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The article discusses the late U.S. Senator Frank Church from Idaho in relation to the 50th anniversary of the passage of America's 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and it mentions then-Senator Church's legislative leadership and his contributions to wilderness protection and land conservation efforts in Idaho. Church's support for environmental protection is assessed, along with incidents involving the Oxbow Dam and dam construction on the Snake River.

The article examines the idea of intrinsic value in wilderness and in Western philosophical traditions, and evaluates the concept of topophilia which characterizes the relationship of Chinese people with nature. It discusses the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic meaning of topophilia, and how topophilia and Chinese philosophical foundations influence the Chinese environmental ethics attitude toward nature.

In this article we respond to and challenge Jørgensen’s criticisms of the concept of rewilding in her paper ‘Rethinking rewilding’, published this year in Geoforum. Jørgensen argues that ‘rewilding’ has become a ‘plastic word’, one that has been stretched to the point where it lacks definitional precision, at risk of becoming ‘the go-to blanket solution to environmental problems’. She also argues that the practice of rewilding is premised upon the dissociation of humans from the rest of nature and reproduces anti-human Nature–Culture binaries, rightly lambasted by critics of wilderness narratives in conservation practice. In response to these criticisms we challenge Jørgensen on two points. Firstly we argue that the problems of ‘plasticity’ and definitional imprecision can be rectified by highlighting and foregrounding the quality that we believe is at the core of all rewilding definitions and efforts: non-human autonomy. Secondly, we challenge Jørgensen’s broad claim that sees the collapse of ‘rewilding’ into anti-human wilderness management. We do so by reflecting on two points; the dynamic human–non-human entanglements embedded within rewilding practice(s) and by arguing for rewilding as a ‘wild experiment’. We make these points through the examination of two actually existing examples of rewilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a practical program for saving the environment which is a requirement for life. Topics include the definition of a healthy environment, the ethical treatment and conservation of other species, and the increased use of sustainable energy. It also looks into the shift to a sustainable economy, corporate responsibility of businesses, and the end management of wildlands.

Our colleague, Professor Joe Feller of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University was well-known and wellregarded in the community of environmental and natural resources law professors. He stood out for the quality of his scholarship, as well as his active and helpful participation in our community and his community at large. Tragically, a car struck and killed Professor Feller on the evening of April 8, 2013, while he was returning home from work. Joe had been the inspiration for a natural resources law teachers conference scheduled for the following month in Flagstaff, Arizona Following that conference, Professors Appel and Squillace conversed and agreed that one of many suitable tributes to Joe would be to arrange to publish one of the last articles that Joe drafted. The subject was wilderness. Professor Squillace received the Article in draft with Joe's request that Squillace make comments on it. Professor Appel- who had never met Joe in person but had spoken to him on the phone and had exchanged emails several times with him-received the Article in draft because the Article directly and pointedly critiques some of Appel's own work. Despite his near-complete rejection of Appel's arguments, Joe nevertheless suggested that, as the Article matured with revision, he and Appel could be co-authors on the piece. Appel responded in a lengthy email, which is reproduced after the main body of the Article. Unfortunately, that collaboration or friendly debate never occurred. Nevertheless, the offer to co-author the Article is a striking testament to Joe's generosity, willingness to cooperate, and his focused dedication to get the answer to a problem right. As those who have delved in the law know, getting the right answer is not as easy as it sounds. As the reader will see, this Article involves important issues regarding wilderness specifically and federal environmental litigation generally. Despite the fact that it does not represent Joe's finished thoughts on the subject, we nevertheless believe that this Symposium issue of Environmental Law offers an ideal forum for this fine piece of scholarship. With the generous agreement of the journal's editors, as well as the permission of Joe's family and his community at ASU Law, we present this Article to join its rightful place in the legal literature about wilderness. A note on editing: Because we wanted this Article to represent Joe's views and not our own, we have taken a very light touch in editing this Article. We have taken the liberty to correct typographical errors and citations to conform to the Bluebook and to Environmental Law's style guidelines. Where we believed that a thought needed expansion or clarification, we have done so and noted the emendation in square brackets. We tried to channel Joe as best as we could to keep these thoughts in the spirit of Joe's thinking, not our own. In closing, we wish to express deepest gratitude once again to Professor Joe Feller's family for granting us permission to reproduce Professor Feller's Article posthumously. We hope that this serves as a fitting tribute and memorial to the life of a great scholar, passionate advocate, good friend, and all-around mensch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critique of the books "The Inward Morning" and "Wilderness in America," both by Henry G. Bugbee, Jr. is presented. The author examines Bugbee's metaphysical view of and stand as a Montanan on wilderness, the theme of both works. He points out that Bugbee drew his concept and understanding of the value of wilderness from his personal experiences. He identifies the implication of Bugbee's reasoning to environmental preservation and to the work of natural scientists.

A literary criticism of the book "My First Summer in the Sierra" by John Muir is presented. It explores the natural beauty of nature and mobilized national support for protecting wilderness in line with the aims of the Sierra Club. It examines the multidimensioned engagement of human with the divine beauty in nature.

Wilderness is often understood as land untouched by people. On this reading, wilderness management seems to be a simple contradiction, but it is in fact a thriving and functional practice. Wildemess is not simply an absence of human influence, but the presence of something else. Wilderness is land characterized by the flourishing of natural purpose. When this is understood, wilderness management becomes intelligible and several recent criticisms of wilderness preservation are defused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of South Africa's national parks are based in rural areas, although a few parks - such as Wilderness National Park (WNP) - are situated in an urban area. This park differs from other national parks in several ways: it is not fenced in, it has very few animal species and it is a marine (fresh and salt water) reserve. WNP is a scenic park with wetlands, beaches and forests. It is well known that national parks are not developed and managed for their environmental purposes alone but they also have an economic and social obligation to surrounding communities. The aim of this article is therefore to determine the socio-economic impact of WNP. In order to achieve this aim, the research involved three surveys, namely a business survey, a community survey and an overnight park tourists survey. The results indicated that the park has an impact in terms of production, income generation and employment and it is also achieving its goal with regard to conservation, creating economic opportunities and involving the community of Wilderness. It was found that the social impact of the WNP is bigger than its economic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the history of human-nature relations and proposes changes that could occur in human occupation in the future. It was noted that the creation of farms for human survival to replace hunting and gathering resulted to uncontrolled nature that has affected the new civilization. According to the author, the success of civilization has led to the destruction of wild places, animals and people. In the 1800s and the early 1900s, relative valuations of wilderness have improved and with the scarcity theory, people began to place importance to nature. The author also expects human occupation to lead to either a wasteland scenario, wherein the planet could only support limited biodiversity and civilization or a garden scenario wherein human control of nature has become beneficent.

The article discusses the nature of wilderness in Brazil from the 1920s to the 1940s. It examines the selected writings of four leading Brazilian conservation scientists in the said period including Alberto José Sampaio, Armando Magalhāes Corrêa, Cândido de Melo Leitāo and Frederico Carlos Hoehne. It argues that the ideas, research and institution-building efforts of the above mentioned scientists were highly pertinent and influential in their own time and remain valuable in the modern day.

Concepts of wild land have recreational, ecological and cultural dimensions, and place varying emphasis on physical landscape attributes and the perceptions of users. In Scotland, national and NGO policies show reasonable consistency in interpreting and defining 'wild land', emphasising the (perception of) lack of current human influence as a key criterion. This research used semi-structured interviews with key individuals and a questionnaire survey of land managers to evaluate concepts and perceptions of wild land in Scotland. Recognising that the conceptual and spatial definition of wild land is a key issue, a new typology is proposed. Weaknesses in the policy framework, as well as key potential threats to, and opportunities associated with, wild landscapes are identified. Management initiatives are fitted to the typology and divided into four management themes. Key recommendations are: (i) that national policy for wild landscapes needs to incorporate criteria, which recognise the multiple values deriving from such areas; and (ii) that future research should combine user group preferences with physical attribute information in determining what constitutes wild landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents environmental news briefs. The Protected Area Network (PAN) Parks Foundation is creating a network of certified wilderness areas in European national parks. A plan was reveiled that will aim to protect the Jamaica Bay watershed in New York. Marine scientists met in Hawaii to design a network of protected areas in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ) in the eastern Pacific.

Both wildland recreationists and conservationists report that wildland childhood play is an important socialization experience. However, researchers know little about the details of play experiences during the formative childhood years. In this article, the authors describe the content and physical and social components of childhood play as recalled by 51 young adults involved in serious leisure and environmental professions related to natural history and a contrast group of 10 adults not participating in natural history activities. On the basis of their interviews, the authors identified stationary and exploratory play, social facilitation of play, play away from the home restricted only by distance, fantasy play, creative play, gaming play, searching and trapping play, and play interspersed with outdoor chores. The authors distinguish between playing with nature and playing with friends within nature and discuss the implications for further research and environmental education programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The naturalness versus wildness debate has gained some prominence in recent years and has seen considerable discussion of issues akin to those that have generated such tension between restorationists and preservationists. This debate is hampered by the terms in which it is framed. The primary meaning of both naturalness and wildness relates to the description of processes or behavior that lack human intervention. This enables human activities and artifacts (such as childbirth, food, and medicine) to be rated according to naturalness. However, when the terms are applied to the description of species and ecosystems, process-oriented definitions are forgotten in favor of historical benchmarks. This can result in serious inconsistencies between those who adhere to the different interpretations, exemplified by the tendency of conservationists to view “naturalness” as being consistent with human intervention in natural processes. The choice of one or the other interpretation is motivated by whether one prioritizes the conservation of biodiversity or minimizing human intervention. There have been claims that naturalness provides an objective measure for assessing biodiversity and calls for value-laden terms to be avoided. Yet, the values are central, and the best that can be hoped for is that the debate be framed using terms that are more indicative of these underlying values. It is suggested here that naturalness versus wildness be recast as “protecting biodiversity” versus “respect for nature’s autonomy.” Not only do these terms avoid the ambiguities of their forebears but they also expose the debate as the result of slight shifts in value priorities rather than fundamentally opposed worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilderness protection is a growing necessity for modern societies, and this is particularly true for areas where population density is extremely high, for example Europe. Conservation, however, implies very high opportunity costs. It is thus crucial to create incentives for efficient management practices, to promote benchmarking and to improve conservation management. In the present paper we propose a methodology based on data envelopment analysis, DEA, a non-parametric benchmarking technique specifically developed to assess the relative efficiency of decision-making units. In particular, the objective of the discussed methodology is to assess the relative efficiency of the management units of the protected area and to indicate how it could be improved, by providing a set of guidelines. The main advantage of this methodology is that it allows us to assess the efficiency of natural park management not only internally (comparing the performance of the park with itself over time) but also by external benchmarking, thus providing new and different perspectives on potential improvements. Although the proposed methodology is fairly general, we have applied it to the context of Italian national parks in order to produce a representative case study. Specifically, the choice of adequate cost and benefit indicators is a very important and delicate phase of any benchmark analysis. For this purpose, a questionnaire was used to investigate the opinions of Italian national park managers and stakeholders and to define the relevant indicators for the analysis. Finally, relevant policy implications for the case study are given. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A persistent debate in the Western United States concerns the economic role of federally managed public lands. This article investigates how different public land management regimes, ranging from wilderness to resource extractive uses, impact the growth of county economies. The findings show that natural amenities on public lands, in the form of permanent protected designations, can play a role in stimulating economic growth for some types of counties. Rural counties that are connected to population centers via air travel are most suited to take economic advantage of protected public lands. Education levels of the workforce, the presence of an airport and ski resort, and the percentage of the workforce employed in engineering, finance, architecture, and other producer services are also strong determinants of growth. The results of this article will help inform policy discussions by placing the role of wilderness, national parks, and other protected lands into a larger context of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evolution and revolution in climbing literature represented by the journal "Ascent." The author recalls the cover of the 1968 issue of the journal that made an emblematic change. With that, one can comprehend important shifts in outdoor recreation and environmental culture. The commitment to wilderness became the ironic inspiration of the journal. Climbing provided a significant portion of publications and it devoted efforts primarily to environmentalist issues. The editors have also published fiction, poetry, humor, and cartoons in addition to articles and climbing notes featured in the journal.

The concept of wilderness found in the black American intellectual tradition poses a provocative alternative to the preservationist concept. For black writers, the wilderness is not radically separate from human society but has an important historical and social dimension. Nor is it merely a feature of the external landscape; there is also a wilderness within, a vital energy that derives from and connects one to the external wilderness. Wilderness is the origin and foundation of culture; preserving it means preserving not merely the physical landscape but our collective memory of it. But black writers also highlight the racial essentialism that infuses both their own and traditional American concepts of the wild, giving us greater insight into why the wilderness celebrated by preservationists can be a problematic value for racial minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the fortieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the Supreme Court refused to enforce a statute that sought to protect the wilderness qualities of public lands. Recognizing the intrinsic value of wilderness, Congress ordered the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to prevent impairment to lands awaiting wilderness designation. In Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, citizen groups challenged BLM's failure to prevent off-road vehicle damage to public lands. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court declared the case unreviewable. The decision expanded unreviewability doctrine under the Administrative Procedure Act and presented a setback for environmental protection. The Court also limited citizen enforcement of environmental laws and restricted supplemental environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Meanwhile, wilderness destruction continues, thus undermining congressional intent to preserve wilderness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeastern Utah is a region of world-renowned red-rock sandstone formations, large tracts of federal public land, rural communities centered on agriculture and extractive industries, and is often at the epicenter of environmental protection efforts in the western United States. Environmental groups have proposed formal Wilderness designations for much of the region’s public land—proposals that have been actively fought by rural community leaders who do not want large areas “locked-up” from traditional livelihood and recreational uses. The debate over wilderness designation in the region has been characterized in the media as one that is particularly contentious and polarizing. A survey of southeastern Utah residents was conducted in order to better understand this conflict. The survey focused on attitudes toward wilderness designation and management. We found that residents of southeastern Utah have negative attitudes towards the designation and management of Wilderness Study Areas. We propose that these attitudes should be carefully considered and engaged in future policy and management decisions. We suggest that negative opinions expressed by residents of southeastern Utah are not directed primarily at the concept of environmental protection but rather at the strong perception that these programs and initiatives have been carried out in a heavy-handed manner and dominated by outside influences that have overwhelmed local “voices.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes the relationship between protected federal lands (wilderness, national parks, national monuments and roadless areas) and nearby communities in the rural western United States. Opponents of environmental protection claim that protected lands limit the growth of nearby communities by locking up potentially valuable natural resources and restricting mining, logging and grazing. Others claim that extractive industries are no longer the backbone of rural economies—instead, the presence of protected federal lands encourages growth by attracting tourists and new residents. A geographic information system is used to calculate the proportion of protected lands occurring within 50 miles of the center of each western county. This calculation, in combination with detailed county-level data, indicates that environmental protection is correlated with relatively rapid population growth and with relatively rapid income and employment growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]