Where in the World Wide Web
Is Wilderness?
Charles Besancon
Wayne A. Freimund
Abstract—Wilderness information on the World Wide Web has
developed considerably in the past 5 years. What was once dominated by the equivalent of electronic brochures has developed into
interactive information resources that together provide a wide
range of useful information. Web sites specific to the concept of
“wilderness” are dominated by United States organizations. The
term “protected areas” is better suited to find the sites of the major
global organizations that influence the conservation of wilderness.
While there are many good sites on the Web, it is still challenging
for a person to find relevant topical information at a global or
regional level. Search results also suggest that the technical network developing around the terms “wilderness” and “protected
areas” remain separate. We evaluate several scenarios for the
development of a more coherent global presence of protected areas
and wilderness on the Web. We also suggest the development of a
global clearinghouse that approaches the global supply of information about wilderness and protected areas from the user perspective
rather than from the agenda of the organizations that are producing
the information.
Introduction ____________________
Freimund and Queen (1996) argued that Web-based mass
communication could have a profound effect upon developing a wilderness constituency and culture. After reviewing
many wilderness related Web sites on the World Wide Web
(WWW), they called for an integrated online strategy to
facilitate communication across the Internet. The end result
of this strategizing was the creation of the Wilderness
Information Network (http://www.wilderness.net). This Web
site has been very effective in bringing information about
wilderness areas to the World. With over 6,000 hits per day,
the Web site has provided an important niche to people
interested in wilderness information.
In this paper, we wish to reexamine the presence of
wilderness on the WWW. Our goal is to identify which sites
are being used and what the purpose of these sites are,
including mission, audience, and financial support.
Charles Besancon is curently working toward his Ph.D. in Southern
Africa, E-mail: charlesbesancon@yahoo.com, cell phone: +27 084 869 2124.
Wayne A. Freimund is Arkwright Associate Professor of Wilderness Studies
and Director of the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana,
Missoula, MT 59812, U.S.A., FAX: (406) 243-6657, E-mail: waf@forestry.
umt.edu
In: Watson, Alan; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2003. Science and stewardship
to protect and sustain wilderness values: Seventh World Wilderness Congress symposium; 2001 November 2–8; Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Proc.
RMRS-P-27. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,
Rocky Mountain Research Station.
268
In 1996, there was a sense that many people needed to be
persuaded of the benefits of the Web. Given the success of the
Wilderness.Net project and the proliferation of wildernessoriented Web sites, we no longer feel that need.
Resources _____________________
Searching for Wilderness on the World
Wide Web
It is no surprise that the resources on the WWW have
proliferated at an amazing rate. Human behavior, on the
other hand, has not dramatically changed, and most Web
visitors are only willing to scan a couple of pages of results
from a search when seeking information. Given the increasingly commercialized use of the Web, Webmasters have
become increasingly savvy on techniques to improve the
chance of being rated toward the top of a search. In other
words, the sites that appear at the top of a search engine do
not necessarily reflect the value of the site.
To address these issues, researchers at Stanford University have developed Google.com. Google uses a rating system
that is based on the number of times a site is linked to and
the popularity of the sites doing the linking. For example,
the Wilderness.Net site rates very high because it is linked
to by many well-established wilderness organizations or
agencies. Likewise, it provides links to other sites that are
highly used and rated. Google has remained detached from
the influence of advertising or other commercial interests to
provide a site that is a high-integrity research tool. Thus, a
search on Google, while not perfect, often returns a set of
discrete sites that are specifically related to the topic and are
highly used.
Wilderness Sites—Our first search was simply on the
word “wilderness.” The top site returned was from the
Wilderness Society. The second was Wilderness.Net, which
provides access to a consortium of wilderness organizations,
including the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,
the Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, and the
University of Montana’s wilderness programs. The next two
sites were not related to wilderness in terms of land designation. The remainder of the sites in the top 10 included: the
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Wilderness Inquiry,
the Chicago Wilderness Page, the Wild Wilderness Home
Page, and two non-American sites—the Wilderness Society
of Australia, and the Canadian Park and Wilderness Society. Included in the top 10, therefore, were a host of interests
(federal and university) represented by Wilderness.Net, six
advocacy organizations—with two of those being non-United
States, an adventure travel organization, and two sites
totally unrelated to wilderness as a land use.
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-27. 2003
Where in the World Wide Web Is Wilderness?
International Wilderness Sites—To add context to
these initial results, we searched on the words “international wilderness.” The first site retrieved was the WILD
foundation, followed by the International Journal of Wilderness, Wilderness.Net, and the Wilderness Society’s Global
page. These sites were followed by Sunrise Expeditions to
Arctic Canada, the Word of Life Fellowship International
Wilderness Ministries, International Wilderness First Aid,
North Carolina Outward Bound, and the Listening Point
Foundation. Again, the top results were dominated by United
States organizations that represent a wide variety of interests in wilderness.
Besancon and Freimund
Commission on Protected Areas, part of the IUCN. The
mission of the commission is to:
…promote the establishment and effective management of
a worldwide representative network of terrestrial and marine
protected areas, as an integral contribution to the IUCN
mission.
Members of the WCPA are the audience for this site, and the
site includes many documents for download, including guidelines for creating and managing protected areas, funding
them, and evaluating the effectiveness of management. This
site details plans for increased interactivity, but in its
current form, acts as an online brochure for WCPA.
Protected Areas Searches—Recognizing that many
other large international players in wilderness conservation
did not surface near the top of these searches, we decided to
narrow our lexicon from “wilderness” to “protected areas.”
Through this term we accessed a very different set of results.
At the top of the list was the array of resources offered by the
World Conservation Union (IUCN) World Commission on
Protected Areas. The Marine Protected Areas site provided
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) followed. Next was the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring
Centre and the Protected Areas Conservation Trust of Belize,
Central America. This initial search was filled out by the
Science and Management of Protected Areas Association,
which is based in eastern Canada. Searching on the term
“protected areas,” therefore, provided a list of sites more focused on protection mechanisms than the wilderness concept.
Wilderness.Net (http://www.wilderness.net)—This
site is managed by the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana, U.S.A., with support from the four Federal
agencies that manage congressionally designated wilderness in the United States, and their training (Arthur Carhart
Wilderness Training Center) and research (Aldo Leopold
Wilderness Research Institute) organizations. The mission
of the site is to “heighten the wilderness dialog worldwide.”
The Web site is organized by content areas, including education, research, and the National Wilderness Preservation
System. Audiences include managers, scientists, educators,
students, legislators, and the general public. Many interactive features can be found here, including a library of fulltext research publications, lesson plans for students and
teachers about wilderness, wilderness news, and discussion
forums.
Review of Selected Protected Area Web
Sites
World Heritage Information Network (http://www.
unep-wcmc.org/whin/index.html)—This site is sponsored by the World Heritage Convention through the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). The mission of the site is to act as:
To better understand the design and range of content
now available on the Web, we conducted a review of selected sites. The sites were chosen based on the large
amount of information to be found there and the relative
importance of the organization or coalition that compiled
the information. The sites reviewed here represent the best
global Web sites the authors could find for detailed information about protected areas (including wilderness). The
specific Web sites listed should not be considered the only
resources available or the best. They simply reflect sites
that ranked highly using the Google search engine and
some we discovered by following links on other Web sites.
The sites selected for review were the World Commission
on Protected Areas (WCPA), Wilderness.Net, World Heritage Information Network (WHIN), EarthTrends from
World Resources Institute, and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC).
As a first step in our review, we tried to answer the following questions:
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is the mission of the sponsoring organization?
What is the function of the site?
How is the site organized?
Who is/are the audience(s)?
Who funds the organization/Web site?
How can we categorize the site?
World Commission on Protected Areas (http://
wcpa.iucn.org)—This site is sponsored by the World
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-27. 2003
…a clearing-house for information about the natural and
cultural sites identified as being of “outstanding universal
value” and inscribed on the World Heritage List by the
Intergovernmental World Heritage Committee.
The clearinghouse is set up as a searchable index of partner
Web sites that house information about World Heritage
sites. Interactive features on the site include the ability to
add your resource to the searchable index of World Heritage
sites and to search other partner sites.
EarthTrends (http://earthtrends.wri.org)—This site
is sponsored by the World Resources Institute (WRI), “an
environmental think tank that goes beyond research to
find practical ways to protect the Earth and improve
peoples’ lives,” and acts as an environmental information
portal. The content is organized around themes including
coastal and marine ecosystems, climate and atmosphere,
and biodiversity, and protected areas. For each theme
there is a searchable database, data tables, country profiles, maps, and features.
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre
(WCMC) (http://www.unep-wcmc.org)—The WCMC Web
site was another ambitious undertaking involving many
interactive features including databases and online mapping, as well as many static Web pages with supporting
information. The content is organized around resources,
habitats, species, regions, climate change, protected areas,
269
Besancon and Freimund
Where in the World Wide Web Is Wilderness?
Toward a Strategy of Protected Area
Information Coordination
conventions, and agreements. This site also hosts the Protected Areas Virtual Library. This library is a database of
information about all areas that meet the guidelines put
forth by the IUCN in 1994. This database does not currently
operate as intended, but comes with a disclaimer explaining
its shortcomings and plans for the future. The interactive
maps on this site are of high quality and utilize the latest in
online map browser technology: ARCIMS.
Looking at the matrix of Web sites we reviewed (table 1),
it is evident that the era of “brochure” Web sites is over. All
of the Web sites reviewed contain a great deal of information
and most utilize built-in search engines, enabling Web site
visitors to quickly find what they are looking for. The
intended audiences for these sites range from the organization members (WCPA) to the WCMC that hosts very specialized content for technical audiences, including avian biologists. EarthTrends and Wilderness.Net contain information
for many different audiences. Two of the sites listed offer the
added feature of Web pages and documents in languages
other than English.
Three of the sites have interactive resources that help to
build community among Web site visitors (Wilderness.Net,
EarthTrends, and WCMC). These community-building resources include discussion forums, Listservs, and news
delivered through e-mail. Other interactive resources we
found were online databases and geographic mapping engines (WCMC).
In general, we found good resources containing information on many topics. However, the fact that so many resources exist creates in itself a problem. Fulfilling specific
information needs from within such an array of possibilities
can be frustrating or impossible. It is now like walking into
a library that has no librarian.
The libraries of documents on these sites reflect the
affiliations and work being conducted by the host organizations. While the content is often excellent, and in many cases
is supplemented by Web links to other organizations with
similar content, the onus of responsibility for finding good
information is put on the Web site visitor, the very person for
whom the information was put online in the first place.
What is missing is a coherent, searchable global resource
or some other form of guide to the galaxy of wild lands and
the Internet. The WHIN project comes the closest to making
this need a reality, at least for World Heritage sites. By
collecting information about World Heritage resources on
the Internet, and indexing those sites, the WHIN project
allows Web visitors to search through one interface—many
hundreds of external Web pages and documents.
A coherent, searchable global resource could take resources from any content source, gather those resources in
one location, and organize the content based on content type,
audience, and level of intended specificity. In addition, such
a resource could help to simplify and indeed blur the lines
between the institutions and organizations that produced
the information. This is especially important to the uninitiated who may not be familiar with all of the jargon inherent
in a complex concept like wilderness.
The current challenge is to develop an efficient structure
for the many types of wilderness or protected area Web sites
that exist. Such a structure would organize and add value to
individual sites. The demand is there; currently the onus is
on the suppliers to provide a more efficient resource that will
be visitor centered and contribute to the global community
engaged in the conservation of wilderness and protected
areas worldwide.
Wilderness Versus Protected Areas
Disconnect
Investing in a Global Resource
As mentioned earlier, there seems to be two discrete sets
of results when using Google to search for “wilderness” and
“protected areas.” While the term “wilderness” refers to
more than land-based protected areas, “protected areas” is
more likely to lead to sites explaining protection mechanisms.
Individuals seeking high-quality information about mechanisms for protection of wilderness, policy documents, and so
forth, may not understand this distinction.
A discussion of the development of a global protected
area and wilderness network must include attention to the
institutional capacity, demands, and commitment it would
require. Communicating with a global audience must be
central to the institution’s mission. The technical sophistication to understand what kind of commitment they are
engaging in is also needed. Channeling scarce resources
Table 1—Protected area Web site content matrix.
General resources
Downloadable
Links to
Online
documents external sites
maps
World Commission
on Protected Areas
Wilderness.Net
World Heritage
Information Network
EarthTrends from World
Reources Institute
UNEP World Conservation
Monitoring Centre
270
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Multiple Search
languages engine
Interactivity
Community building
Searchable Interactive Discussion Listservs,
databases
mapping
forums e-mail news
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
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Where in the World Wide Web Is Wilderness?
Besancon and Freimund
toward a global audience may appear at first glance to be
a nice thing to do but not a central necessity for many
organizations, especially when budgets are tight. Committing to the development of a Web-based information resource also requires a substantial commitment to ongoing
maintenance. For whom is there an incentive for such
activity? Each of the Web resources reviewed above would
meet these institutional capacity criteria.
Each year, participants in protected areas seminars call
for improved access to the information and creative ideas to
problem solving that are generated around the World. Issues related to inventory, monitoring, planning, the use of
science, visitor management, and education are among the
types of issues that there is a global bank of knowledge to
tap. Unfortunately, people have a difficult time accessing
the information. Developing countries, even those with Web
access, are often hampered by slow connections and an
overwhelming amount of data to sift through.
specialized persons (both in number of employees and skill
level) to develop and manage the site.
Hardware and Software—As the complexity of the site
grows, more specialized hardware and software is necessary
to maintain operations. This includes additional Web servers, database servers, backup systems, and all the affiliated
software, both to operate the hardware and develop the Web
content.
Usability
Speed—Refers to the speed of the Web site. It tells how
fast users can find information they are looking for.
Applicability—Refers to how useful the information is
for the audience. The assumed audience for this column is
individuals seeking information at a regional or national
level.
Comprehensiveness—Refers to the depth of information one may find at the Web site. Again, the assumed
audience for this category is individuals seeking information
at a regional or national level.
Technical Capacity
Assuming that institutional support for a global protected
area information network could be established, there are
then a series of technical constraints that would need to be
evaluated before deciding how such an information resource
could be practically developed. These are the nuts-and-bolts
issues that mediate the interaction between the user (information demand) and the technicians and institution who
become the providers of the supply. The developer of the
supply must consider cost, infrastructure, human resources,
and the ever-changing hardware and software. From a user
perspective, issues of speed, applicability, and comprehensiveness are critical to making a site meaningful.
Possible Scenarios
Following are a series of scenarios (table 2), listed in terms
of their complexity, that will be used to illustrate those
practical considerations associated with building Web-based
resources:
• The first scenario (links Web site) is a Web site composed of many Web site links in the form of a comprehensive categorized list of links to international protected
area Web sites and other related resources. The overall
cost of creating a Web site of this type is very low, with
greater initial costs at startup (that is, purchasing Web
server, initial development time) and lower long-term
costs. The infrastructure, human resources necessary,
and hardware/software needs would be moderately low
for this type of project. In terms of usability, the site
would produce fast results for end users and would have
a great deal of applicability, but because of the single
resource found here (links only), the overall value of this
type of resource, in the absence of any additional resources, is negligible.
• The second scenario (searchable index of other sites) is
the development of a Web site that allows the end user
to search the entire contents of other protected area
Overall Cost: Initial and Long Term—These criteria
refer to how much money it would take to operate a Web site.
Initial costs are usually higher than long-term maintenance
costs.
Infrastructure—Refers to the capacity of the institution
to work in the electronic age. Questions asked here include:
• Does the institution operate networked computers?
• Do they currently operate a Web site?
• Does the building where the institution is housed have
a high-speed internet connection?
Human Resources—This is potentially one of the greatest expenses in Web site operation. As the level of complexity
of the Web site grows, so too does the need for more highly
Table 2—Evaluation of four approaches to organize wilderness and protected area data worldwide.
Web site scenariosb
Links Webs site
Searchable index of other sites
Regional protected area networks
Master protected areas database and site
a
b
Technical capacity
Overall cost
InfraHuman
Initial
Long term structure resources
2
3
5
5
1
2
4
5
2
3
5
5
2
3
5
5
Hardware/
software
1
2
5
5
Usabilitya
ApplicaSpeed
bility
5
3
3
3
4
1
5
4
Comprehensiveness
2
2
5
5
Numbers denote Web site scenario practical considerations, ranging from very low (1) to very high (5).
Scenarios are listed in order of complexity with links Web site being the least complex.
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Besancon and Freimund
Web sites. The site acts as a search engine that, instead
of searching the entire WWW, only searches protected
area Web sites chosen by the Web site administrator.
The overall costs of this site are slightly higher than the
links Web site, but far less than the following scenarios
that involve interactive databases.
• The third scenario (regional protected area networks) is
the development of a comprehensive, database-driven,
dynamic Web site with protected area information of all
types for a given region, country, or continent. The best
existing example for what this might look like is the
Wilderness Information Network (Wilderness.Net). The
overall costs for this scenario are high because considerable hardware, software, and human resources are
necessary to complete it. The only criteria that receives
a lower score for this scenario is “speed” because of the
intensive use of database queries to provide information. Somewhat slower speed is to be expected of Web
sites with this level of comprehensiveness. This type of
Web site is envisioned as part of a larger strategy to
provide these “regional” sites that would eventually
encompass protected areas throughout the World. Some
of the higher costs can be offset because considerable
work has already been completed for Wilderness.Net
(wilderness areas in the United States), and this work
can be adapted and made to fit situations in other
regions and countries.
• The last scenario (master protected areas database and
site) encompasses all of the other scenarios together
under one “master” Web site as an entry point. Under
this scenario, the system of regional protected area Web
sites is assumed to be in place and functionally working
together through shared databases and close cooperation among all institutions and government entities. In
addition to what has already been mentioned in the
above scenarios, language translations would be available for Web site visitors to utilize. The one factor in this
scenario that received a somewhat lower score (besides
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Where in the World Wide Web Is Wilderness?
“speed” for the same reasons as in scenario three) is
“applicability,” because many users of this site may only
need information from one geographic region rather
than the entire system of worldwide protected areas. In
other words, this site may provide too much information
for some users, thus making it too unwieldy for them.
Conclusion _____________________
It is now possible and practical to routinely view wilderness and protected area conservation in a global context.
Resources are currently being developed to provide growing
access to information resources at regional and organizational levels. A global resource would assist in integrating
the communication communities that are currently centered on Wilderness, Protected Areas, and other land use
designations. It would also promote discussion and understanding of the finite scope of the Earth and the role of land
conservation within it. Offered here are four scenarios for
potential action, each requiring varied amounts of institutional support and technical capacity. We urge the global
conservation communities to engage into a dialog that could
promote one of these or a similar scenario. There is a growing
demand for informed decisionmaking. In many cases, the
information is available but inaccessible. It is now time to
begin organizing that information and efficiently putting it
into the hands of the people who need it on a daily basis.
Reference ______________________
Freimund, W.; Queen, L. 1996. Wilderness @ Internet—Enhancing
the potential for wilderness electronic communication. International Journal of Wilderness. 2(1): 33–36.
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-27. 2003
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