wilderness worldwide. Articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, photos, book reviews, announcements, and information for the wilderness digest are encouraged. A complete list of manuscript submission guidelines is availablefrom the website: www.ijw.org. Artwork: Submission of artwork and photographs with captions are encouraged. Photo credits will appear in a byline; artwork may be signed by the author. Website: www.ijw.org. Printed on recycled paper.

SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute • Conservation International • SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry • The WILD® Foundation • The Wilderness Society • University of Montana, School of Forestry and Wilderness Institute • USDA Forest Service • USDI Bureau of Land Management • USDI Fish and Wildlife Service • USDI National Park Service • Wilderness Foundation (South Africa) • Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa)

FEATURES E d i t o r ia l P e r spe c t i v es

Take a Scientist to the Sauna! A Great Way to Keep Science and Stewardship Working Together for Another 50 Years ALAN E. WATSON and H. KEN CORDELL

t a workshop in Oulanka National Park in Finland, shortly after the Finnish Wilderness Act had passed in 1991, managers and scientists wrestled with how to incorporate science into protection of wildlands of northern Finland. One working group was assigned to develop a list of “why managers don’t apply the information scientists provide” and another group worked up an impressive list of “why scientists don’t produce the information managers need.” A third group was assigned the task of explaining why “sometimes scientific information is valuable, even if it has no immediate management application.” From this session, it became clear that there was little previously shared knowledge about differences in organization process (organization hierarchies are different, and scientists and managers do different things to identify priorities and move up in their hierarchies), evaluation procedures are different (scientists are often evaluated by a panel of scientists on scientific contribution, managers by their immediate supervisors on accomplishment of management tasks), and even some lack of trust across these boundaries (if I don’t understand your motivation or how you are evaluated, your science must be aimed at someone else; if I don’t understand your motivation or how you are evaluated, your management decisions probably don’t consider the science). In the end everyone shared from new understanding of each other. And, in typical Finnish tradition, the most promising solution that came to the top of proposals was that managers more often take the opportunity to invite scientists to the sauna, a holy place in Finnish culture, where the participants take time to think, talk, reflect, build trust, and cleanse themselves and relationships. This issue of the International Journal of Wilderness isn’t exactly a good substitute for all of us sharing time

in the sauna, but it is aimed at giving scientists an opportunity to share with managers and other scientists their understanding of what has driven the science intended to help managers with their decisions during the past 50 years. For instance, David Cole, scientist emeritus of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, in telling his story of wilderness science over time suggests that it has contributed most in the areas of recreation and fire management, but it has lost some of the focus and collaborative spirit that existed in its first couple decades. Reestablishing that focus and collaborative spirit may be very important to wilderness protection. Alan Watson and Ken Cordell strongly attribute changes in wilderness social science to changes in the questions asked by managers due to changes in society, technology, and public use patterns. All of these things will certainly continue to change into the future. In this issue, Carol Miller also explains how a history of natural fire management contributed a great deal of knowledge to wilderness fire science and the social science surrounding public response to natural fire programs. And through Mike Bowker and others’ explanation of the development of wilderness economics, we may also develop new appreciation for the many components of wilderness that the public values, and that is maybe more important than the total value estimate itself. Wilderness as we know it is often thought of as an American ideal. Scientists from the UK, the United States, the Czech Republic, and Canada, in this issue, however, suggest that in Europe there is the perception that the wilderness idea is really attributable to European influences on our society, and now they are ready to reimport the concept to the European landscape. They readily acknowledge the many benefits afforded by the long history of wilderness

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

Continued on page 13

International Journal of Wilderness

FEATURES S o u l o f t h e W i l d e r n ess

Make the World a Wilder Place WILD10, the 10th World Wilderness Congress Salamanca, Spain, 2013 BY VANCE G. MARTIN and MELANIE HILL

Background The World Wilderness Congress (WWC) was initiated in South Africa in 1977 and has since become a global process occurring approximately every three or four years in a different region. It is the world’s longest-running, international public environmental program. A project of The WILD Foundation and its colleagues in The Wilderness Network (Wilderness Foundations in the UK and Africa), with many hundreds of collaborators and partners, the WWC focuses on the interface between human society and wild nature – defined broadly as wildlands and seas, including designated wilderness. Intensive collaboration over two years leads to an actual gathering (Congress of Delegates) and involves science, policy, communications, the arts, and humanities, boasting delegates and leaders from governments, the private sector, communities, civil society, and the public. It produces positive and practical solutions that protect wild nature and address the needs of human communities, and it helps inspire the passion and commitment required to create a new relationship between nature and people.

WILD10 The WILD10 collaborative process was endorsed by Spain’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Environment, and its honorary president was Queen Sofia of Spain. It surpassed all of its conservation goals during a very challenging time of economic collapse in Spain and financial recession in the eurozone. The planning was coordinated over two years by an Executive Committee, an international secretariat at The WILD Foundation offices in the United States, and a small team of professionals and volunteers in Spain (headed by Executive Director Maria Feduchi), plus scores of partners from around the world. 4 International Journal of Wilderness

Figure 1 – Salamanca, Spain, during WILD10. Photo by Melanie Hill.

The Congress itself involved more than 1,100 delegates from more than 65 nations – conservationists, scientists, government officials, Indigenous leaders, artists, and others – with many additional participants from the general public in Spain. It convened in the medieval city center of Salamanca, Spain (October 2013) to explore, debate, connect, and forge partnerships and implement targeted actions to value and protect wild nature around the world, and to protect its benefits for human society (see Figure 1). They were joined by approximately 25,000 people from 85 countries who followed the proceedings online. The Global Intergovernmental Forum on Wilderness met for two days prior to the plenary opening of WILD10. At wild10.org, a full archive of videos, presentations, outcomes, resolutions, and images is available, plus an upbeat, three-minute summary video. The WILD10 communications and media program – led by Mar Ramirez (Spain) and Karl Wagner (Austria) – was structured around our bilingual (English/Spanish) websites and social media platforms, and extensive on-site media pool during the congress. Prior to the congress, the program focused on informing and uniting delegates

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

located throughout the world on the key points of the congress by way of monthly/biweekly newsletters, numerous interactive web platforms, and daily social media posts. People who were not able to join us in person at WILD10 were able to follow along with the presentations and festivities through our “WILD10 Live/ en Vivo” video stream, live tweeting, and daily Facebook posts. Our messaging proved effective both for delegates in Salamanca and individuals following from abroad. Because of our live video streaming, multiple followers from afar joined in on the live tweeting! In addition to our communications updates, we urged followers to share their WILD10 experience with us by posting images, videos, inspirational quotes, memorable moments, and more with the common hashtag #WILD10. As part of the communications and media program, and to demonstrate commitment to the purposes of WILD10, several groups of hikers walked long distances across Europe and Spain to arrive in Salamanca the day before WILD10 convened. In addition to the 45 youth leaders from eastern Europe who walked from Madrid to Salamanca (400 km/249 miles, organized by Nathan Spees of WWF Austria), Lisa Klimek and her dog, Jala, trekked from Austria, and Geoff Dalglish of South Africa hiked from Geneva, Switzerland, to Salamanca – more than 2,500 km (1,553 miles) – on the Trail to Salamanca. “WILD10 occurred at a very appropriate time in European and global history. We know the problems; the focus now needs to be on solutions,” said Magnus Sylven (co-chair of WILD10 with Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente and Vance G. Martin). Sylven continued, “Not only has WILD10 produced good

Figure 2 – WILD10 opening ceremony. Photo by Jaime Rojo.

conservation outcomes, practical and realistic, we’ve generated a sense of hope, inspiration and cooperation – the very elements that our world needs to have a new relationship with nature and between nations.”

Global Gathering Many new initiatives developed as part of the WILD10 collaborative planning process were officially launched from the Global Gathering (plenary) platform (see Figure 2), which was then followed by the Global Forum (working sessions). WILD10 issued two major policy initiatives: 1. The Statement from Salamanca – endorsed by 10 of the leading global conservation organizations and now being communicated directly to international development institutions and environmental organizations – emphasizes that wild nature is essential to human health and prosperity by providing critical “services” such as fresh water, clean air, and biodiversity; and supporting sustainable AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

livelihoods, culture, identity, and spiritual well-being. It calls for “changing the development paradigm that regards nature as a storehouse to be looted for shortterm gain, to one that integrates a new imperative to protect the life-supporting services – and the beauty, mystery and magic – of wild nature.” The Statement calls for actions to reverse major threats to a healthy planet, such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, climate change, population growth, ocean acidification, warming, and overfishing. It includes 10 solution-oriented and specific recommendations. 2. “A Vision for a Wilder Europe” – the result of 18 months of thorough research and debate among a group of 15 leading European experts, has been endorsed by leading conservation organizations. Backed by a 17-page technical paper, the 3-page summary contains an action agenda for how a wilder (and healthier, more prosperous) Europe could be a reality by 2023. International Journal of Wilderness

Connected to this “Vision for a Wilder Europe” and a major focus of the first day of WILD10 was the comeback of selected species of wildlife across Europe due to developing and implementing better conservation policies and programs, depopulation of rural areas by people moving from the country to the city, and better regulated hunting. The findings of a special study done by the Zoological Society of London and Birdlife International (commissioned by Rewilding Europe), “Wildlife Comeback in Europe,” were summarized in plenary session. Both of these reports and their recommendations were presented in person to senior representatives of the European Union, Council of Europe, and the World Commission on Protected Areas/IUCN. The voice and action of WILD10 delegates – individual experts, agencies, and organizations – were expressed as they debated and adopted 33 plenary Resolutions recommending positive, solution-oriented actions on local, regional, and international conservation concerns. The Rewilding Europe initiative, which aims to rewild 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres) of land by 2020, increased their program by 100% at WILD10 by targeting a total of 10 wildlife and wilderness areas of international quality for re-creating wild nature for better environmental quality, to stimulate local economies, and to create new opportunities for experiencing and gaining benefit from a healthy resource of wilderness on land and sea. They also announced a new rewilding partnership community to further strengthen their ambitious and important goals. In a special meeting of leading global experts, the essential and 6

International Journal of Wilderness

unique role of primary forests of all types – temperate, boreal, and tropical – was reviewed and reaffirmed, and a strategy was created to more effectively advance their protection for the benefit of a healthier and wilder planet. Two other initiatives were officially launched on Day Three of the Global Gathering: 1. Conservation Capital, the private investment fund for conservation-related projects, detailed the basis for such activity in Europe and announced formation of a new Conservation Fund for Europe geared toward attracting private investors and aligning their funds with projects that increase conservation results across Europe, while also creating return on investment for investors. 2. Miquel Rafa of the Fundación Catalunya-la Pedrera (the largest private landowner in Catalonia, Spain) announced the formation of the European Landowners Alliance for Wild Nature, a continent-wide network of private landowners to support and inspire each other in ways to strategically manage their landholdings to enhance biodiversity and other conservation values.

Global Forum Following the Global Gathering of plenary sessions, about 125 workshops, technical sessions, and roundtable discussions comprised the Global Forum (October 8–10, 2013). This complex and substance-rich array of working sessions involved more than 500 presenters during three days, organized into 17 program areas. According to Julie Anton AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

Randall (Global Forum manager and vice president for programs, The WILD Foundation), “The Global Forum produced lasting networks and new initiatives – recognizing ‘what nature needs’ in the context of human livelihoods, values, and culture.” A full report on all Global Forum sessions is available. Science & Stewardship Symposium (S&SS) sessions confirmed how scientists and other engaged parties are scaling up research on the global impacts of climate change on wilderness and on the importance of intact wild areas on land and sea to mitigate climate change. “Wilderness is our baseline, and ideal for researching and monitoring impacts as it is least affected by other influences,” said S&SS coordinator Dr. Alan Watson of the Leopold Wilderness Research Institute . The Indigenous and Community Lands and Seas (ICLS) Forum advanced a vision for conservation that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples to protect and sustain wild nature according to their own biocultural diversity and values of local community stewardship. Responding to the dramatic increase the past decade in mining and other destructive extractive activity – notably in protected areas, World Heritage Sites, and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas and Territories, often taking place in defiance of national and international law – the ICLS called for “No-Go Areas” for mining in order to protect these wildlands and the local cultures dependent on them. Change-making youth and rising leaders launched CoalitionWILD (see Figure 3), forging a community and platform for vision, new voices, communication outreach, and practical projects to “Make the World

sentations, trainings, and planning in the area of conservation communications. The International League of Conservation Writers hosted a series of training sessions that were standing room only. Baba Brinkman, the Canadian rap artist, produced the song “GoWILD!” especially for WILD10, funded Figure 3 – Coalition WILD at WILD10 session. Photo by Jaime Rojo. by The WILD Foundation. Other WILD10 cultural events – such as flamenco a Wilder Place.” Sanctuary Asia fusion by Raúl Cobo, the music of founder and president Bittu Sahgal David Rothenberg, artworks, film remarked, festival, a “video shorts festival” shown outdoors in the Plaza, a youthWe were born of the wilderness, driven flash-mob “howl-in,” and tree and though our generation planting – drew crowds throughout seems to have lost its way and is Salamanca. remorselessly attacking the very A tradition of the WWC is to source of life, nature ... a vibrant leave the host community a gift. The new generation is determined to Executive Committee selected, and ‘right every wrong.’ With nature’s The WILD Foundation funded, Boa self-repair systems on their side it Mistura, the urban art collective from looks increasingly like the larger Madrid, to paint for the entire week CoalitionWILD will end up not of the Congress and to finalize and merely re-wilding the world, but, in the process, finding the soul we lost while pillaging our only home.

Emphasizing a maxim of the WWC and The WILD Foundation that “culture is an important part of the conservation solution,” numerous artists such as Asher Jay (United States), Richard Green (Australia), and Beatriz Padilla (Mexico) presented their works and how they are used to advanced specific conservation agendas. The International League of Conservation Photographers convened some of the world’s top conservation photographers and filmmakers at the WiLDSpeak Forum – three days of dynamic pre-

Figure 4 – Mural painted by Boa Mistura in Salamanca, Spain, during WILD10. Photo by Melanie Hill.

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

present a gift from WILD10 to the people of Salamanca – a 27-meterhigh (90 foot) mural/wall painting in the middle of downtown Salamanca (see Figure 4). WILD10 programs often integrated the Nature Needs Half (NNH) vision launched at WILD9 (Mexico, 2009) to protect and interconnect at least half of the planet. Referred to as a common-sense vision and sciencebased practice of a new relationship between human society and wild nature, NNH principles show that intact natural areas must comprise at least half of the land and sea, and be connected, for both people and planet to be healthy and prosperous. WILD10 was the official launch of the WILD Cities Project, a new concept of urbanism where wild nature is highly valued space, and its conservation a conscious part of human life in cities worldwide. The WILD Cities Collaborative brings together a diverse group of leaders representing cities from all over the world and identifying successful urban initiatives that are aligned with the principles of NNH. This collaborative will work together to formulate common criteria for defining WILD Cities parameters and international guidelines for city planning, and create effective strategies for communicating to the general public that there is space for nature in modern cities. The new Nature Strategy for Sustainability concept launched at WILD10 bridged the international conservation and development sectors toward forging an understanding, common goal, and action plans to alleviate human suffering, enhance human security, and enable economic prosperity while prioritizing the protection of wild nature. Continued on page 48

International Journal of Wilderness

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Wilderness Science A Historical Perspective BY DAVID N. COLE

ilderness is a relatively new and powerful idea that is still finding its footing in the world of science. Although the intellectual history of wilderness can be traced farther back in time (Nash 2001), as a land classification wilderness is less than a century old, and it was just 50 years ago that wilderness was codified in legislation in the United States. While much of the attention over the past 50 years has been given to the growth and development of the National Wilderness Preservation System and the issue of how much and which lands should be protected as wilderness, it is clear that wilderness must be managed and that sound management should be built on a foundation of wilderness science. Without stewardship and management, wilderness designation will not necessarily result in wilderness protection. And without science, management is little more than trial and error, varying with the worldviews and beliefs of whoever happens to have management responsibility at any point in time. Therefore, wilderness science is critical to the success of the wilderness idea. The importance of science to the protection of wilderness values will only increase with time, as the contrast between wilderness and developed lands widens, as the diversity of wilderness values expands, and as the threats to those values intensify.

Antecedents of Wilderness Science Although systematic wilderness science is only about as old as the Wilderness Act, there were some important antecedents to wilderness research. In the biological sciences, there has long been a tradition of research into the ecology of natural systems and landscapes, often using study sites that were eventually designated as wilderness. In fact, at the same time The Wilderness Society was working to establish, define, and promote the concept of wilderness, largely for its primitive recreational values, a committee within the Ecological Society of America was working to establish a system of natural areas, 8 International Journal of Wilderness

representative of all major ecosystem types that would be preserved for study (Sutter 2002). Also in this vein, in the late 1920s, the National Park Service instituted a number of studies of wildlife relationships in the national parks, either broad faunal surveys (Wright et al. 1933) David Cole: Photo by Liese Dean. or studies of individual species, such as the wolves of what is now Denali National Park (Murie 1944). Although the focus of this research was primarily on developing a basic understanding of natural systems, it provided a foundation for more applied work on mitigating threats to the wilderness values of such systems. Basic and applied ecological studies continue to be conducted in wilderness by both federal scientists and academics; however, the focus is typically management of the plants, animals, and ecosystems being studied â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not management of wilderness. One of the threats to wilderness values that has been widely studied for many years is fire and its management. Although research originally focused largely on damage caused by fire and how to improve fire suppression techniques, there were also early challenges to the notion that all fires are bad (Harper 1913). By the 1960s, research had shown that in many forests, frequent low-intensity fires were critical to ecosystem function (Kilgore 1987). The advent of recreation research in the 1960s contributed significantly to the development of wilderness science. Early development was largely spurred by recognition within the Forest Service that burgeoning recreational use of public lands needed to be managed scientifically and that to do so, a discipline of recreation science needed to be developed and stimulated. To do this, Forest Service Research created a recreation research

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program, starting in 1958, which included placing recreation scientists at five universities, where they could develop curricula, conduct recreation research, and teach and advise students to become recreation scientists (Camp 1983). By 1962, there were 20 scientists working full-time in forest recreation research, probably five to six times as many as remain working today. These scientists and others that followed conducted much of the seminal early work in recreation, with international repercussions.

Toward Systematic Wilderness Science To a substantial degree the catalyst for systematic wilderness science came from within Forest Service recreation research. In the late 1950s, the Lake States Forest Experiment Station cosponsored research in the Boundary Water Canoe Area, Minnesota – the first study of wilderness visitors and their experiences (Taves et al. 1960). At the same time, Bob Lucas, a graduate student in geography at the University of Minnesota, began his dissertation work on visitors, their perceptions of wilderness, and the carrying capacity of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The Lake States Station subsequently hired Lucas in 1960 to lead their recreation research program. Several of the earliest publications from that program came from Lucas’s dissertation work (Lucas 1964a, b). Although the mission of that program was broad, much of the research was focused on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, not because the Boundary Waters was wilderness but because it was among the most unique and valued recreation resources in the forests of the north-central United States. With passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, however, interest

in studying wilderness – because it was wilderness – increased. Again, leadership came from Forest Service Research, which decided to charter, in 1967, a Wilderness Management Research Unit. The unit was located in Missoula, Montana, as a field office of the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, with Bob Lucas as project leader. As noted above, there were a few other studies conducted in or about wilderness at this time, but this work was neither systematic nor cumulative. With the creation of the Wilderness Management Research Unit, for the first time scientists were able to devote a career to wilderness science. Forest Service wilderness scientists could pick research projects strategically, replicate studies in different places to test the generalizability of findings, and establish long-term longitudinal studies. They could devise research programs from which knowledge could build cumulatively, collaborate with other scientists, and sponsor the work of other scientists, who thereby were encouraged to do long-term, cumulative research. Of particular importance, they could synthesize results; advance concepts, principles, and frameworks; and apply these to improved wilderness management. One myth about Forest Service wilderness research – and about wilderness management generally – is that it has been focused exclusively on recreation issues. This is not true. Bob Lucas’s initial staffing at the Lake States included Dr. Miron Heinselman, who conducted pioneering wilderness fire ecology work in the Boundary Waters (Heinselman 1973), as well as ecological scientists who studied the native vegetation of the Boundary Waters (Ohmann and Ream 1971). In developing the research agenda AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

for the new Wilderness Management Unit, Lucas continued to support fire ecology research, research on wilderness vegetation, and wildlife and wilderness economics. However, since economists, fire, vegetation, and wildlife scientists were plentiful both within Forest Service research and academia, and recreation science was sparse, Lucas’s initial hire was another geographer, George Stankey, a social scientist who could work on recreation issues. The initial agenda for in-house work included studies designed to (1) better measure wilderness use; (2) understand wilderness visitors, their experiences, their attitudes, and their preferences; and (3) explore ways to manage wilderness within its carrying capacity.

Early Wilderness Visitor Science The three most prominent themes of early wilderness science involved research on wilderness visitors, recreational impacts on the environment, and fire ecology. Prior to establishment of the Wilderness Management Research Unit, as noted earlier, several studies of visitors to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area had been conducted. In addition, in 1960, visitor surveys were conducted, under the auspices of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, in seven “wildernesses”: Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks, Great Smoky Mountains, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, YellowstoneTeton, Bob Marshall, Gila, and High Sierra (Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission 1962). The other studies conducted in the early 1960s were a 1962 study of social characteristics of camping groups in the Three Sisters (Burch 1966; Burch and Wenger 1967); a 1964 study of visitors to the Bob Marshall, International Journal of Wilderness

Early Wilderness Recreation Ecology

Figure 1 – A Forest Service interviewer collects information from visitors as they head into the Rattlesnake Wilderness, Montana. Photo by Alan Watson.

Mission Mountains, and Glacier Park (Merriam and Ammons 1967); and a 1965 study of visitors to the Three Sisters, Eagle Cap, and Glacier Peak wildernesses (Hendee et al. 1968). One of the earliest contributions of wilderness visitor science was the ability to more accurately measure amount of visitor use. This involved improved sampling and statistical techniques (e.g., questions about how to efficiently distribute sampling effort), as well as technological development (e.g., better automatic data collectors [Lucas and Oltman 1971]). Much of this work laid the foundation for the vastly improved measurement techniques of today. As with most sciences, the first step toward improved knowledge is largely descriptive. Building on earlier work, Lucas (1980) studied visitors to nine different wilderness and roadless areas. This work provided foundational information about who wilderness visitors were, as well as the type, timing, and areal distribution of use; how visitors use wilderness; their motivations for visiting; and so on (see Figure 1). 10

By sponsoring and inspiring similar research elsewhere, it was possible to draw insightful conclusions about wilderness visitors and visits, many of which were broadly applicable and some of which varied substantially among wildernesses (Roggenbuck and Lucas 1985). A third body of work was referred to as carrying capacity research because it was motivated by early work on recreational capacity and a belief that limiting recreation use was key to maintaining quality wilderness experiences. In his seminal work on wilderness capacity, Stankey (1973) explored relationships between amount of use, visitor experiences, and perceptions of quality, but in fact advanced science more by showing how other use attributes – such as the type, timing, and location of use – were even more important determinants of visitor quality than amount of use. This work, bolstered by subsequent studies undertaken elsewhere, was highly influential in developing the diverse toolbox of techniques available to wilderness managers today.

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Early studies of recreation impacts on the environment include Meinecke’s (1928) study of the effects of tourist traffic in redwood parks and Wagar’s (1964) early use of trampling experiments. Some of the first rigorous recreation ecology studies were conducted in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, sponsored by Bob Lucas’s Forest Service research project. Frissell (1963) quantified impacts on campsites that received different levels of use. Although Frissell did not recognize their significance, these data were the first used by Cole (1981) to advance one of the most important recreation ecology principles. For attributes as fragile as groundcover vegetation, the relationship between amount of use and impact is curvilinear. Relatively infrequent use can cause near-maximum levels of impact; therefore, concentrating use is usually more effective in minimizing impact than dispersing use (see Figure 2). Frissell (1963) did note that, since impact is inevitable with even low levels of use, the manager’s job is to keep impacts to acceptable levels, the genesis of what became the Limits of Acceptable Change framework (Stankey et al. 1985). In 1978, I (David Cole) joined the Wilderness Management Research Unit, as the first scientist with a career devoted to recreation ecology in relatively undeveloped environments such as wilderness. As with wilderness visitor science, long-term and cumulative research was begun. Disparate studies were synthesized and applied directly to the stewardship of wilderness. This work contributed to the development of wilderness monitoring techniques (Cole 1989a) and the development of Leave No Trace principles (Cole 1989b). Ecological research, parallel

to the visitor capacity research being conducted, identified the factors that influence amount of impact, such as amount and type of use and environmental durability, providing further insight into the effectiveness of wilderness management techniques (Cole et al. 1987).

Early Wilderness Fire Ecology Although progress in wilderness fire science was as critical to the mission of the Wilderness Management Research Unit as progress in recreation research, this work was conducted by fire scientists elsewhere – within Forest Service research, other federal agencies – particularly the National Park Service – and academia. Perhaps the most profound outcome of early research was the conclusion that most wilderness ecosystems are dependent on recurrent fire. Fire controls plant community composition and structure; regulates ecological processes; and impacts wildlife, insects, and disease and the productivity, diversity, and stability of the ecosystem (Kilgore 1987). Consequently, actions to suppress fires or otherwise intervene in the natural role of fire in wilderness conflict with the fundamental wilderness goal of preserving wilderness in its “natural condition.” Given that fire suppression and management were adversely affecting wilderness values, considerable research attention turned to understanding natural fire regimes and exploring means of reintroducing fire in wilderness ecosystems. The work of Heinselman (1973) in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is an important early example of fire history work. He developed stand origin and fire year maps for the 1-million-acre (404,685 ha) wilderness, assessed fire history since 1595 and developed the concept

of the “natural fire rotation.” Kilgore (1987) summarizes the considerable knowledge that has developed about fire effects, organized by fire regimes that vary in the frequency and intensity of fires, along with whether fires were stand replacing or surface fires. This early research has had a dramatic impact on fire management both in and outside wilderness. Lightning fires are often allowed to burn in wilderness, and human ignitions are sometimes used, even in wilderness, to reduce high fuel loads that have accumulated after years of fire suppression and to more closely mimic natural fire regimes.

More Recent Themes in Wilderness Science In the 50 years of systematic wilderness science, the diversity of research themes has increased. In the 1990s, the Wilderness Management Research Unit was transformed into the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute and spread its resources across a much wider range of topics. Early wilderness science was focused on threats to wilderness values, particularly those posed by recreation use and fire management.

More recently, studies have explored such threats as air pollution (Tonnessen 2000), invasive species (Randall 2000), grazing of domestic livestock (McClaran 2000), wildlife management (Kammer 2013), and climate change (Stephenson and Millar 2012). Attention has also turned to monitoring these threats and their effects on wilderness values. Recently, there has been considerable excitement about what has been called wilderness character monitoring (Landres et al. 2008). This involves monitoring a number of indicators of the attributes we care about in wilderness, aggregating them, and then assuming that the overall trend in these aggregated measures is correlated with trends in wilderness character – the holistic, perceptual essence of what wilderness preservation is all about. While some critics argue that this approach does not adequately capture wilderness character (e.g., Watson 2004), it is an extension of earlier wilderness monitoring science and has the positive benefit of advancing wilderness monitoring generally. In addition to studying threats to wilderness as a basis for more

Figure 2 – Measuring the response of vegetation to restoration treatments on highly impacted campsites in the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon. Photo by Dave Spildie.

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effective wilderness stewardship, science has also explored the values associated with wilderness (Cordell et al. 2005). At the last wilderness science conference (held in Missoula, Montana, in 1999), one of the themes was Wilderness for Science: a Place for Scientific Inquiry, in recognition that science has much to learn by studying both wilderness ecosystems and how people interact with wilderness (McCool et al. 2000a). Another theme was Science for Understanding Wilderness in the Context of Larger Systems. Research papers explored the connections between wilderness and surrounding lands – linkages to social and ecological systems at regional, national, and international scales (McCool et al. 2000b). As the wilderness idea has spread around the globe, it has evolved. For example, in many countries, preservation of biodiversity is a higher priority than it is in the United States, while concerns about solitude, lack of permanent habitation, and untrammeled ecosystems are less important. The International Journal of Wilderness provides an important forum for papers that explore wilderness internationally.

The State of Wilderness Science at the 50th Anniversary So what is the state of wilderness science on the eve of the Wilderness Act’s anniversary? We can celebrate the significant contributions that science has made to improved wilderness stewardship, particularly in the realms of recreation and fire management. Some of this work has impacted stewardship of wilderness around the world and even of nonwilderness lands. Wilderness science has increased in breadth, examining diverse threats to wilderness values, as well as understanding those values 12

and the place of wilderness in society and the world. As wilderness science has expanded it has also lost, perhaps necessarily, some of the focus and collaborative spirit that existed in its first couple decades. Even those few scientific disciplines that considered wilderness to be an important category of research, primarily recreation and fire, no longer do so. This suggests the need to reinvigorate wilderness as an organizing subject of study as we move forward after the 50th.

References Burch, W. R. Jr. 1966. Wilderness – the life cycle and forest recreational choice. Journal of Forestry 64: 606–610. Burch, W. R. Jr., and W. D. Wenger. 1967. The Social Characteristics of Participants in Three Styles of Family Camping. Research Paper PNW-48. Portland, OR: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. Camp, H. W. 1983. An Historical Sketch of Recreation Research in the USDA Forest Service. PSW-H-1. Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. Cole, D. N. 1981. Managing ecological impacts at wilderness campsites: An evaluation of techniques. Journal of Forestry 79: 86–89. ———. 1989a. Wilderness Campsite Monitoring Methods: A Sourcebook. General Technical Report INT-259. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. ———. 1989b. Low-Impact Recreational Practices for Wilderness and Backcountry. General Technical Report INT-265. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Cole, D. N., M. E. Petersen, and R. C. Lucas. 1987. Managing Wilderness Recreation Use: Common Problems and Potential Solutions. General Technical Report INT-259. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Cordell, H. K., J. C. Bergstrom, and M. K. Bowker. 2005. The Multiple Values of Wilderness. State College, PA: Venture Publishing. Frissell, S. S. Jr. 1963. Recreational use of campsites in the Quetico-Superior canoe country. Master’s thesis, University of Minnesota.

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Harper, R. M. 1913. A defense of forest fires. Literary Digest 47: 208. Heinselman, M. L. 1973. Fire in the virgin forests of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota. Quaternary Research 3: 329–382. Hendee, J. C., W. R. Catton Jr., L. D. Marlow, and C. F. Brockman. 1968. Wilderness Users in the Pacific Northwest, Their Characteristics, Values and Management Preferences. Research Paper PNW-61. Portland, OR: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. Kammer, S. 2013. Coming to terms with wilderness: The Wilderness Act and the problem of wildlife restoration. Environmental Law Review 43(83): 83–124. Kilgore, B. M. 1987. The role of fire in wilderness: a state-of-knowledge review. In Proceedings – National Wilderness Research Conference: Issues, Stateof-Knowledge, Future Directions. (pp. 70-103). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-220. Ogden, UT: Intermountain Research Station. Landres, P., C. Barns, J. G. Dennis, T. Devine, P. Geissler, C. S. McCasland, L. Merigliano, J. Seastrand, and R. Swain. 2008. Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy to Monitor Trends in Wilderness Character across the National Wilderness Preservation System. General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-212. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Lucas, R. C. 1964a. The Recreational Use of the Quetico-Superior Area. Research Paper LS-8. St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service, Lake States Forest Experiment Station. ———. 1964b. The Recreational Capacity of the Quetico-Superior Area. Research Paper LS-15. St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service, Lake States Forest Experiment Station. ———. 1980. Use Patterns and Visitor Characteristics, Attitudes and Preferences in Nine Wilderness and Other Roadless Areas. Research Paper INT-253. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Lucas, R. C., and J. Oltman. 1971. Survey sampling wilderness visitors. Journal of Leisure Research 3: 28–43. McClaran, M. P. 2000. Improving livestock management in wilderness. In Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Volume 5 – Wilderness Ecosystems Threats and Management, comp. D. N.

Cole et al. (pp. 49–63). Proceedings-P15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. McCool, S. F., D. N. Cole, W. T. Borrie, and J. O’Loughlin. 2000a. Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Volume 3: Wilderness as a Place for Scientific Inquiry. Proceedings-P-15-VOL-3. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. ———. 2000b. Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Volume 2: Wilderness within the Context of Larger Systems. Proceedings-P-15-VOL-2. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Meinecke, E. P. 1928. The Effect of Excessive Tourist Traffic on the California Redwood Parks. Sacramento: California Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks. Merriam, L. C. Jr., and R. B. Ammons. 1967. The Wilderness User in Three Montana Areas. St. Paul: University of Minnesota, School of Forestry. Murie, A. 1944. The Wolves of Mount McKinley. Fauna of the National Parks of the United States. Fauna Series 5. Washington, DC: USDI National Park Service. Nash, R. F. 2001. Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ohmann, L. F., and R. R. Ream. 1971. Wilderness Ecology: Virgin Plant Communities of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Research Paper NC-63. St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station.

Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. 1962. Wilderness and Recreation – A Report on Resources, Values, and Problems. ORRRC Study Report 3. Washington, DC. Randall, J. M. 2000. Improving management of nonnative invasive species in wilderness and other natural areas. In Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Volume 5 – Wilderness Ecosystems Threats and Management, comp. D. N. Cole et al. (pp. 64–73). Proceedings-P15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Roggenbuck, J. W., and R. C. Lucas. 1985. Wilderness use and user characteristics: A state-of-knowledge review. In Proceedings – National Wilderness Research Conference: Issues, State-of-Knowledge, Future Directions, comp R. C. Lucas (pp. 204–245). General Technical Report INT-220. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Stankey, G. H. 1973. Visitor Perception of Wilderness Recreation Carrying Capacity. Research Paper INT-142. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Stankey, G. H., D. N. Cole, R. C. Lucas, M. E. Petersen, and S. S. Frissell. 1985. The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) System for Wilderness Planning. General Technical Report INT-176. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Stephenson, N. L., and C. I. Millar. 2012. Climate change: Wilderness’s greatest challenge. Park Science 28(3): 34–38.

Sutter, P. S. 2002. Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Taves, M., W. Hathaway, and G. Bultena. 1960. Canoe Country Vacationers. Miscellaneous Report 39. St. Paul, MN: Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Minnesota. Tonnessen, K. A. 2000. Protecting wilderness air quality in the United States. In Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Volume 5 – Wilderness Ecosystems Threats and Management, comp. D. N. Cole et al. (pp. 49–63). Proceedings-P15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Wagar, J. A. 1964. The Carrying Capacity of Wildlands for Recreation. Forest Science Monograph No, 7. Washington, DC: Society of American Foresters. Watson, A. E. 2004. Human relationships with wilderness: The fundamental definition of wilderness character. International Journal of Wilderness 10(3): 4–7. Wright, G. M., J. S. Dixon, and B. H. Thompson. 1933. Fauna of the National Parks of the United States: A Preliminary Survey of Faunal Relations in National Parks. Fauna Series 1. Washington, DC: USDI National Park Service.

DAVID N. COLE is stewardship chair for the Society for Wilderness Stewardship and emeritus scientist at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute; email: dncole.work@gmail.com.

Continued from TAKE A SCIENTIST TO THE SAUNA!, page 3

research in the United States and other counties. This issue could not include a complete review of all wilderness research. The executive editors – and the readers – of IJW, however, would welcome additional reviews of relevant research on wilderness issues at this, an important watershed moment in wilderness history: the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act. The history, debate, and future of wilderness restoration pur-

pose and methods could be reviewed; the role of wildlife in wilderness is an important topic; the role of wilderness in off-site water benefits; and how the public has responded to both management-ignited fire in wilderness and restoration of natural fire are all important topics not covered as well as they could be in these short, applied articles. We hope the readership will like the summaries provided and be inspired to contribute further to current efforts to strategically plan AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

the direction for the next 50 years of wilderness science and stewardship. ALAN E. WATSON is the supervisory research social scientist at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Montana; email: awatson@ fs.fed.us. H. KEN CORDELL is emeritus scientist, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute and retired pioneering research scientist and project leader, Southern Research Station, Athens, Georgia.

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SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Wilderness Social Science Responding to Change in Society, Policy, and the Environment ALAN E. WATSON and H. KEN CORDELL Abstract: Wilderness social science has changed over the 50 years since passage of the Wilderness Act. This research was initially heavily influenced by the need to operationalize definitions contained in the Wilderness Act, the desire to report use levels, and the need for better understanding of the important values American people attached to wilderness. Over the past three decades, however, wilderness science was guided by new questions asked by managers due to changes in society, technology, and use patterns. Scientists have collaborated with managers to provide solutions to changing science needs and changing relationships between the U.S. population and wilderness. This article summarizes these changes and highlights contributions to wilderness and other protected area management solutions.

Introduction Even before the Wilderness Act passed and provided a “definition” of wilderness, social scientists explored how people defined wilderness and how those perceptions might help managers once Congress legally defined it. At the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, for example, Lucas (1964) initiated research to understand various ways people described the wilderness character of places. He was exploring differences between motor boaters and canoeists in an area where both user types were well established, anticipating the challenges of changing use in areas protected for their wilderness character, and maybe even the possibility of special provisions that enabled some “nonconforming” uses to continue in wilderness (see Figure 1). For many years after passage of the Wilderness Act, research by Stankey (1973) and others (e.g., Roggenbuck et al. 1993; Williams et al. 1992), was strongly driven by a passage in the Wilderness Act that indicated the visitor should be able to experience solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation opportunities. Early scientists operationalized this legal definition by exploring how numbers of encounters with others in wilderness influenced trip satisfaction. The potential implication was that managers should consider controlling visitor numbers or distribution so that visitors would not feel excessively

Alan E. Watson: Photo courtesy of H. Ken Cordell: Photo by Babs the ALWRI. McDonald.

crowded in wilderness (a surrogate for solitude). In this approach, other recreation users were initially perceived as a threat (to solitude). The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) (Stankey et al. 1985) planning process was introduced by Stankey (1973) as an alternative way to systematically address recreation carrying capacity in wilderness by focusing on how recreation use threatened specific attributes of the wilderness environment (social and biological). This Limits of Acceptable Change concept greatly influenced research efforts and planning approaches, was

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eventually incorporated into the Forest Service handbook and generated similar National Park Service efforts (see NPS 1997) to implement an indicator-based planning system. With LAC there is less focus on numbers of people (unless numbers are truly the problem) and more emphasis on the levels of impact people have on attributes of the wilderness resource. A great deal of research occurred across wilderness and other wildlands to help managers obtain input from visitors in selecting specific indicators and determining how much change in these indicators (defined by standards) they might allow. Today, these indicator-based planning systems are widely used in wilderness planning in the United States (McCool and Cole 1998) and in other countries. Just since the turn of the century, however, social scientists (see Glaspell et al. 2003) have invested great effort in developing understanding of wilderness experiences in previously understudied Arctic areas to allow development of indicators and support indicatorbased applications that may be distinct from past applications. More than half of our National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) is in Alaska, and its distance from population centers, difficult access, challenging conditions, and special provisions for transportation and subsistence use by rural people add dimensions to the wilderness experience. Watson et al. (2007) presented the culmination in an Arctic and sub-Arctic initiative and the most complete exploration of how this type of indicator-based planning system fits into other ecological indicator systems being employed, as well as other human well–being indicator systems around the world. Academics and managers have been able to replicate some of the Arctic studies,

particularly the one at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (Glaspell et al. 2003), to make good use of this line of research in aiding selection of indicators and proposing standards for a broad range of public uses and both contributing and threatening forces on wilderness character. Benefits extended well beyond Arctic and sub-Arctic applications. Recreation use monitoring was also an important wilderness social science effort with roots in the 1960s, and it continues to be an important application function of wilderness social science today. Forest Service scientists (see James 1967) initiated efforts to address manager needs to estimate recreation use to all dispersed outdoor recreation sites and eventually with specific applications to wilderness (Lucas et al. 1971). Managers often ask for assistance with sampling issues, deciding on methods of measurement, what to measure, and how often to develop monitoring estimates. A manual was developed to help managers identify their use and user monitoring objectives, the type of system that could provide this information, technology and sampling considerations, and data analysis methods (Watson et al. 2000).

Beyond Solitude, Crowding, and Monitoring – Part 2 Many factors drove change in wilderness social science beyond solitude protection and use monitoring in the 1980s and 1990s. Changes in science personnel in Forest Service Research, political challenges to the integrity of wilderness through introduction of expanded access proposals, and, in general, increased demand on limited outdoor resources saw expansion of the Forest Service wilderness research program to an interagency research AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

Figure 1 – At the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, conflict research between canoeists and motorboats preceded wilderness designation.

unit in 1993. Development of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute was a response to rapid expansion of the wilderness research program into new topics and to areas not previously studied. While conflict between motorboaters and canoeists seemed an important research issue in the 1960s, this particular conflict was not widespread in the NWPS due to normal exclusion of motorized and mechanized transportation in wilderness. In the recreation literature, however, scientists drew on this research and other efforts to understand conflict between recreationists and proposed a model to explain conflict by the early 1980s (Jacob and Schreyer 1980). This model was commonly used in manager training, and it influenced a long line of research in recreation, with various elements of the model actually becoming major research topics themselves. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that research had advanced to the point that full applications of the model were possible in developing potential solutions to conflict and propose long-term monitoring of conflict levels.

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A rash of conflict research in the early 1990s was precipitated by two events. First, while there was no specific amendment to the Wilderness Act ever developed or submitted to a congressional vote, in subcommittee there was discussion of opening up wilderness to bicycle use. With the advent of mountain bicycle technology, some advocates felt that opening wilderness to bicycle access could increase wilderness use, relevance, and support. This movement never really caught traction, although it did generate lots of questions that research had not addressed up to that point. The wilderness science community responded with some of the first research on conflicts between bicycle use and other uses (Watson et al. 1991), with some speculation about how bicycle use in wilderness might impact other users. This research was never used to help manage bicycle use in wilderness, but it provided a foundation for expanded wilderness conflict research and many manager applications outside of wilderness at outdoor recreation sites popular for mountain biking. Second, with a limited amount of wilderness attracting increasing use and varied types of users, other conflicts were becoming more common, and managers were strongly motivated to address them. Rather than purposes of “solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation experiences,” there was increasing interest in the Wilderness Act’s stated purpose of “enjoying wilderness as wilderness.” When in conflict with other users or their impacts, it was difficult to enjoy wilderness visits, particularly if some experienced users felt new users were invading their spaces with activities or attitudes not considerate of wilderness purposes. 16

The most visible conflict in wilderness around 1990 was between hikers and recreational stock users. This precipitated coordinated research on a large scale to understand issues such as (1) what the contributors to conflict are, (2) differences between the eastern and western United States, (3) differences between conflict with outfitted and nonoutfitted stock use, (4) conflicts between hikers and both day stock use and overnight stock use, (5) conflict with stock use in national parks and on national forest wilderness, and (6) conflict with different types of recreational stock (Watson et al. 1993). This research has often been quoted in efforts to solve conflict issues, particularly in the Sierra Nevada Wildernesses of California, where this research reappears periodically and is reexamined to help managers look for new solutions to persistent conflict issues. Recreation stock use is down in these areas, however, and more recent research in this region no longer tends to focus on an issue so important in the 1990s. Another indication of how societal change can influence wilderness social science was the response of managers and scientists to the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program. When Congress voted to allow federal agencies to collect more user fees for public land access, with the intent of keeping more receipts for local use, there was great uncertainty about where to charge fees, how much to charge, and how to evaluate the effect on visitor experiences. Many felt that wilderness users were possibly the most threatened by new user fees, but they could also benefit substantially from proper use of fees for restoration or information programs. There was a flurry of research at the time of initiation of these

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fees that was not focused solely on wilderness but rather on how wilderness use fees might be different from other recreation use fees (Watson and Herath 1999). Research articles were generated to assist all interests in learning about fee issues that could help shape policy, and entire theme issues of journals were produced and opinion pieces generated that shaped academic research programs and manager knowledge and opinion about fee programs in wilderness. This research was important to making decisions about wilderness fee uses (based on public preferences) and whether to charge them at all. Inquiries have found very little recent fee research connected to wilderness. It was not only changes in society and policy, however, that drove changes in research during this era. Beginning with research by Patterson et al. (1998) and Borrie and Roggenbuck (1998), wilderness social science became more grounded in visitor experiences themselves and less driven by the Wilderness Act. A very small wilderness in Florida became the single area we seemed to know the most about for several years, although Juniper Prairie could hardly be described as the “typical” wilderness. It was small, mostly water-based, and mostly comprised of day use. A hermeneutic approach to data collection and interpretation focused on understanding the experience of visitors as it unfolded, while an in situ study of trip focus identified the ebbs and flows of the experience. These refreshing “open book” approaches provided managers with understanding of how they might define and protect not only solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation experiences but also challenge, way-finding, immersion in nature, and other dimensions of the experience not well-defined in

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fees that was not focused solely on wilderness but rather on how wilderness use fees might be different from other recreation use fees (Watson and Herath 1999). Research articles were generated to assist all interests in learning about fee issues that could help shape policy, and entire-theme issues of journals were produced and opinion pieces generated that shaped academic research programs and manager knowledge and opinion about fee programs in wilderness. This research was important to making decisions about wilderness fee uses (based on public preferences) and whether to charge them at all. Inquiries have found very little recent fee research connected to wilderness. It was not only changes in society and policy, however, that drove changes in research during this era. Beginning with research by Patterson et al. (1998) and Borrie and Roggenbuck (1998), wilderness social science became more grounded in visitor experiences themselves and less driven by the Wilderness Act. A very small wilderness in Florida became the single area we seemed to know the most about for several years, although Juniper Prairie could hardly be described as the “typical” wilderness. It was small, mostly water-based, and mostly comprised of day use. A hermeneutic approach to data collection and interpretation focused on understanding the experience of visitors as it unfolded, while an in situ study of trip focus identified the ebbs and flows of the experience. These refreshing “open book” approaches provided managers with understanding of how they might define and protect not only solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation experiences but also challenge, way-finding, immersion in nature, and other dimensions of the experience not well-defined in

the Wilderness Act. They are obviously important aspects of “enjoying the wilderness as wilderness” and are heavily influenced by visitor management, visitor numbers, and visitor behaviors. More than half of the National Wilderness Preservation System is located in Alaska. Wilderness research, beyond some simple replications of recreation preference studies, was nearly nonexistent in Alaska until after 2000. Building on Juniper Prairie success, studies at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Denali National Park and Preserve, and Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve provided new insights into contributing and threatening influences on visitor experiences. This research approach quickly led to expanded efforts to also apply such methods to understand how experiences among other users of the resource were different from recreation users and how their experiences could be protected, whether directed to do so by the Wilderness Act or not. There are several outstanding examples of expansion of wilderness social science to study Indigenous communities to understand contributions of wilderness to their well-being. Along the Situk River on the Tongass National Forest (Christensen et al. 2007), on the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge (Kluwe and Krumpe 2003), and in the Western Arctic Parklands (Whiting 2004), “enjoyment of wilderness as wilderness” took on new meaning for a local, rural, indigenous user. It wasn’t only about recreation or subsistence, it also included expression of humility, contribution to identity, and protection of traditional skills. New knowledge emerged through changing to a more inclusive research question and applying more

qualitative research methods. This research paradigm still exists and is now applied at a growing number of places with new contributions to solving conflicts. Alaska Native and American Indian perceptions of wilderness meanings are important expansions of the previously narrow social science focus on recreation participation in wilderness (Watson 2011). Expanding our understanding of the trade-offs involved in wilderness designation and stewardship has been an important role of social science.

Society-Level Values An important line of wilderness social science research to address societylevel awareness and values attached to wilderness has also evolved from its start in the 1960s. The U.S. public has been asked what they value about wilderness protection and whether they support designating more federal land as wilderness. The importance of this research is that of informing legislators, land-management agencies, designation advocates, and other interests about public support for wilderness. Until the early 1960s, little research was conducted to evaluate the public sentiment toward protected wilderness. One study, commissioned by the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC 1962) highlighted two broad classes of wilderness values: recreation and indirect. Indirect values were defined to include conservation ethics, scientific uses, and “the wilderness idea.” The wilderness idea established the roots of the concept of existence value – valuable because it is there and has been designated for protection from development and exploitation. Early economic value studies of recreation benefits were primarAUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

ily aimed at valuing recreation visits to wilderness. The ORRRC study, and others that followed, often attempted to estimate the per-acre value of wilderness and to provide a framework for considering allocation of additional public land to wilderness status. Behind the ORRRC recreation-demand study was a survey of wilderness users who reported that among the 21 benefits of wilderness visits asked about, the most important values (“appeals”) were to observe natural beauty, get away from sights and sounds, and get away from work pressures. Throughout the 1970s a variety of studies and articles appeared that further illuminated the range of values attributed to wilderness protection, beyond on-site recreation experiences. In part this advancement sprang from the work of natural resource economists who advanced the notion that on-site recreation visit values captured only a part of the total value. Krutilla and Fisher (1985) were among a number of thought leaders in the concept of total value. Whether seen through the research eyes of economics, or other disciplines, the idea that the societal, total value of wilderness is multidimensional was taking shape. In 1980, Haas et al. (1986) took the idea of multiple values further by developing and applying a 13-item wilderness values scale. The emphasis was on moving past the idea that the only value of wilderness is its recreational use value. Most highly valued by respondents were protection of water quality, wildlife habitat, and air quality. Next were bequest (future generations) and option (future own use) values. Following these values were those of seeing wilderness as a contemporary recreation opportunity and scenic beauty.

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this expansion, however, recreation use of wilderness has remained a chief focus of both managers and researchers. This line of research remains important today. Further study was conducted to identify whether there were detectable trends in how Americans value wilderness (Cordell et al. 2008). Two values stood out: 90% of Americans indicated that protection of air quality and water quality were extremely important (see Figure 2). Four additional values (protecting wildlife habitat, having wilderness for future generations Figure 2 – Americans value wilderness: 90% of Americans [bequest value], protecting indicate protection of both air quality and water quality are rare plant and animal speextremely important. cies, and preserving unique plants and animals) also stood out, Research to broaden underas more than 80% indicated very standing of the public’s support for important to extreme importance. wilderness was extended through a set of questions included in the 1995 Wilderness Social Science: National Survey on Recreation and Full Maturity the Environment. The survey asked Wilderness social science research about awareness of the NWPS, in 2014 doesn’t much resemble whether there is adequate acreage wilderness social science research in protected, and the importance of var1964. Those of us who trained in ious benefits or values. The findings forestry or recreation management or indicated broad public support for forest economics were a big part of the wilderness protection, mainly for its transformation, responding to law ecological and environmental quality and policy changes, changing society, and off-site values. This survey was changing threats to wilderness, and followed in 2000 by a replication of changes in the research approach. The the values scale (Cordell et al. 2003). topics today are mostly different, the The findings indicated that while methods can be very different, and more people in 2000 were aware of the quantity has increased substanthe NWPS, increased awareness did tially. After 50 years of science to not increase support for additional support wilderness stewardship, it is acreages. The public in 2000 placed clear that the initial decision to focus greatest importance on ecosystem research on meeting the directly services, existence value, recreation, stated intents within the Wilderness and future use options. Throughout 18

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Act was productive and contributed not only to management decisions immediately but also to evolving planning systems that would last up to the present. The Limits of Acceptable Change planning system and other indicator-based approaches are a fine legacy for wilderness research and application. Replication of recreation research accomplishments to address new uses or changing users was productive, has led to refinement of planning systems applications, and continues to contribute to wilderness protection today. As in a great deal of science today, however, there is extreme interest in how climate change will affect our lives in the future. While at first a great deal of effort was aimed at understanding the role of wilderness protection and possibly new designations in climate change mitigation, today there is no question that a previously underrecognized value of wilderness is as a baseline of relatively low human influence to understand climate change impacts on natural systems. And along with this recognition worldwide comes the realization of a dilemma: there are new demands on wilderness for installation of measurement devices, more traffic to support monitoring in remote locations, and more pressure for decision makers to review proposals for achieving the scientific values of wilderness (Carver, McCool, Krenova, and Woodley 2014). We are constantly engaged in the debate about protecting or restoring nature and the trade-offs encountered from the impact of management actions on wildness. The role of wilderness (and appropriate management intervention) in providing water-based ecosystem services and restoring natural fire processes will take on new challenges

and significance in rural and urban communities in future scenarios. Tracking changes in priorities for wilderness protection benefits will continue to be of interest to managers, politicians, and the public. As our society changes in its relationship with wilderness, we are anticipating all of society to pay more attention to ecosystem services flowing from wilderness protection and the contribution wilderness has to make to science. Clean water, wildlife migration corridors, airsheds, filtration of groundwater, cultural practices, and recreation will all only become more important to us as a society. But will these issues become less controversial in the political arena? Will the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System continue to expand? Will new interpretations of the values of wilderness be widely accepted as we continue to move away from a limited perception of the value of wilderness as a playground and more toward recognition of wilderness as part of our identity, part of our necessary lifeline to support human life on Earth, and a demonstration of our ethic toward nature and future generations? These are some of the challenges wilderness social science will face in the coming decades.

References Borrie, W. T., and J. W. Roggenbuck, 1998. Describing the wilderness experience at Juniper Prairie Wilderness using experience sampling methods. In Wilderness and Natural Areas in Eastern North America: Research, Management and Planning, ed. D. L. Kulhavy and M. H. Legg. (pp. 165-172) Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University, Arthur Temple College of Forestry, Center for Applied Studies. Carver, S., S. McCool, Z. Krenova, M. Fisher, and S. Woodley. 2014. Fifty years of wilderness science: An international perspective. International Journal of Wilderness 20(2): this issue.

Christensen, N., A. Watson, and J. Burchfield. 2007. Relationships to place in wildland resources management: Developing an effective research approach. In Science and Stewardship to Protect and Sustain Wilderness Values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium: September 30–October 6, 2005, Anchorage, AK, comp. A. Watson, J. Sproull, and L. Dean (pp. 470–478). Proceedings RMRS-P-49. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Cordell, H. K., C. J. Betz, and G. T. Green. 2008. Nature-based outdoor recreation trends and wilderness. International Journal of Wilderness 14(2): 7–9, 13. Cordell, H. K., M. A. Tarrant, and G. T. Green. 2003. Is the public viewpoint on wilderness shifting? International Journal of Wilderness 9(2): 27–32. Glaspell, B., A. Watson, K. Kneeshaw, and D. Pendergrast. 2003. Selecting indicators and understanding their role in wilderness experience stewardship at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. George Wright Forum 20(3): 59–71. Haas, G. E., E. Hermann, and R. Walsh. 1986. Wilderness values. Natural Areas Journal 6(2): 37–43. Jacob. C. R., and R. Schreyer. 1980. Conflict in outdoor recreation: A theoretical perspective. Journal of Leisure Research 12: 368–380. James, G. A. 1967. Recreation Use Estimation of Forest Service Lands in the United States. Research Note SE-79. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southeastern Forest Experiment Station. Kluwe, J., and E. E. Krumpe. 2003. Interpersonal and societal aspects of use conflicts: A case study of wilderness in Alaska and Finland. International Journal of Wilderness 9(3): 28–33. Krutilla, J. V., and A. C. Fisher. 1985. The Economics of Natural Environments. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lucas, R. C. 1964. The Recreation Capacity of the Quetico-Superior Area. Research Paper LS-15. St. Paul, MN: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Lake States Experiment Station. Lucas, R. C., H. T. Schreuder, and G. A. James. 1971. Wilderness Use Estimation: A Pilot Test of Sampling Procedures on the Mission Mountains Primitive Area. Research Paper INT-109. Ogden, UT: USDA

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Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. McCool, S. F., and D. N. Cole. 1998. Experiencing Limits of Acceptable Change: Some thoughts after a decade of implementation. In Proceedings: Limits of Acceptable Change and Related Planning Processes: Progress and Future Directions, 1997, May 20–22, Missoula, MT, comp. S. F. McCool and D. N. Cole (pp. 72–78). General Technical Report INT-GTR-371. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. 1962. Wilderness and Recreation – A Report on Resources, Values, and Problems. ORRRC Study Report 3. Washington, DC. Patterson, M. E., A. E. Watson, D. R. Williams, and J. R. Roggenbuck. 1998. An hermeneutic approach to studying the nature of wilderness experiences. Journal of Leisure Research 30(4): 423–452. Roggenbuck, J. W., D. R. Williams, and A. E. Watson. 1993. Defining acceptable conditions in wilderness. Environmental Management 17(2): 187–197. Stankey, G. H. 1973. Visitor Perception of Wilderness Recreation Carrying Capacity. Research Paper INT-142. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Stankey, G. H., D. N. Cole, R. C. Lucas, M. E. Petersen, and S. S. Frissell. 1985. The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) System for Wilderness Planning. General Technical Report INT-176. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. National Park Service. 1997. VERP: The Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP) Framework. Denver, CO: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Denver Service Center. Watson, A. E. 2011. The role of wilderness protection and societal engagement as indicators of well-being: An examination of change at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Social Indicators Research, DOI 10.1007/s11205-0119947-x. Watson, A. E., D. N. Cole, D. L. Turner, and P. S. Reynolds. 2000. Wilderness Recreation Use Estimation: A Handbook of Methods Continued on page 33

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SCIENCE & RESEARCH

The Contribution of Natural Fire Management to Wilderness Fire Science BY CAROL MILLER Abstract: When the federal agencies established policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s to allow the use of natural fires in wilderness, they launched a natural fire management experiment in a handful of wilderness areas. As a result, wildland fire has played more of its natural role in wilderness than anywhere else. Much of what we understand about fire ecology comes from observations of natural fires in several wilderness areas that have been allowed to burn under a wide range of physical and biological conditions since the 1970s. Wilderness fires have provided valuable datasets for improving fire history methods and understanding of the drivers of fire. Inside some wilderness areas, enough data have accumulated from multiple repeated fires at natural fire intervals to see how forests respond to fire. As a result of the wilderness fire management experiment we can better anticipate the consequences of reintroducing fire and whether restoration with natural fire might be feasible. The experience of allowing fires to burn in wilderness has also contributed to social science knowledge. Studies have examined how public support for the use of fire in wilderness can change over time. Studies of the institutional factors that influence the use of fire in wilderness have pointed to difficulties with implementing wilderness fire policy, as well as the importance of belief and commitment of an individual line officer in overcoming obstacles to carry out a wilderness fire program. Future trends in climate and land use will exacerbate current challenges for wilderness fire management programs, and making the decision to allow fire to burn in wilderness will increasingly demand scientific information and will likely require an even more firm belief in the value of natural fire.

Introduction Wilderness holds unique scientific value as a reference or benchmark for change. By examining wilderness, fire researchers have been able to study the role of fire on ecosystems without being confounded by effects of human activities and other disturbances such as logging. Not surprisingly, several compilations and summaries of wilderness fire science can be found in the literature (Lotan et al. 1985; Kilgore 1986; Brown et al. 1995; Agee 2000). In pointing out specific areas where progress in wilderness fire science has been limited, the most recent state-of-knowledge review (Agee 2000) highlighted a lack of data and insufficient sophistication of computer models to incorporate complexity. The review also concluded that the best way to learn and advance wilderness fire science is for managers to assume the risk of allowing fires to burn. A rich history surrounds the natural experiment

of allowing fires to burn in wilderness (van Wagtendonk 2007). Drawing from the Leopold Report of 1963 and the Wilderness Act of 1964, both of which recognized the role of natural disturbance processes in shaping primitive wilderness landscapes, the federal agencies established policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s to Carol Miller: Photo by Paulette allow the use of natural fires Ford. in wilderness. The earliest wilderness fire programs in the National Park Service began at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (NPs) (1968), Yosemite NP (1970), Saguaro National Monument (1971), and Yellowstone NP (1972). In the Forest Service, the Selway-Bitterroot

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Wilderness launched the Forest Service’s wilderness fire program (1972). Slowly, several other parks and wilderness areas adopted the practice of allowing some natural ignitions to burn with limited or no interference (e.g., Gila Wilderness in 1975, Bob Marshall Wilderness in 1981, and Glacier National Park in 1994). By allowing fires to burn in wilderness on their own terms, wilderness managers launched a large-scale experiment that would greatly advance our scientific understanding of fire. Wildland fire has played its natural role more in wilderness than anywhere else because this experiment has primarily played out in designated wilderness and in protected areas that are managed similar to wilderness (e.g., Grand Canyon National Park). The experiment has not been easy to carry out and suppression of fire remains the dominant management strategy in most wilderness areas (Parsons 2000). However, the practice of allowing fires to burn has been successfully adopted in a handful of case study areas. The experiment has yielded observations of fire and fire effects in diverse conditions that have resulted in new ecological knowledge. The experiment has also evoked and effected social responses that have added to our social science knowledge. In this article, I highlight some of these contributions to knowledge that have been made in both the ecological and social sciences, and speculate about future progress in wilderness fire science.

50 Years of Contributions to Fire Science Much of what we understand about fire ecology – the study of fire effects, natural vegetation dynamics, and succession – is derived from

observations of natural fires in wilderness. Wilderness fires have been allowed to burn under a wide range of physical and biological conditions in several wilderness areas since the 1970s. As a result, we’ve been able to study the causes and consequences of fires and test assumptions about effects of repeated fires on ecosystems. Fires burn outside wilderness areas, of course, but it is inside wilderness where enough data have accumulated from multiple repeated fires at natural fire intervals. For one example, DeLuca and Sala (2006) studied wilderness areas in the northern Rockies, comparing frequently and naturally burned sites with sites that had not burned in recent history. In doing so, they were able to corroborate long-standing but previously untested hypotheses about soil nitrogen dynamics in fire-dependent ponderosa pine ecosystems. Another study that relied on the unmanaged qualities of wilderness was able to quantify the retention of fire-created snags over time and through repeated fires in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico (Holden et al. 2006). This research was possible only because fire-created snags are not salvaged for their wood in wilderness and because fires had been allowed to burn repeatedly under a fire management program aimed at restoring natural fire regimes. Similarly, this same fire management program allowed Holden et al. (2009) to focus on environmental controls of burn severity for fires that burned within the natural season and whose behavior was largely unaffected by roads and suppression or previous logging or grazing activities. The wilderness fire management experiment has allowed us to better anticipate the consequences of reintroducing fire and whether restoration with natural fire might AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

be feasible. Studies have shown that long fire-free intervals can alter forest structure, but they have also shown that large trees can be quite resistant to fires when they do occur (Holden et al. 2007; Leirfallom and Keane 2011). Furthermore, fires that burn severely and kill trees can serve to restore forest structure (Fulé and Laughlin 2007). A study of ponderosa pine forests in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana recently showed that some unlogged, fireexcluded forests in wilderness possess a latent resilience to reintroduced fires and suggested that in some cases, a prescription for restoration is simply to allow lightning-ignited fires to burn (Larson et al. 2013). Restoration is guided by information about the historic range of variation of ecological conditions and disturbance regimes. Fire history studies are especially important for providing the data and the context for understanding the historic range of variation, but certain data collection methods have been viewed critically because of their inferential nature (Baker and Ehle 2001). Wilderness studies, and the natural experiment of the wilderness fire management program, have been able to address some of these concerns about the quality of inferences that can be made with fire scar sampling. Because maps of fires that have burned during this experiment do exist, they can be compared against the fire scar record, and the uncertainty associated with point-based fire scars can be quantified (Farris et al. 2010; Farris et al. 2013). Wilderness fires have provided valuable datasets for the study of landscape ecology, a field of study concerned with the causes and consequences of spatial patterning in ecosystems. Large landscape-scale

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fire history studies in wilderness have increased our understanding of the drivers of fire regimes (Rollins et al. 2002; Haire et al. 2013; Morgan et al. 2014), and the natural fire management experiment in wilderness has provided empirical support for landscape ecological theory. For example, ecological theory posits that freely burning fires over large landscapes will engage in a self-regulating feedback between the spatial pattern of vegetation and the process of fire (McKenzie et al. 2011). Indeed, empirical studies of wilderness fires in the Sierra Nevada, northern Rockies, and Southwest are showing that burned areas left by wildfires generally limit the spread of subsequent fires and moderate the severity of subsequent fires (Collins et al. 2009; Holden et al. 2010; Teske et al. 2012; van Wagtendonk et al. 2012; Parks et al. 2014). None of this research would be possible without the legacy of a landscape mosaic created by the wilderness fire programs in these wilderness areas (see Figure 1). Notable contributions have also been made to the social sciences as a result of managing wilderness fire. Although fire-related social science research has encompassed a gamut of subjects, including risk perception, community preparedness, community-agency relationships, and acceptance of smoke, most research has been focused on perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of homeowners living in the wildland-urban interface (McCaffrey et al. 2013). Only a scant few studies have specifically addressed naturally burning fires in wilderness; these have examined either external or internal factors interacting with wilderness fire management. As public support potentially imposes an external constraint on wilderness fire management, a hand22

Figure 1 – Landscape mosaic in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness created by a sequence of freely burning fires since the 1970s. Photo by Carol Miller.

ful of studies have examined how the public views wilderness fire. Early surveys of wilderness visitors suggested that support for the idea of allowing natural fires to burn in wilderness was related to one’s level of knowledge of fire (Stankey 1976; McCool and Stankey 1986). Later surveys of wilderness visitors often included questions about wilderness fire management (Borrie et al. 2006; Knotek et al. 2008) and a synthesis of such results showed a general trend of increasing support for the use of fire in wilderness (Knotek 2006). Surveys have also revealed the tension between the public’s support for wilderness fire and community protection concerns (Winter 2003; Kneeshaw et al. 2004). Factors internal to the federal agencies can also be important constraints to wilderness fire management (Steelman and McCaffrey 2011). Decisions to allow fires to burn are subject to much higher levels of scrutiny than decisions to suppress, and a few studies have examined institutional factors that influence the use of fire in wilderness (Williamson 2007;

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Doane et al. 2006; Black et al. 2008). One study found that line officers who perceive there is value in the benefits of fire are more likely to authorize its use in wilderness (Williamson 2007; Black et al. 2008). Although these managers faced many obstacles to allowing wilderness fires to burn, it appeared that a belief and commitment impelled them to overcome those barriers. In other words, the success of a wilderness fire program may hinge on an individual.

The Next 50 Years The managers who launched the wilderness fire management experiment nearly 50 years ago probably did not anticipate the rapid and dramatic environmental changes that have since occurred. Today, developments in science and technology allow us to better anticipate the future. Both climate variability and surrounding land use will affect wilderness fire regimes and their management in the next several decades (IPCC 2007; Theobald and Romme 2007) with important implications for policy (Dombeck

et al. 2004). Successful protection and stewardship of wilderness means anticipating how a changing climate along with a changing human footprint will affect fire regimes in the future (Miller et al. 2011). Predicted changes in climate will affect various aspects of wilderness fire regimes, including the seasonality, frequency, extent, spatial pattern, and severity of fires (McKenzie et al. 2004; Fried et al. 2008). What was considered extreme fire danger in the past will become more the norm by the middle of the 21st century (Miller et al. 2011). Prescriptive windows that currently provide opportunities for allowing wilderness fires to burn could become quite narrow in the near future. This situation will be exacerbated by land use changes and development patterns. In particular, housing density near wilderness areas is projected to increase (Radeloff et al. 2010), elevating the potential fire risk to homeowners and the pressure to suppress wilderness fires (Miller and Landres 2004). As more people choose to live closer to wilderness areas (see Figure 2), the complexity of managing natural fire regimes in wilderness will increase (USDA and USDI 1998), likely decreasing the opportunities for allowing wilderness fires to burn on their own terms. As time goes on, the feasibility of allowing wilderness fires to burn unimpeded may decline or vanish altogether, particularly in smaller wilderness areas that simply are not big enough for long-duration fires to spread naturally without threatening adjacent values-at-risk (Husari 1995). For wilderness fire management programs to continue, managers will need tools that can identify those windows, however narrow, within which natural wilderness fire is a viable option. Nationally, fire man-

agement has adopted risk analysis as a decision-support framework, and several wildfire risk analysis tools are available for quantifying potential loss due to fire (Miller and Ager 2013). To support fire management decisions in wilderness, these tools may need to be adapted and applied in new ways (Barnett, unpublished). The projected trends in climate and housing density only heighten the scientific value of wilderness and the value of the wilderness fire management experiment. For example, those areas where natural fires have been allowed to burn are a unique laboratory for studying ecological resilience in a changing climate. As these landscapes respond to increased fire activity, they provide the opportunity to see and learn how resilient landscapes are best created and maintained. Importantly, limits to this resilience may be discovered as the climate changes, allowing ecological thresholds that lead to irreversible change (e.g., vegetation type conversion) to be better understood and anticipated. Could these trends threaten the continuation of wilderness fire programs? An increasingly complex

environment demands more and better information to support wilderness fire management decisions that are being made in an increasingly constrained decision space. Fortunately, research can take advantage of the experiment launched nearly 50 years ago to provide some of this information. The continuation of the wilderness fire program will also depend more strongly on individual managers. The pioneering managers who initiated the wilderness fire management experiment did so by assuming risks and facing uncertainties. These were managers who, as Williamson (2007) found, worked through myriad challenges and barriers (Doane et al. 2006) because they were anchored by a belief in the value of fire. Their successors likely will have a more difficult job in the future, and making the decision to allow fire to burn in wilderness may require an even more firm belief.

Conclusion The best way to learn about fire is to observe fires burning in the natural environment under a diversity of conditions and then to observe and

Figure 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Residential housing close to wilderness increases the complexity of managing wilderness fires. Photo by Carol Miller.

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The wilderness fires that have been allowed to burn over the past 50 years have provided a valuable long-term dataset for describing the beneficial effects of wilderness fire and its role in creating and maintaining resilient landscapes. evaluate their effects over time. The wilderness fires that have been allowed to burn over the past 50 years have provided a valuable long-term dataset for describing the beneficial effects of wilderness fire and its role in creating and maintaining resilient landscapes. The ecological research conducted as a result of the wilderness fire program has been especially fruitful and has advanced the scientific fields of both fire ecology and landscape ecology. Fire-related social science research has paid far less attention to naturally burning fires in wilderness, although a few targeted studies have yielded relevant and applicable results for wilderness. The past 50 years have shown that the decision to allow a fire to burn has always been a difficult one to make. As environmental and social trends complicate the context for wilderness fire management over the next 50 years, this decision will only get more difficult. The future of wilderness fire management programs may now depend on adding to the existing knowledge with research, as well as an unwavering commitment by individuals to managing this keystone natural process.

References Agee, J. K. 2000. Wilderness fire science: A state-of-knowledge review. In Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference – Volume 5: Wilderness Ecosystems, Threats, and Management, May 23–27,1999, Missoula, MT, comp. D. N. Cole et al. (pp. 5–22). Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.

Baker, W. L., and D. Ehle. 2001. Uncertainty in surface-fire history: The case of ponderosa pine forests in the western United States. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 31(7): 1205–1226. Barnett, K. A use of risk analysis to support wilderness fire decisions. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Montana, Department of Forest Management. Black, A., M. Williamson, and D. Doane. 2008. Wildland fire use barriers and facilitators. Fire Management Today 68(1): 10–14. Borrie, W. T., S. F. McCool, and J. G. Whitmore. 2006. Wildland fire effects on visits and visitors to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. International Journal of Wilderness 12(1): 32–36. Brown, J. K., R. W. Mutch, C. W. Spoon, and R. H. Wakimoto. 1995. Proceedings: Symposium on Fire in Wilderness and Park Management, March 30–April 1, 1993, Missoula, MT. General Technical Report INT-GTR-320. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Collins, B. M., J. D. Miller, A. E. Thode, M. Kelly, J. W. van Wagtendonk, and S. L. Stephens. 2009. Interactions among wildland fires in a long-established Sierra Nevada natural fire area. Ecosystems 12: 114–128. DeLuca, T. H., and A. Sala. 2006. Frequent fire alters nitrogen transformations in ponderosa pine stands of the inland Northwest. Ecology 87(10): 2511–2522. Doane, D., J. O’Laughlin, P. Morgan, and C. Miller. 2006. Barriers to wildland fire use: A preliminary problem analysis. International Journal of Wilderness 12: 36–38. Dombeck, M. P., J. E. Williams, and C. A. Wood. 2004. Wildfire policy and public lands: Integrating scientific understanding with social concerns across landscapes. Conservation Biology 18(4): 883–889. Farris, C. A., C. H. Baisan, D. A. Falk, M. L. Van Horne, P. Z. Fulé, and T. W. Swetnam. 2013. A comparison of targeted and systematic fire-scar sampling for estimating historical fire frequency in south-western ponderosa

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pine forests. International Journal of Wildland Fire 22(8): 1021–1033. Farris, C. A., C. H. Baisan, D. A. Falk, S. R. Yool, and T. W. Swetnam. 2010. Spatial and temporal corroboration of a fire-scarbased fire history in a frequently burned ponderosa pine forest. Ecological Applications 20: 1598–1614. Fried, J. S., J. K. Gilless, W. J. Riley, T. J. Moody, C. S. de Blas, K. Hayhoe, M. Moritz, S. Stephens, and M. Torn. 2008. Predicting the effect of climate change on wildfire behavior and initial attack success. Climatic Change 87: 251–264. Fulé, P. Z., and D. C. Laughlin. 2007. Wildland fire effects on forest structure over an altitudinal gradient, Grand Canyon National Park, USA. Journal of Applied Ecology 44: 136–146. Haire, S. L., K. McGarigal, and C. Miller. 2013. Wilderness shapes contemporary fire size distributions across landscapes of the western United States. Ecosphere 4(1): Article 15. Holden, Z. A., P. Morgan, and J. S. Evans. 2009. A predictive model of burn severity based on 20-year satellite-inferred burn severity data in a large southwestern US wilderness area. Forest Ecology and Management 258: 2399–2406. Holden, Z. A., P. Morgan, and A. T. Hudak. 2010. Burn severity of areas reburned by wildfires in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, USA. Fire Ecology 6(3): 77–85. Holden, Z. A., P. Morgan, M. G. Rollins, and K. Kavanaugh. 2007. Effects of multiple wildland fires on ponderosa pine stand structure in two southwestern wilderness areas, USA. Fire Ecology 3(2): 18–33. Holden, Z. A., P. Morgan, M. G. Rollins, and R. G. Wright. 2006. Ponderosa pine snag densities following multiple fires in the Gila Wilderness, New Mexico. Forest Ecology and Management 221: 140–146. Husari, S. J. 1995. Fire management in small wilderness areas and parks. In Proceedings: Symposium on Fire in Wilderness and Park Management, March 30–April 1, 1993, Missoula, MT, comp. J. K. Brown et al. (pp. 117–120). General Technical Report INT-GTR-320. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK, and New York:

Cambridge University Press. Kilgore, B. M. 1986. The role of fire in wilderness: A state-of-knowledge review. In Proceedings: National Wilderness Research Conference: Issues, State-ofKnowledge, Future Directions, July 23–26, 1985, Fort Collins, CO, comp. R. C. Lucas (pp. 70–103). General Technical Report INT-220. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Kneeshaw, K., J. Vaske, A. D. Bright, and J. D. Absher. 2004. Acceptability norms toward fire management in three national forests. Environment and Behavior 36(4): 592–612. Knotek, K. 2006. Trends in public attitudes towards the use of wildland fire. Third International Fire Ecology and Management Congress Proceedings (DVD). Knotek, K., A. E. Watson, W. T. Borrie, J. G. Whitmore, and D. Turner. 2008. Recreation visitor attitudes towards managementignited prescribed fires in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Montana. Journal of Leisure Research 40: 608–618. Larson, A. J., R. T. Belote, C. A. Cansler, S. A. Parks, and M. S. Dietz. 2013. Latent resilience in ponderosa pine forest: Effects of resumed frequent fire. Ecological Applications 23(6): 1243–1249. Leirfallom, S. B., and R. E. Keane. 2011. Six-Year Post-Fire Mortality and Health of Relict Ponderosa Pines in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, Montana. Research Note RMRS-RN-42. Fort Collins, CO: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Lotan, J. E., B. M. Kilgore, W. C. Fischer, and R. W. Mutch. 1985. Proceedings: Symposium on Fire in Wilderness and Park Management, November 15–18, 1983, Missoula, MT. General Technical Report INT-182. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. McCaffrey, S. E. Toman, M. Stidham, and B. Shindler. 2013. Social science research related to wildfire management: An overview of recent findings and future research needs. International Journal of Wildland Fire 22(1): 15–24. McCool, S. F., and G. H. Stankey. 1986. Visitor Attitudes Toward Wilderness Fire Management Policy – 1971–84. Research Paper INT-357.Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station.

McKenzie, D., C. Miller, and D. A. Falk. 2011. Toward a theory of landscape ecology. In The Landscape Ecology of Fire, ed. D. McKenzie et al. (pp. 3–26). New York: Springer. McKenzie, D. M., Z. Gedalof, D. L. Peterson, and P. Mote. 2004. Climatic change, wildfire, and conservation. Conservation Biology 18(4): 890–902. Miller, C., J. Abatzoglou, T. Brown, and A. Syphard. 2011. Wilderness fire management in a changing environment. In The Landscape Ecology of Fire, ed. D. McKenzie et al. (pp. 269–294). New York: Springer. Miller, C., and A. A. Ager. 2013. A review of recent advances in risk analysis for wildfire management. International Journal of Wildland Fire 22(1): 1–14. Miller, C., and P. Landres. 2004. Exploring Information Needs for Wildland Fire and Fuels Management. General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-127. Fort Collins, CO: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Morgan, P., E. K. Heyerdahl, C. Miller, A. Wilson, and C. Gibson. Northern Rockies pyrogeography: An example of fire atlas utility. Fire Ecology. 10(1): 14–30. Parks, S. A., C. Miller, C. R. Nelson, and Z. A. Holden. 2014. Previous fires moderate burn severity of subsequent wildland fires in two large western US wilderness areas. Ecosystems 17(1): 29–42. Parsons, D. J. 2000. The challenge of restoring natural fire to wilderness. In Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference – Volume 5: Wilderness Ecosystems, Threats, and Management, May 23–27, 1999, Missoula, MT, comp. D. N. Cole et al. (pp. 276–282). Proceedings RMRS-P15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Radeloff, V. C., S. I. Stewart, T. J. Hawbaker, U. Gimmi, A. M. Pidgeon, C. H. Flather, R. B. Hammer, and D. P. Helmers. 2010. Housing growth in and near United States protected areas limits their conservation value. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(2): 940–945. Rollins, M. G., P. Morgan, and T. Swetnam. 2002. Landscape-scale controls over 20th century fire occurrence in two large Rocky Mountain (USA) wilderness areas.

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Landscape Ecology 17: 539–557. Stankey, G. H. 1976. Wilderness Fire Policy: An Investigation of Visitor Knowledge and Beliefs. Research Paper INT-180. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Steelman, T. A., and S. M. McCaffrey. 2011. What is limiting more flexible fire management – public or agency pressure? Journal of Forestry 109(8): 454–461. Teske, C. C., C. A. Seielstad, and L. P. Queen. 2012. Characterizing fire-on-fire interactions in three large wilderness areas. Fire Ecology 8(2): 82–106. Theobald, D. M., and W. H. Romme. 2007. Expansion of the US wildland-urban interface. Landscape and Urban Planning 83: 340–354. USDA and USDI. 1998. Wildland Fire and Prescribed Fire Management Policy: Implementation Procedures Reference Guide. Boise, ID: National Interagency Fire Center. van Wagtendonk, J. W. 2007. The history and evolution of wildland fire use. Fire Ecology 3(2): 3–17. van Wagtendonk, J. W., K. A. van Wagtendonk, and A. E. Thode. 2012. Factors associated with the severity of intersecting fires in Yosemite National Park, California. Fire Ecology 8(1): 11–31. Williamson, M. A. 2007. Factors in United States Forest Service District rangers’ decision to manage a fire for resource benefit. International Journal of Wildland Fire 16: 755–762. Winter, P. L. 2003. Californians’ opinions on wildland and wilderness fire management. In Homeowners, Communities, and Wildfire: Science Findings from the National Fire Plan, Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, June 2–5, 2002, Bloomington, IN, ed. P. J. Jakes (pp. 84–92). General Technical Report GTR-NC-231. St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service, North Central Station.

CAROL MILLER is a research ecologist at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, 790 E. Beckwith Avenue, Missoula, MT 59801, USA; phone: 406-542-4198; email: cmiller04@fs.fed.us.

International Journal of Wilderness

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Valuing Values A History of Wilderness Economics BY J. M. BOWKER, H. KEN CORDELL, and NEELAM C. POUDYAL Abstract: Prior to the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964, economics as a science was hardly considered applicable to the types of human values set forth in this pathbreaking legislation. Economics was largely confined to the purchasing and labor decisions of households and firms as well the functioning of markets and economies. However, around this time, John Krutilla (1967) in his seminal paper entitled “Conservation Reconsidered” recognized the economic importance of benefits from nature that were not traded or valued by conventional markets. During the next 50 years, economists developed theoretical and methodological tools that allowed economic values, or dollar metrics, to be estimated for wilderness and other protected nature. In this article, we review the conceptual basis for an economic understanding of wilderness benefits and values. This review is followed by a brief summary of empirical studies about economic values of wilderness. We then use this information to derive rudimentary dollar metrics for the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Introduction This article describes advancements in understanding wilderness benefits and their economic valuation. We use the current state of the art in nonmarket valuation to demonstrate these advancements by applying them to estimating the economic value of the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). Economic value refers to “dollar” values accruing to American society from protection through designation of federal lands as areas in the NWPS. Currently the NWPS consists of 757 distinct land areas totaling 109,511,966 acres (44,317,920 ha), 52% of which are in Alaska (Wilderness.net 2014). When we refer to wilderness, we mean statutory or designated wilderness as defined by the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964. The classes of benefits we describe are linked with dollar values brought to light through a review of empirical studies. Based on these empirical studies, we apply the current state of the art by estimating a value per acre of the NWPS. The article concludes with comments on the use of economics in the wilderness debate, including limitations and suggestions for further examination.

Benefits and Values Conceptualization of the multiple values of wilderness has been advanced over the last 50 years through the work of a number of social science disciplines. Scientists have sought

J. M. Bowker and H. Ken Cordell in Alaska. Neelam C. Poudyal.

to better understand whether the NWPS provides values in addition to those identified in the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964 (Haas et al. 1986) and how these values compare to less protective designations. Evolution of the science of economic valuation of natural resources, and more specifically, valuation of wilderness, was reviewed through numerous papers presented and published for the Economic Value of Wilderness conference (Payne et al. 1992). The culmination of the thinking and empirical work of these scientists was reviewed and further advanced through a number of published works, including Cordell, Bergstrom, and Bowker (2005) in The Multiple Values of Wilderness. Morton (1999) summarized seven categories of benefits defining the total economic value of wilderness. These benefits include on-site recreation, community, scien-

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On-site recreation Human development Cultural-heritage

Subsistence use Non-recreation jobs Retirement income Non-labor income Recreation jobs

Research Education Management

Direct use Genetic Intrinsic

Watershed protection Nutrient cycling Carbon storage Pest control Pollination

Off-site hunting Scenic viewsheds Higher property values Increased tax revenue

Off-site consumption of information in books and magazines, and scenic beauty in photos and videos

Option benefits

Future direct, indirect and off-site benefits

Habitat conservation Biodiversity Ecological services On-site recreation Off-site hunting

Existence benefits

Bequest benefits

Benefits from continued existence

Benefits from conserving wildlands for future generations

Habitat conservation Endangered species Wild recreation Biodiversity On-site recreation Ecological services Archeological resources

Figure 1 – The total economic benefits of wilderness (adapted from Morton 1999).

tific, off-site, biodiversity conservation, ecological services, and passive use (see Figure 1). Most of the empirical research preceding identification of these seven benefits focused on onsite recreation and passive use. On-site recreation benefits derive from activities in wilderness such as backpacking, bird-watching, camping, fishing, hiking, hunting, and rafting (see Figure 2). Morton (1999) referred to on-site recreation or in situ wilderness benefits as direct-use

benefits because they occur on-site. Passive-use benefits, also called non-use benefits (Freeman 1994), are less tangible and occurrence onsite is not required. Krutilla (1967) originated the concept of non-use benefits, which is easily adapted to wilderness as a protected natural resource. For example, passive-use benefits reflect the individual’s utility gained from knowing wilderness is preserved, even if they neither have, nor ever plan to, visit the area. Thus,

Figure 2 – On-site wilderness recreation benefits are obtained from activities such as backpacking, hiking, hunting, and rafting. Photo by Colin Bowker.

passive-use benefits are considered a form of off-site benefits. Passiveuse benefits include (1) option, (2) bequest, and (3) existence benefits. Option benefits refer to knowing that preservation ensures an opportunity to visit wilderness areas in the future. Bequest benefits come from knowing that wilderness will be available to one’s heirs or future generations. Existence benefits derive from simply knowing wilderness exists. There is some debate among economists over the precise definitions for the various components of passive-use benefits, and even more debate over how to estimate their economic value. However, economists generally agree with the concept of passive-use benefits (Freeman 1994). Morton (1999) conceptually identified five other benefits of wilderness, including community, scientific, off-site, biodiversity conservation, and ecological service benefits. These benefits affect the individual indirectly and have proven enigmatic to economists attempting to assign dollar values. Community benefits include jobs and income created and supported through local spending by wilderness visitors (see Figure 3). Rosenberger and English (2005) described the

Figure 3 – Spending by wilderness visitors on guided rafting trips provides economic impacts to local communities. Photo by Alan Watson.

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International Journal of Wilderness

state of knowledge for community economic impacts of wilderness recreation, focusing on local communities and regional economies. Holmes and Hecox (2004) found that “wilderness counties” in the West experienced significantly increased employment, income, and population. Morton identified three types of scientific benefits – research, education, and management (Morton 1999). Wilderness can be recognized as a living laboratory and benchmark for evaluating the impacts of development elsewhere (Loomis and Richardson 2000). Educational benefits include development of wilderness skills, clearing the mind, and creative thinking (Morton 1999). Wilderness also acts as a model for understanding and restoring natural forest ecosystems. Off-site benefits of wilderness occur because it provides habitat for fish, wildlife, and a wide variety of other species. However, species depending on this habitat do not necessarily have to be enjoyed by visiting a wilderness area. A golden eagle soaring beyond the boundary becomes an important off-site benefit. Similarly, wilderness contributes natural and scenic views for the burgeoning resort and second-home communities (McCloskey 1990). “In both time and space, wilderness benefits are not limited to actually setting foot in wilderness” (Morton 1999). Biodiversity conservation is highly important to policy makers and scientists (Ando et al. 1998). It is a growing consideration in wilderness legislation and management to assure protection of representative ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity (Loomis and Richardson 2000). Wilderness also plays a role in sustaining the ecological processes comprising our global life support system, 28

including watershed protection, carbon storage, and natural pest control (Morton 1999). Cordell, and others (2005) further describe the ecological values of wilderness, while Gudmundsen and Loomis (2005) address the more abstract, and often debated, concept 4 – Total economic value of wilderness-based recreation of intrinsic values Figure (adapted from Bergstrom et al. 1990). that differ from the values humans place on wilderness. Application of Economic Value Economists have advanced Research to Wilderness theory and methods for empirically During the past 20 or more years, studying the benefits of wilderness a number of studies have estimated over the last 50 years. Monetary individual consumer surplus for measures of wilderness benefits can on-site wilderness recreation. Fifteen be partitioned into two components: of these studies used either travel cost expenditures and consumer surplus. or contingent valuation methods. Expenditures are what an individual These studies yielded 31 estimates, is required to pay for wilderness of which 27 were from wilderness benefits (see Figure 4: Areas A, C, areas west of the Mississippi River. E, G, and I). Consumer surplus, or Fourteen of these 27 were from net economic value, is the value meaCalifornia, Oregon, Washington, sure for the same wilderness benefit, or Alaska. The majority of the above and beyond expenditures. In wilderness areas studied were on Figure 4, consumer surplus is reprenational forests. sented by the amount of remaining Each observation represents dolarea of the entire circle after the inner lar value (i.e., net economic value or circle is subtracted (Areas B, D, F, H, consumer surplus) for either a singleand J). It may be more or less than day or multiple-day trip to wilderness actual expenditures. (see Table 1). The consumer surplus Passive-use value can also be demvalues per person per wilderness visit onstrated. Consider the Okefenokee ranged from $6 to $372, with the Wilderness in southeastern Georgia. median being $24 (all dollar values Suppose someone enjoyed visiting the in this article are inflated to 2013 area, but does not intend to visit again dollars.). The consumer surplus per – yet they derive benefits from knowperson per trip averaged across studing this wilderness exists and will be ies equaled $84. With an average protected. By paying $25 annually to duration of 3.5 days per trip, avera fund supporting this wilderness, the age consumer surplus per person per individual demonstrates a passive-use day was $24. The most recent value, value of at least $25. by Weber, Mozumder, and Berrens (2012), was $30 per person per

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Table 1 – Wilderness on-site recreation use empirical literature: Individual consumer surplus for day use and multi-day use (2013 dollars). Single-day use Multi-day use Author Year State(s) consumer consumer surplus surplus Brown and Plummer 1981 1979 OR & WA

4 estimates between $537 and $725

Smith and Kopp

1980

$83

Walsh and Gilliam

1982

$240

Walsh et al.

1984

$122 $21

$40

Leuschner et al.

1987

$16

Prince and Ahmed

1988

$18

Walsh et al.

1989

$79

Barrick and Beazley

1990

$21

Halstead et al. 1991

1990

McCollum et al. 1990 9 USDA Forest Service $28 regions Hellerstein

8 estimates between $16 and $372

1991 MN

Englin and Shonkwiler 1995 1994

$43

Baker 1996 CA Richer and Christensen

1999

Weber et al. 2012

2011

trip for a Sonoran Wilderness visit. Values from Brown and Plummer (1981) were treated as outliers. Eight studies provided estimates of passive-use values (see Table 2). These studies used contingent valuation to estimate willingness to pay to protect wilderness, mostly in western states. It is difficult to compare studies of household willingness to pay for passive use due to different sampling frames and base populations. No study has estimated passive use for the entire NWPS. Moreover, each study presented somewhat different development scenarios as alternatives to preservation. Several studies presented multiple passive-use values, as more than one wilderness area in different portions or combinations were valued. An average across studies can serve as an initial approximation of

$35 6 estimates between $82 and $2,470 $6

$30

household annual willingness to pay for wilderness protection. As each study focused on a subset of the NWPS, one can assume that each provides, at most, a conservative estimate of household passive-use value for the whole NWPS. If a household would pay $93 annually for passive-

use benefits from just the designated wilderness areas in Colorado (Walsh et al. 1984), it is logical to pay at least that much for the entire NWPS. Estimates of annual household values of passive-use benefits from the studies reported in Table 2 range from $25 to $1,115. All but Keith and others (1996) reported annual household values of less than $115. Thus, their estimate of $1,115 is considered an outlier. The average annual passive value for households across studies is $87. While a number of published studies focused on recreation and passive use, studies advancing the theory and methods for estimating other wilderness values (see Figure 1) were under way. Scientific values were studied by Loomis and Richardson (2000), who found 422 journal articles based on studies done in wilderness. They used an estimate from Black (1996) to calculate the monetary value of these articles. Black estimated the economic value of one journal article to society as $15,540 per year. Using Black’s approach, the 422 articles were estimated to yield a value to society of $6.6 million annually. Few researchers have attempted to estimate the value of wilderness education programs. However, there are organizations that provide

Table 2 – Empirical literature, year, state, and annual household willingness to pay from study for passive use (2013 dollars) Study Year State(s) CO

Annual household willingness to pay (consumer surplus)

Walsh et al.

1984

Aiken

1985 CO

$93

Barrick and Beazley

1990

$98 and $113

Pope and Jones

1990

$104

$127

Gilbert et al.

1992

Eastern U.S.

$25 and $27

Diamond et al.

1993

CO, ID, MT & WY

$49, $61, and $83

McFadden

1994

CO, ID, MT & WY

$79 and $124

Keith et al.

1996

$1,115

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International Journal of Wilderness

these programs with wilderness as a backdrop (Friese et al. 1998). These programs facilitate adaptation skills, problem solving, emotional development, and a greater awareness of wilderness. Russell, Hendee, and Cook (1998) examined the economic benefits and costs of the Wilderness Discovery program for at-risk youth. They found evidence of a reduction in early terminations of Job Corps Center at-risk youth and an increase in employability equating to social benefits per student of $1,206 for each $578 in program costs. Proximity to wilderness can be considered a valuable amenity benefit. Using a hedonic model of land price, Phillips (2004) estimated that parcels of land near wilderness in the Green Mountain area of Vermont sold at prices 13% higher than comparable land not near wilderness. A similar study in New Mexico found that property located in or adjacent to a census tract containing Inventoried Roadless Areas would sell for 3.5% higher than an identical house located elsewhere (Izon et al. 2010). Alternatively and others (2011) found evidence that wilderness designation was negatively related to county household income, total tax receipts, and total payroll. This suggests that disparities between locals and nonlocals are an important reality when considering the distribution of benefits from wilderness. A major study aimed at advancing the economic valuation of natural assets was done by Costanza and others (1997). Such studies are rare for wilderness per se, but we can draw conclusions from studies of other wild areas serving as a proxy for wilderness. Costanza’s team estimated the benefits for climate regulation services from temperate forests to be $45 per acre per year. They also estimated benefits from waste treatment services of $45 30

per acre per year from these forests. Loomis and Richardson (2000), using Costanza and others estimates, calculated benefits from 42 million roadless acres in the United States at $1,269 million annually, or $30 per acre. Applying this estimate to the current 109.7 million acres in the NWPS yields an ecological value of about $3.5 billion annually. We note that this estimate is probably conservative given wilderness’s capacity for carbon storage and its trend toward increasing in value (Lubowski et al. 2006).

Toward a Total NWPS Economic Value Applying theory and methods advanced during the last 50 years to the monetary value of the wilderness benefits identified in Figure 1 remains controversial. Nevertheless, using available literature, a conservative estimate of these economic benefits can be derived by combining values from the literature with the latest on-site use, acreage, and population estimates. The most scientifically valid estimate of wilderness visitation is provided by the Forest Service’s National Visitor Use Monitoring (NVUM) system. NVUM is a system designed to provide statistically reliable estimates of recreation visitation on national forests and national grasslands, with wilderness being one of five sample strata (English et al. 2002). Between 2005 and 2012, visits to national forest wilderness ranged from 6.5 to 8.1 million visits per year (English 2014, personal communication). This 24% increase reflects a trend identified by Bowker et al. (2006). Currently, NVUM results indicate that wilderness visits are distributed about 75% and 25%, respectively, to single-day and multiple-day visits, while Cole (1996) found that 26% of the visits

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were for single-day use and 74% for multiple-day use. Cole (2003, personal e-mail communication) estimated that 82% of all NWPS visitation is on national forests, 15% in national parks, with the remaining 3% split among other federal agencies. Applying these shares to the most recent NVUM visitation estimate yields 10.1 million annual visits to the NWPS. This use estimate can be combined with the average consumer surplus per trip of $84 to yield an annual net economic value of recreation access to the NWPS of about $850 million, or an estimated annual value of recreation access of $8 per acre. The annual passive-use value for the NWPS depends on the relevant population of passive users. The passive-use values reported in Table 2 are based on household sampling. Therefore, aggregation across U.S. households becomes necessary. Using an average 50% response rate across studies, and an estimate of 115 million U.S. households in 2011 (Vespa et al. 2013), a conservative estimate of annual passive-use value for wilderness is about $5 billion, or $46 per acre. Combining totals in the preceding paragraphs yields $5.85 billion in benefits annually accruing to the U.S. public from the NWPS, or about $54 per acre. To this total we reasonably add an annual value of $3.5 billion in ecological services and estimate a total yield of approximately $9.4 billion per year in benefits to the U.S. public from the NWPS, or $85 per acre. Of course, the present value, however discounted, would be substantially larger.

Conclusions Some claim that economics did not underlie either the Wilderness Act

or subsequent legislation leading to additions to the NWPS. Rather, some have asserted that “wilderness is established for emotional, ecological, and cultural purposes” (Steed et al. 2011). Forgetting about nonmarket values as established earlier, this is a very narrow view of economics, focusing only on jobs and income in the neighborhood of NWPS areas. Others view the role of economics in the wilderness debate as important and perhaps growing, recognizing that benefits extend beyond local jurisdictions and market transactions. The advancement of identifying, defining, and applying money metrics to wilderness benefits has left no question that the NWPS provides many valuable benefits, with some harder to measure because of their indirect nature. These benefits lead to conceptually valid, albeit empirically elusive, estimates of the net economic value of wilderness. While some choose to visit wilderness and obtain direct benefits, the majority of people do not visit wilderness. Yet, numerous studies have shown that even for those with no intention to ever visit the NWPS, benefits derived from passive use are nontrivial, outweighing the value of recreation benefits. The indirect economic value of ecological services, if not double-counted with passive use, adds considerably more to the net economic value of the NWPS. Of course, economic logic would also dictate that these economic values derived from wilderness are only truly relevant when compared to values associated with alternative land use designations. There is also no question that while the net economic benefits of wilderness are positive, they must be included with, or balanced against, equity considerations. Phillips (2004) demonstrated that local areas can be

positively impacted through increased property values. Alternatively, Steed and others (2011) present evidence that wilderness designation can, in some cases, lead to costs in the form of lost jobs and impaired growth and development in local economies. As Rasker (2005) pointed out, “Passing Wilderness legislation these days is very hard work because it also needs to pass the test of being economically beneficial.” In essence, future designation will face increasing economic scrutiny as values put forth for various wilderness benefits will have to be carefully weighed against opportunity costs from forgoing other types of land uses. This is particularly true as more complex accounting approaches are developed to increase the efficiency of conservation and public wildland investments and acquisitions (Withey et al. 2012). Moreover, given the political climate, equity questions concerning the spatial distribution of benefits and costs between local and nonlocal residents will be important. Thus, as roadless acres equaling more than double the acreage of the NWPS are debated for alternative land designations (Campaign for America’s Wilderness 2003), including wilderness, economics and economists will continue to have a seat at both sides of the table, or at least be advising those that do.

References Aiken, R. 1985. Public benefits of environmental protection in Colorado. Unpublished master’s thesis, Colorado State University. Ando, A. W., J. Camm, S. Polasky, A. Solow, 1998. Species distributions, land values and efficient conservation. Science 279: 2126–2128. Baker, J. C. 1996. A nested poisson approach to ecosystem valuation: An application to backcountry hiking in California. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Nevada. Barrick, K. A., and R. I. Beazley. 1990.

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Magnitude and distribution of option value for the Washakie Wilderness, northwest Wyoming, U.S.A. Environmental Management 14(Sept.): 367–380. Bergstrom, J. C., J. R. Stoll, J. P. Titre, and V. L. Wright. 1990. Economic value of wetlandsbased recreation. Ecological Economics 2: 129–147. Black, D. 1996. Application of contingent valuation methodology to value a government public good. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Colorado State University, Department of Economics. Bowker, J. M., D. Murphy, H. K. Cordell, D. B. K. English, J. C. Bergstrom, C. M. Starbuck, C. J. Betz, and G. T. Green. 2006. Wilderness and primitive area recreation participation and consumption: An examination of demographic and spatial factors. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 38: 317–326. Brown, G., and M. Plummer. 1981. Recreation values, appendix a.5, final report, November 30, 1979. In An Economic Analysis of Non-Timber Uses of Forestland in the Pacific Northwest (Modules IIB, IIIB), comp. J. H. Powel and G. K. Loth (A.5-A.5–47). (Final Report). Forest Policy Project, Vancouver, WA (May 31). Campaign for America’s Wilderness. 2003. A mandate to protect America’s Wilderness: A comprehensive review of recent public opinion research. Retrieved December 20, 2004, from www.leaveitwild.org/reports/ polling_report.pdf. Cole, D. N. 1996. Wilderness Recreation Use Trends, 1965 through 1994. INT-RP-488. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Cordell, H. K., and J. Teasley. 1998. Recreation trips to Wilderness. International Journal of Wilderness 4(1): 23–27. Cordell, H. Ken, John C. Bergstrom, and J. M. Bowker. 2005. The multiple values of wilderness and the Future of the National Wilderness Preservation System. In The Multiple Values of Wilderness, ed. H. Ken Cordell, John C. Bergstrom, and J. M. Bowker. Pp. 266-278. State College, PA: Venture Publishing Inc. Cordell, H. Ken, Danielle Murphy, Kurt Riitters, and J. E. Harvard III. 2005. The natural ecological value of wilderness. In The Multiple Values of Wilderness, ed. H. Ken Cordell, John C. Bergstrom, and J. M. Bowker (pp. 205–249). State College, PA:

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Venture Publishing, Inc. Costanza, Robert, Ralph d’Arge, Rudolf de Groot, Stephen Farber, Monica Grasso, Bruce Hannon, Karin Limburg, Shahid Naeem, Robert V. O’Neill, Jose Paruelo, Robert G. Raskin, Paul Sutton, and Marjan van den Belt. 1997. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387(15): 253–260. Diamond, P. A., J. A. Hausman, G. K. Leonard, and M. A. Denning. 1993. Does contingent valuation measure preferences? Experimental evidence. In Contingent Valuation: A Critical Assessment, ed. J. A. Hausman (pp. 41–89). Amsterdam, NY: NorthHolland. Englin, J., and J. Shonkwiler. 1995. Estimating social welfare using count data models. Review of Economics and Statistics 77(1): 105–112. English, D. B. K., S. M. Kocis, S. J. Zarnoch, and J. R. Arnold. 2002. Forest Service National Visitor Use Monitoring Process: Research Method Documentation. GTR-SRS-57. Asheville, NC: USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station. Freeman, A. M. III. 1994. The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values: Theory and Methods. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. Friese, G., J. C. Hendee, and M. Kinziger. 1998. The wilderness experience program industry in the United States: Characteristics and dynamics. Unpublished manuscript, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center at Moscow. Gilbert, A., R. Glass, and R. More. 1992. Valuation of eastern wilderness: Extramarket measures of public support. In Economic Value of Wilderness, comp. C. Payne, J. Bowker, and P. Reed (pp. 57–70). GTR-SE-78. Athens, GA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southeastern Experiment Station. Gudmundsen, S., and J. B. Loomis. 2005. Tracking the intrinsic value of wilderness. In The Multiple Values of Wilderness, ed. H. K. Cordell, J. C. Bergstrom, and J. M. Bowker (chapter 12). State College, PA: Venture Publishing, Inc. Haas, G. E., E. Hermann, and R. Walsh. 1986. Wilderness values. Natural Areas Journal 6(2): 37–43. Halstead, J., B. E. Lindsay, and C. M. Brown. 1991. Use of the TOBIT model in contingent valuation: Experimental evidence from Pemigewasset Wilderness Area. Journal

of Environmental Management 33(1): 79–89. Hellerstein, D. M. 1991. Using count data models in travel cost analysis with aggregate data. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 73(3): 860–866. Holmes, F. P., and W. E. Hecox. 2004. Does wilderness impoverish rural regions? International Journal of Wilderness 10(3): 34–39. Izon, G. M., M. S. Hand, M. Fontenla, and R. P. Berrens. 2010. The economic value of protecting inventoried roadless areas: A spatial hedonic price study in New Mexico. Contemporary Economic Policy 28: 537–553. Keith, J., C. Fawson, and V. Johnson. 1996. Preservation or use: A contingent valuation study of wilderness designation in Utah. Ecological Economics 18(3): 207–214. Krutilla, J. 1967. Conservation reconsidered. The American Economic Review 57: 777–786. Leuschner, W. A., P. S. Cook, J. W. Roggenbuck, and R. G. Oderwald. 1987. A comparative analysis for wilderness user fee policy. Journal of Leisure Research 19(2): 101–114. Loomis, J. B., and R. Richardson. 2000. Economic values of protecting roadless areas in the United States. An analysis prepared for The Wilderness Society and Heritage Forests Campaign. June. Retrieved March 31, 2014, from www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/ FireForestEcology/ForestEconomics/ Economics-Loomis00.pdf. Lubowski, R. N., A. J. Plantinga, and R. N. Stavins. 2006. Land-use change and carbon sinks: Econometric estimation of the carbon sequestration supply function. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 51: 135–152. McCloskey, M. 1990. Evolving perspectives on wilderness values: Putting wilderness values in order. In Preparing to Manage Wilderness in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the Conference. Comp. P. C. Reed. (pp. 13–18). GTR-SE-66. Asheville, NC: USDA Forest Service, Southeastern Forest Experiment Station. McCollum, D. W., G. L. Peterson, J. R. Arnold, D. C. Markstrom, and D. M. Hellerstein. 1990. The Net Economic Value of Recreation on the National Forests: Twelve Types of Primary Activity Trips across Nine Forest Service Regions. RM-RP-289. Fort Collins, CO: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain

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Forest and Range Experiment Station. McFadden, D. 1994. Contingent valuation and social choice. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 76(4): 689–708. Morton, P. 1999. The economic benefits of wilderness: Theory and practice. Denver Law Review 76(2): 465–518. Payne, C., J. M. Bowker, and P. Reed, eds. 1992. The Economic Value of Wilderness: Proceedings of the Conference. General Technical Report SE-78. Asheville, NC: USDA Forest Service, Southeast Forest Experiment Station. Phillips, Spencer. 2004. Windfalls for wilderness: Land protection and land value in the Green Mountains. PhD dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Pope, C. A., and J. Jones. 1990. Value of wilderness designation in Utah. Journal of Environmental Management 30: 157–174. Prince, R., and E. Ahmed. 1988. Estimating individual recreation benefits under congestion and uncertainty. Journal of Leisure Research 20(4): 61–76. Rasker, R. 2005. Wilderness for its own sake or as economic asset? Journal of Land, Resources, Environmental Law 25(1): 15–20. Richer, J. R., and N. A. Christensen. 1999. Appropriate fees for wilderness day use: Pricing decisions for recreation on public land. Journal of Leisure Research 31(3): 269–280. Rosenberger, R. S., and D. B .K. English. 2005. Impacts of wilderness on local economic development. In The Multiple Values of Wilderness, ed. H. K. Cordell, J. C. Bergstrom, and J. M. Bowker (chapter 10). State College, PA: Venture Publishing, Inc. Russell, K., J. C. Hendee, and S. C. Cooke. 1998. Social and economic benefits of a wilderness experience program for youth at risk in Federal Job Corps. International Journal of Wilderness 4(3): 32–38. Smith, V. K., and R. Kopp. 1980. The spatial limits of the travel cost recreational demand model. Land Economics 56(1): 64–72. Steed, B. C., R. M. Yonk, and R. Simmons. 2011. The economic costs of wilderness. Environmental Trends 1(June): 1–7. Vespa, J., J. M. Lewis, and R. M. Kreider. 2013. America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2012. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau, P20–570, August.

Walsh, R. G., G. L. Peterson, and J. R. McKean. 1989. Distribution and efficiency effects of alternative recreation funding methods. Journal of Leisure Research 21(4): 327–347. Walsh, R. G., J. B. Loomis, and R. A. Gillman. 1984. Valuing option, existence and bequest demands for wilderness. Land Economics 60: 14–29. Walsh, R. G., and L. O. Gilliam. 1982. Benefits of wilderness expansion with excess demand for Indian Peaks. Western Journal of Agricultural Economics 7(1): 1–12. Weber, M. A., P. Mozumder, and R. P. Berrens.

2012. Accounting for unobserved time-varying quality in recreation demand: An application to a Sonoran Desert Wilderness. Water Resource Research 48, W05515, doi:10.1029/2010WR010237 Wilderness.net. 2014. Creation and growth of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Retrieved March 13, 2014, from www.wilderness.net/NWPS/fastfacts. Withey, J.C. et al. 2012. Maximising return on conservation investment in the conterminous USA. Ecology Letters doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01847.x.

J. M. BOWKER is a research social scientist, USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Athens, GA, 30602, USA; email: mbowker@fs.fed.us. H. KEN CORDELL is an emeritus scientist, USDA Forest Service, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Institute and Southern Research Station, Athens, GA 30602; email: kencordell@gmail.com. NEELAM C. POUDYAL is assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, Knoxville, TN, 37996-4563, USA; email: npoudyal@utk.edu.

Continued from WILDERNESS SOCIAL SCIENCE, page 19 and Systems. General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-56. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Watson, A., B. Glaspell, N. Christensen, P. Lachapelle, V. Sahanatien, and F. Gertsch. 2007. Giving voice to wildlands visitors: Selecting indicators to protect and sustain experiences in the eastern Arctic of Nunavut. Environmental Management 40: 880–888. Watson, A. E., and G. Herath. 1999. Research implications of the theme issues “Recreation fees and pricing issues in the public sector“ (Journal of Park and Recreation Administration) and “Societal response to recreation fees on public lands” (Journal of Leisure Research). Journal of Leisure Research 31(3): 325–334. Watson, A. E., M. J. Niccolucci, and D. R. Williams. 1993. Hikers and Recreational Stock Users: Predicting and Managing Recreation Conflicts in Three Wildernesses. Research Paper INT-468. Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Watson, A. E., M. Roian, K. Knotek, D. R. Williams, and L. Yung. 2011. Traditional

wisdom: Protecting relationships with wilderness as a cultural landscape. Ecology and Society 16(1): 1–14. Watson, A. E., D. R. Williams, and J. J. Daigle. 1991. Sources of conflict between hikers and mountain bike riders in the Rattlesnake NRA. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 9(3): 59–71. Whiting, A. 2004. The relationship between Qikiktagrugmiut (Kotzebue tribal members) and the Western Arctic Parklands, Alaska, United States. International Journal of Wilderness 10(2): 28–31, 38. Williams, D. R., J. W. Roggenbuck, M. E. Patterson, and A. E. Watson. 1992. The variability of user-based social impact standards for wilderness management. Forest Science 38(4): 738–756.

science on this topic. Our apologies to those scientists who have made substantial contributions that are not included in this short history summary; although their work may not be listed among those cited here, the authors have likely reviewed the work in selecting a small number of references to represent many others. Publications by many Forest Service scientists and university cooperators on this topic are available through two websites that are easy to access: leopold.wilderness.net/ and www. treesearch.fs.fed.us/.

Acknowledgment

ALAN E. WATSON is the supervisory research social scientist at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Montana; awatson@fs.fed.us.

There is a small, strong group of wilderness social scientists in the United States who have contributed substantially to this line of research. In this applied research article there was not enough space to allow reference to all relevant published

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KEN CORDELL is emeritus scientist, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute and retired pioneering research scientist and project leader, Southern Research Station, Athens, Georgia.

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SCIENCE & RESEARCH P E R S P E CT I V E S FRO M TH E A LDO L E O P OLD W I LD E RN E S S R E S E A RCH I N S T I TUT E

The Wildland Research Institute BY STEVE CARVER, MARK FISHER, and ALISON PARFITT

The Wildland Research Institute (WRi) at the University of Leeds (UK) came into being in October 2009. Its origins go back to a United Kingdom research councilfunded seminar series called Wilderness Britain? which ran between 1998 and 2000 and was coordinated from the University of Leeds. This opened up the wider debate on wilderness and rewilding in the UK and later joined with others to form the Wildland Network with support from the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC). The Wildland Network took the debate forward with a focus on the wildland and rewilding movement in Britain. It was at the Wilderness Britain? seminar series that Steve Carver (WRi) and Alan Watson of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI) first met, initiating a long series of collaborations between WRi and ALWRI and cemented by a firm friendship and common interest in wilderness, wildness, and motorcycles.

What Is WRi? WRi is an international group of academics and practitioners specializing in research and policy development relating to wilderness and wildlands. The institute aims to identify and elucidate the requirements, strategies, and policies for a transition to a greater presence of wild landscapes within the wider land use continuum of Britain, Europe, and the world. The institute is based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds and has a dedicated core team of 15 interdisciplinary researchers. Although based in Leeds, we have many more partners and associates working on the different dimensions of wilderness and wildlands worldwide. We have developed a productive collaboration over the years with ALWRI, working on mapping projects for climate change, landscape values, traditional knowledge, fire, and wilderness character, as well as publishing and presenting 34 International Journal of Wilderness

together at joint meetings and co-chairing the science and stewardship symposium at the 10th World Wilderness Congress. The institute has strategic links with national and international bodies, including the Wildland Network, the European Wilderness Society, Wild Europe, and the John Muir Trust. Together we provide a unique skill set and research capacity focusing on GIS mapping and spatial modeling, participatory approaches, programming and tool development, decision support, policy advice, social science, critical thought, and analysis.

Our Achievements Since 2009, WRi has been active on a number of fronts. It is not possible to relate all of these within the confines of these pages, but the key areas of activity have been within mapping, policy advice, and participatory approaches. These are summarized as follows: Mapping Being able to accurately model the spatial characteristics and attributes of wilderness in a robust and repeatable

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fashion with a high degree of detail and certainty is often the key to achieving recognition of wild landscapes within the wider public policy and planning framework. Work by WRi members underpins much of the detailed mapping of wilderness quality being carried out in the world today. Examples include the Scottish national wildness map developed by Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish national parks, the new European Wilderness Quality Index developed for the European Environment Agency with colleagues in Alterra in the Netherlands, and a series of Wilderness Character maps developed for the U.S. National Park Service by James Tricker working at the ALWRI. Other examples include a wilderness map for Austria produced by Christoph Plutzar and a map for the Carpathian Mountains in Romania produced by Dragos Mantiou. Policy Advice Policy making in the 21st century relies on high quality information provided in a timely and understandable manner. WRi specializes in sourcing, researching, and providing policy advice to a range of clients across the social, business, and political spectrum. In 2010 the Scottish government contracted WRi to write a “review of the status and conservation of wild land in Europe”

in support of developing policy on wildland in Scotland. The resulting 150-page document provides the most rigorous and comprehensive overview of wilderness in Europe to date and has been cited in the development of not only Scottish government policy on wildland but also that of the European Union. This led to WRi being part of the team developing the new European Wilderness Register. In addition, WRi has provided advice to various wilderness-facing organizations, including PAN Parks, the European Wilderness Society, The Wild Foundation, the John Muir Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage, and the U.S. Forest Service. Participatory Approaches One area where the WRi and ALWRI are currently collaborating is in the development of spatially explicit means of participatory decision support. Funded by the Joint Fire Science Program and the U.S. Forest Service through Joint Venture Agreements, WRi and ALWRI have jointly developed participatory approaches to understand values and meanings attached to landscapes in or adjacent to wilderness areas with respect to climate change and fire-adapted ecosystems. The emphasis of this work is how best to capture both the spatial pattern (linked to landscape units) and the

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sentiments and local knowledge attached to these in a systematic way that allows both quantitative and qualitative analysis of value/ meaning, change, adaptation, and resilience. To this end we have jointly developed a new tool kit for collecting, collating, and analyzing this kind of information. Known as MapMe, this tool is now available for general use. For further information about WRi, including projects, people, and publications, see www.wildlandresearch.org. STEVE CARVER is a geographer with special interests in wilderness, landscape evaluation, and geographical information systems. He is director of the Wildland Research Institute based at the University of Leeds, UK; email: s.j.carver@leeds.ac.uk. MARK FISHER is a biochemist by training but is a self-taught expert on wilderness ecology and rewilding. He is an honorary research fellow with the Wildland Research Institute where he advises on ecosystems and policy development; email: m.n.fisher@leeds.ac.uk. ALISON PARFITT is an independent practitioner, researcher, sometimeactivist, and honorary research fellow with the Wildland Research Institute where she works to improve relationships and practice between academics and community activists for mutual benefit; email: a.parfitt@leeds.ac.uk.

International Journal of Wilderness

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Fifty Years of Wilderness Science An International Perspective BY STEVE CARVER, STEVE McCOOL, ZDENKA KRENOVA, MARK FISHER, and STEPHEN WOODLEY Â Science provides knowledge upon which to make informed decisions about the protection and management of wilderness. In addition, wilderness provides opportunities for scientific understanding that is not often available in other, less well-protected areas. Thus, science is important to wilderness and wilderness is important to science. (Parsons 2000, p. 34)

Introduction The 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act is a cause for celebration, not least of which is the scientific use recognized in Section 4(b) of the act. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of publication of the International Journal of Wilderness (IJW). IJW plays a unique role in wilderness stewardship, science, and advocacy, providing a forum for presentation and discussion of important questions, challenges, and opportunities. But wilderness provides unique opportunities for science, and IJW provides an equally useful international venue for scientists interested in establishing a dialogue with managers and interested publics. In this article, we take an international view and we focus on how science has benefited from wilderness and also how wilderness has benefited from science. We discuss why each is important (some might say essential) for the other, beginning with an overview of science articles published in IJW. We then shift our attention to the 10th World Wilderness Congress and review the main wilderness science themes developed in Salamanca in 2013. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on what wilderness can do for science and science for wilderness and as a result, implications for other dimensions of human life and our natural heritage. Wilderness science generally involves one of three categories: (1) research in wilderness, (2) research about wilderness, and (3) research for wilderness. In the first 36 International Journal of Wilderness

category, scientists investigate the more or less natural and untrammeled conditions and processes found in wilderness to better understand how nature works. Wilderness provides us with a natural laboratory in which we can carry out observations and experiments within and about the natural world without having to worry too much about the potential effects of human influences on our work. For example, in many western U.S. wildernesses, naturally ignited fire plays an important role in shaping the vegetative mosaic. Research on fire suggests how ecological processes operate, the role of so-called disturbance variables, and how humans may have impacted those processes and resulting conditions. In the second category of wilderness science, researchers are focused on the human aspects of use: impacts and consequences such as the effects of management, wilderness law and policy, recreation, commercial use, and so on. The objective of this research is to better understand the role of wilderness in human life, the ecological services it produces, the ways in which people transform those services into benefits, and how stewardship may impact wilderness. The third category is that of research for wilderness, wherein the focus is more on understanding the wilderness ideal, how it needs to be stewarded, and the equity effects of management actions. For example, scientists may engage in identifying global, regional, and local patterns in wilderness quality; may research the importance

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of wilderness in human discourse; and may investigate how policy is developed, formed, and applied.

Twenty Years of Science and Research in IJW IJW has served as an important international venue for publication of articles on all three categories of wilderness science. In the 57 issues published since 1995, scientists have published a variety of peer-reviewed papers or invited contributions on a diverse range of topics and questions. To better understand what seems to be of interest to scientists, we tabulated science articles appearing in IJW’s Science and Research section across all 57 issues and categorized their major themes. Table 1 summarizes the main topics or themes developed in all issues of IJW between September 1995 and December 2013. In total, 119 papers were published that had a science orientation covering multiple topic/theme categories. We have attempted to distill these into just seven categories, as shown in Table 1. There is nothing particularly scientific in this process, since the classification is necessarily quite subjective because of the applied and often multidisciplinary nature of many of the articles reviewed. We acknowledge that, if a reader were to repeat this exercise, it is highly probable that they would produce somewhat different classes and numbers, although the overall pattern would seemingly remain the same. The first two topics, accounting for just over half of all papers published, are recreational use of wilderness and ecosystem management issues. Recreation is not only a key value of wilderness, it is also often viewed as a threat through its impact on wilderness ecosystems in terms of disturbance, erosion, pol-

lution, and so on. Within this topic we have lumped a number of articles looking at perceptions of wilderness from recreational visitors, as it is important to understand these as they influence attitudes, or are determined by them, but are nearly always expressed politically. Many articles herein might be considered to fall into the broader category of science about wilderness; in this case about use. Ecosystem management is another key area of concern that follows naturally on from the focus on recreation. Here many articles look at issues such as restoration, wildlife, and control of exotic/nonnative species – all of which are influenced in one way or another by human use. In the broader scheme of things, ecosystem management might be considered to be science for wilderness but not exclusively. We might have included fire within ecosystem management but decided that this probably warrants its own category given its prominence within the wilderness science literature. Fire is a significant natural process in wilderness and as such is often a needed modifier of habitat and wildlife. Add those general science papers focusing on doing science in wilderness, and you can account for more than threequarters of all the articles. A number of key articles stand

out, not least of which are a series of pithy “shorts” on wilderness science and research perspectives from the staff at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, covering topics as varied as natural fire regimes, promoting wilderness values, monitoring programs, wilderness-dependent species, managing recreation, and visitor experiences. Reading these provides us with a pastiche or vignette of developments in the wilderness science paradigm and how the field has developed. Recent examples include articles on GIS mapping applications, stewardship, ecosystem services, managing fire, climate change, and recreation impacts. Within the mainstream scientific literature the picture is a little more difficult to discern, largely because the accumulated scientific literature of the last 100 years or so is vast. Google Scholar is probably too blunt a tool to use, but some basic searches reveal approximately 785,000 returns for the word “wilderness,” approximately 287,000 for the Boolean search term “wilderness AND science,” and only 1,390 returns for “wilderness science” as a cojoined phrase. A search of the journals Nature and Scientific American reveals a total of 1,751,837 and 3 articles, respectively. The problem here is that “wilderness and science”

Table 1 – Main wilderness science topics/themes found in the IJW. Topic/theme Number of articles

Percentage

Recreation

37 35

Ecosystem management

Fire

13 12

General science

Monitoring

11 10

Wilderness psychology

Modeling

6 6

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18 11 8

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is too vague a search term: it simply is not a good description of the kinds of research going on in, about, and for wilderness. We all know colleagues that are doing good science using what many of us would call wilderness areas as study sites in which to collect their data, or perhaps they are simply working in wilderness-related fields, but they never use the term, probably because they are not from institutions where the focus is on wilderness per se; rather they focus on other subjects wherein wilderness areas are just a great place to carry out their research. Without going into a long debate on the origins and philosophy of the wilderness idea and the use of the word itself, this wider lack of engagement can potentially deflate any argument as to the importance of wilderness to science and/or science to wilderness before we even start. As regards publishing wilderness science within the pages of IJW, we inevitably turn to the issue of Institute for Scientific Information Impact Factors (IF) used to rate the importance of academic journals based on the number of citations of articles published therein. IJW is an applied journal without an IF rating and so is not necessarily the best place to publish pure and basic science. Putting it bluntly, scientists and academics get more credit for publishing in high impact factor journals, and while we may consider IJW to be the only purely wilderness-focused journal, there are plenty of other avenues open for publishing wilderness science research that generate more credits and more citations than does IJW. Taking recreation as an example, if the interest is in promoting and sharing your work primarily within the broader academic community, as opposed to managers and 38

decision makers, then the Journal of Leisure Research (IF=0.51) or Leisure Sciences (IF=1.07) is where you’d most likely seek to see your paper published. Likewise, many wildliferelated journals and other disciplines such as environmental management, landscape research, forestry, ecology, and so forth, all take and publish material on wilderness science for dissemination to their respective audiences.

Wilderness Science: The View from WILD10 October 2013 year saw many people congregating in Salamanca, Spain, for WILD10 (10th World Wilderness Congress) and, for those who couldn’t make it, following live video streams online. In total, around 1,200 people from more than 50 countries attended the congress in person, all of whom received an electronic copy of IJW in their delegate packs. A key part of the program was, as usual, the Science and Stewardship Symposium. Sessions within the symposium included themes on spatial science, rewilding, climate science, transboundary/ corridor landscapes, ecosystem services, fire, and restoration, while a participatory exercise identifying key questions facing wilderness science (the “WILD Wall”) ran throughout the whole congress. Post-congress, there is now a great opportunity to take stock of wilderness and conservation science as we enter the Wilderness Act’s 50th anniversary year and consider how the act and its amendments have influenced developments. Key themes and findings from the symposium can be summarized as follows: Spatial science. There was something of a special emphasis on spatial science in the symposium,

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funded by the World Universities Network, from which a new community of interest is emerging to lead future spatial analysis to guide wilderness protection around the world. This community is focused around the Wildland Research Institute at the University of Leeds (see short Leopold Institute article this issue on WRI) and promises to move mapping applications into a new era of hypothesis testing and theoretical development, as well as reconnaissance, data management, planning, and policy development. The basic message here is that we need to know where remaining wilderness is located and the spatial patterns of wilderness quality in order to better develop policy, designate wilderness areas, and protect it for future generations. A multiscale approach is needed as global scale maps, valuable as they are for the overview they provide, are more or less useless at a local scale where the need for accuracy and detail in understanding relative local differences is paramount. A network of local “mapping champions,” facilitated by www.wildernessmaps. net, will take the national and regional mapping agendas forward within Europe and elsewhere. Traditional and scientific knowledge. Due to the interactions between Indigenous people, academics, and stakeholders within the symposium community, there is evidence of movement toward a new focus on research as “resistance”: the decolonizing practice of Native people claiming authority to define research questions and better integrate scientific knowledge with traditional knowledge. This will, it is hoped, act to guide traditional wisdom and scientific knowledge

via the applications of the combined knowledge base to protect our relationship with wild nature. Nonetheless, there still seems to be something of a barrier between Western science and traditional knowledge, making this an area for potential future collaboration and a challenge to developing participatory processes that honor different wisdoms.

new technologies and methods of communication. They now seriously want to share their ideas and experiences with young people of other countries. The students from the University of Leeds and other volunteers played an important and enjoyable role in the symposium, and maybe we will see them at the next World Wilderness Congress as presenters and moderators.

Climate change. The role of wilderness in climate change research emerged through various sessions and presentations within the symposium and is likely to become a leading issue in future wilderness stewardship decision making. Where previously we focused on the role of wilderness in mitigation of climate change effects, now we are entering a new era of decision making about the use of wilderness areas for research into these effects. This echoes at least two of our categories of wilderness science outlined earlier. There is a much greater awareness about the role of wilderness as a geographical and temporal baseline for climate change research, where other humancaused influences are minimized. This poses new challenges in processing requests for instrumentation, specimen collecting, and installations in wilderness, as these themselves can have their own impacts.

Wilderness and human well-being. In the future we will see a growing discussion about the role of environmental quality in human well-being. Across the themes of transboundary conservation, ecological networks, rewilding, and threats to ecosystem services and wild nature, there is a need for interdisciplinary collaboration to fully acknowledge and protect the intertwined benefits to humans from wilderness protection. Utilitarian models about the quality of life are being replaced by models with more sustainability foundations, moving us to embrace long-standing recreation interests in wilderness but also moving us to evaluate programs such as Nature Needs Half (natureneedshalf.org/home/), based on the contribution of environmental well-being to human well-being.

Young scientists. We have seen a new generation of enthusiasts for science and stewardship of wilderness emerge at this symposium. CoalitionWILD and GenWILD were very visible, with these young people now talking about new career paths they didn’t previously know existed, inspired by interpersonal interaction with scientists and stewards from all over the world, and learning about using

Rewilding. There was much talk about rewilding at WILD10 with a group of sessions organized by Rewilding Europe. While the general model being followed is based on rewilding of abandoned farmlands, there is much debate as to the best way to do this. Although Rewilding Europe seems wedded to the hypothesis that high densities of large herbivores create grazing pressure that is able to modify vegetation and maintain open and semi-open landscapes (i.e., the Vera AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

Hypothesis), there is an ongoing debate about the scientific evidence supporting this worldview. Certainly large herbivores in the absence of top carnivores create artificially denuded landscapes, such as what was seen in Yellowstone National Park before the reintroduction of the wolf, and so rewilding solely with large herbivores – whether wild or semidomesticated – without a functional carnivore pressure ought to be avoided. This has created a niche for science to exploit in better understanding the patterns and processes involved, and so informing the future role of rewilding in creating new wilderness in former agri-landscapes. Spain. In the WILD10 host country we expect to see many long-term impacts from the exchanges at the symposium. Rewilding projects are in motion that will focus on Iberian lynx, and the rest of Europe and the world will follow these activities closely. Efforts to establish corridors to reconnect landscapes are under way and promise a bright future. With a mixed history of nature protection in Spain, it is clear now that there is a strong central community that is focused on raising public awareness and making great strides toward a wider acceptance of larger carnivores. Environmentally friendly tourism is likely to be a much more visible trend in the future than it has been in the past. Doing wilderness science. Finally, Gary Machlis (science advisor to the director of the U.S. National Park Service) instigated a special workshop at the congress entitled Doing Science in Wilderness. This focused on the policies, protocols, and ethics of actually doing science in wilderness. Whereas wilderness stewards and

International Journal of Wilderness

managers, informed by the results of research on wilderness, are working hard to mitigate against the impacts of wilderness recreation and cope with the effects of climate change, those of us working in wilderness as scientists and managers often don’t practice what we preach. The Leave No Trace (LNT) Center for Outdoor Ethics promotes seven basic principles to be followed by people engaged in outdoor recreation. These are: 1. Plan ahead and prepare. 2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces. 3. Dispose of waste properly. 4. Leave what you find. 5. Minimize campsite impacts. 6. Respect wildlife. 7. Be considerate of other visitors. Often, these are summed up in the wilderness user’s mantra: “Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.” Doing science in wilderness often breaks this rule and many of the principles of LNT. We take samples, we leave scientific monitoring equipment, and we often study wildlife and disturb it in the process (taking measurements and biopsy samples, installing cameras, fitting radio/GPS collars, etc.). We may justify such impacts in the name of science and for the good of the wilderness, but policies, checks, and regulations can help minimize these. In some cases, if the impact is deemed too great or the costs outweigh the benefits, it may be better to do the science somewhere else.

The Wilderness Movement in Europe While much of our attention will focus on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act this year, let us focus for a moment on Europe. It may be argued that it was Europeans 40

who first “exported” the idea of wilderness to the New World during the Age of Discovery, first as an object of dread, of ungodly places inhabited by wild animals and wild people, but subsequently as something more positive during the Romantic period when wilderness began to take on a more positive tone associated with the state of nature and the sublime. Much has been happening in Europe over the last five years, both in recognizing that wilderness exists in the Old World as much as it does in the New, and in promoting good wilderness science to underpin developing European policy. Indeed, history tells us that Europe has a strong scientific tradition in its approach to nature conservation that is less tempered by the landscape aesthetic that laid the foundations of the U.S. Wilderness Act. Much of this attention has sought the preservation of unique assemblages of species rather than necessarily of landscape values. The emergence of the Swiss National Park in 1914 with its policy of undisturbed nature as a long-term, open-air laboratory marked a characteristic approach to wild nature that had contemporaries in other protected areas across Europe. U.S. botanist Harvey Hall, who had studied the flora of Yosemite National Park, visited the Swiss National Park in 1928 while investigating protected area approaches in Europe. Hall took a number of messages back to the Carnegie Institution, including the need to have “complete reserves” in the core areas of national parks and national forests, and that a more scientific approach should be taken as soon as an area was brought under protection. Although unratified, the London Convention of 1900 had been the first multiparty treaty on wildlife

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preservation, prohibiting the hunting or destruction of certain listed species, as well as encouraging the creation of wildlife reserves. This intent was eventually realized in the London Convention of 1933, in which definitions of a “national park” and a “strict natural reserve” were penned. U.S. observers were at that conference (Harold Coolidge and John Phillips), and this acted as motivation at the Conference of American States in Lima, Peru, in 1938 to call for a committee of experts to study protection of wildlife in the American republics and prepare a draft convention. The definition of a “strict wilderness area” in the Western Hemisphere Convention (WHC) of 1940 owes much to the “strict natural reserves” of the London Convention, but unfortunately due to world events of the time, the WHC was largely unimplemented. However, efforts to define wilderness in a way usable in land management had been ongoing since Aldo Leopold in the 1920s, continued by Bob Marshall and the Forest Service in the 1930s, and taken on in the 1940s and 1950s by The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club, culminating in the U.S. Wilderness Act in 1964. For some time, Finland was the only European country with wilderness legislation. This respects traditional sources of livelihood for the local indigenous Sami people in northern Finland and so has diverse and partly conflicting objectives. Political changes in early 1990s opened large areas of central and eastern Europe for both development by business interests and a hectic exploration of wild nature by conservation organizations intent on preserving wilderness in Europe. The urgent need to protect the last wilderness areas in

Europe was recognized and well documented during the preparation of NATURA 2000, a unique European Union (EU) network of nature protection areas, which aims to maintain European biodiversity. In February 2009, the European Parliament passed a resolution on wilderness in Europe by an overwhelming majority of 538 votes in favor to just 19 votes against. The resolution “emphasizes the importance of protecting Europe’s last remaining wilderness areas and that calls on the European Institutions to develop appropriate guidance to EU Member States on the best approaches to ensure the protection of these natural habitats as an important contribution to halting the loss of biodiversity.” The resolution and the conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas held in Prague later the same year both called on the European Community and EU member states to define European wilderness, map the remaining wilderness areas, study the value and benefits of wilderness protection, develop management guidelines, and protect wilderness areas. By any yardstick, Europe is now refocusing its attention on recognizing its own wilderness resource. As Europe looks inward to its own remaining wild landscapes, we reimport the wilderness ideal, learning from developments in wilderness protection and legislation in North America, Africa, and former colonies elsewhere in the world including South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, many of which have their own wilderness definitions, and all of which owe much to the original wording penned by Howard Zahniser in the 1964 U.S. Wilderness Act. It comes as a surprise to many Europeans, who are long used to living in heavily modified landscapes, that significant wilder-

ness landscapes still remain within their otherwise crowded continent. Nonetheless, in looking to European landscapes we can find many of the ideals and values of wilderness normally recognized elsewhere in the world.

What Can Wilderness Science do for the World? As already alluded to, we face something of a problem in the lack of visibility of wilderness as a bona fide focus for scientific research, and yet it is clear from our own experiences and the issues raised here that wilderness science (including science in, on, and for wilderness) is incredibly important for the future of not just wilderness but also the planet as a whole. Here we hypothesize about the future and the bigger questions and themes where wilderness is a key part and wilderness science can have a central role. One area of potentially fruitful research is within the wider field of ecosystem services. To many of us working in wilderness science it may seem obvious that wilder landscapes provide a better range and higher quality of ecosystem services than do modified landscapes. It is something of a “no-brainer” that wilderness watersheds provide clean water to downstream communities, a classic example being the protection of the Catskills’ watershed in order to secure potable water supplies to the city of New York (Pires 2004). The range of wilderness-dependent services is, however, much larger. DeGroot et al. (2002) classify ecosystem services into four categories: regulating, provisioning, supporting, and cultural services, each of which can be seen within the natural processes, forms, and patterns seen most clearly within wilderness environments. These AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

include clean water, flood protection, erosion control, nutrient cycling, pollution buffering, carbon storage and sequestration, wildlife habitat, recreational environments, landscape aesthetics, human health and well-being, inspiration, and so on. A special issue of IJW picked up on the topic in December 2012 (Watson and Venn 2012; Kerkvliet 2012; Douglas et al. 2012). Of course, not all wilderness ecosystems provide all these services, but it may be that within a particular biogeographical zone, it is the wilderness areas that provide by far the best quality services. Here is a strong and persuasive argument for the preservation of wilderness wherever we find it, as the costs of mitigating against the impacts of reduced quality of ecosystem services, natural disasters, and climate change could well be orders of a magnitude greater than the economic opportunities forgone by maintaining protection for wilderness areas. It is also a strong argument for more research into using soft engineering principles and natural processes wherever possible to secure the services we need to live our lives. Much attention has been given to river flow regimes and the effect flooding has on human activities. A recent series of large and devastating floods around the world, occurring with increasing regularity, has led us to question our approach to river engineering and catchment management. No longer can we rely on pouring yet more concrete and building ever-higher defenses to protect homes and businesses; rather, we need to look upstream to the root causes of flooding and reduce grazing pressure, block or backfill drainage ditches, reforest bare hillsides, give the river back its floodplain, and reintroduce beavers. In short, we

International Journal of Wilderness

need to rewild watersheds to help restore flow regimes, attenuate flood events, and return base flows to their natural levels. This is ever more important in a world where climate and weather patterns are becoming more uncertain due to climate change. Herein lies a further area of potentially fruitful research: looking at how wilderness landscapes and ecosystems add resilience to the wider landscape matrix by giving nature space in which to adjust its own patterns and internal rhythms. It is essential that connectivity is maintained or enhanced between core areas, thus allowing species and ecosystems to migrate and evolve as climate changes. This is a burgeoning area for wilderness science research informing strategic decision making about protected area networks, connecting corridors, and nature “infrastructure” such as eco-bridges across highways, naturefriendly farming practices, and creation of stepping-stones or refugia for migrating wildlife. The “cores, corridors, and carnivores” model has become something of a cause célèbre among conservation planners across the world, with examples linking protected areas across the six continents (Worboys et al. 2010). Wilderness provides us with “reference plots” (or control plots in sensu experiment design), which are essential for monitoring and better understanding our activities in managed forests, meadows, catchments, landscapes, or managed parts of protected areas. There are also other outputs or “deliverables” where wilderness science can improve our knowledge and understanding of human-nature interactions during the evolutionary process. Here,

wilderness science can be “a bridge” for better integration of scientific knowledge with traditional knowledge wherein it can help to find a lost key for a safe with our old knowledge about human-nature coexistence, which is to some extent the reasoning behind the focus on Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge. Wilderness science is also about crossing borders, not just the transboundary/international cooperation kind (although that is important, as wilderness and natural processes do not recognize political divisions) but also about crossing methodological borders. For this reason wilderness science is intensely multidisciplinary and because of this it is always an adventure. Finally, wilderness science is determined by a dynamic and ever-changing set of issues, threats, opportunities, and events, and could easily go places in the future we can’t even anticipate at this point in time. We are certain that wilderness science has been crucial in the past, and will remain crucial in the future for guiding managers and policies to maintain human well-being through protecting and restoring environmental well-being associated, not just within wilderness, but within all other human-modified systems. The challenge to us as wilderness scientists, stewards, and managers is to follow the trends, stay informed, and keep doing good science, whether it is in, about, or for wilderness.

Douglas, L. E., J. P. Larson, and M. A. Preston. 2012. Ecosystem services to decision making. International Journal of Wilderness 18(3): 8–12. Kerkvliet, J. 2012. Making estimates of ecosystem service values useful. International Journal of Wilderness 18(3): 4–7. Parsons, D. 2000. Perspectives from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute Science for Wilderness: Wilderness for science. International Journal of Wilderness 6(2): 34. Pires, M. 2004. Watershed protection for a world city: The case of New York. Land Use Policy 21(2): 161–175. Watson, A., and T. Venn. 2012. Wilderness ecosystem services, a focus on applications. International Journal of Wilderness 18(3): 3. Worboys, G. L., W. L. Francis, and M. J. Lockwood, eds. 2010. Connectivity Conservation Management: A Global Guide (with Particular Reference to Mountain Connectivity Conservation). London: Earthscan.

STEVE CARVER is a geographer with special interests in wilderness, landscape evaluation and geographical information systems. He is Director of the Wildland Research Institute based at the University of Leeds, UK; email: s.j.carver@leeds.ac.uk. STEVE McCOOL is professor emeritus from the College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, USA; email: stephen.mccool@umontana. edu. ZDENKA KRENOVA is on the Faculty of Science at the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic; email: z.krenova@gmail.com.

References

MARK FISHER is a biochemist by training but is a self-taught expert on wilderness ecology and rewilding. He is an honorary research fellow with the Wildland Research Institute where he advises on ecosystems and policy development; email: m.n.fisher@leeds.ac.uk.

De Groot, R. S., M. A. Wilson, and R. M. Boumans. 2002. A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services. Ecological Economics 41(3): 393–408.

STEPHEN WOODLEY, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada; email: stephen. woodley@pc.gc.ca.

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AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

WILDERNESS DIGEST

Announcements Compiled by Greg Kroll

U.S. Congress Passes First Wilderness Legislation in Five Years When President Barack Obama signed the law in March 2014, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan, became the first beneficiary of federal wilderness designation since 2009. The measure was the result of more than a dozen years of planning and discussions to update the park’s general management plan and received bilateral support in Congress. Of the lakeshore’s 71,200 acres (28,800 ha), 32,557 acres (13,000 ha) are now permanently protected as wilderness – 45% of the park. The Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness includes portions of two islands, forests, and miles of beach and sand dunes rising hundreds of feet above Lake Michigan. In 1982, Congress mandated that the National Park Service (NPS) must not take any actions that would diminish the wilderness character of the lakeshore’s lands recommended as wilderness or potential wilderness “until Congress determines otherwise.” This was a rare example of statutory (not just policy) protection of NPS recommended wilderness. Dusty Shultz, the park’s superintendent, said, “Through civic engagement, the [master planning process] turned local opposition into broad support. The overwhelming majority of local officials, members of the conservation community, and the Michigan Congressional delegation were united in their support for this bill as a willing resolution to an issue that has been debated for years.” (Sources: wilderness.org/press-release, March 13, 2014; georgewright. org, March 17, 2014; impact.mlive.com, March 13, 2014)

Joseph Sax Passes Away Joseph Sax, author of Mountains Without Handrails, died at his home in San Francisco in March 2014. He was 78. Sax was a legal scholar who helped shape environmental law in the United States by establishing the doctrine that natural resources are a public trust requiring protection. As a law professor at the University of Colorado in the early 1960s, he questioned why there was no public dimension to natural resources law, and asked why “the public who

uses these areas and actually owns most of them doesn’t have a say in what goes on?” In what at the time was an innovative answer, Professor Sax proposed that some natural resources – the oceans, other bodies of water, shorelines, the air, and portions of land – are so important that they should be treated in the courts as a “public trust.” He also believed that citizens had the right to sue to protect these resources against government, business, and private individuals who might threaten them. Although many legal scholars questioned Sax’s proposition, he found justification in Roman law, in English common law, and in an 1892 Supreme Court decision that stated, in an Illinois case, that some lands were held in trust for the people of the state. Sax’s public trust doctrine “[is] now really part of our law,” Carol M. Rose, a law professor at Yale and the University of Arizona, said in an interview. The doctrine has been adopted in a host of other countries, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, and Canada. Joseph Sax served as counsel to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton administration, most significantly on strategies to protect endangered species’ habitats. “Unlike a lot of academic people, he understood that ideas ultimately would make a difference if they were relevant and coherent in a political context,” Mr. Babbitt said. “That’s what made him so valuable to me.” (Source: New York Times, March 10, 2014)

Recently Published: The Wilderness Writings of Howard Zahniser On the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Wilderness Act, the University of Washington Press has published The Wilderness Writings of Howard Zahniser. This collection of Zahniser’s essays was compiled and edited by Mark Harvey, professor of history at North Dakota State University and the author of Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act. According to the University of Washington Press, “Zahniser’s passion for wild places and his arguments

Submit announcements and short news articles to GREG KROLL, IJW Wildernss Digest editor. E-mail: wildernessamigo@yahoo.com

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

International Journal of Wilderness

for their preservation were communicated through radio addresses, magazine articles, speeches and congressional testimony.” Yet, despite his unquestioned importance and the power of his prose, the best of Zahniser’s wilderness writings have never before been gathered in a single volume. Harvey provides prefaces to the essays that outline the contexts in which they were written, as well as a general introduction “to the man whose vision, decency, and quiet passion shine from the pages of this book,” according to the publisher. Ed Zahniser, Howard’s son, said, “The family is pleased to have Howard Zahniser’s far-flung writings in book form at last. We are grateful to have his biography and now this anthology carefully crafted by such a respected environment historian who, like his subject, appreciates and practices good writing.” The book, published only in hardcover, contains 224 pages, 25 illustrations, and sells for $30.00.

The European Wilderness Quality Standard Is Released After months of development, the European Wilderness Society has released a new set of quality standards to be met by wilderness areas wishing to be certified by the society. The result of this process is the concept of wilderness continuum. The continuum measures variation in wilderness quality by using several indicators that represent essential characteristics of wilderness, such as the level of human modification (e.g., extractive use), remoteness, or apparent naturalness. According to Vlado Vancura, director of wilderness development of the European Wilderness Society, 100% pure wilderness with absolutely no human intervention, no extractive use, or no settlements, infrastructure, 44

or visual disturbance turned out to be too demanding a goal for several areas and regions in Europe, including Scandinavia and many Mediterranean and central European countries. The wilderness continuum consists of four wilderness categories (Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze), which strive to create a tool that accommodates the European wilderness agenda while simultaneously motivating wildland managers to gradually improve the wilderness characteristics of their areas. The highest level of wilderness quality is the Gold Standard, while the Bronze and Silver Standards encompass areas aspiring to achieve the Gold Standard but that currently have to contend with the effects of human intervention. (Source: www.wilderness-society.org, March 4 and 10, 2014)

WildLeaks Welcomes Wildlife Trafficking Whistleblowers A group of international organizations fighting illicit wildlife trafficking has unveiled a new website aimed at assisting whistleblowers who want to aid in the fight against wildlife crimes. WildLeaks is an online portal where whistleblowers can safely and anonymously reveal information on wildlife crimes. Funded by the U.S.-based Elephant Action League (EAL) and managed by a group of former law enforcement officers, journalists, and environmental NGOs, the goal of WildLeaks is to facilitate the arrest and the prosecution of traffickers, corrupt government officials, and anyone behind wildlife and forest crime. Individuals who witnesses a wildlife crime or possesses any type of related information – documents, files, images, or videos – can use the website to transmit that information to WildLeaks, using either of two

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routes of encryption. The completely anonymous encryption route makes use of Tor technology – more commonly known as darknet – and does not disclose the sender’s IP address or any other information. “We encourage whistleblowers to use the completely anonymous process,” says EALs Andrea Crosta, “especially if they live in oppressive regimes where communication is not free and where local governments themselves may actually be engaging in wildlife crime.” Once WildLeaks receives any leaked information, the individuals and organizations behind the project will first assess its accuracy and reliability. At that point, WildLeaks will try to forward the findings to law enforcement agencies such as Interpol or to trusted government authorities. However, if governments will not cooperate, the last option will be a leak to the media. (Source: Inter Press Service, February 10, 2014)

New Film Just Released: “Untrammeled” The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has funded a new film as part of its 50th anniversary celebration of the Wilderness Act. Untrammeled follows three groups of students – two groups of Montana high school students and one group of University of Montana students – as they venture into the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness areas. “The film is about youth in wilderness, and youth speaking to youth about wilderness,” said Joni Packard, regional volunteer, youth and service program coordinator for the USFS in Missoula, Montana. The two high school groups traveled on stock-supported trips in the Scapegoat Wilderness, while the university students, who spent 12 days in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, were participants in the university’s Wilder-

ness and Civilization Program. Many of the high school students had never been in wilderness areas before. “I literally had no idea this existed,” one student says during the movie. None of them wanted to leave the backcountry. (Source: Great Falls Tribune, April 2, 2014) Untrammeled is 27 minutes long, and can be accessed at www.youtube. com/watch?v=krtp5gFvixc&feature= youtu.be.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office Analyzes Forest Service Trail Issues The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released an analysis of the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) trails program, concluding that it has more miles of trails than it has been able to maintain, resulting in a persistent maintenance backlog with a range of negative effects. In fiscal year 2012, the USFS reported that it accomplished at least some maintenance on about 37% of its 158,000 trail miles (250,000 km), and that only one-quarter of its trails met the agency’s standards. According to the report, trails not maintained to quality standards have a range of negative effects, such as inhibiting trail use and harming natural resources, and deferring maintenance can add to future maintenance costs. Collectively, the agency officials and stakeholders that the GAO spoke with identified a number of factors complicating the USFS trail maintenance efforts, including (1) factors associated with the origin and location of trails, (2) some agency policies and procedures, and (3) factors associated with the management of volunteers and other external resources. For example, many trails were created for purposes other than recreation, such as access for timber harvesting or fire-

fighting, and some were built on steep slopes, leaving unsustainable, erosionprone trails that require continual maintenance. In addition, certain agency policies and procedures complicate trail maintenance efforts, such as the agency’s lack of standardized training in trails field skills, which limits agency expertise. Further, while volunteers are important to the agency’s trail maintenance efforts, managing volunteers can decrease the time officials can spend performing on-the-ground maintenance. The summary and full report can be found at www.gao.gov/products/ gao-13-618.

National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., has assembled an exhibit of juried photography highlighting the beauty, diversity, and longevity of America’s wilderness. Entitled Wilderness Forever: 50 Years of Protecting America’s Wild Places, the show will open in September 2014. Winning photographs, announced at the beginning of March, were selected from more than 5,000 public entries submitted nationwide. The images will be displayed as large-format prints in the nation’s most-visited museum, which welcomes more than 8 million visitors each year. (Source: www.wilderness50th.org/smithsonian)

Albania Joins the European Wilderness Preservation System

$24 Million Donation Aims to Reduce Rhino Poaching

Albania’s Prespa National Park, located in the southeastern section of the country, now protects 8,900 acres (3,600 ha) of designated wilderness. The park is a key element of the first transboundary protected area in the southwestern part of the Balkans, bordering Greece and Macedonia. The Prespa region is well known for its natural beauty and its high biodiversity. It hosts more than 1,200 species of plants, 30 species of mammals, 220 of birds, 32 of reptiles and amphibians, and 23 species of fish, including a number of endemic species. The mountains are one of Europe’s last strongholds of brown bears, wolves, chamois, and wild boar, while the lake hosts breeding colonies of dalmatian and white pelicans as well as pygmy cormorants. (Source: www.wilderness-society.org, March 20, 2014)

Smithsonian to Showcase Wilderness50 Photo Exhibit To celebrate 50 years since the passage of the Wilderness Act, Smithsonian’s AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

American philanthropist Howard G. Buffett donated 255 million rand (US$24 million) to South Africa’s national park service to fund a high-tech campaign against rhino poaching in Kruger National Park (NP). Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is funding a 30-month campaign to try to reverse a losing battle fought against illegal rhino hunters infiltrating Kruger NP from neighboring Mozambique. The donation will provide park rangers with a helicopter and other equipment, such as an aerostat balloon and land vehicles equipped with sophisticated electronic sensors, to track down poachers. The project will also place sensors on fencing along the border with Mozambique. Rhino hunting is driven by soaring demand in newly affluent Asian countries such as Vietnam and China, where the animals’ horns are prized as a key ingredient in traditional medicine. Rhino horn has a street value of more than $65,000 Continued on page 48

International Journal of Wilderness

WILDERNESS DIGEST

Book Reviews JOHN SHULTIS, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

International Handbook on Ecotourism Edited by Roy Ballantyne and Jan Packer. 2013. Edward Elgar, Northhampton, MA. 520 pp. $125.00 (hc) Ecotourism burst onto the scene in the 1990s, promising a kinder, gentler form of tourism for protected area and wilderness managers. As opposed to mass tourism, which was increasingly seen as a destructive, inauthentic force in natural areas, ecotourism was said to inherently minimize the environmental and cultural impact of tourism by maintaining a meaningful relationship with local, rural communities, retaining a small scale, sustainable ethos, and emphasizing a learning component for its constituents. The International Handbook on Ecotourism reviews the burgeoning literature on this challenging and controversial topic, focusing its four sections on (1) defining and considering ecotourism, (2) ecotourist behavior and visitor experiences, (3) the practice of ecotourism, and (4) exploring the boundaries of ecotourism. The vast majority of authors of the 36 short chapters are Australian, reflecting this country’s impressive history of research on tourism and ecotourism issues. Defining ecotourism – jokingly called an “academic cottage industry” by Hughes (p. 108) – has always been a frustrating proposition. Interestingly, Ralf Buckley’s chapter on defining ecotourism concludes by suggesting ecotourism is a “useful generic concept,” and that not having a single definition matters little. Yet the very vagueness of the term ecotourism is its greatest weakness, and the inability of academics and practitioners to agree on specific attributes of ecotourism and ecotourists ensures that the term remains as meaningless as “sustainable development.” Jim Butcher’s chapter on the link between community participation – which he terms a rhetorical orthodoxy (similar to ecotourism in this sense) – was a particularly interesting chapter in this section, critiquing some of the hidden assumptions of involving communities in decision making. The second section of the book, on ecotourist behavior and visitor experiences, was to me the strongest and most 46 International Journal of Wilderness

interesting part. Discussions range from the impacts of generational cohorts on the ecotourist experience, to critical analyses of the key role of learning through environmental education and interpretation in ecotourism, to the role of emotion and mindfulness in the learning experience. The authors note learning is not simply an “add-on” or an inevitable result of ecotourism; rather, ecotourists co-create meaning with tour guides and other group members in an unfolding, cumulative manner. The final sections on the practice of ecotourism and examining the boundaries of ecotourism explore whether activities such as swimming with wild marine mammals, feeding wildlife and visiting zoos, aquariums, or botanic gardens can be seen as ecotourism. As there seem to be as many definitions of ecotourism as ecotourists, it seems that “true” ecotourism activities, like beauty, rely on the eye of the beholder. Buckley’s chapter called “Ecotourism and Conservation” will be of particular interest to wilderness researchers and practitioners, although his conclusion that “while ecotourism relies on conservation, conservation cannot rely on ecotourism” (p. 243) may be disappointing. This book provides a very useful review of the state of knowledge of ecotourism, clearly reflecting both its glaring weaknesses and its possible, if elusive, utility for conservation managers. REVIEWED BY JOHN SHULTIS, book review editor for IJW and associate professor at the University of Northern British Columbia; email: john.shultis@unbc.ca.

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Nature’s Saviours: Celebrity Conservationists in the Television Age By Graham Huggan. 2013. Routledge, New York. 248 pp. $49.95 (pb). Celebrities have long played a part in conservation efforts. The significant role of such luminaries as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachael Carson, among many others, has spawned multiple biographies and analyses of their impacts on the successes, failures, and structure of the 19thand 20th-century conservation movements. While many of these early writers and activists would not be completely proud of the moniker “celebrity,” there is little doubt as to the global impact of their work. It is not an accident that the modern environmental movement was “the product of a televised age” (p. ix). The rise of nature-related documentaries and series since the 1950s has helped catapult many new conservation leaders into global consciousness, and in these celebrity-crazed times, their impact has become even more significant. Huggan successfully argues that “it seems necessary, then, to take celebrity seriously even if some celebrities themselves have difficulty doing so; and necessarily to look beyond, while also critically registering, celebrity’s reductive and trivializing effects” (p. 2). He uses literature from a range of disciplines, including cultural, media, literary, and postcolonial studies to assess the contemporary role of celebrities in the contemporary

Western conservation movement (primarily wildlife conservation). The analysis is thus based on a constructivist view of the narratives that link celebrity culture and public perceptions of conservation. Huggan adds to the existing, if scant, literature on the topic – most importantly Brockington’s 2009 book Celebrity and the Environment – to critically examine the work and impact of five celebrity conservationists: Sir David Attenborough (Britain), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (France), Dian Fossey (United States), David Suzuki (Canada), and Steve Irwin (Australia). Huggan slyly notes that celebrity conservation tells self-justifying stories to itself about the role and function of conservation: it “belongs to a symbolic economy – a commodified system of signs – the iconography of which frequently mystifies the conditions in which individual conservationists work and

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

under which conservation’s broad social compromises are effectuated” (p. 8). He also suggests that celebrity conservation reflects the intertwining of global conservation and corporate capitalism, advances specific types of conservation (e.g., wilderness and charismatic megafauna conservation) over others, normally advocates “safe” market solutions to solve these specific conservation problems, and actively remakes the world by creating a mediated relationship with nature in general and wilderness specifically. However, Huggan mainly focuses on how the works of these five celebrities creates conflicting narratives about such issues as further separating humans from nature, their simplistic view of local and Indigenous peoples, and nature usually being presented as wilderness. Celebrity both attracts the public’s attention to and distracts it from conservation. This is a fascinating book that provides a deep interpretive analysis of a topic rarely discussed in wilderness preservation circles. It may be of interest to those researchers who are interested in the social and cultural boundaries of the wilderness ideal and those wishing to learn more about the nexus between the global entertainment industry, celebrity culture, and popular conceptions of nature conservation. REVIEWED BY JOHN SHULTIS, book review editor for IJW and associate professor at the University of Northern British Columbia; email: john.shultis@ unbc.ca.

International Journal of Wilderness

Continued from MAKE THE WORLD A WILDER PLACE, page 7

Famed oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle was a key force in and conservation patron of the WILD Water program. A consensus marine wilderness definition and management objectives developed through the NAWPA process – the North American Intergovernmental Committee for Cooperation for Wilderness and Protected Area Conservation, launched at WILD9 – between Canada, the USA, and Mexico were shared for the first time in an international forum and set the stage for understanding how marine wilderness can advance the protection, recovery, and resilience of coral reefs, fisheries, and migratory pathways, and marine resources on which local communities rely. WILD Water delegates studied the impacts of overextraction, coastal conversion, unabated tourism, and plastic and other marine debris, as well as noise and vessel traffic disturbances to marine life.

Renowned photographers and filmmakers dialogued with conservation scientists and practitioners to strategize on how images and communications can empower both situational assessments and stakeholder acceptance. Marine Wilderness 10+10 was launched – 10 sites that demonstrate best practice in marine wilderness and 10 sites where marine wilderness management could draw ecosystems back from the edge of collapse.

“WILD10 achieves practical results, but it is more than just a Congress. It is a celebration of life, a heart-opening experience, an opportunity to reconnect with nature and with people all around the world with a common vision. It represents a vision of a future wherein humans will live in close harmony with wilderness and with each other,” said Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente, president of Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, and WILD10 co-chair.

WILD10 Vision

VANCE G. MARTIN is president of The WILD Foundation, chairman of the Wilderness Specialist Group of the World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN), and co-chair of WILD10; email: vance@ wild.org.

In the closing plenary, Dr. Earle remarked that just as humans may be the planet’s biggest nightmare, so can we also be its biggest hope. “We now have the tools and knowledge, the evidence, to know what’s happening,” she said. “We have to protect what remains in the natural world. It is what keeps us alive. If the Earth is at risk, we are at risk,” she implored.

MELANIE HILL is the communications manager at The WILD Foundation and on the Communications and Media Team in Salamanca; email: melanie@wild.org.

Continued from ANNOUNCEMENTS, page 45

a kilogram in Asia, making it more valuable than platinum, gold, or cocaine. Criminal syndicates promise cash to poor and unemployed villagers willing to take the risk of hunting down the animals. (Source: Reuters, March 14, 2014)

Understanding the Bark Beetle Our Future Forests: Beyond Bark Beetles is a series of 10 short videos exploring effects of and responses to the recent mountain pine beetle outbreak in local forests, and a major condition within wilderness in the American West. The films, all of which take place in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests, highlight impacted 48

user groups and areas, as well as share actions the U.S. Forest Service and others are taking to respond to the outbreak. The videos take viewers to meet hunters, rock climbers, fire lookouts, city water managers, foresters, volunteers and many other individuals who are dealing with effects of bark beetles. The project is a partnership between the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests and the University of Wyoming/Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, and was filmed/produced

International Journal of Wilderness

AUGUST 2014 • Volume 20, Number 2

by WILD Foundation Trustee, Morgan Heim. The Beyond Bark Beetle series premiered on April 29, 2014 at the University of Wyoming, and all films are now available online at www.beyondbarkbeetle.com

For the young conservationists in your family John Muir • Rachael Carson • Henry David Thoreau

Alaska’s Rugged Coast

Images of Conservationists series

Michael McBride

Illustrated by award-winning children’s book artist

7.95 US

6 pages • $2 over • 6 x 9 • 25

Hardc

Hudson

Rachel Carson

John Muir

Walking with Henry

The Story of a River

Preserving a Sense of Wonder

America’s Naturalist

Thomas Locker and Robert C. Baron

Thomas Locker and Joseph Bruchac

Thomas Locker

Based on the Life and Works of Henry David Thoreau

Sand to Stone and Back Again Nancy Bo Flood Photos by Tony Kuyper

in wilderness isolation. In the face of incredible hardships, the McBrides not only carried out their vision, but in the process built the world renowned Kachemak Bay

The Journey of Wildlife and Art

A few copies of the Limited Edition are still available Hardcover, 10 x 9, 260 pages, color photos, $35us

Jane Goodall

founder, the Jane Goodall Institute and UN messenger of peace

Wildlife art of the vast region between Yellowstone National Park and the Arctic Circle

150 years of artistic genius

Hardcover, 9 x 10.5, 144 pages color photos, $35us

America’s Ecosystem series

Each book is 9 x 9 • 48 pages • full-color illustrations maps and glossary • PB $11.95

A series of six books, each exploring a different biome, its plants, and its animals

To order or to learn more about other titles at Fulcrum Publishing, visit: 4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100 • Golden, Colorado USA 80403 Phone: +1 303-277-1623 • Fax: 303-279-7111

Tales of the Full Moon

Each book is 11 x 81/2 • 32 pages full-color illustrations • HC $17.95 Conservation Adventures series

The Girl Who Married the Moon

Jill Ker Conway,Illustrated by Lokken Millis

A remarkable story of pursuing a dream of living close to the land and raising a family

Wilderness Lodge that has become a model for eco-tourism everywhere.

Thomas Locker

To order or to learn more about other titles at Fulcrum Publishing, visit: 4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100 • Golden, Colorado USA 80403 Phone: +1 303-277-1623 • Fax: 303-279-7111

The WILD Foundation 717 Poplar Avenue Boulder, CO 80304 USA www . wild . org

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage

PAID Boulder, CO Permit No. 63

For Wilderness Worldwide www . ijw . org

Wilderness Science Perspective Wilderness Social Science Wilderness Fire Science Wilderness Economics