Preservation
Preservation refers to the practice of maintaining wilderness areas in their natural, undisturbed state. This concept emerged in the United States during the nineteenth century as a reaction to widespread public land development and exploitation through activities like logging and mining. Proponents of preservation, such as John Muir, emphasize the inherent value of nature, arguing against its treatment as merely an economic resource. This philosophy contrasts with conservation, which allows for managed use of natural resources for economic benefits.
Historically, preservation gained popularity after World War II as a growing middle class sought unspoiled outdoor spaces for leisure activities. The movement led to significant legislative achievements, including the Wilderness Act of 1964. However, in the later decades of the twentieth century, there was a shift towards multiple-use land management, prompting ongoing debates about the balance between preservation and development. Critics point out that preservation often reflects the interests of affluent citizens, potentially sidelining the needs of lower-income communities.
Despite ongoing discussions about its philosophical implications, preservation continues to play a crucial role in environmental ethics, advocating for the protection of wilderness areas from destructive practices, while also addressing complex management challenges within these preserved lands.
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Subject Terms
Preservation
DEFINITION: Maintenance of wilderness areas in an undisturbed state
While debates continue regarding the best uses of public lands, it is clear that proponents of preservation have played a large role in preventing the conversion of many wilderness areas to development, logging, mining, or other uses.
The concept of preservation of wilderness emerged in the United States in the nineteenth century as a response to the large-scale disposal of public lands then taking place and to such economic activities as mining and logging, which had altered much of the western landscape. Preservation is typically contrasted with conservation, which allows managed exploitation of resources for economic purposes. John Muir, who is usually cited as the first American preservationist, condemned the common perception of wilderness as an economic resource. Muir and other preservationists argued that the American wilderness possesses an inherent value that must be protected from commercial exploitation. Most historians point to the battle over the damming of Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley at the beginning of the twentieth century as the first major conflict between conservationists and preservationists.
Although preservationists successfully excluded most commercial development from the national park system, conservation remained the dominant ethic in land-use management in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century. However, preservation gained a powerful new constituency in the years after World War II. A rising standard of living allowed growing numbers of Americans the opportunity to pursue leisure activities. Many such Americans, who typically lived in urban or suburban areas, supported preservation because it afforded them unspoiled settings in which to enjoy outdoor activities such as camping.
The growing demand for wilderness areas influenced government officials charged with setting land-use policy, culminating in 1964 with the passage of the Wilderness Act. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, politicians responded to the American public’s continued support for preservation. However, during the 1980s and into the 1990s, government officials increasingly favored multiple-use management of public lands over preservation.
The history of preservation shows that it served as a response to the success of capitalism as an economic system. Ironically, resource exploitation allowed Americans the income and free time to enjoy the outdoors while at the same time significantly altering the environment. For many Americans, the negative consequences of the exploitation of natural resources began to outweigh the benefits that development brought to society. Environmentalists articulated this concern, which even appeared in the wilderness legislation of the 1960s. Politicians, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, began discussing the importance of beauty and the value of nature.
Critics have contended that the preservation ethic is an expression of middle- and upper-class Americans who already enjoy the benefits of economic exploitation of resources; the needs of lower-class citizens who would profit from the continued development of natural resources are disregarded in favor of leisure activities for the affluent. However, preservation constitutes more than an approach to land-use management that calls for the maintenance of natural playgrounds for middle-class Americans. It also serves as more than a muddled critique of capitalism. It expresses a value system, and as such it could be counted as a philosophy that has important political and social implications.
Preservation Versus Conservation
In discussions of preservation’s philosophical import, preservation is usually contrasted with conservation. Whereas conservation understands nature in terms of resources that have value to human economies, preservation regards nature as possessing additional value to humans, bringing aesthetic and even spiritual qualities to human life. Conservationists perceive forests, minerals, and wildlife as separate categories, whereas preservationists argue that such categorization is artificial. Preservationists assert that nature must be understood as a whole in which the apparently individual parts are intimately interconnected in ways that humans, who are a part of the natural system, cannot fully understand. The failure to preserve wilderness thus has consequences that ripple through the entire ecosystem, including human society.
Some environmentalists argue that the distinction between conservation and preservation, while useful for defining advocacy groups and management plans, is simplistic and misleading. Rather than perceiving the two as mutually exclusive, adversarial positions, they maintain that preservation and conservation are two tools for understanding the human relationship to the environment. Some radical environmentalists dismiss preservation on the grounds that, like conservation, it assesses nature according to human values, albeit a wider range of such values than are applied by conservation. They maintain that preservation ultimately fails as a philosophy because it does not understand that nature exists wholly apart from any value system. It is thus faulty because it does not lead to the complete reform of human perceptions necessary to end the destruction of the environment.
Despite such criticisms, preservation remains an important environmental ethic at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the United States and elsewhere, preservationists can claim that their efforts have saved wilderness regions that otherwise would have been devastated by mining, logging, or other activities. These victories, however, also require preservationists to address difficult issues regarding the management of wilderness areas; lively debates continue around such issues as scientific study within wilderness preserves, fire suppression, and the reintroduction of wildlife species, such as wolves. Moreover, preservationists often must work to ensure the establishment of standards concerning air and water quality outside preserved areas in order to protect the integrity of the wilderness.
Bibliography
Allin, Craig W. The Politics of Wilderness Preservation. 1982. Reprint. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2008.
Buys, Adriaan. "What Are the Differences Between Conservation and Preservation?" Conservation Magazine, 4 Apr. 2022, conservationmag.org/en/environment/what-are-the-differences-between-conservation-and-preservation. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.
Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Davis, Charles, ed. Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics. 2d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001.
Lewis, Michael. American Wilderness: A New History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Oelschlaeger, Max. The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991.
Schmitz, Oswald J. "Conserving Wildlife Can Help Mitigate Climate Change." Yale School of the Environment, 27 Mar. 2023, environment.yale.edu/news/article/protecting-wildlife-populations-can-enhance-natural-capture-capture. Accessed 22 July 2024.