SCIENCE & RESEARCH
PERSPECTIVES from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute Science for Wilderness, Wilderness for Science BY DAVID J. PARSONS
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cience provides knowledge upon which to make informed decisions about the protection and management of wilderness. In addition, wilderness provides opportunities for scientific understanding that is often not available in other, less protected areas. Thus, science is important to wilderness and wilderness is important to science. The protection of wilderness requires understanding of wilderness ecosystems, the biological and social impacts of human activities on those ecosystems, and the effects of different policy and management alternatives. The value of science in understanding wilderness is well documented in the literature. Programs to restore fire to wilderness are guided by scientific understanding of fire history and plant succession coupled with the use of scientific models of fire behavior. The management of visitor access, use of wilderness for therapy and personal growth, restoration of damaged recreation sites, and the removal of exotic or reintroduction of extirpated species are other examples where science provides the basis for wilderness management actions. The importance of science to wilderness management decisions will only increase as our remaining natural areas become increasingly influenced by human activities. The relative lack of human disturbance and the protected status of wilderness provide unique opportunities to learn about the natural world. Wilderness provides a laboratory for understanding natural processes that have been disrupted
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International Journal of Wilderness
elsewhere, a baseline for comparison with more humanaltered ecosystems. The importance of wilderness to science was clearly recognized at the Sierra Club’s 1959 Sixth Biennial Wilderness Conference, titled “The Meaning of Wilderness to Science.” Following a presentation by Luna Leopold (son of Aldo Leopold) on the value of the proposed wilderness system for hydrological research, Howard Zahniser, chief architect of the Wilderness Act, cautioned that the increased recreational use expected to follow wilderness designation might “interfere with the establishment of … installations for scientific purposes.” Zahniser clearly sees science as an important value of wilderness. The 1964 Wilderness Act established “scientific use” as one purpose of wilderness. The 1994 California Desert Protection Act reinforced this, stating that a primary purpose of wilderness is to “retain and enhance opportunities for scientific research in undisturbed ecosystems.” Recent studies of the effects of global change have clearly benefited from baseline information derived from wilderness, and we now also realize that wilderness is a valuable laboratory for studying human behavior. The value of wilderness to science will only increase as an expanding population infringes on our remaining natural areas. DAVID J. PARSONS is director of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, an interagency program providing leadership in developing scientific knowledge to sustain wilderness ecosystems and values. He can be reached at the Institute, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula, Montana 59807, USA. Telephone: 406-542-4190.
AUGUST 2000 • VOLUME 6, NUMBER 2