Wilderness as a Form of Land Use

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"Wilderness as a Form of Land Use"

Book excerpt

Date: 1991

Source: Leopold, Aldo. "Wilderness as a Form of Land Use." The River of the Mother of God: And Other Essays by Aldo Leopold. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

About the Author: American biologist Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) was a prolific author known for his advocacy of formally established wilderness areas and ethical land use. Born in Burlington, Iowa, he studied science at Yale before embarking on a career with the U.S. Forest Service in 1909. His initial assignments were in New Mexico and Arizona, but in 1924 he was transferred to an administrative post at the Forest Products Laboratory in Wisconsin. Unhappy with the emphasis on commercial products that prevailed at the laboratory, he resigned in 1928 to become a consultant and lecturer. His seminal textbook Game Management was published in 1931 and is still in print as a classic reference. Leopold was also a hunter, which was not as unusual among early twentieth-century conservationists as it would be today. Many of his essays revolve around hunting, and some of his Depression-era consulting work was funded by the firearms industry. In 1933 Leopold accepted an appointment in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin, and later became the founding chairman of the Department of Wildlife Management at the same university. As the result of his efforts, the 500,000 acre (202,000 hectares) Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico was set aside in 1924 by the Forest Service. An adjacent 200,000 acres (81,000 hectares) was declared the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in 1980. Leopold died of a heart attack in 1948 while helping a neighbor to fight a brush fire. His most widely read work, A Sand County Almanac, was published posthumously in 1949 and became an environmental classic.

INTRODUCTION

"Wilderness as a Form of Land Use" was published in 1925, the year after Aldo Leopold was transferred from Albuquerque, New Mexico to a U.S. Forest Service research laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. It was also the year after the U.S. Forest Service, as a result of Leopold's lobbying, declared the Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico to be the first federal wilderness preserve.

Leopold's interest in wilderness as a resource was kindled by his experience as a forest ranger in New Mexico and Arizona, and stoked by a well-known meeting with fellow U.S. Forest Service employee Arthur Carhart in 1919. Carhart was a landscape architect who had recently recommended to his superiors that a Colorado lakefront slated for development be left in a wild state. His recommendation was accepted in 1920. Leopold had previously written about wilderness in the sense that it need not be incompatible with development, but his meeting with Carhart appears to have been a pivotal event that led Leopold to decide that wilderness has its own intrinsic value and is a valid form of land use. Other, more basic, experiences also shaped his ideas about wilderness. Leopold poignantly recalled the fire in the eyes of a dying mother wolf killed by his party.

PRIMARY SOURCE

WILDERNESS AS A FORM OF LAND USE

From the earliest times, one of the principal criteria of civilization has been the ability to conquer the wilderness and convert it to economic use. To deny the validity of this criterion would be to deny history. But because the conquest of wilderness has produced beneficial reactions on social, political, and economic development, we have set up, more or less unconsciously, the converse assumption that the ultimate social, political, and economic development will be produced by conquering the wilderness entirely—that is, by eliminating it from our environment.

My purpose is to challenge the validity of such an assumption and to show how it is inconsistent with certain cultural ideas which we regard as most distinctly American….

What Is a Wilderness Area? The term wilderness, as here used, means a wild, roadless area where those who are so inclined may enjoy primitive modes of travel and subsistence, such as exploration trips by pack-train or canoe.

The first idea is that wilderness is a resource, not only in the physical sense of the raw materials it contains, but also in the sense of a distinctive environment, which may, if rightly used, yield certain social values. Such a conception ought not to be difficult, because we have lately learned to think of other forms of land use in the same way. We no longer think of a municipal golf links, for instance, as merely soil and grass.

The second idea is that the value of wilderness varies enormously with location. As with other resources, it is impossible to dissociate value from location. There are wilderness areas in Siberia which are probably very similar in character to parts of our Lake states, but their value to us is negligible, compared with what the value of a similar area in the Lake states would be, just as the value of a golf links would be negligible if located so as to be out of reach of golfers.

The third idea is that wilderness, in the sense of an environment as distinguished from a quantity of physical materials, lies somewhere between the class of nonreproducible resources like minerals, and the reproducible resources like forests. It does not disappear proportionately to use, as minerals do, because we can conceive of a wild area which, if properly administered, could be traveled indefinitely and still be as good as ever. On the other hand, wilderness certainly cannot be built at will, like a city park or a tennis court. If we should tear down improvements already made in order to build a wilderness, not only would the cost be prohibitive, but the result would probably be highly dissatisfying. Neither can a wilderness be grown like timber, because it is something more than trees. The practical point is that if we want wilderness, we must foresee our want and preserve the proper areas against the encroachment of inimical uses.

Fourth, wilderness exists in all degrees, from the little accidental wild spot at the head of a ravine in a Corn Belt woodlot to vast expanses of virgin country—

    Where nameless men by nameless rivers wander
    And in strange valleys die strange deaths alone.

What degree of wilderness, then, are we discussing? The answer is all degrees. Wilderness is a relative condition. As a form of land use it cannot be a rigid entity of unchanging content, exclusive of all other forms. On the contrary, it must be a flexible thing, accommodating itself to other forms and blending with them in that highly localized give-and-take scheme of land-planning which employs the criterion of "highest use." By skillfully adjusting one use to another, the land planner builds a balanced whole without undue sacrifice of any function, and thus attains a maximum net utility of land….

Lastly, to round out our definitions, let us exclude from practical consideration any degree of wilderness so absolute as to forbid reasonable protection. It would be idle to discuss wilderness areas if they are to be left subject to destruction by forest fires, or wide open to abuse. Experience has demonstrated, however, that a very modest and unobtrusive framework of trails, telephone line and lookout stations, will suffice for protective purposes. Such improvements do not destroy the wild flavor of the area, and are necessary if it is to be kept in usable condition.

Wilderness Areas in a Balanced Land System What kind of case, then, can be made for wilderness as a form of land use?

To preserve any land in a wild condition is, of course, a reversal of economic tendency, but that fact alone should not condemn the proposal. A study of the history of land utilization shows that good use is largely a matter of good balance—of wise adjustment between opposing tendencies. The modern movements toward diversified crops and live stock on the farm, conservation of eroding soils, forestry, range management, game management, public parks—all these are attempts to balance opposing tendencies that have swung out of counterpoise….

Now after three centuries of overabundance, and before we have even realized that we are dealing with a non-reproducible resource, we have come to the end of our pioneer environment and are about to push its remnants into the Pacific. For three centuries that environment has determined the character of our development; it may, in fact, be said that, coupled with the character of our racial stocks, it is the very stuff America is made of. Shall we now exterminate this thing that made us American?…

What the Wilderness Has Contributed to American Culture … There is little question that many of the attributes most distinctive of America and Americans are the impress of the wilderness and the life that accompanied it. If we have any such thing as an American culture (and I think we have), its distinguishing marks are a certain vigorous individualism combined with ability to organize, a certain intellectual curiosity bent to practical ends, a lack of subservience to stiff social forms, and an intolerance of drones, all of which are the distinctive characteristics of successful pioneers. These, if anything, are the indigenous part of our Americanism, the qualities that set it apart as a new rather than an imitative contribution to civilization. Many observers see these qualities not only bred into our people, but built into our institutions. Is it not a bit beside the point for us to be so solicitous about preserving those institutions without giving so much as a thought to preserving the environment which produced them and which may now be one of our effective means of keeping them alive?

Wilderness Locations … In selecting areas for retention as wilderness, the vital factor of location must be more decisively recognized. A few areas in the national forests of Idaho or Montana are better than none, but, after all, they will be of limited usefulness to the citizen of Chicago or New Orleans who has a great desire but a small purse and a short vacation. Wild areas in the poor lands of the Ozarks and the Lake states would be within his reach. For the great urban populations concentrated on the Atlantic seaboards, wild areas in both ends of the Appalachians would be especially valuable….

Generally speaking, it is not timber, and certainly not agriculture, which is causing the decimation of wilderness areas, but rather the desire to attract tourists. The accumulated momentum of the good-roads movement constitutes a mighty force, which, skillfully manipulated by every little mountain village possessed of a chamber of commerce and a desire to become a metropolis, is bringing about the extension of motor roads into every remaining bit of wild country, whether or not there is economic justification for the extension.

Our remaining wild lands are wild because they are poor. But this poverty does not deter the booster from building expensive roads through them as bait for motor tourists.

I am not without admiration for this spirit of enterprise in backwoods villages, nor am I attempting a censorious pose toward the subsidization of their ambitions from the public treasuries; nor yet am I asserting that the resulting roads are devoid of any economic utility. I do maintain, (1) that such extensions of our road systems into the wilderness are seldom yielding a return sufficient to amortize the public investment; (2) that even where they do yield such a return, their construction is not necessarily in the public interest, any more than obtaining an economic return from the last vacant lot in a parkless city would be in the public interest. On the contrary, the public interest demands the careful planning of a system of wilderness areas and the permanent reversal of the ordinary economic process within their borders….

Practical Aspects of Establishing Wilderness Areas Public wilderness playgrounds differ from all other public areas in that both their establishment and maintenance would entail very low costs. The wilderness is the one kind of public land that requires no improvements. To be sure, a simple system of fire protection and administrative patrol would be required, but the cost would not exceed two or three cents per acre per year. Even that would not usually be a new cost, since the greater part of the needed areas are already under administration in the rougher parts of the national forests and parks. The action needed is the permanent differentiation of a suitable system of wild areas within our national park and forest system….

The retention of certain wild areas in both national forests and national parks will introduce a healthy variety into the wilderness idea itself, the forest areas serving as public hunting grounds, the park areas as public wildlife sanctuaries, and both kinds as public playgrounds in which the wilderness environments and modes of travel may be preserved and enjoyed.

The Cultural Value of Wilderness Are these things worth preserving? This is the vital question. I cannot give an unbiased answer. I can only picture the day that is almost upon us when canoe travel will consist in paddling in the noisy wake of a motor launch and portaging through the back yard of a summer cottage. When that day comes, canoe travel will be dead, and dead, too, will be a part of our Americanism. Joliet and LaSalle will be words in a book, Champlain will be a blue spot on a map, and canoes will be merely things of wood and canvas, with a connotation of white duck pants and bathing "beauties."…

There is a strong movement in this country to preserve the distinctive democracy of our field sports by preserving free hunting and fishing, as distinguished from the European condition of commercialized hunting and fishing privileges. Public shooting grounds and organized cooperative relations between sportsmen and landowners are the means proposed for keeping these sports within reach of the American of moderate means. Free hunting and fishing is a most worthy objective, but it deals with only one of the two distinctive characteristics of American sport. The other characteristic is that our test of skill is primarily the act of living in the open, and only secondarily the act of killing game. It is to preserve this primary characteristic that public wilderness playgrounds are necessary.

Herbert Hoover aptly says that there is no point in increasing the average American's leisure by perfecting the organization of industry, if the expansion of industry is allowed to destroy the recreational resources on which leisure may be beneficially employed. Surely the wilderness is one of the most valuable of these resources, and surely the building of unproductive roads in the wrong places at public expense is one of the least valuable of industries. If we are unable to steer the Juggernaut of our own prosperity, then surely there is an impotence in our vaunted Americanism that augurs ill for our future. The self-directed evolution of rational beings does not apply to us until we become collectively, as well as individually, rational and self-directing….

The vanguard of American thought on the use of land has already recognized all this, in theory. Are we too poor in spirit, in pocket, or in idle acres to recognize it likewise in fact?

SIGNIFICANCE

Although other pioneering American conservationists ranging from John Muir (1838–1914) to Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) recognized the importance of wild areas, it was Leopold who was best known for articulating the idea that wilderness is a valid and important form of land use. He had previously written on the subject, but "Wilderness as a Form of Land Use" was Leopold's first fully developed public statement of the concept.

Leopold was a pragmatic advocate of wilderness preservation. He explained that, just as a golf course is more than grass and sand, wilderness has a social value that extends beyond the trees and minerals that it might produce. Wilderness in proximity to populated areas, Leopold suggested, is even more socially valuable than inaccessible wilderness. Using language that would likely be shunned by modern wilderness advocates, he described wilderness areas as playgrounds and ascribed recreation to be one of their primary values. Beyond that, though, Leopold realized the deeper cultural significance of the American wilderness. Without wilderness and the opportunity to travel through it, he argued that icons such as Jim Bridger and Kit Carson would be reduced to little more than names in history books.

Leopold's vision of American wilderness, while revolutionary in its day, was also a moderate idea. He wrote in "Wilderness as a Form of Land Use" that absolutes are generally not beneficial. He thought it sound for cities to be built and trees to be felled, but not for all the land to be developed and logged. This moderation may have sprung from his early encounter with the dying wolf, before which he believed that if fewer wolves meant more deer, a world without wolves would be a hunter's paradise. The extension of this thinking is that while it was good to carve a civilization out of the wilderness, it is not desirable to completely eliminate wilderness.