Here are two articles about Wilderness that I thought created an interesting contrast.

This article about the Isle Royale Wilderness from the "Marquette Mining Journal" touts the inaccessibility of the Wilderness as a real plus.

This article from the "Columbian" titled "Wilderness that too few can enjoy" complains that the decision to not rebuild a section of the Stehekin Road makes the Stephan Mather Wilderness too inaccessible.

Some get it, some don't!

An added note (correction) about each article.  The Isle Royale Wilderness is about 130,000 acres, not 500,000 as the article states.   The Stehekin Road is a "cherrystem" in the Stephen Mather Wilderness, it is not in the Wilderness as stated in the article.

 George

Comments (1) >>

Steve Sergeant said:

These are both interesting articles. I understand the sentiment behind both perspectives, and my thought is, it doesn't have to be "either/or". There's a need for places so remote that almost nobody could afford the time and effort to get there. But these places don't inspire a lot of passion in people to defend them, because people are less likely to defend something they don't know. There is a need for places that people can get to without a tremendous commitment that would take them away from being "productive" members of society. These are the places that more citizens will fall in love with, and thus help build us build a constituency to protect both the easy and the hard places to get to. The important question is not, which is better. The important question is what's the right balance between the two? How much of the accessible wilderness will we need in order to get enough people to see the importance of in protecting the inaccessible places?

August 25, 2007

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