Dear HCN,
Many thanks for Allen
Best’s excellent feature story on the White River National Forest
Plan (HCN, 1/17/00: STOP – A national forest tries to rein in
recreation).
On a related topic, a conference
held in December in Snowmass, Colo., provided in-depth dialogue on
many of the issues at play in the White River plan. At this
Recreation Capacity Congress, sponsored by Colorado State
University, 550 land managers, outfitters, outdoor educators,
mountain bikers, motorized trail users and environmentalists
debated topics such as outdoor recreationists’ entitlement to the
land vs. the rights of nature. How do the recreation needs of
inner-city youth stack up against the time-honored value of
solitude, and, who “owns’ public lands? Is the wilderness concept
still relevant to modern demographics or is wilderness an outdated
“white male ethic’?
The conference seemed to
demonstrate three emerging trends: First, nature was defined as a
social rather than as a biological or utilitarian construct. For
example, terms such as biodiversity, grazing and logging were
giving way to terms such as “input-output models,” “supply-demand,”
“benefits-based management” and “recreation market segmentation.”
Second, agencies such as the Forest Service, National Park Service
and BLM were being recast as recreation “providers’ rather than as
land stewards. And finally, the conference was dominated by a new
class of recreationists, outdoor educators, tour guides and trail
advocacy groups, characterized by a quest for access and a need for
nature to serve, no longer as a source of products, but as a source
of human experience.
Concepts voiced at the
conference were a far cry from the conservation ethic of the 20th
century. Aldo Leopold envisioned a man as a “plain member” of the
“land-community,” while here public-lands users were termed
“customers,” “clients’ and “consumers.” Instead of the wilderness
ethic espoused by John Muir, David Brower and Dave Foreman, public
lands were seen as “providing customer services’ and “filling
market niches.” And the Deep Ecology notion of nature as having an
intrinsic right to exist for its own sake was replaced by the
notion of nature as a “recreational setting” for human
experience.
To someone steeped in the
20th-century ethic, the whole conference seemed slightly unreal.
And, in light of these shifting definitions of conservation, it is
all the more heartening to see the White River National Forest
maintaining the values of land stewardship and ecosystem
health.
Roz
McClellan
Nederland, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline We’re making a new claim on nature.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
