Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Active Figure 8-26 Endangered natural capital: 25 hot spots identified by ecologists as important but en-
dangered centers of biodiversity that contain a large number of endemic plant and animal species found
nowhere else. Recent research has added nine additional hot spots to this list. See an animation based on this
figure and take a short quiz on the concept. (Data from Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation
International)
trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and
the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like
autumn leaves.
and to protect them as centers for evolution in response to
mostly unpredictable changes in environmental condi-
tions. In other words, wilderness is a biodiversity and
wildness bank and an eco-insurance policy.
Some analysts also believe wilderness should
be preserved because the wild species it contains have
a right to exist (or struggle to exist) and play their roles
in the earth's ongoing saga of biological evolution and
ecological processes, without human interference.
Even those who never use the wilderness areas
may want to know they are there, a feeling expressed
by novelist Wallace Stegner:
Save a piece of country...and it does not matter in
the slightest that only a few people every year will go
into it. This is precisely its value....We simply need
that wild country available to us, even if we never do
more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a
means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as crea-
tures, a part of the geography of hope.
Science and Politics Case Study: Wilderness
Protection in the United States
Only a small percentage of the land area of the United
States has been protected as wilderness.
In the United States, conservationists have been trying
to save wild areas from development since 1900. Over-
all, they have fought a losing battle. Not until 1964 did
Congress pass the Wilderness Act. It allowed the gov-
ernment to protect undeveloped tracts of public land
from development as part of the National Wilderness
Preservation System.
The area of protected wilderness in the United
States increased tenfold between 1970 and 2000. Even
Some critics oppose protecting wilderness for its
scenic and recreational value for a small number of
people. They believe this policy to be an outmoded
concept that keeps some areas of the planet from being
economically useful to humans.
Most biologists disagree. To them, the most impor-
tant reasons for protecting wilderness and other areas
from exploitation and degradation are to preserve their
biodiversity as a vital part of the earth's natural capital
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