The wilderness-development debate in frontier ecosystems

Led by Victor Shelford, the Ecological Society of America's (ESA's) Committee on Natural Areas (CNA) campaigned for wilderness preservation for the sake of the scientific study of pristine ecosystems and wildlife habitat during the 1930s. Simultaneously, The Wilderness Society (WS) campaigned for wilderness preservation for the sake of virile recreation, especially various forms of primitive travel (by pack animal and canoe) and hunting. The ESA eventually expunged the CNA, because of a fear that its open advocacy of wilderness preservation would compromise the objectivity appropriate to science. The CNA went private as The Nature Conservancy. United States wilderness policy, formulated in the Wilderness Act of 1964, was based on the vision of the WS. Consequently, designated wilderness areas were chosen for a suite of anthropocentric utilities—hiking and other forms of primitive travel and opportunities for solitude and for beholding sublime scenery. If based on the CNA vision, there would have been a system of wilderness areas in the US more in line with contemporary conservation goals. Non-scenic habitats such as grasslands and wetlands would be better represented as would more critical habitat for endangered species. Further, priorities in circumstances of conflict between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric values would be clear. In frontier ecosystems, it is important to apply the criteria devolving from the the ESA's CNA, not from the WS, to guide wilderness preservation.