Treesearch

Currently, tourism offers one of the best prospects for conserving remaining areas of unprotected wilderness in most parts of the world. Tourism produces environmental impacts, and in heavily-visited protected areas these impacts may be a significant threat to conservation values and a major management issue; along with other anthropogenic impacts such as weeds, pests, pathogens, and pollution. The impacts of tourism are generally far less than those of other industry sectors such as forestry, farming, mining or commercial fisheries, however, so if tourism can displace these land uses,...

Wilderness in Australia has no formal legal designation at a national level as it does in the United States. In addition, new federal environmental legislation abdicates responsibility almost entirely to the States. A national wilderness inventory has recently been completed, but abandoned by the current federal government. Almost all wilderness recreation in Australia is in national parks, which are in fact a State designation, and in World Heritage areas. Private recreation and commercial tourism are growing rapidly in these areas, pushing into backcountry wilderness as well as frontcount...

Two wilderness visionaries, Robert Marshall and Howard Zahniser, were influenced by their personal wilderness experiences in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and the “forever wild” legislation that protected those Forest Preserve areas. Both learned from and contributed to the wilderness preservation movement in the Adirondacks and the nation. The wilderness advocacy roles of Marshall and Zahniser were formative in the development and eventual passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964.

Concepts of wilderness and “wilderness experience” merge into a grand or metanarrative that describes how “wilderness experience” is and provides a normalized reference point for values, beliefs, actions, and choices. This paper engages and juxtaposes critiques by scholars and authors representing nondominant perspectives with the North American, wilderness metanarrative. The bricolage analysis develops a repleteness of interpretation, feeds new visions from the margin to the center, and enhances a particular style of ethical discourse.

There have been few economic studies of the impact of wilderness on nearby communities. The few studies that have been carried out find relatively modest economic impacts on the surrounding communities by people who come to recreate in federally wilderness areas. However, studies find that people are moving to areas near federally designated wilderness and other wildlands because of the environmental amenities associated with such areas. These rapid population increases are having dramatic impacts on the ongoing changing structure of local and regional economies.

Natural disturbances are critical to wilderness management. This paper reviews recent research on natural disturbance and addresses the problem of managing for disturbances in a world of human-imposed scales and boundaries. The dominant scale issue in disturbance management is the question of patch dynamic equilibrium. The dominant boundary issue in disturbance management is the effect of boundary conditions on disturbance frequency and magnitude. Human property and attitudes outside wilderness areas influence management decisions on disturbances within natural areas.

The Sundarbans, natural mangrove forests of Bangladesh covers an area of 577,000 ha. It is the largest single tract of mangrove forest in the world. The members of the family Rhizophoracae do not dominate the tree vegetation of the Sundarbans. Heritiera fomes and Excoecaria agallocha are the two most extensively occurring tree species in the forest and they are members of Sterculiaceae and Euphorbiaceae respectively. The forest is very rich in biodiversity and supports different species of about 334 plants, 120 fishes, 35 reptiles, 270 birds and 42 mammals. The Sundarbans is the only...

Two techniques are used to estimate the economic value of recreation and off-site passive use values of wilderness. Using an average value per recreation day ($39), the economic value of wilderness recreation is estimated to be $574 million annually. Generalizing the two Western passive use values studies we estimate values of Western wilderness in the lower 48 states to be $168 per acre, for a total value of $7 billion for the 42.7 million acres. Using the one study of Eastern wilderness we estimate a value of $103 per acre, for a total value of the 4.5 million acres to be $468 million.

This report documents trends and impacts of climate change on America's forests as required by the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. Recent research on the impact of climate and elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide on plant productivity is synthesized. Modeling analyses explore the potential impact of climate changes on forests, wood products, and carbon in the United States.

This paper outlines modifications and new approaches to wild land mapping developed specifically for the United Kingdom and European areas. In particular, national level reconnaissance and local level mapping of wild land in the UK and Scotland are presented. A national level study for the UK is undertaken, and a local study focuses on the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. ‘Remoteness from mechanized access’ is mapped on a local scale, using Naismith’s Rule in combination with Djikstra’s algorithm. ‘Apparent naturalness’ is mapped by using an Internet questionnaire in order to collect...