Wilderness and nature
KGA172 Space, Place and Nature
Presented by Associate Professor Elaine Stratford
Semester 2
Photo by Rob Blakers from
Endangered Viking
Part 1
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING
FORWARD
Revising Lecture 3.2
1. What does Tattersall mean when he refers
to human adaptive capacity as exaptive?
2. What evidence can you bring to bear to
support the argument – advanced by
Tattersall, that “As climates changed at the end
of the last Ice Age, the new technophile
proclivity was expressed in a shift toward
agriculture and sedentary lifestyles: a shift that
precipitated a fundamentally new (and
potentially self-destructive) relationship with
nature.”
3. Describe the general pattern of the spread
of humans around the world, referring to
Diamond’s work to assist you.
4. What does the archaeological evidence
suggest about the lifestyles of gathering and
hunting communities? How did those
lifestyles change with the advent of
agriculture and pastoralism? Why might that
be so?
5. What is meant by the term Pleistocene
overkill? Neolithic Revolution? Hydraulic
civilizations?
A Woman Thinking
Learning Objectives
Module 3 Lecture 3
KGA172
• be able to
•
– define current concepts of
wilderness and address the
historic background to
wilderness areas, and the
contemporary use of the term
– explain why the concept of
wilderness has been
questioned
– explain why effective
wilderness conservation and
management are worthy
goals
•
•
•
•
Know and be able to (a) employ basic
geographical terminology and concepts, (b)
find, evaluate, analyse and reference
appropriate literature, (c) contribute to
debates about development and
sustainability
Comprehend and be able to explain spatial
patterns, generate basic maps, field sketches
and graphs, and communicate in written and
graphical forms
Apply key academic skills and (a) engage in
critical thinking, discussion and listening,
and in self-reflection and reflection upon the
viewpoints of others and (b) research, plan
and conduct fieldwork to collect data
Analyse and interpret basic spatial,
numerical and qualitative information
Synthesize and integrate knowledge of social
and Earth systems
Textbook Reading
Cronon, W. (1995) The trouble with wilderness;
or getting back to the wrong nature. In Cronon,
W. (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the
Human Place in Nature. New York, W.W.
Norton, 69-90, 80-81.
Kirkpatrick, J.B. (2006) Science and nature
conservation in the wilderness. In Brown, I.
(ed.), Celebrating Wilderness. Envirobook,
Canterbury NSW, pp. 78-89.
Critical reading
1.What is the author’s purpose?
2.What key questions or problems does the author
raise?
3.What information, data and evidence does the
author present?
4.What key concepts does the author use to
organize this information, this evidence?
5.What key conclusions is the author coming to?
Are those conclusions justified?
6.What are the author’s primary assumptions?
7.What viewpoints is the author writing from?
8.What are the implications of the author’s
reasoning?
[from Foundation for Critical Thinking]
Old Woman Reading a Lectionary, Gerard Dou
Part 2
DEFINING WILDERNESS –
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Hebrew words for wilderness
desolate
arid
wasteland
He found him in a desert land, and in the
waste howling wilderness; he led him
about, he instructed him, he kept him as
the apple of his eye.
Deuteronomy 32:10 (King James Bible)
A waste and howling wilderness,
Where none inhabited
But hellish fiends and brutish men
That devils worshipped.
Michael Wigglesworth 1662
St John the Baptist Entering the Wilderness
Giovanni di Paolo, 1417–1482
Satan’s Home?
And he was there in the
wilderness forty days,
tempted of Satan; and was
with the wild beasts; and
the angels ministered unto
him.
Mark 1:12-13
Christ in the Wilderness
Kramskoy, Ivan 1837-1887
Wilderness words
Concise Oxford Dictionary
1) desert, uncultivated and uninhabited tract
2) part of garden left uncultivated
3) confused assemblage
On-line Free Dictionary
1) an unsettled, uncultivated region left in its natural
condition, especially:
a. a large wild tract of land covered with dense
vegetation or forests
b. an extensive area, such as a desert or ocean, that is
barren or empty; a waste
c. a piece of land set aside to grow wild
2) something characterized by bewildering vastness,
peril, or unchecked profusion
Wilderness images?
From wild and threatening to the sublime
The Garden of Eden
Thomas Cole 1828
A home in the wilderness?
Home in the Woods
Thomas Cole 1847
Natives and Nation
The perceived link between wilderness and indigeneity
'And in future what a splendid contemplation ... preserved in
their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park,
where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian
in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow,
and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and
buffaloes ... A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all
the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!’
George Catlin, 1841 (1989): The Manners and Customs of the North
American Indians. Penguin, Harmondsworth, p.vii.
Second half of the nineteenth century
From the sublime to the … dedication of National Parks?
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Thomas Moran 1872
Mt Olympus, Lake St Clair
WC Piguenit, 1888
Solitude
“In wildness is the preservation of the world”
“land retaining … outstanding
opportunities for solitude”
US Wilderness Act 1964
“It is as solitary where I live as on the
prairies. … I have, as it were my own
sun and moon and stars, and a little
world all to myself”
Henry David Thoreau 1854
1997: Walden, 119, 121
“Wilderness solitude … a mental
freedom … where visitors experience
nature essentially free of the reminders
of society”
US Fish & Wildlife Service 2001
“To provide opportunities for solitude”
The Wilderness Society (Australia)
Aldo Leopold
Bob Brown’s House, NE Tas
Bradley 1998: Wisconsin Academy Review; Meine 1988 Aldo Leopold
Brown 2004: Memo for a Saner World
Part 3
MODERN PERSPECTIVES ON
WILDERNESS
Taroko National Park
Taiwan
E Stratford
Types of natural and protected areas
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
(a) Strictly Nature Reserve (only), (b) Wilderness Area
National Park (NP)
National Monument
Habitat / Species Management Area
Protected Landscape / Seascape
Managed (multiple-use) Resource Protection Area (RPA)
Taroko, Taiwan, E Stratford
Types of natural and protected areas
Elephant Rock, at Mornington Peninsula National Park, southeastern Australia.
See Matysek, Stratford and Kriwoken (2006)
Purpose and function of
wilderness and natural area reserves
Lava tube cave, Maui, Hawaii, E Stratford
Contemporary concepts of wilderness
• Founded in both science (ecology) and ethics (social science/values)
• Broad objectives of management:
– Appropriate protection and use (conservation) of natural resources and
environments in ecologically sustainable ways
– To enhance environmental, social, cultural and economic well-being of all peoples
alongside the sustainable protection and use of those natural resources
– Wilderness conservation and protection, not necessarily preservation
Christ figure in the wilderness, Vatican, E Stratford
The trouble with wilderness?
“This, then, is the central paradox:
Wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in
which the human is entirely outside the
natural ... We thereby leave ourselves little
hope of discovering what an ethical,
sustainable, honourable human place in
nature might actually look like.
Worse: to the extent that we live in an
urban-industrial civilization but at the same
time pretend to ourselves that our real
home is in the wilderness, just to that extent
we give ourselves permission to evade
responsibility for the lives we actually lead.”
Bill Cronon (pictured far right)
Part 4
PROBLEMS, HAZARDS AND
THREATS TO MANAGEMENT
The challenge
Hallasan National Park,
Jeju Island, South Korea
E Stratford
Conceptual Approaches to
Wilderness Conservation
Classical anthropocentric view of
life its environmental problems
and events
Ecocentric view of life and
environmental problems and
events
Human needs and wants are
privileged and at the centre of
importance
Human needs and wants are
seen as part of a larger set of
imperatives to be accounted for
Sees humanity as ‘apart from’,
and in charge of nature and its
resources, which are to be
accessed through science,
technology and management
Requires sustainable use and
protection of the Earth’s natural
and living resources
Near Pearshape Lagoon
King Island
E Stratford
Benefits of an ecocentric view
Reproduction of a painting of a thylacine by John Lewin, circa 1817, Linnean Society of London
Is wilderness a state of the natural
environment or a state of the human
psyche or perhaps both?
Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain National Park
Nature conservation
The benefits of remoteness
lack of artificial movement barriers
lack of movement channels for exotics
small proportion of area with edge effects
Corridors and
effects
The problem of streams
The problem of coasts
edge
The virtues of size and heterogeneity
Species at high trophic levels
Jon Marsden-Smedley
Resilience to climatic change
Management intervention for biodiversity conservation
Jon Marsden-Smedley
Science and wilderness
The problems of cost and regulation
The destruction of mystery
The virtue of landscape benchmarks
The virtue of ‘natural’ processes
Jon Marsden-Smedley
Photo by Rob Blakers from
Endangered Viking
Wilderness art – where are the people? Should they be there?
Photo by Rob Blakers from Endangered Viking
Is this better?
Or this? Or is that the right question in the first place?
Breeden and Wright 1989, Kakadu, Simon & Schuster NSW, cover photo