forever wild?

          On Sunday, July 6, 2012 the frontpage of the NYT's SundayReview featured an article on "Rethinking the Wild." In general it is a thoughtful article and the changes discussed in the management of the Wilderness Act 1974 are actually minor and commonsensical. Most are concerned with remedying and forestalling the effects of the northward movement of warmer temperatures. The central question is raised by one of the Act's promoters, viz. that "we should be guardians, not gardeners." The article's recommendations are summed up as "We need to be more nuanced in our hands-off approach."
          The danger lies that once the hands-off approached is open to modification the politicians will gradually introduce ecologically harmful "nuances" on the advice of graduates from forestry etc. departments of State Universities that are primarily funded by commercial corporations hungry for more resources. On the premise that one should not bite the hand that feeds these Departments they are not conducive to promote free thought. Some pretty disastrous remedies emerging from the Department of Agriculture include the recommendation of creating windbreaks and hedgerows of multiflora roses the hips of which provide food for many songbirds who caused the roses to become pests invading every untended plot including the "forever wild" ones. An other such invasive remedy was the use of the Japanese honeysuckle used to stabilize railroad banks against erosion. That too gets spread by birds and in my untended woods the multifloras provide support for the honeysuckle creating an area much loved by breeding songbirds and migrating or wintering guests.
           The problem of the Act lies in the fact that its aim to protect wilderness areas from destructive human exploitation was based on a pre-1970's concept of "hands-off" as direct physical action. Virtually all ecologist then were not fully - or at all - aware of the long term and distant - as well as cumulative - effect of human action that creates climate change as well as the acidification of the earth's surface. There were instances of man-made natural disasters in the past such as the dustbowl of the 1930s, which in the memory of most became a draught caused by capricious nature because the Plains became fertile and populated again and thus providing arguments for the eco-sceptics of today, arguments that are still more salient than the disappearance of the Ice Age when the Sahara had the climate of Europe and Canada an new England uninhabitable. Draughts are seen as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods which have been around ever since records were kept. And people continue to build homes in fragile coastal areas or in forests prone to wildfires, for most people remain unaware or disregard the warnings of the steady increase in such disasters and their violence. Our culture allows us to satisfy our desires and provides the  justification for it by providing a moral, political and economic system of protection one socially costly aspect of which are the insurance companies. I am reminded of the devastating hurricane of the early sixties when the then Secretary of the Interior suggested that the destroyed areas on New Jersey barrier islands be turned into a national park. Today these areas are more built up than before.
          Of course, the article's nuanced approach can not be a one time remedy for of climate change will be with us forever as the world population continues to increase and modernization of the poorer nations accelerates. Thus we see the 1950s smog of London replicated in today's Peking. A telling instance was described in a long article in the NYT of 7/27 concerning the adoption of frozen food as a staple in Chinese households and the deleterious consequences on the environment of the increased demand for refrigeration.
           But even if there was no man-made climate change, the wilderness areas that were created under the Act would inevitably change as suggested by the maxim that all wild areas revert to forest, a maxim well illustrated by the forests of New England in many of which one comes across the old stone walls of farms that were abandoned since the late 19th century. This is in a climate suitable for forests; in other places it may be deserts, a place where gardening is a challenge.
          Usually when we are in Maine in August we visit the Singing Meadow Preserve in Edgecomb, a truly favored spot. Although it is mowed once a year to keep the brush down and paths are mowed more than once, the landscape has been changing, subtly, but changing nevertheless. Alders are particularly resistant to the yearly mowing and I suspect that it's done by a landscaper "who has adopted" the Meadows that it is not done very well. And there certainly is no resemblance to the original working farm. But as an "abandoned meadows" preserve the "forever wild" doesn't apply as the meadows would no longer have the same singing birds and insects. And I wonder whether the "forever wild" concept didn't mean wild as it appeared when designated. If that includes saving the species that were there then at the time, the preservation becomes more like curating a museum.