But see Charles Mann’s book, “1491.” My point is that what the modern mind regards as “untrammeled” may have been and may still be “lightly trammeled” if the appropriate ethical/moral values accompany such light usage. Of course, the modern mind also regards everything, including protected “wilderness,” as a commodity for profit-making, and the current desires to drill in existing wilderness are a few examples. The implications are that once an “unspoiled” wilderness has been spoiled, it is spoiled for all time. Another historian, Simon Schama, had a lot to say about this in a book on the emergence of “landscape” as an important cultural mode of perception. And as Aldo Leopold noted, there is also that profound cultural tendency to separate humans completely from the natural world, either by regarding it as wilderness or as commodity. He preferred to understand us as members of the natural communities, not outsiders. It’s in the spirit of that thinking that I offered my remarks.
Leland Searles
Air Quality Program Director
Iowa Environmental Council
521 E. Locust St., Suite 220
Des Moines, Iowa 50309
515-244-1194 ext. 204
About the Iowa Environmental Council:
The Iowa Environmental Council actively works in public policy to provide a safe, healthy environment for all Iowans. We focus on public education and coalition building to give Iowans a voice on issues that affect their quality of life. For more information contact the Iowa Environmental Council or visit www.iaenvironment.org.
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I'm not sure the "outmoded" view of wilderness has been "appropriately deconstructed" by Snyder, Cronon, et al. They do have some points worth considering and make us think about how much humans can impact an area and still call it wilderness. Maybe the best definition of wilderness is still found in the Wilderness Act:
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 community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
Wally Taylor
Apparently Sierra Club’s position is based on an outmoded view of “wilderness” that has been appropriately deconstructed by, among others, Gary Snyder, William Cronon, Jim Igoe, and many others. Humans have been using resources on most of the world’s landscapes for millennia. The essential problem is to distinguish sustainable from nonsustainable practices. Is there any demonstration that native egg collection will cause harm to the gull population? That species of gull is one of the most plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. A carefully managed (by native religious views or otherwise) resource use is not necessarily a bad thing.
Air Quality Program Director
Iowa Environmental Council
521 E. Locust St., Suite 220
About the Iowa Environmental Council:
The Iowa Environmental Council actively works in public policy to provide a safe, healthy environment for all Iowans. We focus on public education and coalition building to give Iowans a voice on issues that affect their quality of life. For more information contact the Iowa Environmental Council or visit www.iaenvironment.org.
Please do not print this email unless it is absolutely necessary. Spread environmental awareness.
Senate hearing July 28 on bill (S.1063) attacking Glacier Bay National Park—Your support for the park needed now.
Along with the National Park Service (NPS) in Alaska, Alaska’s Senators Lisa Murkowski (R) and Sen. Mark Begich (D) want to let members of the Huna Tlingit tribe of SE Alaska collect glaucous-winged gull eggs in Glacier Bay National Park. Their bill, S. 1063, would authorize this subsistence practice in a park long closed to the extraction of wildlife, including subsistence hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering by Alaska Natives.
Glacier Bay is one of the nation’s finest wilderness national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. It is a World Heritage Site, a major component of an International Biosphere Reserve, and a critically important summer feeding ground for endangered humpback whales. It provides essential security for Steller sea lions. It fulfills Congress’s mandate to be one of the national parks in Alaska that “…are intended to be large sanctuaries where fish and wildlife may roam freely…without the changes that extensive human activity would cause.”
The Sierra Club strongly opposes S. 1063. Opening this park would inflict harm on the gulls—by reducing the number of fledglings in the park by 22%, according to the National Park Service (NPS)—and it would likely result in proposals for additional subsistence practices in the park. The tribe is on public record as wanting the park opened to subsistence hunting for mountain goats and seals.
If Congress were to approve S. 1063, other federally recognized tribes in Alaska could ask for the same privilege and other perhaps other subsistence practices in Alaska’s other three sanctuary parks, Katmai National Park, the old Mt. McKinley part of Denali National Park, and Kenai Fjords National Park.
And the potential unraveling of the park sanctuary standard might not stop in our 49th state. If enacted, S. 1063 could trigger similar Native American demands for subsistence access to national parks in other states. As Glacier Bay goes, so goes Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, Yellowstone, North Cascades, and other premier national park sanctuaries?
Opening Glacier Bay to egg gathering is also completely unnecessary. Just outside the park boundaries and within Huna Tlingit traditional territory are a half-dozen traditional gull egg collection sites of the tribe. In a demonstration project in 2001 and 2002 the National Park Service assisted tribal members to successfully collect gull eggs on one of these non-park sites. This proved that NPS facilitation of such non-park collection trips is a “reasonable and feasible” alternative to opening the park.
Please act to defend the park – one phone call
Members of the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks and the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee need to hear from Sierra Club members from throughout the nation:
If your senator is listed below, please call his/her office before July 28 and urge opposition to S. 1063: explain you oppose this Glacier Bay National Park gull-egg collecting bill because:
(pick one or two)
**You care about continuing the proud tradition of Glacier Bay National Park as a wildlife sanctuary and one of our national treasures, a world-renowned park which John Muir explored in the late 19th century and which is a park dear to the heart of Sierra Club members.
** You support Native subsistence in Alaska but not in this national park long closed to wildlife extraction, especially as there are alternative proven egg-collecting sites outside the park.
** You fear the precedent would lead to similar extractive uses in other Alaska national park sanctuaries and maybe in famed national parks in other states.
** If you have visited Glacier Bay National Park – let them know.
If you do not have your Senator’s direct office number, call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senator.
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