50 Years of Wilderness - Wild Iowa?

Jester Park Lodge-Polk County Conservation Board

Tuesday, September 2 ~ 6:30 - 8:30 pm

 

50 years ago, on September 3, 1964, the United States penned the Wilderness
Act creating not only a new category of public lands, but also opened a new
cultural paradigm for our relationship to the land. Join us on the eve of
the Wilderness Act's 50th anniversary to celebrate wildness. Over the course
of its 50 years the Wilderness Act has designated nearly 110 million acres
as wild. 

 

Iowa is one of six states that does not have any designated wilderness
areas. We have more roads per capita than any other state and only a small
percentage of Iowa is in public ownership.  Does this mean we have no
wildness in Iowa? This question leads us to examine just what is wilderness.
Further, do we need wilderness - what is its value?  Where do you go to be
re-energized, unplug and be alone in nature? What is the future of
wilderness and what role do we have in this future? Chris Adkins, Naturalist
for Dallas County Conservation will start the conversation on wilderness.
Special guest presenter Dallas Chief Eagle, Champion hoop dancer, will
demonstrate traditional Lakota hoop dance. He will engage the audience via
dance and story to view our position in nature and our relationship to
nature.

 

Fifty years ago in 1964 President, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Wilderness
Act into law. This one of a kind law established that Americans would have
roadless tracts of land preserved for future generations to explore. A
definition of wilderness is: "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas
where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as
an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,
where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."  President, Lyndon B.
Johnson said in 1964: "If future generations are to remember us with
gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the
miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was
in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."

 

What is your wild place? Join us on Tuesday, September 2nd at 6:30 p.m. for
a celebration of wildness and the 50 year anniversary of the Wilderness Act
at the Jester Park Lodge.

 

 


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