Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Wolves in the Adirondacks?
Recently, an outdoor columnist for the
Albany (New York) Times Union
wrote, 'No
single animal…has so consternated a general population as the possibility of wolves
in the Adirondacks' (Lebrun 1998). The idea of wolf restoration to the Adirondack
region has, in effect, rekindled the age-old yet chronic rupture between New York's
rural upstate and urban populations. Bringing the wolf back into the landscape is
locally constructed as the latest attempt by an urban-based conservation ideology to
dictate local landscape meaning and, subsequently, land-use and property rights
(Lebrun 1998; Thompson 1998; also Heiman 1988; Nixon 1992). Indicative of these
residual urban—rural hostilities, the wolf's primary advocate, the Washington DC-
based environmental non-profit Defenders of Wildlife, finds itself engaged in an
uphill battle with an expanding local consortium of anti-wolf interests composed of
local farm bureaus, hunting clubs, the Adirondack Association of Towns and
Villages, and various county supervisory boards. Indeed, the heavy influence of
urban wolf support was critical to the recent prohibition of wolves by New York's
Essex County, one of the region's largest and most likely counties for wolf release in
the state (McKinstry 1998a). In the words of one local resident, '[I]f [wolf
supporters] don't live in the Adirondack Park, they have nothing to lose. The
people up here do' (in McKinstry 1998b).
An irony of certain consequence to restoration success now appears. The wolf
represents, indeed, is the cultural icon adopted by, the urban-based conservation
ideology of which local Adirondackers remain so wary and distrustful. The irony lies
in the fact that it was this very same philosophy that was responsible for the wolf's
extermination from the region one hundred years ago. Once exclusive of wolves and
other 'vermin', conservation discourse today is thoroughly inclusive of these animals
and has successfully applied to them remarkable symbolic character. Conservation
discourse and ideology have remained, generally speaking, the same, especially in
regard to their urban source and its abilities to control landscape meaning. Yet
today, two of its earliest casualties find themselves residing on opposing ends of this
discourse. Despite remarkably similar histories of displacement at the hands and
under the distant gaze of a leisure-seeking urban population, local Adirondackers
and wolves today (re-)emerge as discursive antagonists in the chronic battle for
landscape meaning and definition.
Conclusion
Cresswell (1996:60, original emphasis), in his discussion of the place in New York of
graffiti artists and their work, portends, 'If the meaning of place changes, the place
itself will change. The new meaning will be
their
meaning (the meaning of the
'other'). The place in question will become
their
place (the place of the 'other').'
With this in mind, this chapter has historically traced subsequent appropriations of
control over the socio-physical Adirondack landscape via the abilities to direct and
to control its meaning and definition. Inclusive and exclusive powers emerge from
