Dear HCN,
I was interested in the
views of William Cronon, and his defender, William R. Dickinson,
that we need a new vision of wilderness that takes into account the
effects humans had on the North American environment in the
pre-Columbian period (HCN, 12/6/99).
These views
are also similar to those of Prof. Charles Kay at Utah State
University, who stresses the large effects earlier peoples had in
areas that are now officially designated as wilderness or are
managed for naturalness, such as the northern range of Yellowstone
National Park.
I must disagree with them. We do
not know the degree by which the aboriginal population was reduced
by European diseases. We don’t know what the impacts of earlier
humans were, and so we cannot restore these environments, even if
we were to try.
If their population was large,
and they degraded their environment, we certainly have no
obligation to restore that. It is true that pre-Columbian America
was different than the authors of the Wilderness Act imagined.
That’s interesting, but it is not relevant. The purpose of
wilderness, as defined by the Wilderness Act, remains valid in my
set of values. Those with another set of values ought not disguise
them. Their anthropology has no bearing on the issue except
inasmuch as it is useful as a rhetorical weapon against
wilderness.
Ralph
Maughan
Pocatello,
Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline No new vision needed.
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