Anyone interested in preserving, protecting, and expanding wilderness is forced to ask themselves ‘why does the negative attitude toward wilderness persist?’ Or perhaps more appropriately, ‘when did this negative attitude toward wilderness begin?’ And ‘when did the pro-wilderness attitude - or the ecological movements, per se, begin?’

When we hear the word “wilderness” we immediately see forests and rivers and mountains and bears and perhaps moose living there in some sort of fantastic peace. Truth is, these creatures live in a state of constant wariness - wary about the intrusions of man.

I live in an area where the forests WERE the economy. The forests of America of course became an economy unto themselves over 400 years ago. The relentless removal of the America forests - in this writer’s opinion - will go down as one of the great crimes of history. For it is impossible to grasp the fact that there was a violent attitude toward wilderness by the masses of America well into the 20th century.

We know that there were people in the early 19th century who were already opposing the violent attitude toward wilderness. They were called “romantics” or in the case of Emerson and Thoreau “transcendentalists” or simply “followers of Emerson.” What amazes is that it was common to hear at the Sunday morning sermon that “evil spirits” and “smarmy savages” - or even “descendants of Cain” - still inhabited the wilderness and “possessed” the native peoples.

So when vast areas of forest were cut down all along the Eastern seacoast and inward for several hundred miles, dozens of species began to disappear - seemingly overnight. Finally, it became obvious that if man was not stopped legally from doing so, he would take down every tree in every forest on the continent. The voices of Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold began a process of awakening people (politicians were the hardest to convince) to the truth that rather than ‘evil spirits’ lurking about in wilderness - there were actually squirrels, chipmunks, voles, deer, moose, bear, etc. Eventually there emerged a science of ecology which brought forth facts, scientific facts, showing that man will not survive on the planet without an ecological policy. Today we have forest biologists and ocean biologists and mountain biologists, etc., and each day we’re learning more about the benefits to mankind from the ecological movements.

One of the great discoveries these scientists found was that the owl was the “indicator species” regarding the overall health of a forest. As one scientist wrote, “something like the canary in the coal mines.” If there are owls, and the owls are healthy, then the forest is usually healthy. Soon they began to find ecosystems within ecosystems. And in each of those ecosystems they found an “indicator species.” A definition emerged for the word-phrase “ecosystem.” It was a living system “composed of physical, chemical, and biological processes that were active within a certain space-time unit of any magnitude.

With this definition, they began to map wilderness areas to determine their overall health. Granted, it wasn’t perfect science. But as we know, there is no such thing as perfect science. Ask NASA. The truly important thing to grasp from these scientific insights is that MANKIND belongs to the biosphere; the biosphere does NOT belong to man.

In my next post - Part 3 of this series - I’ll detail the origins of the centuries-long negative attitude toward wilderness.