Dear HCN,
Yellowstone National Park
faces a terrific dilemma. Enhancement for recreational visitors or
management as a diverse ecosystem? What ecosystem? The
pre-Columbian system or the modern system which is a result of
endless human tinkering? Of course, this kind of dilemma faces not
only Yellowstone, but every place.
The overriding
goal, which researcher Fred Wagner did not discuss in his essay
(HCN, 5/30/94), is that Yellowstone harbors the last of the wild –
the essence of wildness as we know it today – and that is all we
have to measure. If a scientific consensus emerges as a result of
the work Wagner and others have done, it would behoove them to
recognize that additional tinkering, i.e., more intensive
management of the wildlife such as hunting in the park, deepens and
broadens our sphere of influence which can only further tame
Yellowstone’s wildness.
If there is one thing we
have learned, further tinkering with wildness doesn’t allow us to
extract ourselves from that system; it assures continued tinkering
to solve the next set of problems that we
create.
Dick Carter
Salt Lake
City, Utah
Dick Carter is
coordinator of the Utah Wilderness
Association.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The problem and the solution.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
