Dear HCN,
As one of the founders
and the current president of The Wildlands Project, I must respond
to your article, “Foreman finds hope amid ecological rubble” (HCN,
8/4/97). At the end of the article you comment that Dave failed to
describe how our reserve designs were to be implemented. You also
asked about the identity of the folks that are “carving up” the
local areas.
We are not a top-down organization,
and our staff of five don’t do the reserve designs themselves. The
process of mapping potential core areas, wildlife corridors, and
buffer zones (the buffers allow sustainable, wildlife-friendly
economic activities) is carried out by grassroots, volunteer
conservationists throughout North America. We are currently helping
to coordinate several dozen such groups, which have their own
members and constituents, raise most of their own funds, handle
their own community relations, and are already involved in
activities that make their regions more friendly to creatures and
native ecosystems.
We don’t think of our work as
“carving up local areas.” This is what development has done. To the
contrary, we are part of the stitching back together process –
recreating the linkages that have been severed by unwise forestry
and grazing practices, a fanatical anti-predator policy,
unnecessary road construction, well-funded ORV aficionados, real
estate profiteers and sprawling
urbanization.
Regarding implementation, I’ll be
candid. We haven’t done a lot of that yet. We are a young
organization, and we are attempting to accomplish what you and
others describe as “utopian,” creating a science-supported vision
of an ecologically healthy North America – a vision that inspires
everyone to protect and restore wilderness and living nature. This
will be the first year when we will be ready to send out some of
the wildlands proposals for peer review by scientists, economists,
ranchers, sportspersons, state and federal agencies, and community
leaders.
We will gradually move into
implementation when our proposals have passed the litmus of common
sense and stood up to rigorous review.
But we
don’t spend all our time indoors, staring at pretty maps on
computer monitors. We and our cooperating groups are working with
ranchers in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, helping them adopt
practices that are friendly to wildlife while developing a
marketing strategy for “predator-friendly beef.” We have been
working behind the scenes with the U.S. Forest Service, helping
them design forest management practices that minimize the harm to
endangered species and other wildlife. We and our cooperators have
encouraged community programs that diversify local economies and
find alternative employment for people who lose their jobs (for
economic, not environmental reasons) when the large logging
companies move their mills to the Southeastern United States or
overseas. We’ve also encouraged and promoted the reintroduction of
the Mexican wolf. Incidentally, the state of Florida (not known for
being “utopian’) has already committed to spending $3 billion on a
plan that is based on our principles. So, it’s
happening.
Finally, let me clarify the comments
in your article about the mysterious maps to which one of the
hostile questioners referred. There is a guy publishing phony maps
in wise-use and evangelical newsletters, claiming that these are
Wildlands Project maps. For example, one of these maps shows about
half of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska as off-limits to
humans, “requiring tens of millions of people” to leave the land.
(There aren’t that many people in that part of the Midwest.) That
map and others like it are nothing but wise-use scare
propaganda.
Michael
Soulé
Hotchkiss,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Putting wildlands back together.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
