I live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear could be nearby.
Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in.
It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food?
I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event.
I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.
Was out in the wilderness on Vancouver Island, a place with the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You're right, it is a vastly different experience walking around an area like that knowing you're just a fragile voyeur in another animal's environment (especially something as silent and murderous as a big cat).
I think the ecological issues we're facing are more serious and underappreciated that the overall warming problem. They are linked but ultimately we can survive longer as it gets warmer, just more alone. If you do a search for ecological the result presumes you mean environmental a lot. Pollution, plastics and habitats need very urgent attention as well has CO2/Methane.
It is also one of the big results people are freaking out about the changing climates but stay away from mentioning it much as many don't see it affecting us directly. Technology may drive us enough to replace the untouched wildness essential for nature. I've heard the only large area becoming wilder is Chernobyl and it's hard to think about what's next for Brazil and pretty much everywhere.
We have to consider what's left to be land of the highest value and compensate people (less the 0.1%) who are affected by that decision.
I'd argue that humanity certainly requires huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'.
But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides, algal blooms, etc.) and degradation of biomes. What are the effects on our biochemistry? Plastic pollution is only now being noticed. Pthalates and numerous other estrogen mimickers are silently at work. Antibiotic resistance is increasing.
I think it's too early to conclude that we can indeed survive this. The outlook for the rest of this century is not positive...
A 'wilderness' is a vast library of alternative biotech. Until humanity understands the effects of its impact on Earth's ecosystems and itself, it would be wise to remember this.
Could not agree more with this. Evolution on Earth has had a very long time to develop super advanced nanotechnology, which we understand and utilise very poorly and are destroying forever - for what? More beef on the plate, palm oil for products no one needs and a bit of money for one generation?
Beyond being critical to the survival of deeply linked ecosystems, and ultimately ourselves, it's just really stupid to destroy products of millions of years of R&D before we've even begun to unlock their potential. The amount of energy and computation that has gone into that evolution is super valuable and a couple of generations are trading it for profits lasting a blink of an eye.
In general, I find it super strange that multi-generational thinking/optimisation isn't more deeply ingrained in our behaviour as a species.
Quite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the location for so many leisure activities and holidays. Few want to retire in a city.
We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything else divided up between agriculture and industry astounds me. Who knows how many miracle drugs and biotech has been lost in those unknown bacteria and species.
Even if it turns out to be a process that can continue our collective psyche will lose something it apparently desires or needs. So at what cost?
The one thing that gives me hope on this, is that lab-grown meat requires about 95% less land, energy, and water. If we can get it cheap enough we could put most of our farms out of business.
My naive impression is that the safest bet for survival would be to improve our technological mastery to a point where we can create near-closed and self sufficient ecosystems for small populations that they can be fully in control of, like deep space habitats. Such habitats should be able to support life inside indefinitely and be able to produce new habitat. And we need to make sure that we can maintain a high level of technological competence even if our population would be severely diminished. Perhaps then can civilization survive almost anything. Not sure if this is a pipe dream.
I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently - "Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money." It's attributed to a canadian Aboriginal but could apply to any industrialized or semi industrialized country. Hopefully we save ourselves before it's too late
Canada has a terrible environmental record that completely undermines its progressive reputation. The tar sands project may be the single most egregious resources undertaking in history.
But other so-called progressive industrialized nations aren't much better. Norway is also wealthy primarily due to the extraction of fossil fuels.
Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions".
One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.
As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.
City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.
Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...
Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.
Dr. So and So sometimes is a local. A local who has hard data collected fairly regularly since ~1950 that shows that Chesapeake oyster/blue crab/whatever populations have been in steady decline due to a combination of over-fishing, and massive increases in nutrient levels due to runoff. And yet many water-men resist any sort of limits on catch and fishing methods tooth and nail.
You are probably right in some cases, but "locals" are nearly always the bloody problem. And when you leave them alone, without intervention, they tend to completely destroy whatever resources are near bye. Look at the coral reefs in Cuba for instance vs the protected reefs off the Florida keys.
I'm not saying the having a PhD makes you correct. There are tons of arrogant idiots out there and some of them are definitely wrong, but when the two sides of the argument are leave it alone vs don't leave it alone (and also maybe stop dumping so much chicken poop on your crops), I tend to think that leave it alone is the healthier option a good percentage of the time.
I made this post because I have seen this attitude before so many times, and it is so often combined with a willful ignorance of the situation. The government doesn't spend an obscene amount of money raising and releasing oysters so that "natives", who are often no more native than the people raising and studying the oysters, can scoop them out of protected areas, inhibit the process, and claim that nothing is wrong and they know the bay better than those arrogant scientists.
When I was growing up in Oregon the biggest forestry controversy was a halt to logging in national forests to conserve habitat for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. Outside of the Portland area, it seemed like most news outlets and people were against this intervention. I kind of went along with adult sentiment and thought that the federal government shouldn't destroy our state's logging jobs with their meddling.
As an adult, I have a completely different perspective. Loggers had been cutting down old-growth trees faster than they grow back for generations. If they'd been managing the forests sustainably all along nobody would have forced them to do things differently. Blaming environmentalists and government for the end of old growth logging is like blaming the gas gauge for your empty fuel tank. The underlying resource was depleted and the logging community plan was, apparently, to ensure it ran out completely before changing.
your points are fine. people don't understand we live in a dynamic ecosystem. if we have been active in the forest doing things for a long time, it will get used to this ,and the whole ecosystem of the forest will adjust to it. like you said, if it stops, as your example, an infestation of some insect or plant which is generally kept in check by the human interactions might ruin everything.
humans are natural, and their interactions generally are also natural, and nature can deal with nature just fine...
on another note: people seem to think they dominate this earth all over, but most of the earth is uninhabited and a lot is still unexplored. if you want to 'save' something, go after big corporations who do things on 'unnaturally' large scale. not forestry services and loggers who are doing it small scale. they are the people who know things and should be listened to, their experience is invaluable, more important than some phd paper or science project from some dweeb who has hardly seen a naturally grown tree in their life.
completely agree with your points thanks, that happens only very rarely on here! :D
>Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up
>The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service
What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email.
Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that.
Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge. And that's all your post really gets at. "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!"
>One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.
This is just flat out false, anti-science disinformation. Fire suppression as a policy started in the 1930s and actually reverted in the 60's and 70's.
>The first national fire policy came after several years of severe fires between 1910
and 1935. In the context of the ecological theory of the time, fire exclusion was
believed to promote ecological stability. In addition, fire exclusion could also reduce
commodity damages and economic losses. In 1935, the USDA Forest Service
instituted the “10 AM Policy,” wherein the objective was to prevent all human-caused
fires and contain any fire that started by 10 a.m. the following day.
By the 1960s, fire management costs were increasing exponentially. The 1964
Wilderness Act, Tall Timbers Research Conferences, and Southern Forest Fire Lab
research demonstrated the positive benefits derived from natural and prescribed fire.
As a result, national fire policy began to evolve to address both the economic and
ecological benefits of not aggressively controlling, and even using, fire. In February
1967, the USDA Forest Service permitted leeway for early- and late-season fires. In
1968, the National Park Service changed its policy to recognize the natural role of
fire, allow natural ignitions to run their course under prescribed conditions, and use
prescribed fires to meet management objectives. In 1971, the USDA Forest Service
10-Acre Policy was added, which set a pre-suppression objective of containing all
fires within 10 acres.
In 1977 a new fire policy was selected by the USDA Forest Service that replaced
both the 10 AM and 10-Acre policies. The new policy encouraged a pluralistic
approach — fire by prescription. Even for suppression, once initial attack failed,
alternatives to full suppression were to be considered. Fire suppression became fire
management.The 1994 fire season with its 34 fatalities (14 at South Canyon, Colorado)
precipitated the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy & Program
Review (1995 Report). This review again affirmed the positive benefits of fire. It
recognized that fire was part of a larger problem, one of several symptoms of
natural ecosystems becoming increasingly unstable due to altered ecological regimes.
It talked about the needs for landscape-level resource management, the integration
of fire into land management planning and implementation, and the involvement of
all affected landowners and stakeholders.[0]
This is a difficult issue. On the one hand, it is arrogant to sit in comfortable chairs imported to areas that live in excess and tell others to live with less so that we may appreciate their wilderness from afar; or ephemerally while we are on vacation. On the other hand, I am reminded of this letter/video which sums up an important ethos: https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter. We should protect the wilderness because it inspires us to be better.
Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow (we need food and water). But we do need it to remind ourselves where we came from and how complexity can be beautiful. So what do we do?
> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow
Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...
> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow
It is a very egoistic perspective (at the species level) that we can destroy species of plants and animals (and entire ecosystems) just because they don't serve us.
There is almost no wilderness left, and what remains is only there because people spent lifetimes working to defend it. I highly encourage anyone who reads this to make a stand in your personal discussions to always choose protecting wild lands over financial gain.
I see the recent attacks on things like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments to be sabotage, undermining the decades-long efforts of conservationists:
As a native Idahoan I respect opposing arguments but recent trends have gone too far. I heard discussions while growing up that when the national debt reached a certain level, the US government would begin selling off its public lands. So look at who stands to benefit from that and other debts, and you'll see a giant circle of corruption. Meta-level critical thinking is needed now more than ever in these times.
Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full-blown wilderness back. It doesn't have to be Amazon or some place in Africa, Europe once was covered in forests end-to-end too.
> Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same.
So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild?
It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."
An absolutely massive amount of land could be saved by not eating beef. I don't see that ever happening in America though. And even if the land was saved from cow farming it would just be used to create more urban sprawl.
This is literally what developed countries have been doing, at least in the last 6-7 decades. And besides, Europe still is ‘covered by forests end-to-end’.
So not sure what your rant is about… Just speculating, but maybe in your opinion the rates should be increased?
So how do you incentivize/coerce governments and companies to conserve natural resources, not dump toxins into the air, land and water, and generally limit the negative influences on our health and environment?
"A world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope." - Tim Winton
What these reports often seem to ignore is that there is still biodiversity within our cities--sometimes a lot of it. If the default assumption is "city bad, wilderness good", we're never going to make any progress, because short of an apocalyptic event cities are here to stay. What we should be focused on is making the cities we live in more sustainable and integrated with their ecosystems. Green roofs, urban parks, sustainable transportation networks, clean energy--there are plenty of avenues being explored today that are connecting our cities with nature. Cities should be a part of nature rather than apart from nature.
Thinking just of recognizable animals, typical cities have, what, rats, cats, starlings, house sparrows, rock doves, gulls, and not terribly much more. We can do better, but in general cities are not biodiversity hotspots.
Interesting that the article comes a week after Brazilians elected an extreme right-wing president that promised to open up all the Amazon's nature reserves for mining and farming. I expect the next 4 years will be very sad for Amazon forests.
At HN we are discussing roguelike game development while the world around us is systematically destroyed and what will be left is us experiencing nature through a Nethack game.
[+] [-] japhyr|7 years ago|reply
Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in.
It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food?
I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event.
I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.
[+] [-] oldstrangers|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmach|7 years ago|reply
It is also one of the big results people are freaking out about the changing climates but stay away from mentioning it much as many don't see it affecting us directly. Technology may drive us enough to replace the untouched wildness essential for nature. I've heard the only large area becoming wilder is Chernobyl and it's hard to think about what's next for Brazil and pretty much everywhere.
We have to consider what's left to be land of the highest value and compensate people (less the 0.1%) who are affected by that decision.
This may be of interest https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska...
I hope the bears keep tourists away.
[+] [-] fractallyte|7 years ago|reply
But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides, algal blooms, etc.) and degradation of biomes. What are the effects on our biochemistry? Plastic pollution is only now being noticed. Pthalates and numerous other estrogen mimickers are silently at work. Antibiotic resistance is increasing.
I think it's too early to conclude that we can indeed survive this. The outlook for the rest of this century is not positive...
A 'wilderness' is a vast library of alternative biotech. Until humanity understands the effects of its impact on Earth's ecosystems and itself, it would be wise to remember this.
[+] [-] dharma1|7 years ago|reply
Beyond being critical to the survival of deeply linked ecosystems, and ultimately ourselves, it's just really stupid to destroy products of millions of years of R&D before we've even begun to unlock their potential. The amount of energy and computation that has gone into that evolution is super valuable and a couple of generations are trading it for profits lasting a blink of an eye.
In general, I find it super strange that multi-generational thinking/optimisation isn't more deeply ingrained in our behaviour as a species.
[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|7 years ago|reply
We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything else divided up between agriculture and industry astounds me. Who knows how many miracle drugs and biotech has been lost in those unknown bacteria and species.
Even if it turns out to be a process that can continue our collective psyche will lose something it apparently desires or needs. So at what cost?
[+] [-] DennisP|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worldsayshi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omosubi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] claydavisss|7 years ago|reply
But other so-called progressive industrialized nations aren't much better. Norway is also wealthy primarily due to the extraction of fossil fuels.
[+] [-] arminiusreturns|7 years ago|reply
One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.
As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.
City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.
Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...
Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.
[+] [-] fhood|7 years ago|reply
Dr. So and So sometimes is a local. A local who has hard data collected fairly regularly since ~1950 that shows that Chesapeake oyster/blue crab/whatever populations have been in steady decline due to a combination of over-fishing, and massive increases in nutrient levels due to runoff. And yet many water-men resist any sort of limits on catch and fishing methods tooth and nail.
You are probably right in some cases, but "locals" are nearly always the bloody problem. And when you leave them alone, without intervention, they tend to completely destroy whatever resources are near bye. Look at the coral reefs in Cuba for instance vs the protected reefs off the Florida keys.
I'm not saying the having a PhD makes you correct. There are tons of arrogant idiots out there and some of them are definitely wrong, but when the two sides of the argument are leave it alone vs don't leave it alone (and also maybe stop dumping so much chicken poop on your crops), I tend to think that leave it alone is the healthier option a good percentage of the time.
I made this post because I have seen this attitude before so many times, and it is so often combined with a willful ignorance of the situation. The government doesn't spend an obscene amount of money raising and releasing oysters so that "natives", who are often no more native than the people raising and studying the oysters, can scoop them out of protected areas, inhibit the process, and claim that nothing is wrong and they know the bay better than those arrogant scientists.
[+] [-] philipkglass|7 years ago|reply
As an adult, I have a completely different perspective. Loggers had been cutting down old-growth trees faster than they grow back for generations. If they'd been managing the forests sustainably all along nobody would have forced them to do things differently. Blaming environmentalists and government for the end of old growth logging is like blaming the gas gauge for your empty fuel tank. The underlying resource was depleted and the logging community plan was, apparently, to ensure it ran out completely before changing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_spotted_owl#Controver...
[+] [-] vectorEQ|7 years ago|reply
humans are natural, and their interactions generally are also natural, and nature can deal with nature just fine...
on another note: people seem to think they dominate this earth all over, but most of the earth is uninhabited and a lot is still unexplored. if you want to 'save' something, go after big corporations who do things on 'unnaturally' large scale. not forestry services and loggers who are doing it small scale. they are the people who know things and should be listened to, their experience is invaluable, more important than some phd paper or science project from some dweeb who has hardly seen a naturally grown tree in their life.
completely agree with your points thanks, that happens only very rarely on here! :D
[+] [-] kadendogthing|7 years ago|reply
>The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service
What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email.
Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that.
Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge. And that's all your post really gets at. "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!"
[+] [-] sparrc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastor_elm|7 years ago|reply
This is just flat out false, anti-science disinformation. Fire suppression as a policy started in the 1930s and actually reverted in the 60's and 70's.
>The first national fire policy came after several years of severe fires between 1910 and 1935. In the context of the ecological theory of the time, fire exclusion was believed to promote ecological stability. In addition, fire exclusion could also reduce commodity damages and economic losses. In 1935, the USDA Forest Service instituted the “10 AM Policy,” wherein the objective was to prevent all human-caused fires and contain any fire that started by 10 a.m. the following day. By the 1960s, fire management costs were increasing exponentially. The 1964 Wilderness Act, Tall Timbers Research Conferences, and Southern Forest Fire Lab research demonstrated the positive benefits derived from natural and prescribed fire. As a result, national fire policy began to evolve to address both the economic and ecological benefits of not aggressively controlling, and even using, fire. In February 1967, the USDA Forest Service permitted leeway for early- and late-season fires. In 1968, the National Park Service changed its policy to recognize the natural role of fire, allow natural ignitions to run their course under prescribed conditions, and use prescribed fires to meet management objectives. In 1971, the USDA Forest Service 10-Acre Policy was added, which set a pre-suppression objective of containing all fires within 10 acres. In 1977 a new fire policy was selected by the USDA Forest Service that replaced both the 10 AM and 10-Acre policies. The new policy encouraged a pluralistic approach — fire by prescription. Even for suppression, once initial attack failed, alternatives to full suppression were to be considered. Fire suppression became fire management.The 1994 fire season with its 34 fatalities (14 at South Canyon, Colorado) precipitated the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy & Program Review (1995 Report). This review again affirmed the positive benefits of fire. It recognized that fire was part of a larger problem, one of several symptoms of natural ecosystems becoming increasingly unstable due to altered ecological regimes. It talked about the needs for landscape-level resource management, the integration of fire into land management planning and implementation, and the involvement of all affected landowners and stakeholders.[0]
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20070810191055/http://www.nifc.g...
[+] [-] peterlk|7 years ago|reply
Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow (we need food and water). But we do need it to remind ourselves where we came from and how complexity can be beautiful. So what do we do?
[+] [-] jarmitage|7 years ago|reply
Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...
[+] [-] stared|7 years ago|reply
It is a very egoistic perspective (at the species level) that we can destroy species of plants and animals (and entire ecosystems) just because they don't serve us.
[+] [-] zackmorris|7 years ago|reply
https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-071...
That's most likely the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness here in Idaho, as well as the various national forests surrounding it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Retur...
There is almost no wilderness left, and what remains is only there because people spent lifetimes working to defend it. I highly encourage anyone who reads this to make a stand in your personal discussions to always choose protecting wild lands over financial gain.
I see the recent attacks on things like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments to be sabotage, undermining the decades-long efforts of conservationists:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html
As a native Idahoan I respect opposing arguments but recent trends have gone too far. I heard discussions while growing up that when the national debt reached a certain level, the US government would begin selling off its public lands. So look at who stands to benefit from that and other debts, and you'll see a giant circle of corruption. Meta-level critical thinking is needed now more than ever in these times.
[+] [-] ivanhoe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerbilly|7 years ago|reply
So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild?
It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."
[+] [-] ndnxhs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pofjer|7 years ago|reply
So not sure what your rant is about… Just speculating, but maybe in your opinion the rates should be increased?
[+] [-] caprorso|7 years ago|reply
"A world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope." - Tim Winton
[+] [-] briga|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trax|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] myth_drannon|7 years ago|reply
At HN we are discussing roguelike game development while the world around us is systematically destroyed and what will be left is us experiencing nature through a Nethack game.