The definition of wilderness is changing
The wilderness is changing -- not just the place, but the idea itself.
As a former president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), Whitehorse consultant Juri Peepre is interested in the changing meanings of the word "wilderness" because of the way they affect how people and governments view parks and protected areas.
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Is there room for humans in wilderness?
(photo: Environment Canada)
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In European culture, he says, the word first appears in medieval Bibles, in reference to arid, uninhabited lands that were often a sign of God's displeasure. The traditional Judaeo-Christian view has been that it is right and proper, in the eyes of God, to transform the wilderness and make it bloom.
At the same time, wilderness was seen as a place to cleanse the soul. Hermits retired to the wilderness to become closer to God. Eastern cultures had an even stronger tradition of contemplation and meditation in natural places.
Eventually, with the rise of science, Peepre says, people began to see wilderness as a revelation of God's handiwork and a source of inspiration. In Europe, formal gardens gave way to more natural gardens.
In North America, where the advance of European settlement was transforming the landscape, a few people began to talk about protecting and preserving parts of the natural landscape, the wilderness. And they meant more than the plants and animals.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of wilderness included some kinds of human occupation, Peepre says. The American thinker, George Catlin, talked about setting apart preserves that would include aboriginal people: "...a nation's park, containing man and bear..."
However, by the time national parks were established in the United States and Canada, Catlin's idea had been transformed. In the United States, Yosemite National Park was set up in 1864 and Yellowstone in 1872, both with tourism in mind.
The first Canadian national park, Banff, was established in 1885. Banff was first set aside to protect its hot springs, which people visited for health reasons. Then it was enlarged as a tourist destination for the wealthy, linked with the Canadian Pacific Railway and its grand hotels.
"Those first national parks actually had very little to do with wilderness," says Peepre.
But the idea of wilderness persisted, along with the idea of setting aside protected areas to allow them to recover from human impact. Human activity had little or no place in the new definition of wilderness. The 1964 United States Wilderness Act, Peepre says, talks about wilderness "untrammeled by man."
In the last five or ten years, the meaning of wilderness is changing again, says Peepre, and northern Canada is leading the way.
"In native languages, there is no word for wilderness," he says. To First Nations people, the natural landscape is simply where they live and the ecosystem is something they are part of.
The settlement of northern land claims has led to the creation of new parks and protected areas that recognize human activity as part of the wilderness ecosystem, Peepre says.
"We have exported this idea south," he says. " Wilderness has come more to mean leaving areas untouched by industrial development, the idea of allowing the land to develop in its natural state, including people in the ecosystem."
The concept of wilderness in relationship to human activity is still a big debate in southern Canada and the United States, Peepre says. But north of 60, especially in Canada, people are recognized as part of the ecosystem.
"I see it as a very healthy idea," he says.
For more information about wilderness, parks, and protected areas, contact Environment Canada in Whitehorse.
