Journal of Wildernessijw.org/wp-content/uploads/1999/08/Vol-05.No-2.Aug-99small.pdf4 International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 1999 • VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2 FEATURES Soul of the Wilderness

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Journal of WildernessAUGUST 1999 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2

FEATURESEditorial PerspectivesExcellence in Wilderness ResearchBY ALAN E. WATSON,EXECUTIVE EDITOR (SCIENCE AND RESEARCH)

Soul of the WildernessWho Needs Wild Philosophy?BY DAVID ROTHENBERG

STEWARDSHIPThe Role of Legislative History inAgency Decision-MakingA Case Study of Wilderness AirstripManagement in the United StatesBY SHANNON S. MEYER

Wilderness ConservationThrough Local Participationin the Cayambe-Coca and AntisanaEcological Reserves, EcuadorRevisiting the Community Park Ranger ProgramBY WILLIAM H. ULFELDER

EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATIONProtected Areas and Aboriginal InterestsAt Home in the Canadian Arctic WildernessBY ERIN E. SHERRY

Persuasive Communication and GradeLevel Effects on Behavioral Intentionswithin a Wilderness Education ProgramBY WILLIAM W. HENDRICKS

Wilderness@InternetUsing the Internet as a Survey ResearchTool: Potentials and PitfallsBY DIANE B. GAEDE AND JERRY J. VASKE

SCIENCE AND RESEARCHCommercial and Private Boat Use onthe Salmon River in the FrankChurch–River of No Return Wilderness,United StatesBY DONALD H. HUNGER, NEAL A. CHRISTENSEN,AND KURT G. BECKER

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVESOrigins, Evolution, and Present Statusof the Protected Areas of Sri LankaBY LYN DE ALWIS

The Wilderness Leadership School ofSouth Africa’s Imbewu and OpinionLeader ProgrammesBY ANDREW MUIR

WILDERNESS DIGESTAnnouncements &Wilderness Calendar

Book Reviews

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Front cover photo of streamand wood in Val Pusteria(Italian Alps), copyright ©1999 by Ulf Doerner; insetphoto of moss on quartz,copyright © 1999 by UlfDoerner. Background imageof mountain waterfall, copy-right © 1999 by John FoxxImages.

2 International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 1999 • VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2

EXECUTIVE EDITORSAlan W. Ewert, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., USA

Vance G. Martin, WILD Foundation, Ojai, Calif., USAAlan E. Watson, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont., USA

Margaret Petersen, Portland, Oreg., USAWayne A. Freimund, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USA

John Shultis, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, B.C., Canada

MANAGING-AND-PRODUCTION EDITORMichelle S. Mazzola, Conservation District Manager, State of Washington

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJohn C. Hendee, Director, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—INTERNATIONALHugh Barr, Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand; Karen Fox, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta,Canada; Richard Meganck, United Nations Environment Programme, Osaka, Japan; Les Molloy, Heritage Works, Wellington, New Zealand; Andrew Muir,South African Wilderness Leadership School, Durbin, South Africa; Ian Player, South Africa National Parks Board and The Wilderness Foundation, Howick,Natal, Republic of South Africa; Ron Rutledge, B.C. Forest Service, Fort St. John, B.C., Canada; Won Sop Shin, Chungbuk National University, Chungbuk,Korea; Anna-Liisa Sippola, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland; Pamela Wright, Bamfield Marine Station, Bamfield, B.C., Canada; Franco Zunino,Associazione Italiana per la Wilderness, Murialdo, Italy.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—UNITED STATESGreg Aplet, The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colo.; Liz Close, U.S. Forest Service, Washington D.C.; David Cole, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,Missoula, Mont.; Chad Dawson, State University of New York, Syracuse, N.Y.; Donald Duff, U.S. Forest Service, Salt Lake City, Utah; Lewis Glenn, OutwardBound USA, Garrison, N.Y.; Glenn Haas, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.; Dave Harmon, Bureau of Land Management, Portland, Oreg.; BillHendricks, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Steve Hollenhorst, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; Ed Krumpe, Universityof Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; David Lime, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minn.; Bob Manning, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; Jeffrey Marion, VirginiaPolytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Michael McCloskey, Sierra Club, Washington, D.C.; Chris Monz, National Outdoor Leadership School, Lander, Wyo.;Bob Muth, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass.; Connie Myers, Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, Missoula, Mont.; Roderick Nash,University of California, Santa Barbara, Calif.; Max Oelschlaeger, University of North Texas, Denton, Tex.; Marilyn Riley, Wilderness Transitions and theWilderness Guides Council, Ross, Calif.; Joe Roggenbuck, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Holmes Rolston III, Colorado State University,Ft. Collins, Colo.; Mitch Sakofs, Outward Bound, Garrison, N.Y.; Susan Sater, U.S. Forest Service, Portland, Oreg.; Tod Schimelpfenig, National OutdoorLeadership School, Lander, Wyo.; Alan Schmierer, National Park Service, San Francisco, Calif.; Jerry Stokes, U.S. Forest Service, Washington, D.C.; RalphSwain, U.S. Forest Service, Golden, Colo.; Elizabeth Thorndike, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Jay Watson, The Wilderness Society, San Francisco, Calif.;Tom Zimmerman, National Park Service, Boise, Idaho.

International Journal of Wilderness

International Journal of Wilderness (IJW) publishes three issues per year(April, August, and December). IJW is a not-for-profit publication.

Manuscripts to: University of Idaho, Wilderness Research Center,Moscow, ID 83844-1144, USA. Telephone: (208) 885-2267. Fax:(208) 885-2268. E-mail: [email protected].

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All materials printed in the International Journal of Wilderness, copyright© 1999 by the International Wilderness Leadership (WILD) Foundation.Individuals, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to makefair use of material from the journal. ISSN # 1086-5519.

Submissions: Contributions pertinent to wilderness worldwide aresolicited, including articles on wilderness planning, management,and allocation strategies; wilderness education, including descriptionsof key programs using wilderness for personal growth, therapy, andenvironmental education; wilderness-related science and research fromall disciplines addressing physical, biological, and social aspects ofwilderness; and international perspectives describing wildernessworldwide. Articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, photos, bookreviews, announcements, and information for the wilderness digest areencouraged. A complete list of manuscript submission guidelines isavailable from the editors.

Artwork: Submission of artwork and photographs with captions areencouraged. Photo credits will appear in a byline; artwork may be signedby the author.

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SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS• Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute • Indiana University, Department of Recreation and Park Administration • NationalOutdoor Leadership School (NOLS) • Outward Bound™ • The WILD® Foundation • The Wilderness Society • University of IdahoWilderness Research Center • University of Montana, School of Forestry and Wilderness Institute • USDA Forest Service • USDIBureau of Land Management • USDI Fish and Wildlife Service • USDI National Park Service • Wilderness Foundation (South Africa)• Wilderness Inquiry • Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa)

The International Journal of Wilderness links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interestedcitizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management,

and allocation strategies; education; and research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship.

International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 1999 • VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2 3

FEATURES

Editorial Perspectives

IJW Joins U.S. Forest Service in Recognizing Excellencein Wilderness Research

BY ALAN E. WATSONEXECUTIVE EDITOR (SCIENCE AND RESEARCH)

or many years the United States Forest Service haspromoted excellence in wilderness managementthrough national awards for primitive skills, wilder-

that the wilderness re-source and the decisionswe are making aboutmanaging it are worthy ofthe best science possible.Managers need to under-stand wilderness ecosys-tems and their dynamics,threats to those ecosys-tems, and how human im-pact can be mitigated.They also need to under-stand how wilderness ex-periences benefit humanstoday and the tremendousvalue of such places to fu-ture societies. We hope this award stimulates more andbetter wilderness science.

The recipient of the Award for Excellence in WildernessManagement Research will be announced during 1999. Wehope the wilderness science and management communitywill honor the recipient and work with us in the future tomake sure the best wilderness research is nominated forthis annual award. We urge everyone to think of this awardas interagency and interdisciplinary recognition of valuablescience. Hopefully, someday we will also recognize wilder-ness research at the international level. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

Fness education, and leadership. Recipients have representedthe most creative and dedicated USFS employees and teamsworking for wilderness, as well as public organizationsworking with the USFS on restoration, maintenance, andeducation projects. This year the USFS invited the IJW toreferee nominations and cooperatively issue its nationalaward for excellence in wilderness research.

The “Call for Nominations” in the December issue (vol.4, no. 3) of the IJW announced the objective of recognizing“individual or team wilderness research accomplishmentsthat directly benefit the wilderness resource in the UnitedStates.” Employees of federal or state governments, any pri-vate or public organizations, or private individuals are eli-gible to receive this award. But more important, the awardrecognizes significant scientific contribution to understand-ing and protecting the benefits related to wilderness any-where, or everywhere, in the United States. The IJW is proudto represent the interests of all federal wilderness manage-ment agencies, all cooperating sponsors, and the public injointly soliciting nominations, selecting a recipient, and rec-ognizing the award winner this year.

The effects of this award are far greater than simplyrecognizing people who conduct excellent wildernessresearch. Through these awards we are acknowledging

Article author Alan E. Watson.


FEATURES

Soul of the Wilderness

Who Needs Wild Philosophy?

BY DAVID ROTHENBERG

cation of how humanity should relate to the natural world.We need to examine the fate of wilderness as an idea. Weneed to help define the wild place as something that can beunderstood and cared for in all parts of the world, as aconcept that may change fluidly as it is reinterpreted insidemany cultures and many political systems, to hopefullyemerge as something not that all people can agree upon,but something that can be thought about and saved in somany ways.

I will quickly admit my biases: I believe in the value ofwilderness. The wild has a place in the hearts of all livingbeings, somewhere, and that includes all humans. The ideaof the wild includes a sense of danger as well as purity, ofultimate naturalness as well as fragility. There are peoplewho can live inside of it, but to love it is to acknowledge avalue more than the human—something wider, somethinglarger—that we must work hard to participate in while it isso much easier for the rest of nature to inhabit it. That isthe fate of humanity—to have to struggle to fit into nature,after our own nature has thrust us out.

The love of wilderness and the desire to maintain it ispart of humanity’s rise toward a less selfish state. It is a signof our growing ability to look beyond ourselves, to expandour care to aspects of nature that are important not becausethey are useful to us, but because we respect them beyondthe limitations of use. The love of wilderness as somethingprecious and worthy is part of the march of civilization andshould never be opposed to culture.

“Wilderness” is probably not the most important wayhumanity should look at nature, though it is one of manyimportant ways we can relate to the world around us. It isimportant to say this because as much as wilderness itselfhas been under siege by those forces in our culture thatwant to see all of nature as something we can use, the ideaof wilderness has come at the same time under conceptualsiege, sometimes from very surprising places. It is often

nvironmental activists, wildland and wildlife man-agers, environmental policy makers, and politicianshave every right to ask what place philosophy has in

Article author David Rothenberg.

Ethe heated discussion on the future of wilderness. Everyphilosopher ought to ask herself the same question, so asto avoid being caught in the conceptual spirals that can bethe hallmark of the discipline of which D. T. Suzuki oncesaid, “This is what I love about philosophy—no one wins”(quoted in John Cage, Silence, [Middletown: Wesleyan Uni-versity Press, 1961], p. 193). It is Hermann Hesse’s glassbead game of concepts, the free flow of the test of ideas.Fun, frustrating, endless, beautiful at best, nitpicking andcold at worst. “Philosophers,” warned Keats, “are the kindwho would pull off angels’ wings.” We are not satisfied withbelief. We claim to want to explain things, but we remainbest at asking questions.

But environmental philosophy is applied philosophy,which means it uses this questioning approach ostensiblyto help solve real-world problems; in this case, the clarifi-


historians and philosophers who saythey are “for” the environment but“against” wilderness. They see the wildas a narrow and very exclusionary per-spective on the natural world, not rep-resentative of the real and diverse wayshuman beings work with andreunderstand the land.

In environmental history we haveseen William Cronon decry in thepages of The New York Times Magazineand in his big anthology UncommonGround (1955), the idea of wilder-ness as something naive and unre-alistic to those people who actuallywork with the land. He asks for anenvironmental ethic and aestheticbased on respect, not for the wildreserves thousands of miles from ourhomes, but for the trees in our back-yard, for the health of the familyfarm, for the understanding of ex-actly where our food comes from.For him, wilderness exists only asan idea, an idea developed for thosewho live in cities isolated from na-ture, where they can imagine of themountains whatever they will.

Environmental philosopher J. BairdCallicott has been pushing for severalyears now the argument that believ-ing in wilderness is a kind of old-timereligion, based on backward and origi-nal colonial American ideas of sepa-rating humanity from nature. As such,it is an extremely limited notion onwhich to found the discipline of envi-ronmental philosophy, and because ofthis, it is a darn shame that it has gotso much attention from environmen-tal philosophers in the first century ofour discipline. It’s time to move be-yond this naive separation betweenourselves and our surroundings andreplace it by sustainable developmentand biodiversity.

Callicott believes that “implicit inthe most passionate pleas for wilder-ness preservation is a complacency

about what passes for civilization”(1998). This is an interesting notion,though I don’t believe it for a second.It is only a somewhat enlightened civi-lization that could believe saving somewild country out there for its own sakehas value. This desire is a civilizednotion, something from our era, andis a step in the right direction. It shouldbe brought into the wider debate ofthe kind of relationship humanityshould have with nature, not cast asideas a deviant direction.

When it comes to saving wild coun-try, Callicott believes that we shouldstop talking about something aswoolly as wilderness and instead setup “biodiversity reserves,” saving en-dangered species and whole ecosys-tems in the name of science (1998).That is all fine and good, but I wouldnot call the notion of biodiversity anyless culturally constructed than theidea of wilderness. I still suspect thenotion of the wild, which might needsome renovating, is more inspiring andcompelling than the idea of biologicaldiversity, but I might be just the kindof hopeless puritan romantic thatCallicott wants to dismiss.

Yet the suggestion that sustainabledevelopment might somehow replaceconcern for wilderness is even moreperplexing. The Brundtland Commis-sion said sustainable development is“meeting the needs of the presentwithout compromising the ability ofthe future to meet its own needs”(World Commission for Environmentand Development, Our Common Fu-ture, New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1987). This is as wishy-washyan avoidance of our moral responsi-bility to future generations as anythingI could imagine. If we believe in thefuture, we have to decide things forthat future and not let the future takeits own path. If we decide to preservewilderness in perpetuity, as our fore-

bears in conservation had the insightto do, we take the risk of claiming toknow what’s best for the future. Mod-ern United Nations and World Bankschemers are too slippery for such realmoral commitment.

Why should sustainability be op-posed to the identification of, concernfor, and preservation of wilderness? Ihave never been able to understandthis fallacy. Perhaps it’s because we alllike to extrapolate, or inflate, the pri-macy and completeness of whateverpoint of view we are championing asthe true “right” way. Callicott wantssustainability, and for him it super-sedes all that came before. Many en-vironmental philosophers, not sointerested in people and their prob-lems, put forth wilderness as whatmatters most. Even William Cronon,when pressed to stop all the nay-say-ing and announce just what it is thathe does believe in, couldn’t haveagreed with the old naive view morewhen he said in the pages of Environ-mental History that “wilderness is myreligion” (1996).

It is easy to see why the wildernesscan be a source of spiritual experienceand challenge for so many through his-tory. From Moses to Muir, many haveneeded to be out there, away from thecivilization that created them, to catcha glimpse of the God who so oftenslinks from the details of the con-structed human world. Yet it has neverbeen the only place to see God, andno one should put the wild forth asthe only part of nature that matters. Itis one of many places to touch thegreatness that is inherent in the fabricof this world.

But wilderness philosophy is notwilderness religion, and the philoso-pher who wants to support wildernessshould not turn away in disgust fromcritiques of the idea of wilderness, cry-ing blasphemy. Wilderness is much


more interesting as philosophical pos-sibility than as religious icon. The re-sponsible philosopher of the wildwon’t simply love it in silence but willbe able to combine his or her ownsupport with relentlessness question-ing. I support the intention behind thecritical efforts of Cronon and Callicott,to caution against the totalizing ten-dencies of some all-or-nothing wilder-ness demagogues, but I protest thenegativity of their tones. It is so mucheasier for intellectuals to say “no” thanto say “yes” to anything, for that is theway we are trained to think. It is harderto turn skepticism into support, so thatwe may refine possibilities and hon-estly change the world. Yet this ap-proach is so much more important.

Therefore I believe it is imperativeto question the idea of wilderness inorder to defend it more forcefullyrather than hasten its conceptual de-struction. Following are three basiccritiques of the idea of wilderness thatdeserve thoughtful consideration byall supporters of the wild:

1. Wilderness comes from civiliza-tion, and it is not an idea thatmakes much sense to the historyof human cultures. I agree. Therewas never any need to worryabout preserving the wildernesswhen it was something formi-dable and dangerous, againstwhich humanity defended itselffeebly in order to subsist. Timeshave changed. We have prolifer-ated across the planet. We nolonger fear the wild, by andlarge, but we lament its passing.This is no mere romanticism. Itis an achievement. We are nowable to care about what is notprimarily of use to us. We maylove it for its difference. Sure,this makes nature somethingseparate from the mainstream of

human slash-and-burn mentalityand activity. But it is a nature stillpart of nature, a place we camefrom after a long and hard cul-tural evolution. The wild willsurely win in the end, long afterhumanity has been rendered ir-relevant, so we need not worryabout its ultimate survival. Ourchallenge is to see if we are com-patible with its present healthand that it is flourishing. I sin-cerely hope we are up to the task.That being said, we must be care-ful not to make the model ofhumans separated from naturethat identifies wilderness to bethe only way, or even the mostimportant way, we as a speciesrelate to the environment.

2. Wilderness is not everything. Itspreservation has never been theonly goal of the environmentalmovement, or even the most im-portant goal. True, it may seem tobe the most dramatic, the mostobvious, or the most photogenicgoal, but it should always be seenas one extreme of a diverse move-ment that exists to encourage ourspecies to reflect carefully on ourdependence on and attitude to-ward the vast world around us. Itis essential that we never use con-cern for wilderness to distract usfrom concern for the more imme-diate ways human beings dependon the environment: using it forfood, resources, and designing ourhabitations so they do not cumu-latively pollute and degrade thesurroundings. These other areasare perhaps far more directly im-portant for most of us in day-to-day life than the saving ofwilderness. Knowing the wilder-ness is safe may be more symboli-cally important.

I hope that more nations seethe realism inherent in designat-ing wilderness. It does not mean adeclaration of the rights of naturebefore the rights of people. It onlymeans the people as a whole de-cide that sometimes nature mustbe given its own chance. But theproblems the many diverse coun-tries of the world will face whendescribing wilderness may be quitedifferent from what the UnitedStates had to face.

3. Wilderness does imply conflictsbetween nature and people. Foras many examples of indigenouspeoples that can be brought upto show that humanity might livein a simpler form of harmonywith nature, there are as manyinstances where it is only the factof a small population that preventsa people from overharvesting itsland. There is much we can learnfrom the world’s traditional sub-sistence peoples about how tolive closely with our surround-ings. But in one sense we avoidthe real issue by talking toomuch about indigenous rightswhen we are pitting humanityagainst nature in search of the wild.

More often people are agrarian ortraders. They work closely with theland, and they buy and sell whatthey find there. Saving a few placesdoes not mean calling for an end toall commerce. Setting a place asideas wilderness does take it out of themarketplace, and whether we like itor not, this often sets it against theinterests of people who live nearbyand have had to earn their livingfrom the land. They should be com-pensated, and they should bebrought into discussions of why wil-derness can matter to all of us. They


should not be punished for havingused the land. Sometimes they maybe put in charge of the newly de-marcated places, but sometimes theyare not the ones who know how tomanage best.

Indigenous primal people arechanging. Hunters and harvestersare changing. It is not in our inter-est to halt this change. Their histo-ries may include original and clearideas about respecting nature, andthey may not have needed a wordfor wilderness. If they need it now,it is our job to teach them. To dis-cuss it, not to preach or inflict. Cul-tural identity is a fragile thing. Everygroup wants to maintain it, but theyrarely realize how easy it is to lose.Setting cultures aside as museumswill not work. Inspiring a care forthe wild may bring humanity to-gether once in a while around acommon goal, but it should alloweach group of people to find its ownway through the problem.

In some places wilderness willadmit the presence and activities ofpeople who have tended the land re-sponsibly for generations. In otherplaces the fragility of the situationmight mean that the old ways mustgo. Each case deserves separate con-sideration. No proclamations willmake easier the difficult choices mi-nority cultures must face amidstpressures of development and pres-ervation of their inherited lands.There is no easy way to save the wildas well.

Science is not going to save thewilderness. Biodiversity may be veryimportant, and its value may beclearly established by conservationbiologists. But it remains a special-ized concept. In contrast, the wildis an idea that will be compelling tofar more of us: It is pure, sensual,dangerous and alluring. We cannot

a price tag on the priceless, attempt-ing to buy what is not for sale: Beauty,purity, survival of the beyond-humanright in our midst, reminding us toturn off the running total of calcula-tion in order to truly perceive wherewe are, and what kind of world it isthat we live in.

Management is not going to savethe wilderness. It may be practicaland possible to draw a line on themap and say, “Look, this side is wildand is governed by rules, and thatside is tame and there you can dowhat you want.” Something is back-ward there—legislation cannot setboundaries in which wildness issupposed to be confined. True, wehave to set up such laws because wepeople seem to need codes to keepus in check. But this is a sad fact ofhuman irreconcilability with nature:We don’t on our own fit in. Yet if we

Philosophy is certainly not going tosave the wilderness. Especially if itonly pokes thorns in the sides of ev-eryone else’s faiths and arguments.Ideas have through history changedthe world, but I doubt that they havesaved the world. Will humility save itif we just dare to step back and treadlightly but seriously across this planetthat is all we honestly have? Will edu-cation save the wild if we simply teachmore and more people to consider, tocare? Will poetry save the wild if welearn to bend language as far as it cango so that it will be its most beautiful?As Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmerwrites, “The wild does not havewords” (Selected Poems, ed. RobertHass, Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press,1987, p. 159). We don’t have muchtime. We have to do everything, andnothing, acting always with bothpassion and care.

Setting a place aside as wilderness does take it outof the marketplace, and whether we like it or not,this often sets it against the interests of people wholive nearby and have had to earn their living fromthe land.

resist it. Science can only supportour love. It will not replace it be-cause its language is more exact.

Economics will not save the wilder-ness. The wild may need a place inthe nations’ budgets and expenditures,but it cannot be quantified, and aboveall it cannot be reduced to dollars andsense. You cannot make enoughmoney on wild places to justify theirexistence in cost-benefit analyses un-less you sincerely bend the rules to put

find the wild in these planned-outwildernesses, its presence will bethere in spite of the rules. So takeus out there, to breathe in the alter-native. Even so, experience is notgoing to save the wilderness. Youcan go there and love it, or evenrefuse to come home and insteadlive there, but its safety will still bein danger. There is so much to do,both back home and across theworld.


Go out there. See what you know.Come back with more. But don’t for-get to come back. We need all of yousomehow, in the midst of this fight.None of these approaches alone willdo enough to save the wild, but if theyall respect their own limitations andthe contributions of other, quite dif-

ferent ways of seeing the wild, thenhopefully something can be done.There will be disagreements and in-completeness, but all we can hope foris to work together, and although thewild will surely win in the end, per-haps it can include us in the victoryas well. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

DAVID ROTHENBERG, noted environmen-tal philosopher, is an associate professor ofphilosophy at New Jersey Institute ofTechnology, biographer of Arne Naess,musician, editor of TerraNova, and more.Contact David at the Department ofHumanities, New Jersey Institute ofTechnology, Newark, New Jersey 07102,USA. Telephone: 973-596-3289. E-mail:[email protected].

REFERENCESCallicott, J. Baird and Michael Nelson, eds.

1998. The Great, New, Wilderness Debate.Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Cronon, William, ed. 1995. UncommonGround: Toward Reinventing Nature. NewYork: Norton.

Cronon, William. 1996. The trouble withwilderness: a response. Environmental His-tory 1 (1).

Hass, Robert, ed. 1987. Selected Poems.Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, p. 159.

Rothenberg, David. 1996. Who’s naive aboutnature? review of uncommon ground, ed.by William Cronon, Amicus Journal (Spring1996).

This paper is the edited version of the 6th World Wilderness Congress presentation (Bangalore, India, October 1998).Proceedings are in press with Fulcrum Publishing (Golden, Colo.) and The WILD Foundation.

News from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research InstituteRelevant recent publication Supported by the Leopold Institute include:

Landres, P. B., P. S. White, G. Aplet, and A.Zimmermann. 1998. Naturalness and naturalvariability: definitions, concepts, and strategiesfor wilderness management. Wilderness andNatural Areas in Eastern North America:Research, Management and Planning, ed. by D.L. Mulhavy and M. H. Legg. Nacogdoches,Texas: Stephen F. Austin State University, ArthurTemple College of Forestry, Center for AppliedStudies in Forestry: 41–50.

Gutzwiller, K. J., H. A. Marcum, H. B. Harvey, J. D.Roth, and S. H. Anderson. 1998. Bird toleranceto human intrusion in Wyoming montaneforests. The Condor 100: 519–527.

Gutzwiller, K. J., E. A. Kroese, S. H. Anderson, andC. A. Wilkins. 1997. Does human intrusionalter the seasonal timing of avian song duringbreeding periods? The Auk (114) 1: 55–65.

Riffell, S. K., K. J. Gutzwiller, and S. H. Anderson.1996. Does repeated human intrusion causecumulative declines in avian richness andabundance? Ecological Applications (6) 2:492–505.

Cole, D. N., and P. B. Landres. 1995. Indirecteffects of recreation on wildlife. In Wildlife andRecreationists—Coexistence Through Manage-ment and Research, ed. by R. L. Knight and K. J.Gutzwiller. Washington, D.C.: Island Press:183–202.

Landres, P. B. 1995. The role of ecological monitor-ing in managing wilderness. TRENDS/Wilder-ness Research (32) 1: 10–13.

VITA WRIGHT is a wilderness applications specialistat the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,an interagency unit administered by the U.S.D.A.Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.Focusing on the application of science to manage-ment, Vita works to facilitate the communication ofinformation between scientists and managers on avariety of wilderness issues. She can be reached atthe Leopold Institute, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula,Montana 59807, USA. Telephone: 406-542-4190.E-mail: leopold_institute/[email protected].

EXTRA


The Role of Legislative Historyin Agency Decision-Making

A Case Study ofWilderness Airstrip Management in the United States

BY SHANNON S. MEYER

Abstract: The Wilderness Act, which established the United State’s National Wilderness Preservation System in1964, contains both a clear definition of wilderness and multiple “nonconforming” exceptions to this definition.Managers are given discretion to manage these nonconforming uses within the framework of wilderness that the Actsought to preserve. This article presents a process for assessing congressional intent by closely examining legislativelanguage and legislative history, especially as it relates to wilderness airstrips.

these airstrips should be man-aged has repeatedly broughtmanagers, pilots, outfitters,environmentalists, and otherwilderness users into conflict.

Three wilderness areasoutside of Alaska have activeairstrips on federal land, witha total of 16 airstrips in Idahoand Montana. These airstripsare used by agency personnel,private pilots, and outfittersfor myriad purposes, includ-ing hunting, fishing, boating, wilderness administration, andscientific research. In addition, “touchdowns,” where pi-lots land on backcountry airstrips for the challenge of thelanding rather than for access to the wilderness, are popu-lar among some pilots.

The Analytical ProcessWhen a manager is faced with an ambiguous situation (Meyer1998), a structured analytical process is needed: (1) Use statu-tory construction to determine whether ambiguity existsand attempt to resolve it; (2) if the ambiguity still persists,

(PEER REVIEWED)

n some remote wildernesses in the United States, visi-tors may be surprised to encounter airstrips, motor-boats, houses on private inholdings, and cattle grazing.I

These uses are permitted in some places under special pro-visions in The Wilderness Act (P.L. 88-577) (TWA) of 1964.The compromises necessary for passage to occur led to thepersistence of some preexisting uses that do not conformwith the common perception of wilderness.

Wilderness managers are responsible for deciphering andcarrying out Congress’s intent for the management ofwilderness. Normally, when a manager is faced with acontroversial issue they turn to their agency’s wildernesspolicies, manual, and handbook. While some managers arecognizant of the relevance of legislative history to their de-cision-making process, the administrative use of legislativehistory is neither consistent nor always correct.

Airstrips in WildernessTWA’s prohibition on motorized transport is clarified by anexception that states; “Within wilderness areas designated bythis Act the use of aircraft or motorboats where these prac-tices have already become established may be permitted tocontinue subject to such restrictions as the Secretary of Agri-culture deems desirable (sec. 4[d][1]).” The debate over how

Article author Shannon S. Meyer.

STEWARDSHIP


determine whether the use of legisla-tive history is appropriate; and (3) uselegislative interpretation to clarify con-gressional intent. For the first step, thereviewer must determine whether theambiguity is real or only perceived byusing statutory construction to carefullyexamine the letter of the law. Initial am-biguity can sometimes be eliminatedthrough a closer reading of the law andthe application of common rules ofgrammar and sentence construction tothe provision(s) in question.

If statutory construction fails to elimi-nate the confusion, Stephen Breyer, acurrent Supreme Court justice, lists fivecircumstances where the use of legisla-tive history is appropriate. These are:(1) to avoid an absurd result, (2) to dis-cover and correct drafting errors, (3) todetermine whether a special meaningexists for a word within a statute, (4) todetermine the purpose of a word in thestatutory scheme, and (5) to help choosebetween reasonable alternative interpre-tations of a politically controversial stat-ute (Breyer 1992). If any of these fivecircumstances apply, Breyer suggeststurning to legislative interpretation.

The third and final step involves ana-lyzing the appropriate legislative history.Legislative history has been defined asthe “explanations of the legislators them-selves, or the documents officially used

by them, in the course of making a spe-cific law” (Folsom 1972). All legislativehistory, however, is not created equal,and the weight given to different aspectsof legislative history varies. Figure 1provides a hierarchy of the relative im-portance of these documents. This wascreated from a variety of sources includ-ing scholarly writings and the standardlegal guide to statutory construction,and it reflects common usage by thecourts (de Sloovere 1940; Dickerson1975; Folsom 1972; and Singer 1992).When attempting to interpret legislativehistory, these documents must be ana-lyzed in order of importance.

Committee reports are generallygiven the most weight (Mc-Donald1991). On an equal footing are the ex-planations of the committee chair whenreporting a bill out of committee. In theprocess of explaining a bill to the full

legislature, a committeechair must answer specificquestions about it anddefend it against opposi-tion. They must be famil-iar with both the bill andthe situation in need ofremedy (Singer 1992).

Statements made tothe whole chamber bythe legislative sponsorsof a bill are next in im-portance. They reveal alegislative intent moresignificant than that re-

vealed by those of a more casual legis-lative adherent (Dickerson 1975). Incontrast, the views of opponents arerarely assigned much importance, astheir statements may tend to overstatethe reach of the provision opposed(Folsom 1972).

Committee hearings are given lessweight because they are generally “con-cerned with the more diffuse matters ofulterior legislative purpose” (Dickerson1975). However, issues may be dis-cussed in hearings that are not revisitedin other documents. Amendments orprevious bill language that were dis-carded also play a role. The eliminationof words or phrases from a draft bill in-dicates that the meaning in question wasnot intended or was no longer acceptableto the majority. Finally, testimony given bynoncongressional parties during com-mittee hearings have little value otherthan to provide context (Singer 1992).

Applying theProcess to AirstripsTo apply this process to airstrip man-agement, the legislative history of bothTWA and the legislation establishing aparticular wilderness must be exam-ined. Two out of three of the wilder-nesses in the coterminous states thatcontain aircraft landing strips, the FrankChurch-River of No Return Wilderness(FC-RONRW) and the Great Bear Wil-derness, were not designated by TWA.

Figure 1—Significance of Legislative Documents inDescending Order of Importance

I. Committee ReportsII. a. Statements of sponsors to the whole chamber

b. Explanations of the committee chairIII. a. Committee hearings

b. Statements in general debateIV. a. Statements of members of the opposition

b. Amendments or language rejected in committee or on the floor

Indian Creek Airstrip, Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho. Photo byShannon Meyer.


The airstrips on these wildernesses aregoverned by additional legislation. Inthe legislative history of the Great BearWilderness Act of 1978, Congress ex-plicitly states its intention to keep theairstrip in this wilderness open (U.S.Congress 1978). The Central Idaho Wil-derness Act (CIWA) of 1980 containslanguage limiting the U.S. ForestService’s (USFS) ability to close airstripsin the FC-RONRW (P.L. 96-312).

Ambiguity in Wilderness ActsWhile aircraft landings are permitted inwilderness areas where they occurredbefore designation, the rest of The Wil-derness Act’s language defines these ar-eas in terms that do not includemotorized travel. Section 2“C” of TWAdefines a wilderness as “primarily unaf-fected by the work of man” with “out-standing opportunities for solitude or aprimitive and unconfined type of rec-reation.” These definitions are furtherclarified by the legislative history ofTWA, which begins with the introduc-tion of the first bill in 1957. SenatorHubert Humphrey, the legislation’soriginal sponsor, clarified his definitionof wilderness as “the native conditionof the area, undeveloped, … untouchedby the hand of man or his mechanicalproducts” (U.S. Congress 1957). He sawwilderness as a place “for people tomake their way into … without all ofthe so-called advances of modernizationand technology” (U.S. Congress 1957).None of the statements defining wilder-ness in the final law or in its legislativehistory include motorized uses.

The CIWA of 1980 created the FC-RONRW, the largest contiguous wilder-ness area in the lower 48 states. Thisremote area had a long tradition of ac-cess by airplanes, and its users wishedto ensure that it would continue (U.S.Senate 1979). As a result, the CIWAdeviated from the standard language ofTWA’s section 4(d)(1) to state that

Wilderness managers are asked to make a host ofdiscretionary decisions in a very polarized atmosphere.They are constantly faced with pressures from interestgroups demanding opposing interpretations ofwilderness regulations.

certain established uses “shall” ratherthan “may” be permitted to continuesubject to the secretary’s regulations. Italso added that: “the Secretary shall notpermanently close or render unservice-able any aircraft landing strip in regularuse on national forest lands on the dateof enactment of the Act for reasons otherthan extreme danger to aircraft, and inany case not without the express writ-ten concurrence of the agency of theState of Idaho charged with evaluatingthe safety of back-country airstrips” (sec.7[a][1]). Compared with the languageof TWA, this provision significantly lim-ited the agency’s discretion over the per-sistence of airstrips in the FC-RONRW.

At the time of the bill’s passage, onlya few of the area’s airstrips were receiv-ing active maintenance and some hadbeen closed due to their dangerous con-ditions. Senator Church emphasizedthat with this provision “the Forest Ser-vice is expressly prohibited from closingairstrips on national forests within thewilderness, which are in regular use atpresent, except for the reason of aircraftsafety” (U.S. Senate 1980, S17780). Nowmanagers are left to decipher whatmanagement discretion remains with theUSFS and how it should be exercised.

Airstrip Management inthe Frank Church-Riverof No Return WildernessThe FC-RONRW currently has 31 op-erational airstrips within its boundaries,12 of which are found on federal land

(USDA Forest Service 1998). Theselanding strips vary in condition fromsmall undeveloped areas to graded andmaintained runways with tie-downs,wind socks, and user facilities. Accord-ing to the agency, approximately 5,500aircraft landings occur on federal air-strips within the wilderness annually.The USFS notes that “[t]he sites andsounds of aircraft operating at or nearlanding strips and the noise of low leveloverflights probably disturb the quietof the wilderness” and “[a]ircraft activi-ties have the potential to affect wildlifespecies, particularly those at landingsites located on or near key wildlife habi-tat” (USDA Forest Service 1998: 1–37).

Statutory ConstructionThe first step in applying the analyti-cal process is to determine whether thestatutory issue needs interpretation. Todo so, both TWA and the CIWA mustbe analyzed. The initial ambiguity re-garding airstrip management stemsfrom provisions of TWA that governthe entire National Wilderness Pres-ervation System. This ambiguity arisesfrom the exception in section 4(d)(1)that permits the continuation of a usethat is incompatible with the defini-tion of wilderness found in section 2of TWA. The CIWA adds ambiguityby increasing statutory protection forairstrips without resolving the under-lying conflict between them and wil-derness protection.

In section 7(a)(1) of the CIWA, Con-gress clearly limits the management


agency’s ability to close airstrips on theFC-RONRW. In doing so, Congressdemonstrated that it could reduce theagency’s management discretion if itdesired. At the same time, Congress didnot specifically limit the agency’s discre-tionary ability to restrict use levels. Byexpressly restricting closures but not re-stricting other management discretion,Congress indicates that only the abilityto close airstrips is limited.

Legislative InterpretationLegislative interpretation is still nec-essary to address the ambiguity inTWA. Breyer’s fifth scenario applies inthis case. Both TWA and the CIWA arepolitically controversial statutes, andvarying interpretations can be made

from both of them abouthow airstrips should bemanaged. Although Con-gress abdicated its rightto statutorily terminatethe use of wilderness air-strips in the 1964 Act, itdid explicitly give theUSFS discretion to regu-late aircraft access as theagency “deems desir-able”. The CIWA clearlyrestricts the USFS’s abil-ity to close airstrips onthe FC-RONRW except

in the case of extreme danger to aircraft.However, it does not reduce the USFSdiscretion to manage use levels on, andmaintenance of, these strips. Theagency is still bound by TWA to mini-mize the impacts of air access on wil-derness character, as explained inagency policy direction. In a 1993 Of-fice of General Counsel decision on apossible closure of an airstrip in theFC-RONRW, USFS attorneys foundthat when an airstrip is unsafe, thereis “nothing in the Act [that] requiresthe U.S. Forest Service to make im-provements to existing airstrips tomake them safer … [and] improvingexisting airstrips could well violate theWilderness Act” (Lodine andCampbell 1993: 4).

The legislative history of the CIWAsupports the conclusion that closure, notmanagement discretion, was being rem-edied with section 7(a). The bill’s spon-sor, Senator Church, wanted to preventthe USFS from arbitrarily closing air-strips. There is no indication in thestatute’s legislative history that Congressintended to reduce the agency’s discre-tionary ability to manage use levels pur-suant to agency regulations and policies.

ConclusionWilderness managers are asked to makea host of discretionary decisions in a verypolarized atmosphere. They are con-stantly faced with pressures from inter-est groups demanding opposinginterpretations of wilderness regula-tions. Where TWA is clear and direc-tive, these requests are easily dealt with;where the Act is ambiguous, the resultis often controversy and confusion. Wil-derness airstrips are just one exampleof such a discretionary quandary. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

SHANNON S. MEYER is a researchassistant at the Aldo Leopold WildernessResearch Institute in Missoula, Montana,USA. This article is an outgrowth of hermaster’s thesis for the EnvironmentalStudies Department at the University ofMontana. Questions may be addressed toShannon at The Leopold Institute, Box8089, Missoula, Montana 59807, USA.E-mail: smeyer/[email protected].

REFERENCESBreyer, Stephen. 1992. On the uses of legisla-

tive history in interpreting statutes. SouthernCalifornia Law Review 65: 845–874.

de Sloovere, Frederick J. 1940. ExtrinCrawford [sic]aids in the interpretation of statutes. Universityof Pennsylvania Law Review 88: 527–555.

Dickerson, Reed. 1975. The Interpretation andApplication of Statutes. Boston: Little, Brown.

Folsom, Gwendolyn B. 1972. Legislative His-tory: Research for the Interpretation of Laws.Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Lodine, Mark D., and Alan J. Campbell. 1993.Wilson Bar Airstrip. USDA Forest Servicememorandum.

McDonald, Leigh Ann. 1991. The role of legis-lative history in statutory interpretation: a

new era after the resignation of Justice Wil-liam Brennan? Missouri Law Review 56:121–141.

Meyer, Shannon S. 1998. Wilderness airstrips:a case study for using legislative history toinform wilderness management. Unpub-lished master’s thesis. University of Montana,Environmental Studies Department,Missoula, Mont.

Singer, N. J., ed. 1992. Sutherland Statutes andStatutory Construction, 5th ed. Deerfield, Ill.:Clark Boardman Callaghan.

USDA Forest Service. 1998. Frank Church-Riverof No Return Wilderness programmatic andoperational management plans, Vol. I andII, Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Cabin Creek Airstrip, Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho. Photo byShannon Meyer.

(DEIS). Bitterroot, Boise, Nez Perce, Payette,and Salmon-Challis National Forests. Inter-mountain and northern regions.

U.S. Congress. 1978. House. Designation of theGreat Bear Wilderness. House Report 1616.

———. Senate. 1957. Committee on Interiorand Insular Affairs, National WildernessPreservation Act, hearings on S. 1176,June 19–20.

———. Senate. 1980. Debate on the Central IdahoWilderness Act. 96th Cong. 2d

sess. Congressional Record 126, June 26.U.S. Public Law 88-577. 1964. The Wilderness

Act. 78 Stat. 890.U.S. Public Law 96-312. 1980. Central Idaho

Wilderness Act. 94 Stat. 948.


STEWARDSHIP

Wilderness ConservationThrough Local Participation in the Cayambe-Coca and

Antisana Ecological Reserves, Ecuador

Revisiting the Community Park Ranger Program

BY WILLIAM H. ULFELDER

Abstract: Local communities are playing an increasingly important role in the protection of wilderness areas in theUnited States and abroad. The community park ranger program in the Cayambe-Coca and Antisana EcologicalReserves, Ecuador, represents an innovative way to involve local residents in protected area management. Thisarticle describes changes that have been made in the past two years to make the program participatory, orientedtoward abating threats to biodiversity, financially sustainable, and adaptively managed.

The Cayambe-Coca and Antisana ReservesLocated just an hour from Ecuador’s capital, Quito, theCayambe-Coca and Antisana Ecological Reserves are two ofthe most diverse and beautiful protected areas in LatinAmerica. Cayambe-Coca’s nearly 1 million acres (380,000hectares) and Antisana’s 300 thousand acres (120,000 hect-ares) form the backbone of the Condor Bioreserve. The Con-servancy, working with its Ecuadorian conservation partners

n the July 1998 issue of the IJW (vol. 4, no. 2) Iwrote an article analyzing a Latin American com-munity park ranger program (“The Community Park

Article author William Ulfelder.

IRanger Program in the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Re-serve: Analyzing the Effectiveness of a Wilderness Pro-tection Strategy in Ecuador”). The article summarizedthe findings of the Local Participation in Protected AreasManagement (Spanish acronym, PALOMAP) study, whichwas carried out in 1997 by The Nature Conservancy(the Conservancy) and the Latin American Social SciencesFaculty (FLACSO), with support from the Ford Founda-tion. Since the completion of the study in 1997 severalchanges have been made to the community park rangerprogram that make it more effective as a wilderness conser-vation strategy. Because local communities are participat-ing more in biodiversity conservation, both domesticallyand abroad, and many national and international conser-vation organizations are seeking to develop similar com-munity ranger programs, it is worth revisiting theCayambe-Coca example to learn what changes have beenmade to improve the program and what additional lessonshave been learned. This article provides both an update onthe program and a reflection on what lessons it has provided.


ranger program were identified. Theseincluded the need to improve localcommunity participation, develop anadaptive management program, per-form objective evaluations, and pro-vide greater financial continuity. Thestrengths of the program were that itprovided INEFAN with an on-the-ground presence and additional staffto report activities in the field and ad-dress threats such as illegal fishing andhunting. The rangers have dramati-cally improved communications andrelations between the park service andlocal communities.

During the past two years a num-ber of changes have been implementedto improve the effectiveness of thecommunity ranger program and ad-dress its weaknesses. INEFAN, theConservancy, the Antisana Founda-tion, and the Rumicocha EcologicalFoundation have clarified the commu-nity rangers’ responsibilities. Theirresponsibilities are to train communitymembers in conservation and sustain-able resource use through workshops,presentations, formal events, and ex-changes with other communities; col-laborate with INEFAN in themanagement of the protected area, inthe monitoring of flora and fauna, andthe implementation of basic scientificresearch; facilitate communication be-tween INEFAN and his or her com-munity; and help integrate his or hercommunity into the management andconservation of the protected area.

While far-reaching, these objectiveshave made the community rangers’ jobmore focused and realistic. When theSUBIR Project began, the rangers wereexpected to serve as community lead-ers in many fields such as health, edu-cation, and development. This placedtremendous expectations on the rang-ers and made them unable to performany single aspect of their work well.By keeping their objectives related to

and other international conservation or-ganizations, hopes to link these two pro-tected areas with Cotopaxi, GranSumanco, and Napo-Galeras NationalParks. When joined together these pro-tected areas will form a reserve that isnearly 2.5 million acres in size (one mil-lion hectares) and will include threeecoregions of highest priority for con-servation: Northern Andean paramo,Eastern Cordillera Real montane forestsand Napo moist forest (Dinerstein et al.1995). The principal threats to the pro-tected areas are road construction, damconstruction to generate hydroelectricpower and channel water for irriga-tion and drinking water, colonization,burning of the paramo grasslands, andthe clearing of land for agriculture andcattle production.

Ecuador’sCommunity Park RangersWhen the community ranger programbegan in the Cayambe-Coca EcologicalReserve in 1993 13 local residentsjoined with support from the Sustain-able Use of Biological Resources (SUBIR)Project, a consortium of the U.S. Agencyfor International Development (USAID),the Conservancy, and the Cooperative forAmerican Relief Everywhere (CARE). InCayambe-Coca the Conservancy worked

with its partner organi-zations, the AntisanaFoundation and theEcuadorian park ser-vice (INEFAN) to imple-ment the program. Thecommunity rangerswere hired with threeprincipal objectives:bolster the manage-ment of the protectedarea in threatened anddifficult to access places;improve relations be-tween INEFAN and

the communities that depend on thereserve for wildlife, timber, water, andother natural resources; and providelocal communities with greater lead-ership to meet their sustainable devel-opment needs.

Since 1993 the program has grownto include the adjacent Antisana Eco-logical Reserve and now includes 16rangers. In addition, the RumicochaEcological Foundation, a grassroots con-servation organization based in the townof Papallacta, located between the tworeserves, has developed with INEFANand Quito’s water company (EMAAP-Q) a similar program that employs sevenmore local residents. This second pro-gram relies on community members toprotect the resources of three large wa-tersheds that provide the capital city ofQuito with approximately 75% of itsdrinking water. The Rumicocha/INEFAN/EMAAP-Q initiative was mod-eled after the SUBIR Project communityranger program. Therefore, there arecurrently 23 community park rangersworking in the Cayambe-Coca andAntisana Ecological Reserves.

Improving theCommunity Ranger ProgramIn the July 1998 article, four princi-pal weaknesses of the community

San Rafael Waterfall, Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve, Ecuador. Photo by William Ulfelder.


protected area management and di-rectly related themes (community/park communication, monitoring, andbasic research) the program is morelikely to generate concrete results.

In addition, the program manage-ment team developed a “profile” ofwhat a community ranger should be,clarified the steps that should be takento hire a community ranger, developeda ranger code of ethics, and deter-mined what sanctions should beplaced upon any ranger who does notfulfill his or her duties. As the programis still relatively new in Latin America,these documented clarifications pro-vide guidelines for other organizationsthat wish to establish similar pro-grams. Without going into too greatdetail, it is worth mentioning that theteam clarified that community rang-ers can be either male or female (thefirst woman ranger in Ecuador washired through the program), they mustbe nominated and approved by theircommunity in an open assembly,and they have management respon-sibilities related to offenses by bothresidents and nonresidents alike.During the initial years of the pro-gram these issues were not clear,leading to considerable controversy.Providing management staff andpark rangers with these guidelinesresolved several controversies.

Another important change was thecommunity park rangers’ training. Dur-ing the first phase of the program manyrangers received little or no formal train-ing in protected area management, ba-sic ecology, natural interpretation, firstaid, search and rescue, and other relatedtopics. The attitude was that since thecommunity rangers were local residentsthey could take care of themselves andwould be “naturals” at the job. Unfor-tunately, this was not the case. The com-plicated aspects of balancingcommunity needs and protected area

management goals of-ten put communityrangers in delicate anduncomfortable situa-tions—they were oftenexpected to be in twoplaces at once, felt un-easy speaking withtourists, and did notknow whether theyshould enforce rulesamong fellow villagersand friends. Through aseries of training work-shops the communityrangers have learnedmore about these challenges and howbest to handle them. Perhaps more im-portantly, they have had the opportu-nity to meet one another and share theirown personal experiences. These ex-changes have allowed them the oppor-tunity to enrich each other andappreciate that they are not workingalone. In addition, many of the rangersare taking advantage of a national edu-cation program, supported by theWorld Bank’s Global EnvironmentalFacility, that provides basic educationin all subjects to INEFAN staff. Thecurriculum includes basic subjectssuch as math and science and is de-signed to teach these courses in thecontext of protected area management.

In late 1998 the management teamundertook a series of interviews withprotected area staff, community rang-ers, and community members to deter-mine what have been the best and worstexperiences, and how the programscould be improved. This was the firstobjective evaluation of the program bythe management team. The manage-ment team, after reviewing the resultsof a 1997 threats analysis, also deter-mined the most important communi-ties for locating community rangers. Byanalyzing threats to the reserves, iden-tifying community/park conflicts, and

reviewing where current rangers are lo-cated, the team determined the 15 com-munities that should have rangers.Fourteen now have community rang-ers in them.

Steps have also been taken to de-velop a monitoring and evaluationprogram. Data are being collected onwildlife such as spectacled bears,mountain tapirs, deer, migratorybirds, and the Andean condor.While these data are not yet beinganalyzed by the rangers themselves,the management team is planning totrain the rangers in how to use thedata to make management decisionssuch as setting patrol schedules andestablishing policies that includeclosing certain areas and seasons tohunting and fishing (fishing is per-mitted if a pole is used, and hunting isallowed for the indigenous commu-nities located inside Cayambe-Coca’sboundaries).

Finally, the management team hasdeveloped an innovative way to providegreater financial sustainability to thecommunity ranger program, one of itsgreatest weaknesses. To date the fundsfor rangers’ salaries, equipment, andtraining have been provided by USAIDand the Conservancy. Now, through awatershed conservation fund, potable

One of the community park rangers from Oyacachi at his post in the paramo. Photo byWilliam Ulfelder.


and irrigation water users will financeconservation and management activitiesin the reserves by paying a small fee forthe water they consume (The NatureConservancy 1998). In the past, wateruse charges have only covered the de-livery of water to homes and businesses,but have not included the protection ofthe water’s source. By paying a fractionof a cent on each cubic meter of waterconsumed, tens of thousands of dollarswill be raised to finance watershedprotection activities, community de-velopment, and land acquisition.Quito’s municipal government hasbacked the proposal, and soon thewater that the reserves generate forconsumption and irrigation will payfor the reserves’ protection.

ConclusionsThe community park rangers havehelped make Cayambe-Coca andAntisana Ecological Reserves two ofthe better protected areas in LatinAmerica. As a result of the programthere are more than 35 park rangersworking in the two reserves that to-tal about 1.2 million acres (500,000hectares). INEFAN had only abouta dozen full-time park rangers be-fore the program began. This meansthere is now one park ranger per35,300 acres (14,300 hectares). Thiscompares very favorably with theBrazilian Amazon, where each parkranger has responsibility over ap-proximately 1.5 mill ion acres(605,300 hectares) and is almost on

par with the United States, where eachranger is responsible for an average ofapproximately 20,250 acres (8,200hectares) (Peres and Terborgh 1995).

Numbers alone do not tell the story.Since the program began the commu-nity rangers have confiscated huntingrifles, fishing nets, dynamite, and elec-trical generators. Relations betweenINEFAN and local communitieshave improved tremendously, andINEFAN can now discuss manage-ment issues with communities thatbefore did not allow them to visit.The biggest threats to the reserves’biodiversity, such as colonizationand infrastructure development,also pose threats to local residents.By working to mitigate these threatsthe rangers are simultaneously pro-tecting the local human communi-ties—protecting both natural andhuman resources. And the data thatare being collected on the reserves’flora and fauna will improve the man-agement of the sites through betterfield activities and policies, providinglocals with a greater understandingand appreciation of what is at stake.

The work, however, is not com-plete. Though all rangers have receivedsome training, additional training isneeded in subjects such as first aid,tropical ecology, and environmentaleducation. Also, local communitiesmust be given an even greater voicein the program’s design and imple-mentation. The reserves’ communitiesrepresent a wealth of knowledge,

experience, and potential support thatis not being tapped to its potential. Byconstantly engaging communities inthe ranger program through formaland informal events, the communitieswill be able to provide additional in-formation on protected area threats,threat abatement strategies, potentialand actual conflicts, and long-termsustainable development strategies.

With the progress made in the com-munity ranger program during thepast several years, it is clear that thesupport is there among the protectedareas’ managers and involved localresidents who depend on the areas fortheir livelihoods. It has taken six yearsto develop the program and the result-ing benefits it has generated. Perhapsone of the most important lessons theprogram has provided is the need tobe patient and flexible in the imple-mentation of community-basedconservation initiatives such as thecommunity park ranger program. For-tunately, all involved are committedto the long-term success of the ini-tiative as it meets the needs of thereserves and the residents who inhabitthem. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

WILLIAM H. ULFELDER is the communityconservation program manager for theAndean/Southern Cone Division of theConservancy’s Latin America and Carib-bean Region. He can be contacted at TheNature Conservancy, 4245 North FairfaxDrive, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1601,USA. Telephone: 703-841-7198. E-mail:[email protected].

REFERENCESDinerstein, Eric et al. 1995. A Conservation As-

sessment of the Terrestrial Ecoregions of LatinAmerica and the Caribbean. Washington,DC: The World Bank.

The Nature Conservancy. 1998. Water: To-gether We Can Care for It! A Case Study ofa Watershed Conservation Fund For Quito,Ecuador. Arlington, Virginia: The NatureConservancy.

Peres, Carlos, and John Terborgh. 1995. Ama-zonian nature preserves: an analysis of thedefensibility status of existing conservationunits and design criteria for the future. Con-servation Biology 9 (1): 34–46.


EDUCATION & COMMUNICATION

Protected Areasand Aboriginal Interests

At Home in the Canadian Arctic Wilderness

BY ERIN E. SHERRY

Abstract: An alliance in the Canadian Arctic between aboriginal and conservation interests through agreements thatcombine aboriginal entitlement, national park creation, and cooperative management is giving new dimension towilderness preservation goals and is enriching protected area values. This article explores the historic roots andcontemporary character of aboriginal and nonaboriginal views of wilderness. A case study analysis of VuntutNational Park, Yukon, Canada is presented to exemplify a new type of protected area establishment and manage-ment that promises to support both ancient aboriginal lifeways and national conservation objectives.

Differing Perspectives on WildernessFor Canada’s first people, wilderness protection is part of largerpolitical and legal questions, those “bound up in the thornyissues of treaty rights, aboriginal title, and Land Claims”(Erasmus 1989). Through aboriginal eyes the Canadian Arc-tic embodies many pervasive and enduring connections, familyties; seasonal cycles of activity, a spirit of place, sacred spaces,and ancestral homeland (Klein 1994; Davis 1994). Duringthe past three decades aboriginal land claims and self-gov-ernment negotiations have altered the political, legal, andcultural face of the North. The exploration and developmentof energy, mining, water, and timber interests have affectedtraditional aboriginal lifestyles and the health of northern eco-systems. In the context of this contested terrain, aboriginalgroups, resource managers, and conservationists are endeav-oring to define common goals and mutual understanding.

Changing Wilderness ConceptsNorthern First Nations, through the Land Claim process andself-government negotiations, are seeking both a land andresource base sufficient to support their communities and rec-ognition of their inherent right to autonomous government.The role of protected areas in relation to northern aboriginalcommunities is being redefined through international docu-ments such as the “World Conservation Strategy” (IUCN 1980)and “Our Common Future” (WCED 1987). These vision state-

(PEER REVIEWED)

ments link the aesthetic,utilitarian, and ecologicaltraditions of western wil-derness protection withthe broader processes ofsocial development, eco-nomic development, andcultural survival (Sadler1989). This global move-ment highlights the impor-tance of self-sufficientcommunities and soundenvironmental manage-ment practices that reflect the cultural values, belief systems,and aspirations of indigenous people. Particular attention isfocused on the rights and interests of aboriginal users di-rectly affected by protected area creation and management.

Aboriginal PerspectivesWilderness protection that supports the diversity andproductivity of northern ecosystems is a common westernand aboriginal goal. However, dissonant perceptions ofwilderness and discordant attitudes toward formalized wil-derness protection still echo between the two cultures.While there is no one aboriginal viewpoint, for many theland is synonymous with community and survival.

Article author Erin Sherry beside the MendenhallGlacier, Alaska. Photo by David Stuart.


Examine a map of aboriginal land usein the Arctic and misconceptions of un-touched landscapes vanish. Instead, an-other face of the land appears—atraditional territory that is intimatelyknown, traveled, used, and named. AsHrenchuk (1993) cautions, it is “illusoryto think that others have not gone be-fore us nor [use] these areas today.” Ab-original groups hold a large stake in“preserving areas as close as possible totheir original state … for without renew-able resources to harvest, aboriginalpeople lose both their livelihood andtheir way of life” (Erasmus 1989). How-ever, in the pursuit of this goal, manyFirst Nations remain skeptical of allianceswith governments and conservationistswho have too often violated their aborigi-nal rights in the name of parks and envi-ronmental protection.

Aboriginal Relationshipsto Protected AreasHistorically, the establishment of Cana-dian parks meant the imposition of rulesand regulations that jeopardized aborigi-nal ways of life by restricting oreliminating the people’s legal rights(Hrenchuk 1993; Press et al. 1995). Thefreedom of First Nations to practice theircultures in harmony with nature was

often abruptly overridden by state au-thorities: “We were told we may nolonger take certain plants for medicinesand food … we may no longer pitch tentsin certain places in which we had gath-ered for generations … we may no longerstart fires … we may no longer carry fire-arms” (Erasmus 1989). Setting parkboundaries alienated First Nations, di-vorcing people from their homeland. Thecreation of most wilderness-orientedprotected areas in Canada involved theexclusion of aboriginal people. TheKeeseekoowenen were evicted and theirhomes burnt in Riding Mountain Na-tional Park, Manitoba. Blackfoot andStoney groups were expelled from BanffNational Park, Alberta, and their hunt-ing rights suspended. The Ojibway wereprohibited from hunting, trapping, andfishing within Quetico Provincial Park,Ontario. It is an unequivocal truth thatFirst Nations have heavily borne the costsof “protecting” natural areas in the “pub-lic” interest for the benefit of future gen-erations (Hrenchuk 1993; Kassi 1994;Njootli 1994; Morrison 1995). The in-terests of the new dominant society wereplaced above those of minority aborigi-nal groups, making “an ancient way oflife subject to the apparent modern-daywhims of an alien culture, all in the nameof conservation” (Erasmus 1989).

Will the persistent differences be-tween western ideals of wilderness andaboriginal perspectives make the simul-taneous protection of wildlife, uniquelandscapes, functioning ecosystems, andindigenous lifeways an impossibility? Thisdifficult question remains unresolved; how-ever, the northern Yukon contains a pro-tected area, Vuntut National Park (VNP),which provides a promising working modelof joint action in wilderness protection.

Vuntut National Park:Enriching Aboriginal CulturesVNP bridges the divide between pro-tected and utilized areas and gives new

dimension to mainstream wildernesspreservation goals. It lies within theYukon, a region of internationally signifi-cant cultural and natural heritage, richin its diversity of fish and wildlife, veg-etation, landscapes, and lifeways. Here,the federal and territorial government havesuccessfully negotiated comprehensiveclaims with aboriginal organizations suchas the Inuvialuit, Tutchone First Nation,Champagne and Aishihik First Nation,Trondek Hwech’in First Nation, and theNacho Nyak Dun First Nation (Morrison1993; Peepre 1994; Morrison 1995).These agreements have emerged as a posi-tive force for both the expansion of north-ern national parks and the recognitionof aboriginal people’s stewardship role.

VNP was established in the contextof cooperation and shared responsibil-ity as a provision of the Vuntut GwitchinFirst Nation Final Agreement (VGFA)(DIAND 1993). The creation of VNPprovided not only for conservation of thisremote wildland, but fully integrated thetraditional lifestyle, culture, knowledge,and spiritual values of the VuntutGwitchin First Nation (VGFN). Sittingnorth of the Arctic Circle and encom-passing Old Crow Flats, the new parkcontains wetlands of international sig-nificance, critical portions of the Porcu-pine Caribou Herd range, importantmigratory waterfowl habitat, and ar-chaeological and paleontological re-sources of global concern (DIAND1993). Consequently, the park is aUnited Nations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)World Heritage Site candidate, the firstto be recognized for its combined natu-ral and cultural resource wealth.

A Vuntut Gwitchin ViewpointVNP is part of the Old Crow community’sconservation strategy. Under the direc-tion of community elders, VGFN at-tempted to establish a park to “protectthe wildlife, protect the land, and to have

Gwitchin Elders, such as Charlie Thomas, emphasize theimportance of integrating aboriginal use and occupancy withinnational park boundaries to ensure cultural survival andcommunity well-being. Photo by Roy Moses.


some authority given to Indian peopleso that we can exercise our rights andcarry on with our way of life” (Njootli1994). Through the land claims process,VGFN has secured several park co-man-agement rights and responsibilities: har-vesting rights, advisory obligations, parkplanning and management duties, andemployment and economic opportuni-ties (DIAND 1993; Njootli 1994).

VNP is closely linked to the aborigi-nal ethic of conservation through sus-tainable use rather than wildernesspreservation per se (Sadler 1989). Bothtraditional and current aboriginal usesof the park are recognized and protectedunder a cooperative management agree-ment. This is a significant provision sinceit respects the right of aboriginal culturesto build on the experience of earlier gen-erations by adapting to the technologi-cal and socioeconomic changes of thepresent (e.g., firearms, snow machines,a cash economy). The Vuntut Gwitchinhave exclusive rights to hunt, trap, andgather in the park for subsistence pur-poses and have priority access over sportfishers (Morrison 1993). VGFN hasrights to give, trade, barter, or sell ediblefish, wildlife, and plant products har-vested within the park for domestic pur-poses (DIAND 1993). This is a criticalrecognition of the importance of infor-mal aboriginal economies based on reci-procity and communal sharing.

Co-managementof Park PlanningDesigned to ensure VGFN shares signifi-cantly in decision-making and imple-mentation processes, the VNP’scomanagement committee is composedequally of representatives of VGFN andParks Canada. This advisory body makesbroad management, administrative, andplanning decisions that involve heritageand cultural resources; travel routes, har-vest limits, locations, and seasonal re-strictions; development and revision of

the park’s management plan; and themanagement of transboundary fish andwildlife (DIAND 1993). The minister ofheritage and parks does retain the ulti-mate authority to accept, reject, or varythe comanagement committee’s recom-mendations and alter VGFN park use(DIAND 1993).

Cooperative management is de-scribed as “both a cornerstone and a ba-rometer in the relationship betweenaboriginal and non-aboriginal society”(Hawkes 1995). The comanagement ofVNP is an approach designed to “com-bine the best of both worlds,” blendingaboriginal and state management ap-proaches. This arrangement entails shar-ing responsibility and balancing powerbetween local resource users and gov-ernment agencies. An environment iscreated where payoffs are greater for co-operation than for competition, andwhere actors optimize their mutual goodby planning jointly with long-term vi-sion. Kofinas (1993) specifies three wayscomanagement can contribute to eco-nomic development: (1) confronting ex-ternal competing demands and valuesthat threaten the resource base of sub-sistence economies; (2) creating new andappropriate economic opportunities; and(3) redirecting the flow of resource ben-efits to local communities. The govern-ment–Gwitchin partnership alsoenhances several park managementfunctions including data gathering andanalysis; logistical harvesting and allo-cation decisions; resource protection; en-forcement; long-term planning andenhancement; and broad policy deci-sion-making. Currently the Old Crowcommunity and government agencies arejointly implementing a project focusedon mutual learning, cultural research,and park resource management. Thiscommunity-based investigation intoVuntut Gwitchin traditional ecologicalknowledge and oral history has thepotential to overcome the cultural,

perceptual, and disciplinary barriersconventionally impeding sustainable re-source management endeavors.

Barriers to ProgressDespite an encouraging outlook, severalunresolved issues are acting as barriersto progress in the application ofcomanagement principles throughoutnorthern Canada. First, shifts in the bal-ance of power and control away fromgovernment agencies are typically metby reluctance. A second obstacle islearned dependency, resulting from theappropriation of local authority and re-sponsibility by centralized resource man-agement agencies (Hawkes 1995). Thebreakdown of traditional aboriginal man-agement structures has many causes: lossof resource access and control; disrup-tion of social systems defining propertyrights, stewardship responsibilities, andcommunity obligations; interferencewith intergenerational patterns of edu-cation and information transmission; andthe introduction of cash economies andwage employment. Reintroducing locallevel control will require the reversal ofcenturies of dependency and distrust.

Economic andEmployment OpportunitiesThe VGFA ensures Vuntut Gwitchininvolvement in park design, tourism

Barren ground caribou of the porcupine herd filter through VuntutNational Park by the thousands en route to their winteringgrounds. The pervasive spiritual and cultural connections betweenVuntut Gwitchin and porcupine caribou will endure only if the herdis protected against threats to their natural existence. Photo byWayne Lynch, Parks Canada.


ventures, and facility construction on theOld Crow town site (DIAND 1993). AVuntut Gwitchin “community impacts andbenefits analysis” must be completedunder the terms of the VGFA for any pro-posed development. This is critical sincethose who best know local landscapes,wildlife, and natural processes can bestzassess the potential for overdevelopment(Morrison 1993; Morrison 1995). Localpeople receive priority in park employ-ment, contract tendering, and businessventures (DIAND 1993). This is highlyappropriate since Vuntut Gwitchin havethe experience, skills, and interest re-quired to play key roles as park manag-ers, park wardens, park rangers, tourguides, and interpreters.

Vuntut National Park—ANew Type of Protected AreaThe establishment and comanagementof VNP represents an end to policies andpractices based on exclusionary prin-

ciples that have subverted aboriginalrights and destroyed traditional lifestyles.This regime transfers a large measure ofcontrol over decisions affecting parkplanning, use, and management toVuntut Gwitchin. It emphasizes the un-derlying importance of integrating tradi-tional aboriginal use and occupancy withinpark boundaries. VNP has the potentialto emerge as a model of how govern-ment and aboriginal people can work to-gether to preserve natural areas vital tocultural survival and the achievement ofnational wilderness conservation goals.

The Future of Protected AreaCreation and ManagementRecognition of wilderness as a culturalconstruct will revolutionize our belief inthe existence of uninhabited, primordiallandscapes. Wilderness preserved neednot be wilderness dispossessed from theaboriginal people who view it as home-land. Development of the contemporary

concept of usable occupied wildernessexpands not only our view of humanity’splace in nature, but adds new dimensionsto western conservation goals. The alliancebetween conservation and aboriginalinterests can bridge the gulf between wil-derness preservation and sustainable de-velopment, enriching protected areavalues. The emergence of a new type ofprotected area, one that incorporatesaboriginal use, interests, and wisdom, hasthe potential to ensure both the protectionof unique functioning ecosystems andthe preservation of ancient lifeways. I JWIJWIJWIJWIJW

ERIN E. SHERRY is a Ph.D. student in naturalresource management and environmentalscience at the University of Northern BritishColumbia, where she studies Arcticaboriginal resource management andtraditional environmental knowledge.Contact Erin at the University of NorthernBritish Columbia, 3333 University Way,Prince George, British Columbia V2N 4Z9,Canada. Telephone: 250-964-3565. E-mail:[email protected].

REFERENCESDavis, W. 1994. The Idea of the Wild and Spirit

of Place. In Northern Protected Areas and Wil-derness, ed. by J. Peepre and B. Jickling. Proc.of a Forum on Northern Protected Areas andWilderness, Canadian Parks and WildernessSociety and Yukon College, Whitehorse,Yukon, Nov., 1993: 25–38.

Department of Indian Affairs and Northern De-velopment (DIAND). 1993. Vuntut GwitchinFirst Nation final agreement. Otlawa, Ontario:Ministry of Supply and Services.

Erasmus, G. 1989. A Native viewpoint. In En-dangered Spaces: The Future for Canada’sWilderness, ed. by M. Hummel. Toronto,Ontario: Key Porter Books: 92–98.

Hawkes, S.L.E. 1995. Co-management and pro-tected areas in Canada: the case of GwaiiHaanas. Published master’s thesis. School ofResource and Environmental Management,Simon Fraser University, B.C., Canada.

Hrenchuk, C. 1993. Native land use and com-mon property: whose common? In TraditionalEcological Knowledge: Concepts and Cases,ed. by J. T. Inglis. Ottawa, Ontario: Cana-dian Museum of Nature and International De-velopment and Research Center: 69–86.

International Union for the Conservation of Na-ture (IUCN). 1980. World conservation strat-egy. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.

Kassi, N. 1994. Science, ethics, and wildlife man-agement. In Northern Protected Areas andWilderness, ed. by J. Peepre and B. Jickling.Proc. of a Forum on Northern Protected Ar-eas and Wilderness, Canadian Parks and Wil-derness Society and Yukon College,Whitehorse, Yukon, Nov. 1993: 212–216.

Klein, D. R. 1994. Wilderness: a western conceptalien to Arctic cultures. Information North 20(3): 1–6.

Kofinas, G. 1993. Subsistence hunting in a glo-bal economy: contributions of northern wild-life co-management to community economicdevelopment. Making Waves: A Newsletterfor Community Economic Development Prac-titioners in Canada 4 (3): 1–7.

Morrison, J. 1993. Protected Areas and Aborigi-nal Interests in Canada. Toronto, Ontario:World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Morrison, J. 1995. Aboriginal Interests. In Pro-tecting Canada’s Endangered Spaces: AnOwner’s Manual, ed. by M. Hummel. Toronto,Ontario: Key Porter Books: 18–26.

Njootli, S. 1994. Two perspectives—one park:Vuntut National Park. In Northern ProtectedAreas and Wilderness, ed. by J. Peepre andB. Jickling. Proc. of a Forum on Northern Pro-tected Areas and Wilderness, Canadian Parksand Wilderness Society and Yukon College,Whitehorse, Yukon, Nov. 1993: 132–136.

Peepre, J. 1994. Protected Areas and Wildernessin the North. In Northern Protected Areas andWilderness, ed by J. Peepre and B. Jickling.Proc. of a Forum on Northern Protected Ar-eas and Wilderness, Canadian Parks andWilderness Society and Yukon College,Whitehorse, Yukon, Nov. 1993: 5–19.

Press, T., D. Lea, A. Webb, and A. Graham. 1995.Kakadu: Natural and Cultural Heritage andManagement. Casuarina, Australia: NorthAustralian Research Unit, The Australian Na-tional University.

Sadler, B. 1989. National parks, wilderness preser-vation, and Native peoples in northern Canada.Natural Resources Journal (29) 1: 185–204.

World Commission on Environment and Devel-opment (WCED). 1987. Our Common Future:The Bruntland Report. Toronto, Ontario: Ox-ford University Press.



Persuasive Communication andGrade Level Effects on BehavioralIntentions within a Wilderness

Education Program

BY WILLIAM W. HENDRICKS

Abstract: In investigating the effects of persuasive communication sources and messages and student grade levels onlow-impact camping behavioral intentions, the impact monster skit was utilized. This wilderness education programemploys a quasi-experimental design (pre-test/post-test). First, third, and sixth grade students (N=574) were ran-domly assigned to treatments. There was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores in the short-term behavioral intentions of students following exposure to the program. When considering pre- and post-testscores, a wilderness hiker was more effective than a wilderness ranger as a positive message source, and third andsixth grade students’ scores were significantly higher than first grade students’ scores. Chi-square tests for 15 of 17potential behaviors were significant and in the expected direction.

any wilderness managers use educational pro-grams to supplement wilderness managementtechniques in efforts to influence visitor behavior.

(PEER REVIEWED)

to process information (Pettyand Cacioppo, 1981, 1986;Petty, McMichael, and Brannon,1992). With the peripheralroute, the message recipientmay be unable to process themessage content and thus littleattention is paid to the actualmessage (Roggenbuck andManfredo 1989).

One means of distinguishingbetween the central and periph-eral routes of persuasion is within the content of a mes-sage. In general, a message that emphasizes questions resultsin a higher level of central route processing than a messagethat relies on assertions (Petty et al. 1992). For example,asking an individual why dishes should not be washed in astream may result in a higher degree of central route pro-cessing than telling the person that they should not washdishes in a stream.

MAmong the wilderness education efforts of land managementagencies is the K–8 “Wilderness and Land Ethic Curriculum”distributed by the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Train-ing Center. The curriculum teaches appropriate land ethicsand wilderness values. The impact monster program is oneactivity within the curriculum (Hendricks and Watson 1999).

Persuasive CommunicationPersuasive communication is often used to influence thebehavior of wilderness visitors (Roggenbuck 1992;Roggenbuck and Manfredo 1989). Two potential persua-sive communication approaches available are the centraland peripheral routes to persuasion (Roggenbuck andManfredo, 1989). The conceptual basis for these routes wasderived from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty andCacioppo, 1981, 1986). The central route to persuasiondepends upon message recipients being motivated and able

Article author Bill Hendricks. Photo by TobiGreene.


The central route to persuasion is gen-erally not recommended as an effectiveapproach with children due to its infor-mation processing requirements. Whenchildren lack the ability to process thecontent of a message, peripheral routefactors such as the expertise, attractive-ness (Roggenbuck and Manfredo, 1989),likability, (Petty, Cacioppo, andSchumann, 1983) or credibility (Petty,Cacioppo, and Goldman 1981) of asource become consequential. Therefore,it is important to determine the appro-priate source of a message in children’swilderness education programs.

Grade Level andLearning DevelopmentA wilderness education program may bemore effective at one grade level thananother depending on learning and cog-nitive development of program partici-pants. Sometimes a single program suchas the impact monster is used for a vari-ety of ages, including children and adults,yet it is unknown if wilderness educa-tors adapt the program for the audiencetaking into consideration the cognitivedevelopment of the participants.

Behavioral IntentionsWilderness behavior has been of inter-est to researchers for more than two de-cades. Although behavioral intentions orattribute choices have been investigatedin a variety of environments (e.g. Beaulieu& Schreyer, 1984; McDonough, 1982;McLaughlin, Krumpe, & Paradice, 1982;Schreyer & Beaulieu, 1986) the selectionof low impact behavioral intentions by

children in a controlled setting has re-ceived little attention. Among the fewstudies that have been conducted,Dowell and McCool (1986) found thatexposure to a minimum impact programimproved knowledge, behavioral inten-tions, and skills of Boy Scouts. Further-more, Tracy (1995) determined that fifthgrade students exposed to the impactmonster skit increased their knowledgeof wilderness behavior.

Impact Monster ProgramThe impact monster skit, which was de-signed to teach low impact campingtechniques (Hansen 1990), has beenused extensively by wilderness rangerssince its development in the late 1970s.Typically, an “impact monster” as thesource of a negative message demon-strates inappropriate wilderness behav-ior and a “good guy” corrects thebehavior. For example, the impact mon-ster may litter, pollute a stream, harmwildlife, and destroy other wildernessresources. The good guy as the source ofa positive message informs the impactmonster of how less impact could beincurred and more suitable behavior ismodeled (Hendricks and Watson 1999).Characters previously used to representthe impact monster have included a per-son in brightly colored clothing, a wil-derness user, a trash-covered impactmonster, a white-faced impact monster,and a “country western geek.” The goodguy role is often a ranger, wilderness user,audience peer, or junior ranger (Hendricksand Watson, 1999). Other roles areplayed by the audience, providing a

hands-on learning experience (Tracy1995). The skit is often adapted to spe-cific wilderness areas or ecosystems andhas been used for a variety of age groupsand settings such as campfire programs,special events, schools, and agency train-ing workshops (Hendricks and Watson1999). Persuasive communication is anintegral part of the impact monster pro-gram as it relies on message content andsources in efforts to influence wildernessvisitor behavior.

Research QuestionsThis study attempted to answer thefollowing research questions:

1. Does the source of the impact mon-ster skit “positive message” influencebehavioral intentions to adopt ap-propriate wilderness behavior?

2. Does the source of the impact mon-ster skit “negative message” influencebehavioral intentions to adopt appro-priate wilderness behavior?

3. Does content format (telling versusasking) influence behavioral inten-tions to adopt appropriate wildernessbehavior?

4. Does grade level (first, third, andsixth) influence behavioral inten-tions to adopt appropriate wildernessbehavior?

MethodsThe study was a quasi-experimental de-sign employing a repeated measuresanalysis of variance. The factors were (a)three grade levels (first, third, and sixth)to indicate the ability to process infor-mation; (b) two levels of a positive mes-sage source who presented appropriatelow-impact techniques (wildernessranger or wilderness hiker); (c) a nega-tive message source with two levels whopresented inappropriate techniques (a“cool” impact monster dressed in brightlycolored clothing or an impact monsterdressed as a traditional wilderness hiker);

Prior to and following the presentation of the program,each student was given a color illustration depictingsix appropriate and 11 inappropriate low-impactcamping behaviors.


“Asking” message format. Photo by Pam Hamp.

and (d) two versions of the program mes-sage content (one with an emphasis onasserting behaviors and the other withquestioning as the predominant format).

Short-term behavioral intentionswere measured prior to and followingpresentation of the impact monster skitby having each subject view a wilder-ness setting illustration. The illustrationwas adapted, with artist permission,from a 1994 National Geographic, Wil-derness System publication.

Study subjects consisted of 574 stu-dents in 24 first, third, and sixth gradeclasses from elementary schools locatedin communities on the California cen-tral coast adjacent to the Los Padres Na-tional Forest. Schools were selectedbased on their willingness to participatein the study. The schools were contactedbecause they were similar in demograph-ics and student composition. Nearly allsubjects spoke English as a first language.The schools were located in communi-ties ranging in population from 405 to6,600 residents. There were 200 (34.8%)first graders, 202 (35.2%) third graders,and 172 (30.0%) sixth graders in thestudy. Classes in each grade level wererandomly assigned to treatments.

ProceduresScripts for two versions of the impactmonster were written based on skits typi-cally used by wilderness educators. Onescript was written in an “asking” mes-sage format, whereas the second scriptwas a “telling” format, thus creating twolevels of persuasive messages requiringdifferent levels of processing capabilities.For example, in the introduction of the“telling” version the students were toldwhat they would not find in a wilder-ness. In the “asking” version they wereasked, “What are some things you wouldnot find in a wilderness?” Similarly, atthe conclusion of the skit during the “tell-ing” version the students were told how im-pacts could be prevented. In the “asking”

version they were asked,“How can impacts beprevented?” The sameprops, roles, and low im-pact examples were usedfor each version. Trainedresearch assistants pre-sented the program. Theresearch assistants main-tained the same roles foreach skit. The programwas presented to eachclass individually duringspring 1996.

Prior to and followingthe presentation of theprogram, each student was given a colorillustration depicting six appropriate and11 inappropriate low-impact campingbehaviors. Students were asked to circlethose activities they would do the nexttime they went camping in a wildernesssetting. Inappropriate behaviors werecoded negative one and appropriate be-haviors were coded positive one. Aggre-gate pre-test and post-test scores for the17 potential behaviors present in the illus-tration were computed for each subject.Thus, scores could range from negative11 for a student who selected the 11 in-appropriate behaviors and no appropri-ate behaviors to positive six for a studentwho selected the six appropriate behav-iors and no inappropriate behaviors.

ResultsThere were 302 boys (52.6%) and 270girls (47.0%) who participated in thestudy (gender was not provided for twostudents). Roles in the skit (frog, tree,rocks, flower, sign, and snake) wereplayed by 192 randomly selected stu-dents (33.4%). An analysis was con-ducted for the full repeated measuresmodel and for each of the potential be-havioral intentions. Significant differ-ences between pre-test and post-testscores were present for levels of all fac-tors (see Table 1). The full model indi-

cated a statistically significant differencebetween pre-test and post-test scores (seeTable 2). Interaction effects were presentfor positive message source hiker/rangerby pre-test/post-test and grade by pre-test/post-test scores.

In addition to the full model analysis,chi square tests were conducted for eachof the 17 behaviors that were coded asdichotomous variables (selected and notselected) (see Table 3). The chi-squarewas significant and in the expected di-rection for all behaviors except hikingon a trail and using a tent away from alake. Hiking on a trail changed in theexpected direction, but using a tent awayfrom a lake did not.

ConclusionsRegardless of the factor levels presented,the skit in all cases made a difference inpre-test and post-test scores. Thus, forshort-term behavioral intentions, knowl-edge of appropriate behavior was im-proved by exposure to the skit.

Results indicated that the hiker is agreater influence on behavioral intentionsthan the ranger as a source of a positivemessage. There is little difference be-tween the influence of the cool monster andtraditional hiker monster as a negativemessage source. At a statistical signifi-cance level of p<.054, mean scores for


all three grade levels are higher with thetelling message than with the asking mes-sage, indicating that peripheral messagesmay be more effective than central routemessages within the skit. There is a sig-nificant difference between grade levelpre-test and post-test scores. Third and sixthgrade levels influence behavioral intentionsmore than first grade.

The collection of pre-test data con-tributes meaningful information foranalysis, yet some caution is advised ininterpretation of the results. For themessage source and message content fac-tors, classes that began with inferior pre-test scores resulted in a greater mean

difference between pre- and post-testscores. The classes with greater pre-testscores also had greater post-test scores,but the difference was less than thosewith the lower scores prior to exposureto the skit.

Educational ImplicationsAlthough the skit appears to be effectivefor third and sixth grade students, theappropriateness for first grade students isquestionable. There are significant differ-ences between first grade pre- and post-test scores; yet, following the skit less thantwo appropriate behaviors were identifiedby this group as behavioral intentions.

With the relatively low p value at-tained and the practical results thatbehavioral intentions are greater for allgrade levels with a telling message,attention should be given to the skitformat. When writing scripts theaudience’s ability to process informa-tion should be considered. For thisstudy, extensive use of prewritten ques-tions was employed to systematicallydifferentiate the telling versus askingskit. The abundance of questions maybe beyond the processing capabilitiesof even the sixth grade students. Fur-ther research needs to be pursued re-garding this variable before definitivesolutions may be offered.

Theoretical ImplicationsAs mentioned previously, at a statisti-cal significance level of p<.054, greatermean score differences occur with thetelling format of the skit for all threegrade levels. This indicates that themessage (telling) requiring less cogni-tive abilities and information process-ing is potentially the more influential.These results support Roggenbuck andManfredo’s (1989) suggestion that wil-derness education programs for chil-dren should not employ complexinformation processing techniques.

Credibility and source attractivenessare key components of peripheral routemessage sources (Petty and Cacioppo,1981, 1986; Petty, McMichael, andBrannon, 1992). If limited central routeprocessing is occurring, the importanceof actors in the skit becomes magnified.For example, did the students considerthe hiker to be a more credible sourcethan the ranger? Expertise is anothersource variable that comes into play here.In this case, is attractiveness more im-portant than expertise or was the rangerconsidered less of an expert? Perloff (1993)discussed similarity as an alternative sourceto attractiveness, expertise, and credibil-ity. Attractive, credible, expert, and


similar sources may have differing influ-ences on behavioral intentions of partici-pants in the program.

Refinements based on sound theorycan potentially improve the effective-ness of the impact monster program.Nevertheless, the results of this researchand Tracy’s (1995) study provide evi-dence that current versions of the skitmay influence short-term behavioralintentions, and the program shouldremain a tool for promoting appropri-ate wilderness behavior. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

WILLIAM W. HENDRICKS is an associateprofessor in the Recreation AdministrationProgram, Natural Resources ManagementDepartment at California Polytechnic StateUniversity, San Luis Obispo. He can becontacted at the NRM Department, CalPoly, San Luis Obispo, California 93407,USA. Telephone: 805-756-1246. E-mail:[email protected].

This paper was presented at the Seventh International Symposium on Society and Resource Management,Columbia Missouri, May 27–31, 1998. Partial funding for this research was provided by the

Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute.

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Roggenbuck, J. W., and M. J. Manfredo. 1989.Choosing the right route to wilderness edu-cation. Presented at Managing AmericasEnduring Wilderness Resource, Minneapo-lis, Minn.: 103–112.

Schreyer, R., and J. Beaulieu. 1986. Attributepreferences for wildland recreation settings.Journal of Leisure Research 9: 231–247.

Tracy, B. M. 1995. An evaluation of the teach-ing effectiveness of a typical wilderness boxactivity. Unpublished master’s thesis, Califor-nia State University, Chico, California.


Wilderness@Internet

Using the Internet as a Survey Research Tool:Potentials and Pitfalls

BY DIANE B. GAEDE AND JERRY J. VASKE

ecent research shows that the average wildernessuser is a 37-year-old, college-educated male (69%)who lives in an urban area (Cook and Borrie 1995;


Electronic surveys distributed via the Internet offer thepotential for gathering information from wilderness users ona range of topics of interest to natural resource managers. Web-based surveys offer at least three advantages. First, comparedto traditional survey modes (e.g., telephone interviews), web-based surveys can be completed faster, especially for largesamples where the number of telephones and trained inter-viewers limit the number of completions per day (Schaeferand Dillman 1998). Second, the costs associated with datacollection are substantially reduced for Internet surveys sincethe methodology eliminates postage, printing and/or inter-viewer costs (Smith 1997; Walsh, et al. 1992). Third, graphicinterfaces and branch/fill capabilities allow for survey presen-tation in formats that have previously been difficult to achieve(Schmidt 1997). Despite these advantages, several method-ological questions remain unanswered. For example, to whatextent do the findings from a web survey approximate thosefrom a phone survey? To what extent are web-based data gen-eralizable to the larger population?

Electronic Surveys: The PitfallsAll surveys strive to obtain a sample that is representativeof the population in question. Survey mode (web surveysversus telephone interviews) is important because it influ-ences who is included in the sample frame as well as whoresponds from within that frame. Mode differences arisewhen the respondents and nonrespondents for one type ofsurvey differ from those of another.

Two types of nonresponse bias can be distinguished. First,sample frame or coverage bias refers to whether certain peoplein a population are not included in a sample frame becausethey are unreachable (Dillman, et al. 1996); for example, in-dividuals who do not have access to or use the Internet. Sec-ond, sample nonresponse bias focuses on differences between

RWatson, et al. 1995). The typical Internet user is a 35-year-old, college-educated male (67%) who lives in an urbanarea (GVU 1997). Such dramatic similarities suggest at leastthree things. First, this column in IJW is aptly named. Sec-ond, wilderness users are likely to be Internet proficient. Andfinally, the Internet may offer a viable technique for commu-nicating with the general public.

This paper explores the potentials and pitfalls of usingthe Internet to gather information about the public’s viewson natural resource management. Data for this investiga-tion were obtained from two surveys of national park visi-tors. The first, a phone interview, was based on a nationalrandom sample of individuals. The second was a World-Wide-Web-based survey and included a self-selected sampleof respondents who voluntarily completed the online in-strument. The two samples of individuals are comparedrelative to their demographic profiles, frequency of nationalpark visitation, general beliefs regarding limiting and con-trolling visitation to national parks, and beliefs about cur-rent issues facing specific national parks.

Electronic Surveys: The PotentialCurrently, about 50% of all U.S. households have comput-ers and about 22% have access to the Internet in their home.Although 35% of all Americans have accessed the Internetat least once (Witt 1997), this estimate changes daily(Tapscott 1998). Internationally, there are 10% to 15% fewerInternet users in Europe than in the United States andCanada. In third-world nations less than 10% of the popu-lation is connected to the Internet (GVU 1997), but thistoo is changing rapidly.


respondents and nonrespondents whorefuse to answer all or portions of thesurvey.

Phone and web surveys have differ-ent coverage and sample nonresponseproblems. Coverage problems occur fortelephone surveys because respondentsmust be available when the interviewercalls. Specific to web surveys, the avail-able evidence suggests that when com-pared to the U.S. population, Internetusers tend to be younger, predominantlymale, and more highly educated(Webster 1998; GVU 1997), findingsthat have consequences for represent-ing the population.

MethodsThis study explores these potentialsources of bias between web and tele-phone surveys for two samples of na-tional park visitors. Responses tosocio-demographic questions, park visi-tation rates, general beliefs about limit-ing/controlling park visitation, andbeliefs about current issues facing spe-cific national parks are examined.

Data for this study come from twoNational Parks and Conservation As-sociation (NPCA) survey projects. Thephone survey was based on a nationalrandom sample of individuals (Vaske,et al. 1996), while the web survey wasbased on a self-selected sample of re-spondents who voluntarily completedthe online instrument.

The Telephone SurveyA sample of random digit numbers waspurchased from a commercial samplingfirm. The sample was designed to beproportional to the population of eachstate, and representative of the popula-tion in age, income, and ethnicity. Theinitial sample included 4,400 numbers.Trained interviewers conducted thephone survey during the spring of 1996.Interviewers made up to three “call-backs” to numbers that were busy or

had answering machines. Approxi-mately 47% of the numbers did not re-sult in contact. Of the remaining 53%,or 2,310 households, 809 individuals(18 or older) agreed to complete thesurvey (response rate=35%).

The World Wide Web SurveyDuring the summer of 1996, the phonesurvey was converted to html (hypertextmark-up language) and was posted onthe NPCA web home page from July 18to December 1, 1996. During that timeframe, approximately 16,114 individu-als visited the NPCA home page. Of

these, 1,653 opened the cover letter as-sociated with the web survey. The websurvey sample consisted of respondentswho voluntarily completed the comput-erized self-administered interview. Ap-proximately 300 web surveys werereceived each month (July through No-vember). After screening for and remov-ing duplicate submissions (n=33) of thesurvey, 1,120 completed questionnaireswere available for analysis.

Variables MeasuredQuestions on the phone and web sur-veys measured the same variables.


ResultsSocio-Demographic andPark Visitation ComparisonsThe two samples differed statisticallyon all four socio-demographic vari-ables (x2 > 39.0, p < .001, in all tests,Table 1). Compared to 1996 U.S. Cen-sus data, the telephone sample approxi-mated the age, gender, and educationcharacteristics of the U.S. population(U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997). Rela-tive to gender differences, phone re-spondents were 43% male (57%female). In the web survey, the distri-bution was reversed (59% male, 41%female). Telephone respondents were,on average, older than web respondents(M=44.7 and M=36.2, respectively,t=11.13, p < .001). After recoding thisvariable into discrete categories, the larg-est differences were in the two oldestage groupings. For example, 14% of thephone respondents were 65 or older,but only 2% of the web respondentswere in this age category.

Consistent with other surveys ofInternet users, the web sample wasmore highly educated than the phonesample (Table 1). For example, 43%of the individuals who volunteered tocomplete the web survey reportedpost-graduate work; only 18% of thephone sample indicated this level ofeducation. At the other extreme, 2%of the web sample were in the “somehigh school or less” category, com-pared to 10% of the phone respon-dents. Relative to place of residence,57% of the individuals in the phonesample lived in areas with populationdensities less than or equal to 50,000,while 59% of the web respondentslived in cities with populations over50,000 (Table 1).

On average, the web respondentshad visited twice as many nationalparks in the last three years (M=8.48)as the phone respondents (M=3.91)

Respondents were first asked, “Haveyou ever visited any national park ar-eas (defined as “the 369 areas man-aged by the National Park Service;including National Parks and Monu-ments, National Recreation Areas,National Historic Sites, NationalLakeshores and Seashores, and soon”). Responses were coded in a di-chotomous choice (“Yes” or “No”) for-mat. Only those individuals whoindicated “Yes” are included here(81%—phone survey, n=633; 98%—web survey, n=1080).

A fill-in-the-blank question askedindividuals to specify the number ofnational parks visited in the past threeyears. Four socio-demographic vari-ables (gender, age, education, andplace of residence) were included onboth surveys. Table 1 shows the re-

sponse options for these demographicquestions. Four questions examinedrespondents’ support for limiting and/or controlling visitation to nationalparks. These questions ranged fromlimiting use to protect park experi-ences and the natural environment, toinstituting a reservation system and ashuttle bus system. Table 2 shows theactual wording of these questions. Foreach variable, responses were codedas “Yes,” “No,” or “Do not know.” Fivequestions addressed respondents’views on a range of issues facing spe-cific national parks (e.g., Grand Can-yon, Great Smoky Mountains,Yellowstone, Voyageurs, and Ever-glades). The issues along with thequestion wording are shown in Table3. Responses to each issue were codedas “Yes,” “No,” or “Do not know.”


(t=8.35, p < .001). Given that indi-viduals in the web sample were on theNPCA web home page, their interestin national parks is likely to be greater,and thus it is not surprising that theirvisitation rates were also higher.

Taken together, these socio-demo-graphic and park visitation compari-sons highlight the magnitude ofdifferences between the randomsample of phone respondents and theself-selected sample of individualswho volunteered to complete the websurvey. Although the socio-demo-graphic distributions for the web re-spondents were similar to thosereported in other studies of Internetusers, the results reported here sug-gest that coverage bias issues are prob-lematic for representing the U.S.population with web-based surveys.

General Beliefs aboutLimiting and/or ControllingVisitationFour questions in the survey asked re-spondents whether they supported lim-iting and/or controlling visitation tonational parks (Table 2). Similar to thesocio-demographic and park visitationanalyses, the phone and web samplesdiffered statistically (based on the x2) onall four comparisons. However, unlikethese previous comparisons where thestrength of the association was relativelystrong (average Phi=.30, see Table 1),the strength of the relationship betweensurvey mode and beliefs about limiting/controlling visitation was not as strong(average Phi=.13; Table 2). Moreover,from an applied perspective, data fromeither sample would yield the same con-clusion regarding acceptable nationalpark management strategies. For ex-ample, more than three-quarters of therespondents in the phone and web sur-veys supported the concepts of limitingvisitor numbers, requiring reservations,

and using shuttle buses to reducecrowding and protect park resources.

Beliefs about SpecificNational Park IssuesFive questions in the survey askedabout current issues facing specificnational parks (Table 3). Similar tothe general beliefs questions, althoughthe two samples differed statistically(x2 > 22.3 p < .002, in all analyses),the pattern of responses shows con-

siderable agreement regarding accept-able management strategies. For ex-ample, more than 85% of bothsamples (87% phone survey and 91%web survey) were willing to pay morefor their utilities if visibility problemsdue to pollution from power plantemissions were reduced in GrandCanyon and Smoky Mountain Na-tional Parks. Similarly, more than70% of all respondents believed thefederal government should stop themine near Yellowstone National


Park to avoid potential risks to thepark’s land, water, and wildlife.

ConclusionsThe findings presented here suggestseveral considerations regarding theuse of electronic surveys. First, whileInternet surveys reduce data collectioncosts and provide faster turnaroundwhen compared to telephone inter-views, population coverage problemsare a major limitation of web-basedsurveys. Data reported here showmarked differences in socio-demo-graphic characteristics between theself-selected individuals who voluntar-ily completed the online survey andthe random sample of phone respon-dents. Given the rapid rate at whichInternet usage is increasing, it is notclear who is included in the sampleframe. Moreover, there is currently noway for researchers to follow-up withnonrespondents. In this study, for ex-ample, more individuals opened theweb survey than actually completedthe instrument.

While these sampling issues cur-rently pose limitations for using web-

based surveys, many of these problemswill disappear as Internet usage contin-ues to grow. Telephones were initiallycommunication devices for the eliteuntil they gained mass acceptance. Asthe cost of technology decreases, per-sonal computers with an Internet con-nection are rapidly becoming a part ofmore U.S. households. Similar to thetelephone, once the Internet gains masspopularity, random sampling will be-come more feasible.

Second, these sampling issues carryover to other variables researchers maybe interested in measuring. In this in-vestigation, for example, web respon-dents visited twice as many nationalparks when compared to phone re-spondents. Given that the web surveywas accessed through the NPCAwebsite, such differences probably re-flect a higher level of commitment tonational parks than is found in thegeneral population.

Third, caution must be used whenevaluating respondents’ general andspecific beliefs regarding acceptablemanagement strategies derived fromdifferent survey modes. While the per-

centages of individuals in identical re-sponse categories were similar, web re-spondents were generally more positivetoward the management action than thephone respondents. If only the web datawere available, managers would over-estimate the extent to which the visit-ing public approved of the policy.

Taken together, these findings sug-gest that web-based survey researchhas the potential for assisting in man-agement decisions. At the presenttime, however, population coverageand sample nonresponse biases se-verely limit widespread application ofthe methodology. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

DIANE B. GAEDE is assistant professor ofrecreation at the University of NorthernColorado, Human Services Department,Greeley, Colorado 80639, USA.Telephone: 970-351-2688. E-mail:[email protected].

JERRY J. VASKE is a professor at ColoradoState University in the Department ofNatural Resource Recreation and Tourism,Human Dimensions in Natural ResourcesUnit, 244 Forestry Building, Fort Collins,Colorado 80523, USA. Telephone:970-491-2360.E-mail: [email protected].

REFERENCESCook, B., and W. Borrie. 1995. Trends in rec-

reation use and management of wilderness.IJW 1 (2): 30–37.

Dillman, D. A., R. L. Sangster, J. Tarnai, and T.H. Rockwood. 1996. Understanding differ-ences in people’s answers to telephone andmail surveys. In Advances in Survey Re-search, ed. by M. T. Braverman and J. K.Slater. San Francisco: Jossy-Bass.

GVU. 1997. GVU’s 7th WWW User Survey.http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1997-04/.

Schaefer, D. R., and D. A Dillman. 1998. De-velopment of a standard e-mail methodol-ogy: results of an experiment. Public OpinionQuarterly 62 (3): 378–397.

Schmidt, W. C. 1997. World wide web research:benefits, potential problems, and solutions.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments andComputers 29 (2): 274–279.

Smith, C. B. 1997. Casting the net: surveyingan internet population. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue1/smith.html.

Tapscott, D. 1998. Growing up digital: therise of the net generation. New York:McGraw-Hill.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1997. Statistical Ab-stract of the United States 1997. Washing-ton, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce.

Vaske, J. J., G. E. Haas, D. Whittaker, and T.Wakefield. 1996. American views on na-tional park issues. Project Report for theNational Parks and Conservation Associa-tion. Washington, D.C.

Walsh, J. P., S. Kiesler, L. S. Sproull, and B.W. Hesse, 1992. Self-selected and ran-domly selected respondents in a computernetwork survey. Public Opinion Quarterly56: 241–244.

Watson, A. E., D. N. Cole, and J. W.Roggenbuck. 1995. Trends in wildernessrecreation use statistics. In Proc. of the FourthInternational Outdoor Recreation and Tour-ism Trends Symposium ed. by J. L. Thomp-son, D. W. Lime, B. Gartner, & W. M. Sames.St. Paul, Minn.: University of Minnesota,College of Natural Resources and Minne-sota Extension Service.

Webster, J. C. 1998. Who is the digital citizen:a systematic comparison of telephone andonline methodologies. Paper presented at theannual American Association for PublicOpinion Research Conference, St. Louis, Mo.

Witt, K. J. 1997. Best practices in interviewingvia the internet. Paper presented at theSawtooth Conference, Seattle, Wash.


SCIENCE & RESEARCH

(PEER REVIEWED)

Commercial and Private Boat Useon the Salmon River in the

Frank Church-River ofNo Return Wilderness, United States

BY DONALD H. HUNGER, NEAL A. CHRISTENSEN, AND KURT G. BECKER

Abstract: Historically, float permits on the Middle and Main Forks of the Salmon River in Idaho, United States, havebeen approximately split evenly between private and commercial float groups. A study of these two dominant usergroups was conducted to understand likely response of the two groups to potential changes in management. Findingsfrom this research emphasize many differences between private and commercial users. Though these groups are usingsimilar equipment and traveling on the same river at the same time, they differ in most aspects of their expectations forthe trip, problems they encounter, and what they think managers should do to protect the resource.

When the Middle Fork of the Salmon River inIdaho was designated “wild” under the Wildand Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, its values as a

Article authors Don Hunger (left) and Kurt Becker (center) receive award from U.S. ForestService Chief Mike Dombeck for research on the Salmon River. Photo by U.S. Forest Service.

Wfree-flowing wilderness river were protected by federal law.A “wild” river is defined as the river and its adjacent landthat is “generally inaccessible except by trail, with water-sheds or shorelines essentially primitive.” The U.S. ForestService (USFS) was given the authority to administer theriver in a manner that protects or enhances its wildernesscharacteristics, including limiting nonconforming uses anddeveloping a protective management plan. The “wild” sec-tion of the Middle Fork extends nearly 90 miles within theFrank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (FC-RONRW).

Also within the FC-RONRW, the Main Stem of theSalmon River travels for approximately 79 miles. This por-tion of the Salmon River was designated “wild” with pas-sage of the Central Idaho Wilderness Act (CIWA) in 1980.The Main Stem is managed under the Wild and Scenic Riv-ers Act, with additional direction in the CIWA to allow cer-tain uses that conflict with The Wilderness Act, such asallowing motorized vehicles, motorized boats, air strips,commercial lodges, and substantial recreational use.

On both rivers, the number of private and commercialgroups allowed to float each day of the controlled use season


is approximately split in half. Privateuse is limited through a lottery sys-tem with chances to receive a permitupon application estimated at one in23. Commercial clients do not applyfor a limited number of permits. Out-fitters receive an allocation oflaunches, constrained only by limitson group sizes, equipment, and ad-equate camping locations.

Stratifying WildernessVisitors into MeaningfulConsumer GroupsWatson and Cronn (1994) reportedthat wilderness visitors with a moreextensive history of visiting a particu-lar wilderness will more likely notice

social and resource im-pact problems. If gen-eral visitor populationsare surveyed in order tounderstand trends inperceptions of condi-tions or likely responseto management actions,very different resultswill be obtained thanwhen more specific sub-populations (strata) ofthe user public are ex-amined. Watson andCronn (1994) suggest

that where there is a high percentageof first-time visitors, any type of sur-vey or experienced quality monitor-ing activities may lead to theconclusion that everything is finewhen, in fact, conditions are actuallydeteriorating. On the other hand,places that receive high percentages ofrepeat use should find general visitorsurveys more useful to track percep-tions of condition changes. Watsonand Cronn (1994) concluded thatmanagers need a more complete un-derstanding of the relationship be-tween variables such as amount of pastexperience, visitor expectations for thetrip, and evaluations of resource andsocial conditions in order to considervisitor input in making decisions

about how to care forthe wilderness.

On the SalmonRiver, as at many otherplaces in the westernUnited States, there arecommercially outfittedand guided groups andthere are private partieswho provide their ownequipment, supplies,and the skills needed totravel the river. Previousresearch, such as Wat-son and Cronn (1994)

above, suggests against simply lump-ing river users of such different orienta-tion toward the resource into a singlegroup and making decisions on the ba-sis of this information. Average re-sponses would suggest the existence ofan average visitor. In fact, if identifiablesubpopulations exist we must under-stand these subpopulations better inorder to make management decisions.

Commercial versusPrivate Boater SamplingCommercial and private boaters werecontacted on both rivers (Hunger1996). During the primary use seasonof 1995, 10 pairs of days were randomlyselected from all possible days betweenJuly 15 and September 16. This in-cluded eight sampling pairs during thesummer permit season and two sam-pling pairs in September, outside thesummer permit season. There was nodifferentiation made between weekdaysor weekends because parties launch inequal numbers every day of the week.On the main fork of the river the maxi-mum number of permits per day is foreight groups, while only seven groupsare allowed to launch each day on themiddle fork of the river.

On sampling days, each launch partywas contacted after they had received arequired prelaunch orientation by aUSFS river manager and before theyboarded their boats. Up to 10 people,ages 16 and older, from each group wererandomly selected for the survey. Ingroups of 10 or less, all were surveyed.Commercial guides were not includedin the pool of potential respondents.This sampling process resulted in 238commercial clients and 301 privateparty members.

Implementation of the surveymethodology led to information beingobtained at various times during thetrip. Respondents received a survey

A “wild” river is generally inaccessible except by trail, with watersheds or shorelinesessentially primitive. Leopold Institute photo.

In this study, visitors completed a survey in stages as they floated down the rivers.Leopold Institute photo.


composed of five sections at the launchpoint. The launch-point section wascompleted in the presence of a surveyadministrator. In this pretrip survey,the floaters were queried about theirexpectations for the trip, their pastriver use history, and some basic de-mographics such as age, education,income, and residence. Four other sec-tions were completed in stages duringthe trip and deposited in speciallymarked repository boxes at easilyidentified locations.

Besides the launch-point survey, visi-tors were asked to answer questions ontheir first, third, and last nights on theriver, and at the take-out point. Of in-terest to this article, on the third nightfloaters were asked about their supportor opposition to several potential man-agement actions for minimizing recre-ational floater use impacts on theresource or the experiences of others(about 58% of the launch-point samplecompleted this section). At the take-outpoint they were asked about problemsthey encountered on the trip (just un-der 50% of the launch-point sample re-sponded).

All users were asked about their pastexperience level on the Salmon Riverand about their past experience on otherovernight river trips. Every floater wasalso asked to indicate his or her personallevel of skill in river travel on a scale of“beginner, novice, intermediate, ad-vanced, or expert.” Information wascollected on expectations (using cat-egorical responses) for the number ofpeople and parties they would see daily,level of impacts they would find, andother things (such as wildlife, modernstructures, and low-flying aircraft) theymight see on the trip.

Visitor support for potential manage-ment actions that were being consid-ered by an interdisciplinary planningteam, or had been mentioned in recentpublic involvement meetings, were

measured on a five-pointscale ranging from“strongly support” to“strongly oppose” withboth a neutral point onthe scale for respondentswho could not decidetheir support and a col-umn labeled “no opin-ion” for those who eitherdid not care or had in-sufficient knowledge tojudge how much theysupported proposed ac-tions. Visitors were askedto report how much cer-tain things influenced their river trip byrating them as being “no problem at all,”“a small problem,” “a moderate prob-lem,” or “a big problem.” The itemsevaluated included potential conges-tion/crowding problems and human-caused resource impact problems.

User Characteristicsof BoatersCommercial clients and private boat-ers differed in many ways (see Table 1).Though commercial floaters tended tobe older, both groups’ average age was

Commercial clients were more opposed to reducing the allowable number of people perfloat party. Leopold Institute photo.


early 40s. About twice as many com-mercial clients grew up and now livein major metropolitan areas. This moreurban group of users reported that21% have completed the equivalent ofdoctoral degrees while only 14% ofprivate floaters have completed doc-toral level degrees. Reflective partiallyof high education attainment levelsand highly urban residence, we sus-pect, those who pay someone else totake them down the Salmon River arebetter able to pay for these services,with over 43% reporting householdincomes of over $100,000 per year,compared to only 14% of private float-ers in this income bracket.

On past river use characteristics,these two groups also appear to be verydifferent. Private users averaged more

previous trips on the Salmon River, hadtaken more previous overnight floattrips on rivers, had guided their ownwatercraft on a greater number of pre-vious river trips, and had taken theirfirst overnight float trip more years agothan commercial clients reported. Pri-vate users even exceeded commercialclients on the average number of previ-ous river trips taken with a commercialguide. Also, private floaters evaluatetheir river running skills higher thancommercial clients. About 48% of com-mercial clients rate themselves as “be-ginner”; 54% of private floaters ratethemselves as “intermediate” to “ad-vanced.” Private floaters tended to bein smaller groups and stayed longer.

Using a stepwise logistic regressionroutine, the pool of 13 demographic

and past use history variables was re-duced to seven significant predictorvariables. The significance value forinserting a variable was specified at0.05, while that for removing a variablewas set at 0.10. The final solution pro-duced an overall prediction ability of78% (a 28% improvement over chancealone). Using the resultant model topredict classification for new subjects,private users would be correctly clas-sified 73% of the time, while commer-cial users would be correctly identified82% of the time.

The variables in the final model in-cluded the number of previous tripson any river, the number of previousovernight trips on any segment of theSalmon River, the number of previousguided trips, a self-evaluation of river-running skill level, the length of thistrip, the number of people in thegroup, and household income (Table1). The multiple categories of incomeused in the survey (nine) were en-tered as contrasting variables, con-trasting with the highest category(>$100,000), which contained 43% ofthe commercial floaters and only 14%of the private visitors. For the finalmodel, however, the income variablewas broken into only two categories.From examination of the univariateanalysis of this variable, it was notedthat in all seven categories of incomebelow $75,000 the percentage of pri-vate floaters exceeded that of commer-cial clients. On the other hand, from$75,000 up, the percentage of com-mercial clients dominated. The high-est category was chosen as the contrastvariable. Overall prediction successwas not increased drastically with thischange, but interpretation of coeffi-cients seemed clearer. The variablewith the largest partial correlation co-efficient (R), and therefore with thegreatest relative strength in the rela-tionship, was income category.


River Trip ExpectationsPrivate floaters expected to see signifi-cantly more floating parties, to be withinsight of other float parties more of thetime, to be delayed by other parties atmajor rapids a greater amount of time,to see more modern human structures,to see more human-caused vegetationloss and bare ground at campsites, tosee more human-damaged trees atcampsites, and to see more litter duringtheir river trip (see Table 2). Both groupshad high expectations for seeing no onenear their campsites each night, high ex-pectations for seeing wildlife, and verylittle expectation of encountering hu-man waste during the trip.

Perceptions of ProblemsThere is a mandatory human wastepackout procedure on both rivers, and81% of commercial clients and 69%of private users reported no problemsencountering human waste on the trip,suggesting high compliance with thisregulation (see Table 3). Only a fewfrom each group reported this as a“small problem.” For commercial cli-ents, 24% said litter was a problemalong the river, while more than halfof private boaters felt it was a prob-lem. But, of those private boaters feel-ing it was a problem, most thought itwas only a small problem.

There were some parameters thatwere not scored universally high. Pri-vate boaters indicated a higher prob-lem score than commercial floaters onthe following things: the number ofpeople seen on the river, the amountof time spent in sight of other parties,the number of parties passing theircampsites, having other campsiteswithin sight or sound of their own,seeing human-caused vegetation dam-age around campsites, seeing damagedtrees around campsites, the numberof modern structures encounteredalong the river, and low-flying aircraft.


Evaluations of Management

Options and ConsiderationsPrivate floaters demonstrated greateropposition to the current level of low-flying aircraft, though about 40% ofboth groups are neutral on this issue(see Table 4). Commercial clientstended more toward support for thecurrent level of flights. For other riveraccessibility issues, private floatersscored higher in opposition (50%strongly oppose) to increasing dailylaunch limits (though commercial cli-ents opposed [31% strongly oppose]this action, too) and for extending thesummer lottery system to spring andfall seasons (a high percentage of com-mercial clients were neutral on thisitem, as it would have little effect ontheir ability to take trips on the river).About half of both groups opposedincreasing parking spaces at launchsites (another 40% of each group wereneutral). On social issues, commercialclients were more opposed to reduc-ing the allowable number of peopleper float party, less supportive of re-ducing the number of boats per party,more supportive of establishing launchschedules to avoid down-river conges-tion, and less supportive of require-ments for carrying out human waste.

Commercial clients appear to havea more pure image of what a river tripis going to be like through this wil-derness. They expected to see fewerpeople and fewer impacts than theprivate parties expected. This differ-ence in expectations can easily be ex-plained by the significant differencesbetween the two groups in past riverexperience on these river segmentsand elsewhere. Possibly they wereswayed to believe wilder conditionsexisted than they would actually find.Their expectations may also have been

correlated with the amount of moneythey paid for the trip.

But, exposed to the same river, dur-ing the same use season, the privateusers who were expecting less pristineconditions were more bothered by theconditions they did find. This is con-trary to some previous work that sug-gests evaluations of quality are afunction of the relationship betweenexpectations and actual conditions en-countered. These more urban, highereducated, wealthier users of the riverseem to rationalize the higher impactsand social conditions they encounteredmuch better than the private users.

Of all the demographic differencesbetween the two groups, the uncom-monly high income of the commercialusers dominates when analyzed in amultivariate fashion. It must be un-common to find such clear distinctionbetween two groups of users of thesame resource, using similar equip-ment (unlike canoeists and motorboaters on a lake, or snowmobilers andcross-country skiers) on a similar trip.This income difference clarifies for themanager and the policy maker the eco-nomic segment of society representedby the commercial clients. Since partysize of commercial groups is one-fourth larger on the average than forprivate parties (16 versus 12)—thoughnumber of permits is nearly thesame—this commercial client groupis the dominant user of these riversduring the high use season. Is the im-plication, therefore, that they shouldbe dominant in determining manage-ment for the river in the future? Howdo we take into consideration a sub-population of visitors who appear tobe fairly casual in their relationshipwith primitive environments? Shouldwe weigh their responses more heavilybecause they are the dominant user,

or less because of this apparent casualrelationship?

While preferences for managementdo not seem extremely different in theirbroadest sense across these two groups,the high proportions of floaters indicat-ing problems with numbers of otherfloaters, numbers of modern structuresand aircraft, and human-caused impactsaround campsites suggests the need forproactive management actions. Legisla-tive intent is clear on these two rivers,despite overlays of wilderness and wild-river legislation. Control of impacts andcrowds are necessary to maintain wil-derness and wildness for visitors to theseimportant national treasures. We mustfocus management on maintaining op-portunities to experience challenge, soli-tude, freedom, and primitive nature. Ina country that is dedicated to both pri-vate enterprise and the democratic pro-cess, our federal land managers are facedwith decisions that will greatly affect theresource and wilderness opportunitiesof future generations. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

DONALD H. HUNGER is with the StudentConservation Association, Inc., 1265 S.Main Street #210, Seattle, Washington98144, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

NEAL A. CHRISTENSEN is social scienceanalyst with the Aldo Leopold WildernessResearch Institute, Missoula, Montana USA.

KURT G. BECKER is interdisciplinaryplanning team leader, Salmon NationalForest, Salmon, Idaho, USA.

REFERENCESHunger, Donald Hancock. 1996. Defining po-

tential human experience indicators andstandards on the Main Stem and Middle Forkof the Salmon River in Idaho. Unpublishedmasters thesis. The Evergreen State College,Olympia, Washington.

Watson, Alan E. and Richard Cronn. 1994. Howprevious experience relates to visitors’ per-ceptions of wilderness conditions. Trends (31)3: 43–46.


INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Editor’s note: As a result of the 6th World Wilderness Congress, The WILD Foundation and associatesare conducting research as part of the Asian Wilderness Initiative. To date, it appears that Sri Lanka is theonly nation in Asia that has legislation recognizing wilderness. Following, the former Director of Wildlifeprovides some useful and interesting background.

—Vance G. Martin, President, The WILD Foundation

Origins, Evolution, andPresent Status of the

Protected Areas of Sri Lanka

BY LYN DE ALWIS

Sri Lanka in Ancient TimesIn Asia the old belief systems in largely agricultural societiessaw the wilderness as the provider of all human requirements.It therefore had to be treated with awe and respect, and itsbounty had to be shared with all other living beings within it.Humans were in no way superior. Spiritually, too, the wilder-ness was seen as a source of inspiration and healing of troubledminds. Whether it was Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, or ProphetMohammed, they all withdrew into the quietness of the wil-derness to contemplate, to seek the truth, or to pray.

Sri Lanka was fortunate to receive the gift of Buddhismsome 300 years before Christ, bringing with it love and com-passion for all beings and necessarily for the forests in whichthey lived. King Dharmasoka of India and King DevenampiyaTissa of Sri Lanka were great friends, and the former was quickto share gifts with the latter. So, no sooner had he embracedthe teachings of Lord Buddha than he sent his son to the Sinhalaking with a message to share this great Truth. Later, KingDharmasoka sent missionaries to Sri Lanka (or Lanka as itwas then probably known) to explain the Buddhist Dharma.One such explanation had to do with the fact that people andall living beings were equal. The teaching was as follows: “Ogreat King, the birds of the air and the animals have an equalright to live in this land as thou: the land belongs to the peopleand all living beings and thou art only the guardian of it.”

The ancient texts and chronicles bear witness to the factthat monarch, clergy, and laity ensured that this principle wasnever violated. On the contrary we can say that every oppor-tunity was seized to perpetuate the principle and to spread it

throughout the country. Thus wasborn the concept of “sanctuary” foranimals and the unique conditionthat the largest of them were in theenvirons of the cities.

While protection of wild land-scape for watershed purposes isan ancient practice in Sri Lanka,the sanctuary concept precededeven that. There is a stone-pillarinscription from the twelfth century near Anuradhapura inwhich the king (Kirti Nissanka Malla) “Ordered by beat ofdrums that no animal should be killed within a radius of sevengaw (1 gaw=5.1 kilometers or 3.06 miles) of the city ofAnuradhapura; he gave security to animals, he gave securityto the fish in the 12 great tanks, he gave security to birds.”

In direct contrast to this was the kind of sanctuary that theBritish declared in 1909. They were “game” sanctuaries inwhich game was protected for sportsmen to kill! Actually, bythe twelfth century Sri Lanka had reached the zenith of itsprosperity as an agricultural nation. It had been referred to as“the granary of the East.” We must also remember that by thistime its population, though not as high as 20 million as somehistorians try to make out, was “exploding” in the face of pros-perity. To have succeeded in transforming natural ecosystemsinto a comprehensive agrosystem meant that the people ofSri Lanka was practicing stringent conservation methods, es-pecially those of water and of soil. It was another clever King—Prarkrama Bahu—who reigned in 1153 A.D. who directed

Article author Lyn de Alwis.


that “Let not a single drop of water receivedfrom rain escape into the sea withoutbeing utilized for human benefit.”

Irrigated agricultural lands becamethe centers of dense populations andperhaps the abode of royalty, state offi-cials, and feudal lords. But outside citylimits and the sanctuaries, the land wasstill clothed in forest. On the fringes werethe rural people living in self-containedvillages, which is where we can trace theessence of sustainable living—a conceptthat the West is very magnanimously try-ing to educate the East in, so many cen-turies later.

Outside the sanctuary limits, forestsfell into two main categories—crownforests and wastelands. Crown land was,as the name implies, forests belongingto the king and into which only royaltyhad access. Wasteland was unprotectedforest land that the people had access toand in which slash-and-burn or shiftingagriculture was practiced. The status quoof sanctuary, crown land, and wastelandmay have sufficed when the old king-doms were established in the flat low-lands of the country. But after thethirteenth century we see that waves offoreign invasions, mostly from India,compounded by recurring epidemics ofmalaria, drove the Sinhala kings into thesalubrious highlands, an environmentunfamiliar to them.

As more settlers moved into the hillcountry, obviously more forest had tobe opened up. This called for more for-ward planning in land utilization ac-companied by appropriate soil andwater conservation techniques. The set-tlers’ success paved the way for anothergolden age in our history—the rise ofthe Kandyan Kingdom in the hill coun-try. As soon as agriculture moved intothe hill country we see that the crownforests was further categorized intoroyal forest, forbidden or sequesteredforests, forests for defense, and severalother purposes.

The royal forests virtually surroundedthe royal palaces and were the preserveof the king. No commoners were allowedentry. A good example of one survivingeven today is Udawattekele situatedabove the palace of the last King ofKandy, behind the Temple of the Tooth.Equally well protected were the forbid-den forests (Sinh.: Thahansi kale), whichwere invariably dense evergreen forestsand were the sources of streams and riv-ers. We see here the first wilderness ar-eas being protected for ecologicalpurposes. Even colonial rulers on therampage in the seventeenth, eighteenth,and nineteenth centuries, clearing themagnificent forests of the hill country,respected a few of these wilderness ar-eas that survive to the present day, al-though drastically reduced in size, asprotected wilderness areas. The Sinharaja(Rain) Forest, the Peak Wilderness, theMaha Eliya montane forests (subse-quently renamed Horton Plains after aBritish governor of that name) are someof the better known thahansi kales. Allthese wilderness areas were actively pro-tected by paid kale korales, the equiva-lent of today’s forest rangers.

The Colonial PeriodThis was the idyllic scenario in Sri Lankaat the turn of the sixteenth century, whenthe ruthless Portuguese armies arrived.The invaders, who began in 1505 andwere bolstered by arms and ammunition,made short work of the Sinhalese defensesand quickly captured the maritime prov-inces. Though they plundered the natu-ral wealth of the country and exportedit by the shipload, they didn’t wipe outthe forests. However, their devastatingelephant capture operations and shoot-ing of wildlife left the country stunned.

After 150 years, the Dutch madetheir aggressive appearance, van-quished the Portuguese, and decidedto stay for 150 years. Being a maritimepower themselves, the Dutch concen-

trated on the coastal areas, strengthen-ing the trade activities of the Dutch EastIndia Company. They moved into thehinterland only to plant cinnamon andother spices that were valuable com-modities at that time.

Among the colonial powers it was theBritish who did the most damage to thewilderness areas, regardless of whetherthey were protected. Apart from the Brits’single-minded desire to subjugate thepeople, they set about planting economiccrops—tea and rubber—for which thelush forests protecting the hill countrywere systematically annihilated. The Brit-ish heartlessly dispossessed the peopleof all their land and destroyed completelythe very essence of life in this blessedcountry. It is said that at one stage theylaid absolute claim to 95% of the land.The crown forests of the Sinhala kingswere subtly changed to Crown land un-der the British Crown.

Not only did the British usurp all vil-lage land, they also introduced a cultureof violence towards wildlife, using fire-arms in their destruction. Then came theroads into the hill country, their construc-tion well described by Karunaratne inhis work on “Udawattekele”: “As the yearswent by many more roads were openedup in the hill country, often passing throughformer royal sequestered forests, with theadvent of the coffee industry more andmore acres of virgin jungle clothing themountainsides disappeared before theplanters’ axe” (Karunaratne 1986).

So the Asian concept of conservationthrough sustainable use of natural re-sources disappeared, at least in this coun-try, through the ignorance or greed ofthe colonial rulers. When the need forconservation became necessary to theBritish, they returned with a draconianculture of controls, laws, and punish-ments destroying for all time people’sparticipation in protecting the land. Tothis day, even after 50 years of indepen-dence, rural people cannot comprehend


the change. It was left to the curator ofthe Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Dr. J.Hooker, to draw the attention of the thengovernor to the senseless destruction offorests in Ceylon. It was this observationthat led the British administration to for-mulate a Forest Act in 1885 and a ForestDepartment in 1887, to slow down theoverexploitation.

Even this noteworthy step did not domuch good for wilderness protection,because the act only regulated forestryactivities that brought more revenue tothe government. There was no mentionof forests as being ecologically importantto agriculture or soil and water conser-vation. As was customary, wildlife cameunder the purview of the Forest Depart-ment. But in those early days the ForestAct paid scant respect to the animals,their protection, or their needs. Havingransacked the hill country and driven itsfauna into the inhospitable dry thornscrub and monsoon forests of the low-lands, some energetic British marksmenbanded themselves together and formedthe Ceylon Game Protection Society in1894. Even though their intentions maynot have been altogether altruistic, thesociety did agitate for the introductionof laws to protect their targets (“game”)such as elephant, buffalo, deer, leopard,and bear. The efforts resulted in the firstpiece of legislation to protect “game” in“game sanctuaries” through the GameProtection Ordinance of 1909.

Much to the chagrin of the ForestDepartment hierarchy, the governmententrusted the task of administering theordinance to the self-same society. Thiswas perhaps the first time that wildlifewas privatized! Sri Lanka’s first wardenof wildlife, Mr. C. W. Nicholas, in hisfirst Administration Report for 1951,traces the history of wildlife conserva-tion in a few concise paragraphs. Hestates that after the Great War of 1914–1918 “cheap, single-barrel breech load-ing shotguns were imported [into Sri

Lanka] in large numbers, motor carheadlights and electric torches beganto be used to facilitate the shooting ofanimals on and off the roads at night,and the slaughter of wildlife reachedsuch proportions that an Ordinance toamend the Game Protection Ordinancewas introduced in the Legislative Coun-cil in 1926” (Nicholas 1951).

A new era for wildlife dawned after1930 when Sri Lanka adopted the newDonoughmore Constitution that allowedlocal members of the state council to holdcabinet portfolios. It was our good for-tune, too, that nature conservation (for-ests and wildlife) came under theminister for agriculture and lands, no lessa person than Mr. D. S. Senanayake whobecame independent Sri Lanka’s firstprime minister. An epochal change oc-curred when the Game Protection Ordi-nance was replaced by the Fauna andFlora Protection Ordinance on March 1,1938. On that same day Sri Lanka’s firsttwo national parks came into existence,namely Yala and Wilpattu.

Conservation inIndependent Sri LankaAlthough we only gained indepen-dence in 1948, Britain appeared to belosing its grip on colonies such as In-dia and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) long beforethat, as it was fighting a world war. Thisenabled the more enlightened citizens,backed by the Game and Fauna Pro-tection Society, to press for more re-serves and also to give autonomy towildlife protection. The latter wasachieved in part with the creation of a postof deputy warden to be in charge of wild-life protection, though still under the For-est Department. The conservator offorests was de facto warden of wildlife.

This status quo continued until Octo-ber 1, 1949 when autonomy came atlast and a new department was insti-tuted. The first full-time warden tookoffice on December 1, 1950.

The new ordinance also saw the gen-esis of a number of categories of pro-tected areas. There were two principalones—sanctuaries, which gave total pro-tection to wildlife, yet allowed humanactivity because the land was not neces-sarily state land, and national reserves,which were on entirely state-owned land.The national reserves were subdividedinto strict natural reserves, nationalparks, and intermediate zones.

The breakaway from the “big brother”(Forest Department) so soon after Inde-pendence proved to be a giant step for thefuture of wildlife and wilderness protec-tion. We were also unique among Asiancountries in so doing, and the followingbenefits accrued:• Better protection for the indigenous

fauna, which until then forestersderisively referred to as “vermin”

• Better protection for the forest(jungle) itself, for there was no ques-tion of timber extraction and otherforms of exploitation. The wildlifedepartment became the sole “own-ers” of its territories.

• More opportunities for scientific re-search and education

• Public access for aesthetic and emo-tional interaction with wild placesand their inhabitants, which provedto be essential to resist political pres-sure on land from such reservesStrict natural reserves were for the

protection of specific animals and plantsand for research about them. No personother than the genuine researcher wasallowed into their hallowed portals. Core

By appreciating the politician’s viewpoint I was able tomake him or her see the animals’ viewpoint, so to speak.


areas of the Wilpattu and Yala NationalReserves were declared strict natural re-serves for the benefit of fauna, whileRitigala, a unique mountain massif in themiddle of the dry zone, and Hakgala at6,500 feet, clothed in montane forest,were so-declared to protect a uniqueflora. National parks are similar in SriLanka to elsewhere.

Intermediate zones, ostensibly buff-ers between national parks and villageforests, were open only to the so-calledsportsmen. Had they been classified asbuffer zones in which no shooting waspermitted they may have survived byserving a better purpose. It was not un-til the late 1950s and 1960’s that the de-partment formulated a conservationpolicy. Field surveys, research, and sci-entific methods gathered momentumand resulted in the creation of more spe-cialized national reserves. The most sig-nificant of these was the “Jungle corridor”(or “link forest”) as national reserves. Thisprovided a scientific approach to solve,or at least mitigate, the fragmentation ofhabitats, especially those of elephants. Inthe 1964 amendments to the ordinance,jungle corridors entered the statute bookas did nature reserves. The first naturereserve was the 6,500-foot-high HortonPlains, a wilderness par excellence. (To-day it has been elevated to the status of anational park, but much of it is acces-sible only on foot.)

During my 40 years of service to wild-life and wilderness (13 of them as direc-tor of wildlife conservation), I had toshed my bureaucratic mantle when deal-ing with politicians and try to understandtheir anxieties. This is where my villagebackground held me in good stead. Byappreciating the politician’s viewpoint Iwas able to make him or her see the ani-mals’ viewpoint, so to speak. I was ac-cused of being parochial, but I can say

as an “elder” conservationist that unlessone has a passion for the wilderness andthe wildlife in it and considers the na-tional reserves as being sacred, one hasvery little reason to care for them!

So it was that we have been able notonly to save the wilderness areas en-trusted to the department but also to addconsiderably to them. The recognitionof jungle corridors and subsequently ofbuffer zones and refuges has increasedwildlife habitats from 10% of thecountry’s forest cover in 1950 to 12%today. This constitutes 50% of total for-est cover in the country, a fact of whichthe Forest Department is somewhat en-vious. Today the department looks aftera total of 70 protected areas covering anarea of some 830,715 acres. In addition,the Forest Department also takes care of73 protected areas with a total of 161,853acres. Sri Lanka today has a NationalHeritage and Wilderness Act by whichthose listed therein are inviolate. This actpassed in Parliament in 1987 is of greatrelevance today.

What of the Future?There must be a paradigm shift in ourapproach to conservation. The shift isreally a choice between forging a part-nership with the people whose lives aremost affected by wildlife—whether it beconflict or cooperation—or to perpetu-ate the fallacious thinking that humansare superior to all beings and continuewith senseless humanmade confronta-tion with animals. I have shown that SriLanka is an agricultural country and thatthe conservation practices, which en-abled the smooth transition from eco-system to agrosystem, were absolutelycorrect. The pseudoscientific attitudetoward problems caused by conservationmethods originating in industrializedcountries will never solve our problems.

Laws, controls, and a police officer’sattitude widen the gap between stake-holder and administrator. Often, muchof the land in reserves was actuallywrested from the villagers’ forebears bya single stroke of a colonial pen. Smallwonder then that we cannot expect orpersuade “community participation”from people so wronged. When I intro-duced the concept of buffer zones in thelate 1970s, I had in mind allowing vil-lagers the use of such reservations forgrazing their cattle, collecting firewood,and raising timber. By that process Iwould expect them to have a sense of“belonging” and of participation. Alas,this process was aborted, but I hope thedepartment will try again.

We are today in the information age.The kind of information I would like tosee is communication between politician,policy maker, conservationist, adminis-trator, and scientist. Unfortunately, to-day the latter two are losing theircredibility—the administrator through alack of conviction and the scientist inwhose presence the policy maker be-comes defiant or suspicious. We have toremove such barriers and learn to speak toeach other person to person for the goodof wildlife and the wilderness. That willbe the correct path to tread in the fu-ture. May that day soon dawn. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

LYN DE ALWIS is a Sri Lankan, recentlyretired after a career that culminated in 14years as director of wildlife in his country.He is also currently a member of IUCN’sAfrican Elephant Specialist Group. Contacthim at 30 Hotel Road, Mount Lavinia, SRILANKA. E-mail: [email protected]).

REFERENCESKarunaratne, Nihal. 1986. Udawattekale: The

forbidden forest of the Kings of Kandy.” Dept.of National Archives, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Nicholas, C. W. 1951. Wildlife department ad-ministration report for 1951.

This article is the edited version of the presentation at the 6th World Wilderness Congress (Bangalore, India, October 1998).Proceedings are in press with Fulcrum Publishing (Golden, Colo.) and The WILD Foundation.


The Wilderness LeadershipSchool of South Africa’s

Imbewu and Opinion LeaderProgrammes

BY ANDREW MUIR

he Wilderness Leadership School Trust (WLST) wasfounded as an environmental education trust in 1963by conservationist Dr. Ian Player and the game guard

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Africans. Yet the development ofan environmental awareness islargely dependent on the expo-sure young people have to first-hand experiences in naturalenvironments. It is therefore im-perative for the future protectionand well-being of our few re-maining wilderness and wildlands that young people are ex-posed to these areas to gain anunderstanding of their impor-tance. It is with this as a back-ground that the WLS launchedits Imbewu and Opinion Leaderprogrammes.

Imbewu—The SeedImbewu is an African initiative and literally translated means“seed.” Imbewu is a four-day, entry-point wilderness expe-rience operated as a joint venture between the South Afri-can National Parks Board (SANPB) and the WLS. Imbewuenables South African youth, particularly those from dis-advantaged communities, to reclaim their birthright to aquality experience of their game reserves. The centerpieceof South African wildlife reserves—the 2-million-acreKruger National Park—was selected to host the pilotImbewu programme.

One of the unique aspects of Imbewu is that retired blackgame guards are selected and trained as the Imbewu teach-ers. These former employees of the SANPB have an average

Twho inspired him, Magqubu Ntombela. The aim of theWLST is best summed up in its mission statement, whichreads: “We strive to restore a balanced relationship betweenhumanity and nature by providing a direct experience ofwilderness especially for the leaders who shape society.”

The Wilderness Leadership School of South Africa (WLS)takes small groups of up to eight participants at a time onfive-day wilderness trails throughout South Africa. Since1963 more than 35,000 people have participated on thesecourses. As outlined in our mission statement, leaders whoshape society are our primary target market, including youth(potential leaders) and current leaders.

Legal wilderness protection in South Africa has gainedmomentum over the past two decades, and there are nowdesignated wilderness areas within many protected areas,notably the Kruger National Park, Drakensberg, Zululand,and Cape reserves.

But a great sadness is that far more western tourists havebeen stirred by these wilderness areas and wild lands thanlocal black South Africans. The reason for this is that underthe previous white nationalist government black peoplewere excluded and denied access to public nature reserves,picnic areas, and hiking trails. For many black people ourprotected areas and reserves are often reminders of pastdiscrimination and, in some quarters, are hated symbols ofpainful forced relocations.

Even in the new South Africa, experiences in nature re-serves are beyond the economic reach of most South

Article author Andrew Muir.


of 30 years’ experience workingmainly on foot in game reserves andthus have much outdoor wisdom andknowledge to offer as teachers andguides for this programme. These re-tired game guards have become cor-nerstones of the Imbewu programme.Many of these men cannot read orwrite, but they have traditional knowl-edge that they share with the youth inhome-tongue languages, using the Af-rican art of storytelling. Traditionalknowledge links our wild lands, trees,animals, and birds to the hearts of ourpeople. The insights of these blackconservationists, born to South Africa,have for too long remained unshared.

The primitive Imbewu camps havebeen designed by the Imbewu teachersusing principles of minimum-impactcamping, with a focal point being thecampfire. Over four days these “wisemen” mesmerize 16 young people,drawn mainly from communities sur-rounding the parks and from urbantownships, with stories around the nightfire. During the day the youth are takeninto the wilderness areas on daylonginterpretative walks. In many waysImbewu is a rite of passage, a culturalexperience for young South Africansstruggling to find their heritage and theirrightful place in society.

More than a thousand youth com-pleted the Imbewu pilot programme inits first 14 months during 1997 and1998, and it is obvious that Imbewuimpacted them at a deep emotionallevel. Our observations suggest that thewilderness experience is irreplaceableand inspirational to their human spirit.Imbewu features environmental educa-

tion as an empowerment process basedon our need to root conservation in anAfrican context. We plan on expandingthis programme to as many other parksas possible, eventually enabling thou-sands of young people to experiencetheir heritage in this way.

Opinion LeaderWilderness ProgrammeThe Opinion Leader Wildernessprogramme (OLW), initiated by theWLS and funded by the EuropeanUnion, brings together Members of Par-liament (MP) and other key communityand environmental leaders on four-daywilderness trails (treks). This is a qual-ity, natural experience that facilitates across-pollination of ideas, discussion ofissues, and networking amongst electedand grassroots opinion leaders. It is animportant catalyst for the emergence ofenvironmental consciousness and envi-ronmental initiatives.

The WLS has now taken more thantwenty OLW programmes into wilder-ness areas throughout South Africa.More than 130 community and politi-cal leaders have already participatedthrough mid-1998, 50 of them nationaland regional Members of Parliament(MPs). We believe this program isunique to South Africa, but we hope thatit is copied by other nations.

Participants in the OLW programmehave consistently commented on howbeing in a natural environment “on thetrail” created a time period for much-needed debate in an appropriate en-vironment. In her trail report JudyChalmers, an MP in the National

Assembly, stated that “The debate wasmade more real, more urgent, morerelevant because we sat in surround-ings we could not ignore.” SenatorLubidla, another MP, stated in his trailreport that “We never actually appre-ciated the environment, and now thatwe have experienced it we havelearned how vital it is.”

Many of the participants, includingthe MPs, had never experienced a na-ture reserve or protected natural areaprior to participating on these trails.Some of the participants initially ex-pressed a negative attitude toward for-mal conservation. They saw “brownenvironmental issues,” such as waste,water, and air pollution, as separateand unrelated concepts. Our observa-tions support the belief that, after par-ticipating in the OLW programme,many of these negative perceptionshad become positive perceptions. Forexample, as a direct result of the OLWtrail programme the National Parlia-ment Environmental Committeechairs formed the Environmental Con-sultation Forum, which is a trainingworkshop for parliamentarians aroundSouth Africa who sit on one of the 11committees having an environmentalportfolio among their duties. At theirrequest the WLS coordinates and or-ganizes each workshop. The forum isdesigned to increase the environmen-tal knowledge and understanding ofits MP participants. Training topicshave included parks and people, en-vironmental impact assessments, andthe role of parliamentarians in envi-ronmental issues. To date, three-dayworkshops have taken place in theHouses of Parliament in January 1998and at the South African Wildlife Col-lege outside of Hoedspruit in May1998. Forty-five regional and nationalparliamentarians participated ineach workshop, thereby providingenvironmental education to leaders

For many black people our protected areas and reservesare often reminders of past discrimination and, in somequarters, are hated symbols of painful, forced relocations.


whose decisions will impact the en-vironment.

ConclusionOver the past 300 years, through poli-cies of colonization and apartheid,many South Africans have experienceda spiritual alienation from their land.Experiential education in wildernessprovides the opportunity to rekindle

This article is the edited version of the presentation at the 6th World Wilderness Congress (Bangalore, India, October 1998).Proceedings are in press with Fulcrum Publishing (Golden, Colo.) and The WILD Foundation.

a bond with the land. The Imbewu andOLW programmes incorporate spiri-tual, educational, cultural, and ritualexperiences into an environmentaleducation experience on the land—ona wilderness trail. These programmesdemonstrate the real value, benefits,and importance of wilderness areas ina developing country. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

ANDREW MUIR is executive director of theSouth African Wilderness LeadershipSchool headquartered in Yellowwood Park,Durban, South Africa. Contact Andrew atthe Wilderness Foundation, 18 PinewoodRoad, Newlands, Cape 7700, SouthAfrica. E-mail:[email protected].

News from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research InstituteWildlife and Wilderness

For many people, watching and searching for signsof wildlife contributes to the value of their wilder-ness experience. Hiking a wilderness trail imagin-ing that a grizzly bear awaits at every turn, hearingthe first birds sing in the spring, and searching theforest understory for snakes and salamanders areheart-filling experiences for many wilderness visi-tors. Wildlife species contribute to the functioningof wilderness ecosystems through actions such asseed dispersal, germination, and fertilization. Inaddition, the presence of wildlife is often used as abarometer of wildness contained by individual wil-derness areas. Many wildlife species could notpersist in the face of human development withoutbroad expanses of wilderness, and if wildernessareas are too small, species such as the wolf, griz-zly, and wolverine disappear from the landscape.

Wildlife management in wilderness is one of themore complex and controversial aspects of overallwilderness administration for a variety of reasons:Wildlife species often are hard to see, their require-ments for survival are complex, they can be disturbedby recreational activities, they move across wildernessboundaries, and they are still only one aspect of wil-derness management. Ecologists at the Leopold Insti-tute investigate a variety of wildlife-related questions,including what constitutes “natural” wildlife habitat,how wildlife species are affected by recreation, andhow managers can monitor the effects of human

actions on wildlife populations. Peter Landres also hasbeen investigating sources of cooperation and con-flict between federal wilderness managers and statewildlife managers in Arizona and California, USA.

To address the adequacy of wilderness for wild-life conservation, Vita Wright chaired a session onthis topic at The Wildlife Society Northwest SectionMeeting, March 12, 1999 in Bozeman, Montana,USA. Presentations addressed the types of habitatscurrently not represented by wilderness, threats to wild-life within wilderness, boundary issues, and differinggovernmental policies related to managing wildlife andwilderness. Abstracts from this session can be viewedon the Leopold Institute’s webpage: http://www.wilderness.net/leopold, on the Announcementsand Conferences page.

VITA WRIGHT is a wilderness applications specialistat the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,an interagency unit administered by the U.S.D.A.Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.Focusing on the application of science to manage-ment, Vita works to facilitate the communication ofinformation between scientists and managers on avariety of wilderness issues. She can be reached atthe Leopold Institute, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula,Montana 59807, USA. Telephone: 406-542-4190.E-mail: leopold_institute/[email protected].

EXTRA


Announcements &Wilderness Calendar

WILDERNESS DIGEST

• The Wilderness, Energy, and Global Warming Crisis• Timber Sales Halted in Southeast• Maine Forest Lands Protected• Migratory Bird Initiative Launched• New Italian Wilderness Proclaimed• Italian Mountain Wilderness Activities• WildAlert E-mail Action Network

The Wilderness, Energy,and Global Warming CrisisThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hasfound overwhelming evidence that increased greenhouse gasconcentrations are changing the Earth’s climate. Atmosphericcarbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been at anytime during the past 160,000 years. Meanwhile, global tem-peratures are rising. The 1990s will be the hottest decade onrecord. A recent National Science Foundation study deter-mined that 1998 was hotter than “any other year back to 1400,(at) roughly a 99.7% level of certainty.” Accelerating destruc-tion of forests, which act as reservoirs of carbon, is also con-tributing to the warming of the Earth. The burning and loggingof forest ecosystems is responsible for approximately 20% oftotal global carbon dioxide emissions.

Habitats already severely fragmented by human devel-opment will be further damaged or destroyed as the Earthwarms. Many species have quite narrow temperature nicheswithin which their growth and reproduction are favored.When forced to migrate toward conditions that match theirtemperature and rainfall needs, they will encounterhumanmade barriers that will be difficult or impossible toovercome. As vulnerable species are displaced, the brokenlinks in the food chain will impact the entire biological com-munity. The geological record shows that in past eras, mas-sive extinctions have accompanied rapid climate change.

During the twenty-first century it is predicted that one-third or more of the world’s forests will be substantially im-pacted by the changing climate. Global warming is already

affecting ecosystems. In the Alps, plant species are migratingto higher elevations. In the Northern Hemisphere, spring ar-rives a week earlier than it did 20 years ago. In Alaska, melt-ing permafrost and a vast infestation of spruce bark beetleshave wiped out thousands of acres of Alaska’s boreal forests.

For more information contact Peter Drekmeier, Earth DayNetwork/Earth Day 2000, E-mail: [email protected](Excerpted from WildAlert, 3/12/98.)

Timber Sales Halted in SoutheastThe 11th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta hasstopped seven national forest timber sales in the southernAppalachians because the U.S. Forest Service failed to col-lect and evaluate data regarding logging impacts on speciesclassified as rare or sensitive to forest disturbances—a vio-lation of the National Forest Management Act. This deci-sion, handed down in response to a lawsuit brought by theSierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Georgia Forest Watch,and other groups, could have significance for poorly pre-pared timber sales nationwide. For more information: http://www.wilderness.org/ccc/southeast/timberhalt.htm. (Ex-cerpted from WildAlert, 3/12/98)

Maine Forest Lands ProtectedLast March in Augusta, Maine, the Pingree family announcedits intention to sell the development rights to 754,673 acresof northern Maine forest land—approximately 80% of theirland—to the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) forU.S. $28 million. The largest forestry conservation easement


project of its kind, the deal prohibitsall structural development and pro-motes sustainable forest management.

“This is a landmark day for anyonewho cherishes the great forests of thisregion,” said Bob Perschel, northeastregional director for The WildernessSociety and chairman of the 35-groupNorthern Forest Alliance. “The futureof this area depends on our ability topiece together a network of wild andmanaged forests that can sustain thehealth and productivity of the landwhile promoting the economies of lo-cal communities. This is a huge andmagnanimous gesture to the people ofMaine and to people everywhere whocare about the Northern Forest.” Thisannouncement is the latest in a stringof unprecedented land protectiontransactions across the region. For thefull story, go to http://www. wilder-ness.org/newsroom/mainedeal.htm.(Excerpted from WildAlert, 3/18/99.)

MigratoryBird Initiative LaunchedThe caribou are one of the more vis-ible animals that use the Arctic coastalplain, but the area is also remarkablefor its migratory birds. More than 125species—millions of birds—use thecoastal plain to breed, nest, or stage.These birds are migratory, travelingthousands of miles to winter in theUnited States, South America, even asfar away as Russia and China. TheWilderness Society has launched aninitiative to help people understandthe connection between migratingspecies you may see in nearby ref-uges—even your own backyards—and the remote and spectacular Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge. CalledFrom Alaska to Our Backyards, theinitiative is teaching children andadults about the many species thatuse the coastal plain. Visit theirwebsite to learn more at: http://www.wilderness.org/backyard. (Ex-cerpted from WildAlert, 3/25/99.)

New Italian WildernessProclaimedIn follow up to IJW’s report in vol. 1,no. 2, the Wilderness AssociazioneItaliana reports that 16 wilderness ar-eas have now been proclaimed in Italy.The most recent, of more than 4,000hectares (9,600 acres) of mountainouschaparral habitat was designated onFebruary 25 by a municipality in themountains south of Rome.

Also, three wilderness areas in thePo River Delta, the largest of which is5,300 hectares (12,700 acres) includemore than 20 kilometers (34 miles) ofmarine front and 15 kilometers (25.5miles) of river. While these areas arenot “pristine” in the manner of NorthAmerican, Australian, or New Zealandwilderness, it is a valuable step in alandscape long used by human beings.For more information, contact FrancoZunino, Wilderness AssociazioneItaliana, Via Bonetti 42 (Borgata Piano)-17010 Murialdo (SV) ITALY. Telephone/Fax: (011 + 39) 019-53545.

Italian MountainWilderness ActivitiesMountain Wilderness was founded inItaly in 1987 under the auspices of theItalian Academic Alpine Club and theSella Foundation. It has spread to eightEuropean countries and has members

in the United States. Mountain Wil-derness carries out environmentalmountaineering activities, trainingprograms for guides, clean-up cam-paigns (e.g. on K-2). Sergio Kociancichis the executive officer of the interna-tional organization: via Nepi 13,00191 Roma, ITALY. Fax: 39 063 3366 40. Another contact is BarbaraEhringhaus of Mountain WildernessSwitzerland (e-mail: [email protected]). Barbara is also presi-dent of CIAPM, the InternationalCommittee of Associations for the Pro-tection of Mont Blanc.

WildAlert EmailAction NetworkSeveral of the Wilderness Digest briefsfor this issue were excerpted fromWildAlert. WildAlert is an E-mail ac-tion alert system brought to you byThe Wilderness Society. Their goal isto keep you apprised of threats to ourwildlands—in the field and in Wash-ington, D.C. WildAlert messages in-clude updates along with clear, conciseactions you can take to protectAmerica’s last wild places. You arewelcome to forward WildAlerts to allthose interested in saving America’swildlands.

To subscribe to WildAlert, send thefollowing message to [email protected]: “subscribe wilder-ness-alert” (without quotes).

The Wilderness Society, founded in1935, is a nonprofit conservation or-ganization working to save the last ofAmerica’s wildlands through advocacy,research, and education. To take ac-tion on behalf of wildlands today, visitour website at http://www.wilderness.org.


Book Reviews

BY JOHN SHULTIS, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR ([email protected])

Wilderness by Design: Landscape Architecture & the National Park Service by Ethan Carr. 1998. University ofNebraska Press, Lincoln and London. 378 pp., $45.00 (hardcover), USA.

Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction by Linda Flint McClelland. 1998.Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. 656 pp., $65.00 (hardcover), $29.95 (paper-back), USA.

WILDERNESS DIGEST

Book review editor John Shultis.

After a relative famine, afeast: in 1998, two books ap-peared that focused on theearly history of the philoso-phy and practice of land-scape design in the U.S.national park system. Thebooks noted above are richlydetailed narratives that con-centrate on what both au-thors suggest is the “goldenage” of landscape design inAmerican national parks: theperiod from 1916, when theUSDI National Park Servicewas legislated into existence,until 1942, when recreationplanning was temporarilyabandoned with the entry of

the United States into World War II.At least three related stories converge in Ethan Carr’s

Wilderness by Design. The primary story relates the impor-tance of early landscape parks and the emerging professionof landscape architecture on the appearance and design ofthe national parks. Neatly integrated with this story is ahistory of landscape architecture in the United States, par-ticularly the influence of the so-called Fairsted Schoolheaded by Frederick Law Olmstead, and the parallel evo-lution of this profession with the landscape planning pro-cess of the National Park Service. Finally, Carr details howthe precarious political support of early national parks ne-cessitated park development that would maximize the num-

ber of visitors to the parks. Incorporated within this idea isthe overriding importance of the automobile and road sys-tems in park development. For example, without the pass-ing of the Federal Aid to Highways legislation in 1916 (thesame year the National Parks Act was passed), it seems un-likely many western national parks would have been cre-ated and “developed”.

Perhaps the most important message of Carr’s book isfrom yet another secondary strand. Wilderness by Designreminds us that even though the public still equates thenational parks and, to a lesser extent, other protected areaswith primordial, untouched wilderness, the reality is con-siderably different. Not only is the conception of the na-tional park a cultural construct, but the very appearanceand design of national parks is based on social conventions(e.g., aesthetic and political ideologies) that allow “land” tobecome “landscape”:

The designed landscapes in national and state parks,as works or art, directly express the value societyinvests in preserving and appreciating natural areas.Few other arts, with the exception of landscapepainting, more fully explore this leitmotif of Americanculture. Neither pure wilderness nor mere artifact, thenational park is the purest manifestation of thepeculiar American genius which sought to reconcile apeople obsessed with progress with the unmatchedprice paid for that advance: the near total loss of theNorth American wilderness (p. 9).

These ideas are not novel, having been previously articulatedby such authors as Roderick Nash, Max Oelschlaeger, andWilliam Cronon. What makes this book so valuable is thelevel of detail provided, the manner in which all of these


strands are brought together, and howCarr repeatedly, though gently, forces usto reconsider how each of these andother related social movements shapedthe contemporary conception of the na-tional park. This level of synthesis is gen-erally lacking in McClelland’s work.

It is intriguing that the developmentof scenic corridors, buildings, and evencomplete villages in national and stateparks owed their existence to the dualmandate of the early parks: preserva-tion and use. As Carr and McClellandnote, the sometimes extensive develop-ment was concentrated in limited areasof the parks in order to keep other ar-eas as wilderness or “research” areas.These paradoxical and competing landuses created a unique type of landscape,one that was closely associated with theearlier concept of urban landscapeparks. Nonetheless, both authors makeit clear that recreational developmentwas the primary purpose of park cre-ation and design: the maximization ofpark visitation was seen as paramountto public and political support of parks.It was held that only by increasing thenumber of visitors to the parks couldthe future of the national park systemsbe secured.

Both books have a similar structure.Carr’s Wilderness by Design is dividedinto two parts and six chapters. Partone (chapters 1 and 2) provide thehistorical context behind park plan-ning in the National Park Service. Theimportance of picturesque theory andlandscape park design in the planningof early national parks are highlightedin these chapters. Again, while otherauthors have noted these links, Carr’shistorical analysis provides the mostdetailed and illuminating descriptionof the critical relationship between theideology of landscape park design andthe development of the national parkideal. In Part one of Building the Na-tional Parks (Chapters 1 through 3),

McClelland’s introductory/historicalsection places far less emphasis on theearly European (primarily British)landscape designers’ influence onAmerican park design, and provides abroader, if not always deeper, discus-sion on early American landscape de-sign. She suggests that the Americanstyles differed from the earlier Britishstyle in that it was more naturalistic,preferring to preserve the natural char-acter of the area. McClelland includesan interesting analysis of the influenceof indigenous American movementssuch as the Prairie Style, CaliforniaStyle, Arts and Crafts Movement, andShingle Style forms of architecture/design on national park design.

Part two (chapters 3 through 6) ofCarr’s book uses a case study approachto discuss the evolution of both the na-scent landscape architecture professionand park planning in the National ParkService from 1920 to the 1940s. Eachchapter in this section highlights therange of design and construction activ-ity undertaken in the national parks.Chapter 3 provides the internal ratio-nale provided by Mather, Albright, Hull,and Vint, among others, for the creationof the Grand Canyon Village beginningin the 1920s and identifies how thisprocess reflected the emerging urbanplanning movement. Chapter 4 identi-fies the decisions that led to the creationof the Going to the Sun Road in GlacierNational Park (completed in 1928)through a landscape engineering per-spective. Chapter 5 uses the example ofdevelopment in Mount Rainier NationalPark during the 1930s to documenthow regional planning and “masterplanning” were used to develop thispark. Finally, in chapter 6, the creationof the Civilian Conservation Corps(CCC) is used to indicate how planningin the National Park Service had becomenational recreational planning by the1930s. The concluding chapter briefly

describes the Blue Ridge Parkway tohelp review the findings of the book andto illustrate how park planning not onlyevolved, but had gone full circle: thesame philosophies and ideologies thatcreated curving carriageways and park-ways in the 1800s for urban parks suchas Central Park in New York City hadnow been expanded to create regionalparkways for the National Park Service.

In part two of McClelland’s book(chapters 4 and 5), the policy and pro-cess of national park design from 1916to 1927 are covered. Unlike Carr,McClelland does not use a case studyapproach. Instead, she incorporates anumber of construction projects andfocuses on the visions of people suchas Mather, Albright, Vint, Hull andCharles Punchard (the first landscapeengineer) and the early policies pub-lished by the National Park Service todiscuss the underlying principles ofpark design at this time. Part three(chapters 6 through 8) focuses on de-scribing the impact of Vint and theWestern Field Office from 1927 to1932. Chapters 6 and 7 provide a use-ful description of the design principlesand practices of a large number of spe-cific facilities (e.g., bridges, guardrails,culverts, tunnels, roads, road banks,trails, and campgrounds) that is lack-ing from Carr’s analysis.

In her final section (part four, chap-ters 9 through 12), McClelland dis-cusses the critical role that the NationalPark Service’s role in the emergency con-servation work performed by the CCCand its role in the creation and designof state parks throughout the UnitedStates. The importance of the work per-formed by the CCC is difficult to over-estimate. Both Carr and McClellandnote that Mather’s decision to createpark development plans for all nationalparks turned out extremely well for theNational Park Service: as they had nu-merous plans for park construction in


hand when the emergency work pro-gram was announced in 1933, Matherwas able to access hundreds of mil-lions of dollars and hundreds of thou-sands of workers to help create hisvision for the national and state parks.Indeed, it is likely that many recre-ation facilities would not have beenbuilt without the funds provided bythe emergency work programs. It isalso unlikely that the National ParkService could have employed somany experienced landscape archi-tects without the massive unemploy-ment generated by the depression.The employment of these skilledand experienced workers allowed theprinciples of park design to be invokedat each construction site.

McClelland’s final chapter providesa more thorough discussion of post-1940 events on the principles andpractices of national park design thanCarr’s. The alteration of design prin-ciples from a rustic to a modern styleincorporated in development createdby “Mission 66” and the negative re-actions to this shift are covered inchapter 12 of Building the NationalParks and serve a useful purpose inassessing the loss of the naturalisticdesign principles of the 1920s and1930s on the National Park Service.

Both of these titles are requiredreading for those interested in the his-tory of park design principles andpractice, but of course each have theirown strengths and weaknesses. To me,Carr’s writing—particularly in the firsthalf of the book—seems to be some-what more lyrical than McClelland’s,whose writing is a bit more business-like. Carr also attempts and succeedsin looking beyond the policies of theNational Park Service to the person-alities of the people that created thepolicies. For example, Carr’s discus-sion of Vint’s conflict of interest inworking within a private practicewhile being employed by the NationalPark Service is very revealing.

While both works are well re-searched, I have to give the edge inscholarship to Carr’s book. By access-ing more sources external to govern-ment reports and associatedpublications, Carr ties together all therelated social movements and designconcepts into a seamless whole. At firstglance, Wilderness by Design seems tosimply address landscape design andarchitecture in the National Park Ser-vice from the 1920s to the 1940s. Inreality, it incorporates much more thanthat. It provides a meticulous schol-arly discussion of the profession of

landscape architecture in the NationalPark Service, the early ideologies thatdrove the initial development of na-tional parks, the influence of the pres-ervation movement, and, ultimately,the evolution of the national parkssystem. McClelland hints at these re-lationships, but to a far lesser extent.

One disappointment is Carr’s lackof pictures and illustrations on facili-ties located in the national and stateparks systems. McClelland provides alist of figures that includes approxi-mately 125 pictures of facilities cre-ated in the 1920s and 1930s, and thesephotographs are essential to appreci-ating the principles and appearance ofthe rustic style. Carr does not providea list of figures and only includes ap-proximately 50 figures in his work,although several series of photographsprovided at the end of several chap-ters are useful additions. Given thetopic covered, the dearth of figures inCarr’s book is disappointing.

For those intimately associated withor interested in park design, bothbooks are required reading. Together,it is hard to imagine that any bookpublished in the near future couldmatch the quality and quantity of in-formation they provide on this topic.For generalists and interested ama-teurs, if only one book can be read orbought, I would recommend Wilder-ness by Design most strongly. Carr’s at-tention to detail, his incorporation ofthe British influence on park designin the United States, his analysis of thecritical importance of urban park de-sign on national parks, his reflectionof how changes in the profession oflandscape architecture mirrored thosein the National Park Service, and hisability to synthesize various historicaltrends makes this the seminal book onthis fascinating topic. IIIII JJJJJWWWWW

Downby Sarah Johnson

Beneath cloud-clotted sky,sky dumped off the world’s sagging roof,slab-grey sky with frazzled seamsworried by sunlightpricking here, prodding there,

rocks like patient cactusrooted to the underworldprobe deep subsoil dampwith fingers plunged to the bristleinto holes that tap the gluey aquifer,

holes to a home unknowable,fitfully dreamed, scribbled on maps,hothouse for sinuous minerals wherepale worms of light-sick growthshepherd flocks of pock—

bed of one world,vault above anotherwhose silence breaks only withhush, hush, hush expressedin flights of boiling air.