Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Source:
adapted from McKenry (1977:209)
McKenry's research, records the level of compatibility between wilderness values and
common disruptive activities. The significant factor which emerges from Table 7.4 is that
because of the intrinsic characteristics of wilderness as primitive and remote land the
range of uses that can occur within wilderness areas without diminishing the values of
wilderness is extremely limited and will require careful management. As soon as the
characteristics of the wilderness resource are infringed through the activities of western
humans then wilderness values are reduced. Emphasis is placed upon the impacts of
western society, rather than those of technologically underdeveloped peoples, because as
the following discussion will illustrate, the present-day concept of wilderness is a product
of western thought. Indeed, geographers such as Nelson (1982, 1986) have argued for the
adoption of a human-ecological approach to wilderness and park management which sees
the incorporation of the attitudes and practices of indigenous peoples as being an
essential part of a contemporary perspective on the notion of wilderness.
INSIGHT: National parks and indigenous peoples
National parks are a western concept (R.Nash 1967, 1982). National parks have their
origins in the New World desire to conserve nature and appropriately aesthetic
landscapes for economic development through tourism (Hall 1992a, 2000b). Until
recently, the creation of national parks was marked by the exclusion of aboriginal
populations as undesirable elements in the 'natural' landscape. The drawing of
boundaries between the natural parks and the rural human landscape available for
agriculture, forestry, mining and/or grazing reflecting the Cartesian divide of western
society has long sought to separate 'civilisation' and 'wilderness'. However, since the
late 1960s, the separation between natural and cultural heritage has come to be seen as
increasingly artificial (Mels 1999). In part, this has been due to the renaissance of
aboriginal and indigenous cultures in the New Worlds of North America and Australasia
as well as greater assertion of native cultural values in post-colonial societies (Butler and
Hinch 1996; Ryan and Huyton 2002; Hall and Tucker 2004). In addition, there has been
an increased realisation by ecologists and natural resource managers that many ecological
relationships in so-called natural landscapes are actually the result of a complex set of
interrelations between the use of the land by native peoples and the creation of habitat.
For example, through burning regimes (e.g. Aagesen 2004), or through grazing in relation
to transhumance (e.g. Bunce et al. 2004), as in the case of the Sami in the Nordic
countries. Such developments have had enormous influence not only on the ways in
which parks are managed but also on how they are established and re-created for tourist
consumption (Cohen 1993; Pedersen and Viken 1996; Hinch 1998; Waitt 1999;
Pettersson 2004).
The influence of the Romantic movement on the establishment of national parks was
extremely significant (Hall 1992a). For example, the first call for the establishment of
national parks in the United States came in 1832 from an artist, George Catlin, who on
seeing the slaughter of buffalo on the Great Plains described the waste of animals and
humankind to be a 'melancholy contemplation', but he found it 'splendid' when he
imagined
that
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