Wonderful Wilderness

Wonderful Wilderness Written by Gill Arbuthnott

Contents What is a wilderness?

2

Yosemite

26

Managing Yosemite

28

Where in the world are the wildernesses?

4

Sagarmatha

30

Types of wilderness

6

The Great Barrier Reef

32

National Parks in the UK

34

The Lake District

36

Managing the Lake District

38

The Broads

40

Conclusion

42

Threats to wilderness

10

Why should we preserve wildernesses?

14

How can we preserve wildernesses?

16

What is a National Park?

18

Yellowstone – the first National Park

20

Glossary

44

More about Yellowstone

22

Index

45

John Muir

24

Different types of wilderness

46

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What is a wilderness?

A wilderness is an area of land that hasn’t been significantly changed by humans. Wildernesses are the last really wild places on Earth.

Until recent times, people only affected quite small areas of the planet, and most of the earth was wilderness.

The wilderness was something to be afraid of, full of wild sts animals that could kill you, fores forests where you could become hopelessly lost, and icy mountains where you could fall to your death.

Amazon rainforest

Snowdonia

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As human populations expanded nded and cities grew bigger, wild areas began to shrink.

They also became busier, as people started to use wildernesses as places to enjoy themselves – for instance, going walking and climbing for pleasure.

Sahara desert

o st tarted Many poets and painters also started to use the landscape to inspire their work. People began to realise that wilderness areas needed protection.

Wild Fact In the Middle Ages, English kings started to pass laws protecting wild areas, but only to make sure they could use them for hunting.

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Where in the world are the wildernesses?

There are wildernesses on every continent, but they’re not evenly spread around the world.

Arctic tundra Rocky Mountains

Boreal forest

European mountains

Appalachian Mountains Sahara desert Mojave Desert

Amazonia

Andes mountains

Congo forests

Antarctica

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Most of the wilderness areas are found in places where few people live – this is why they haven’t been changed by human action. Many of them are now threatened by expanding human populations.

The map shows some of the main areas of wilderness in the world.

Arctic tundra

Boreal forest Himalayas New Guinea

Arabian desert Serengeti Australian desert Kalahari desert Great Barrier Reef

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Types of wilderness There are several types of wilderness, including forest, grassland, desert and wetland. The type of wilderness in an area depends on the climate there.

Forest Tropical rainforest is found near the equator, and has high rainfall and constant warm temperatures. The Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth. conifers in a boreal forest

Amazon rainforest, il Brazil

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Temperate areas are areas with four different seasons.

The forests in these areas mainly contain deciduous trees – trees that lose their leaves in autumn. The largest one in Europe is the Bialowieza Forest in Poland.

Boreal forest is found in Asia, the north of Europe and North America, for instance, in Alaska, where it’s cold for much of the year. The trees are mainly conifers like pine and spruce, which have needle-shaped leaves and don’t se them in winter. lose

Bialowieza Forest

equator

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