Let it be: A hands-off approach to preserving wildness in protected areas [chapter 6]

Abstract

In an era of rapid global climate change and other pervasive anthropogenic ecological insults, many scientists and managers have few qualms about taking action to mitigate the effects of these insults, including in areas that are protected by law as wilderness, wildlife refuges, or national parks. For example, habitat is manipulated to sustain populations of selected threatened and endangered species, nonindigenous invasive species are removed, and extirpated species are reintroduced. Even with important technical advances in the ecological sciences over the last several decades, ecologists still question the feasibility of managing biodiversity in the face of continued environmental change. For example, Western (2004: 496) wryly notes in an essay on the paradox of managing wildlands that "like the Red Queen running in place, we are destined to manage ever harder to save any semblance of the natural until . . . the unmanaged will be more managed than the managed to preserve the illusion of the natural."

Citation

Landres, Peter. 2010. Let it be: A hands-off approach to preserving wildness in protected areas [chapter 6]. In: Cole, David N.; Yung, Laurie, eds. Beyond naturalness: Rethinking park and wilderness stewardship in an era of rapid change. Washington D.C.: Island Press. p. 88-105.