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Denali National Park and PreserveAlaskan WildernessWilderness ValuesSouthern Africa

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Journal of WildernessAUGUST 2005 VOLUME 11, NUMBER 2

FEATURESEDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES

3 Denali National Park and PreserveA Different Kind of WildernessBY ALAN E. WATSON

SOUL OF THE WILDERNESS4 Voices from Denali

“It’s Bigger Than Wilderness”BY ALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNOTEK, and

NEAL CHRISTENSEN

STEWARDSHIP8 Legislative Direction for a

Conservation System Unit in AlaskaThe Case of Denali National Park and PreserveBY ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM and MICHAEL J. TRANEL

11 Denali National Park and PreserveA Federal Conservation System Unitin an Owner StateBY ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM and MICHAEL J. TRANEL

15 Customary and TraditionalA Continuing Way of Life at DenaliBY MIKI COLLINS and JULIE COLLINS

19 Native People and Wilderness Values at DenaliBY HOLLIS TWITCHELL

23 Symbolic ValuesThe Overlooked ValuesThat Make Wilderness UniqueBY DAVID N. COLE

SCIENCE AND RESEARCH28 Social Science Research and Planning

in the Bob Marshall Wilderness ComplexBY STEPHEN F. McCOOL

PERSPECTIVES FROM THE ALDO LEOPOLDWILDERNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE

30 Research on the Relationship betweenHumans and Wilderness in AlaskaBY ALAN E. WATSON

EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION31 Humility in the Alaskan Wilderness

BY DARYL R. MILLER

35 Science and Learning in the Alaska WildernessBY INGRID NIXON

37 Minimizing Mountaineering Impacts in DenaliNational Park and PreserveBY WHITNEY C. WARD

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES41 Transfrontier Land Use Planning in

Southern AfricaBY WILLEM VAN RIET JR. and NADIA VAN DER MERWE

WILDERNESS DIGEST43 Announcements and Wilderness Calendar

46 Letter to the EditorBY MIKE TURNER

Book Reviews47 Landscape Ecology and Resource Management:

Linking Theory with Practiceedited by John A. Bissonette and Isle StorchREVIEW BY JOHN SHULTIS

47 Voyageurs National Park: The Battle to CreateMinnesota’s National Parkby Fred T. WitzigREVIEW BY JOHN SHULTIS

FRONT COVER Mount McKinley, Denali National Park, Alaska, in Septembercolors. Photo by Cathy Hart.

INSET Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in Alaska and Canada do the biggestmigration of large mammals in North America. Photo by Cathy Hart.

2 International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 2005 • VOLUME 11, NUMBER 2

EDITORIAL BOARDPerry Brown, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USA

Vance G. Martin, WILD Foundation, Ojai, Calif., USAAlan Watson, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont., USA

John Shultis, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, B.C., CanadaSteve Hollenhorst, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

Wayne A. Freimund, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USARebecca Oreskes, White Mountain National Forest, Gorham, N.H., USA

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJohn C. Hendee, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho, USA

MANAGING EDITORChad P. Dawson, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, N.Y., USA

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—INTERNATIONALGordon Cessford, Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand; Karen Fox, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Andrew Muir,Wilderness Foundation Eastern Cape, South Africa; Ian Player, South Africa National Parks Board and The Wilderness Foundation, Howick, Natal, Republic ofSouth Africa; Vicki A. M. Sahanatien, Fundy National Park, Alma, Canada; Won Sop Shin, Chungbuk National University, Chungbuk, Korea; Anna-LiisaSippola, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland; Franco Zunino, Associazione Italiana per la Wilderness, Murialdo, Italy.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—UNITED STATESGreg Aplet, The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colo.; David Cole, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont.; John Daigle, University ofMaine, Orono, Maine; Don Fisher, USFS, Washington D.C.; Joseph Flood, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.; Lewis Glenn, Outward Bound USA,Garrison, N.Y.; Glenn Haas, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.; Troy Hall, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; William Hammit, ClemsonUniversity, Clemson, S.C.; Greg Hansen, U.S. Forest Service, Mesa, Ariz.; Dave Harmon, Bureau of Land Management, Portland, Oreg.; Bill Hendricks,California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Ed Krumpe, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; Jim Mahoney, Bureau of Land Management,Sierra Vista, Ariz.; Bob Manning, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; Jeffrey Marion, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Leo McAvoy,University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.; Michael McCloskey, Sierra Club; Christopher Monz, St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y.; Connie Myers,Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, Missoula, Mont.; Roderick Nash, University of California, Santa Barbara, Calif.; David Ostergren, NorthernArizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Marilyn Riley, Wilderness Transitions Inc., Sausalito, Calif.; Joe Roggenbuck, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.;Holmes Rolston III, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colo.; Susan Sater, U.S. Forest Service, Portland, Oreg.; Tod Schimelpfenig, National OutdoorLeadership School, Lander, Wyo.; Rudy Schuster, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, N.Y.; Elizabeth Thorndike, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Jay Watson, The WildernessSociety, San Francisco, Calif.; Dave White, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.

International Journal of Wilderness

International Journal of Wilderness (IJW) publishes three issues per year(April, August, and December). IJW is a not-for-profit publication.

Manuscripts to: Chad P. Dawson, SUNY-ESF, 320 Bray Hall, OneForestry Drive, Syracuse, N.Y. 13210, USA. Telephone: (315) 470-6567.Fax: (315) 470-6535. E-mail: [email protected].

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All materials printed in the International Journal of Wilderness, copyright© 2005 by the International Wilderness Leadership (WILD) Foundation.Individuals, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to makefair use of material from the journal. ISSN # 1086-5519.

Submissions: Contributions pertinent to wilderness worldwide aresolicited, including articles on wilderness planning, management,and allocation strategies; wilderness education, including descriptionsof key programs using wilderness for personal growth, therapy, andenvironmental education; wilderness-related science and research fromall disciplines addressing physical, biological, and social aspects ofwilderness; and international perspectives describing wildernessworldwide. Articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, photos, bookreviews, announcements, and information for the wilderness digest areencouraged. A complete list of manuscript submission guidelines isavailable from the managing editor.

Artwork: Submission of artwork and photographs with captions areencouraged. Photo credits will appear in a byline; artwork may be signedby the author.

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SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS• Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute • Conservation International • National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)• Outward Bound™ • SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry • The WILD® Foundation • The Wilderness Society• University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center • University of Montana, School of Forestry and Wilderness Institute • USDAForest Service • USDI Bureau of Land Management • USDI Fish and Wildlife Service • USDI National Park Service • WildernessFoundation (South Africa) • Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa)

The International Journal of Wilderness links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interestedcitizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management,

and allocation strategies; education; and research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship.

International Journal of Wilderness AUGUST 2005 • VOLUME 11, NUMBER 2 3

FEATURES

E D I T O R I A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

Once again, the IJW has ventured into new terri-tory. In previous issues, the Journal has featuredvarious countries (such as Finland, Canada, and

South Africa), continents (such as Antarctica and SouthAmerica), and topics (such as wild rivers and monitoring).One issue even had a focus on the state of Alaska in theUnited States, but this is the first issue concentrated on oneplace. Denali National Park and Preserve is that place.Whereas one issue of the IJW could never communicate allof the information of interest about this place, severalarticles were developed specifically to provide readers withsome understanding of Denali’s wilderness character. Wesuspect that most people coming to the 8th World Wilder-ness Congress in Alaska in the fall of 2005 know somethingabout the park and the mountain officially called Mt.McKinley, but known by the local name, Denali, to many.We hope these articles increase readers’ awareness of someof the park’s wilderness characteristics.

At three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, its6 million acres (2.4 million ha) make it a giant amonggiants. Our national parks in Alaska include the largest U.S.park, Wrangell-St. Elias, at 13 million acres (5.2 millionha), Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve at over8 million acres (3.2 million ha), and several parks over 2million acres (0.8 million ha) (e.g., Katmai, Glacier Bay). Itis not its size that distinguishes Denali, however, but themountain. Among mountains in North America, Denali is

the highest. With increasing numbers of people attemptingto summit its 20,320-foot (6,193-m) peak each year dur-ing a limited climbing season, the park faces many complexmanagement issues, including human waste, air traffic,safety, and competition for space.

We hope, however, that after reading these articles read-ers will think about more than the mountain when theyhear “Denali.” About 500 people make it to the summitof Mt. McKinley each year, and they each have a story totell. They often dream of this trip for years, and they comefrom all over the world. There are people who make theirliving flying these climbers in to a base camp at 7,200 feet(2,195 m), and flying other people in just to look at themany glaciers and mountains in the Alaska Range. Thesepilots have a unique relationship with the visitors and thepark. There are also people who hunt, fish, trap, pick ber-ries, and live in sight of the mountain, and visitors comefrom around the world to backpack and see the wildlifefrom buses that carry visitors along the single road thatextends nearly 90 miles (145 km) into the park. School-children in Alaska also have tremendous opportunities tostudy vegetation and wildlife in the park, and moderntechnology allows them to share this place with othersaround the world.

Denali is a special place in this world. Get to know ita little.

Denali National Parkand Preserve

A Different Kind of Wilderness

BY ALAN E. WATSON


S O U L O F T H E W I L D E R N E S S

FEATURES

Denali National Park and Preserve, at over 6 mil-lion acres (2.5 million ha) contains the highestpoint in North America. Mount McKinley, at more

than 20,000 feet (more than 6,000 m) above sea level,watches over thousands of caribou, moose, packs of wolves,grizzly bears, and Dall sheep, as well as many other moun-tains and a vast amount of rare plant life. Research wasconducted at Denali in 2004 as a way to understand theexperiences people have when they either fly into the parkto climb Mt. McKinley or the surrounding peaks, or just tosee the glaciers and mountains within the park. Here is aglimpse of this place from the perspectives of the peoplewho travel great distances to experience it and the pilotsfrom Talkeetna, Alaska, who make their living flying visitorsto the mountain (see figure 1).

What Do Visitors Expect?The cold is extreme on that mountain. When we flyin the first week of May, it’s minus forty every night.And then in June it warms up to about minustwenty-five.”

—Peter Hackett’s voice, in Strickland, 1992, p. 73

I expected a very cold mountain. (A climber’s voice)

You know, it’s hard to tell. A lot of them come up here with abso-lutely no real idea what they’re going to see. (An air-taxi voice)

For the most part, people don’t really come here to be up therealone…in some cases the climbers, they’ll want to go some-

where where they cannot see other people. But,I mean, 90% of the people that go up there, es-pecially on Denali, realize it’s a pretty socialroute. (An air-taxi voice)

[It’s] unlike anything they’ve ever done before,and there’s no way you can describe what you’regoing to see. You can show pictures…show vid-eos, but until you’re actually there andexperience it, it’s unlike anything that you’veever done. (An air-taxi voice)

I didn’t really have too many expectations. I guess I just kind ofknew I was going to the Alaska Range and it was the bigwilderness…I haven’t been to Alaska before. So I didn’t reallyexpect too much. I mean, I know that Denali base camp’s a bitof a circus and there’s a lot of people there, but I kind of didn’tfigure there’d be too many people in the rest of the range. (Aclimber’s voice)

On the scenic tour, people aren’t there for a wildernessexperience…we’ll take two or three planes up at a time andland, and people get together and talk and sometimes they meetpeople from their hometown on the Ruth Glacier, 4,000 or 5,000miles away from their home. (An air-taxi voice)

Climbers, they’re only there for one reason, to climb the mountain.(An air-taxi voice)

Voices from Denali“It’s Bigger Than Wilderness”

BY ALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNOTEK, and NEAL CHRISTENSEN

“Is the mountain out?” Someone on the right side of the plane wantedto know. In so many mountains, there was one mountain. The mountainwas a megahedron—its high white facets doming in the air. Longsnow banners, extending eastward, were pluming from the ridgesabove twenty thousand feet.”

—John McPhee’s voice, in McPhee, 1979, p. 97

Alan E. Watson


How Do Visitors Describe It?One of our team members hadrefused to climb higher than14,300 feet because he hadseen himself dying in adream…I admired him forbeing more in touch with hisfeelings, more willing to ex-press his fears and his respectfor the mountain than any ofthe rest of us.—Jonathan Waterman’s voice,

in Waterman, 1998, p. 37

My husband said, even though he’s overthere sick in the car, he said, that was aonce in a lifetime...it was sort of like, eventhough I’m sick I’m really glad we did that.(A flightseer’s voice)

Denali National Park’s gorgeous. It wasreally interesting to see it from the southside as opposed to the north side. I thinkwhen you take the bus in from the northside you get a much different perspectiveof the park because it’s green, it’s tundra,there’s flowers everywhere, there’s animalseverywhere. But on the south side, on themountain, you know, there’s not a stitchof green, there’s not an animal to be had.It’s just such a different landscape. (Aclimber’s voice)

The thing they most often say is that theycouldn’t believe that it was so big…theycould just not believe the vastness of it.For most people it’s a very humbling ex-perience because they’ve never beenaround or near anything that big. (Anair-taxi voice)

It’s awesome. Like you look at it in a wholeview and then you look at the same thingagain and zoom in and then you’ll lookat that thing you zoomed in on and zoomin again. (A climber’s voice)

They’ve just gone and seen somethingthat’s way bigger than they could everthink of being, which really knocks themkind of on their ass. It really knocks their

ego down a bit when they see that becausethey just couldn’t believe it’s so big. (Anair-taxi voice)

It’s like being on the moon; you’ve neverseen it before. (A climber’s voice)

It’s kind of like flying into a whole otherworld. And I’ve had people describe it asgoing into orbit around another planet,and I’ve described it as flying indoors. Imean it’s huge. (An air-taxi voice)

Maybe one of the most beautiful experi-ences in my life. It was very, very emotivefor me to fly in the plane and watch thoseglaciers and very, very beautiful landing,the surrounding mountains, Hunter,Foraker, Huntington, and, of course,Denali. One of the most beautiful expe-riences I ever had, and also the hardestone I ever had. (A climber’s voice)

I cried. I cried on the way in and on theway out because…that experience of fly-ing is just fantastic, just fantastic. I loveit. (A climber’s voice)

People see the glaciers and the groundstuff a lot more when they can’t see themountains. … They don’t really see whatyou’re flying over on a clear day whenyou can see everything because they’rebusy looking at McKinley and the othermountains and forget to look down andsee all the other stuff (An air-taxi voice)

It’s the beginning of everything. It’s whereeverything stops. All animals. Youknow…it’s like looking at a galaxy in theuniverse. You’re looking back in time andlooking at the glaciers. You’re lookingback, you know, those glaciers have beenthere millions of years and you’re look-ing back into the Stone Age, and it’s rightnow. (A climber’s voice)

Most of the time the weather was prettybad in terms of the wind. It was blowingtoo hard, 50-to-80-mile-an-hour aver-age winds. So that never allowed us theopportunity to try and summit. (Aclimber’s voice)

Figure 1—“You zoom in and then you’ll look at that thing you zoomed in on and zoom in again.” A climber’s voice in DenaliNational Park and Preserve. Photo by Neal Christensen.


In Alaska you have to wait for the goodweather. You have to stay in the tent forfour, five, six days…be strong in yourmind…it’s really boring to wait. (Aclimber’s voice)

The cold, the wind, the vast nothingness,you know, just, sort of isolation from ev-erything and then the physical effect ofonly getting about half as much air witha breath that you normally do down hereat sea level make you wonder whetheryou’re going to actually be able to get outof there or not. (A climber’s voice)

It’s really subtle in a lot of ways and re-ally powerful in a lot of other ways andyou really have to think about who youare, why you’re there, and what you needto do in order to exist in that place and

just be safe, in order to be there and towitness a 20,000-foot mountain and whatthat entails. All the glaciers, all the rocks.It’s a dynamic environment. It’s changingall the time. It’s moving, it’s breathing, it’sfalling apart, it’s avalanching. I think itjust, it’s good for people to step out of theirlittle safe zone and to go to these placesso it helps them realize who they are andwhat it means to be alive in this place. (Aclimber’s voice)

It’s actually one-dimensional when you’reflying. But when you land and get out andactually the engine stops and you hearthe silence and the occasional avalancherumbling in the background…havingyour feet in the snow and just lookingaround at the vast scale…it will be theonly time in most people’s lives that theyever are able to get into a mountain scenelike that. (An air-taxi voice)

What Makes Denali Unique?So I started off the next morn-ing, short of dog feed and withonly a vague notion of where Iwas going. But over on myright, far away, rose loftyMount McKinley, called by theIndians Denali (”The HighestOne”), and Mount Foraker be-side it. These would guide me.By going eastward, I hoped toreach the Kantishna River bythe end of March. I had goodfortune. I came upon an occa-sional Indian camp and movedalong steadily.—Olaus Murie’s voice, in Hedin

and Holthaus, 1989, p. 95

There’s only one mountain that looks likethat. …It’s unique. (A flightseer’s voice)

One morning…we got up really early andwe could see the light was just coming off,just coming onto Foraker and Hunter andthe shades of different colors of blue andwhite and red coming off sides of themountain. It was quite spectacular. Acamera wouldn’t have done justice, butI’ve seen it and I can always imagine it.(A climber’s voice)

It’s such an extreme place, you know. Ican’t really think of anywhere in the Statesthat’s actually that intense of a place togo to. Usually there’s trails and off-gla-cier terrain. There’s nowhere in the AlaskaRange that’s off glacier. The whole expe-rience is kind of a step above anythingelse. (A climber’s voice)

It is huge…just the immensity and thescale is just really blowing me away. Yousee a spot, you think, oh that’s 20 min-utes’ walk and you’re there in four hours,so the scale’s really just absolutely aston-ishing. (A climber’s voice)

You use your lower-48 scale and it justdoesn’t quite pan out...it’s always twiceas high or twice as far or twice as what-ever. It’s one of the most amazing placesin the world really, that I’ve ever been.It’s definitely the biggest place I’ve everbeen. (A climber’s voice)

There’s no other place like this. …Stand-ing at 5,600 feet and you’re showing thema mountain that’s three vertical milesabove them, now tell me where else you’regoing to do that. (An air-taxi voice)

On the WildernessCharacter of Denali

If I go to the range and there’s alittle turbulence, I can feel it as Igo in and see little signs in thesky. I may see a little bit of snowdrifting across one of the ridges

Figure 2—“You see a spot, you think, oh that’s 20minutes’ walk and you’re there in four hours, so thescale’s just absolutely astonishing.” A climber’s voicein Denali National Park and Preserve. Photo byFernando Ferrer.

Research was conducted at Denali in 2004 as a wayto understand the experiences people have when they

either fly into the park to climb Mt. McKinley or thesurrounding peaks, or just to see the glaciers and

mountains within the park.


and be able to anticipate whichway the wind is blowing andwhether it is sinking or rising. Itry to anticipate the flow of theair around the peaks andthrough the passes just like you’dwatch water flowing in a brook.”

—Doug Geeting’s voice, air-taxi operator, in Strickland,

1992, p. 66

Wilderness beyond what most people con-sider wilderness, I guess, if that makesany sense. It’s bigger than wilderness.…There’s, like, really no life other thanyourself there…you can make shelter, butyou can’t make warmth, you can’t makefood. (A climber’s voice)

It was 21 days without seeing or speak-ing to anyone other than in our group, sothat was to me a rather rare experience.(A climber’s voice)

It’s like walking on the moon. There’s noth-ing there but ice. So I guess it’s a wilderness.It’s just a different kind of wilderness thanI’m used to. (A climber’s voice)

It’s a noninhabited area. You can’t livethere…it is the back of beyond. You getout there by flying and you take in withyou what you need to survive and whenthat runs out you’re pretty much gameover. You’ve got to get out. (A climber’svoice)

Wilderness to me means you can’t justwalk out of there. That’s kind of my defi-nition. It’s going to be a major, major effortto try to walk out of someplace. So to mewilderness means remoteness, and thatcertainly qualifies out there. (A climber’svoice)

Even beyond wilderness. I don’t thinkmuch about the park aspect of it…it’s oneof the great mountains. So I think of it in

terms of the mountains of the world. AndDenali is one of the mountains of theworld rather than a park. So it’s sort of,it’s more rugged and cold and scarier thana wilderness area. (A climber’s voice)

There’s nothing there, other than themountain house and then the climbers’tents. Definitely wilderness. And it’s wil-derness that’s really unlike any otherwilderness that most people have beenexposed to. (An air-taxi voice)

People often ask, you know, they seewhat the glaciers have done up there andoften ask whether man has piled thegravel up there or whether it’s natural.…It does look like it’s been contrived ina sense, that man could have possiblydone a few things up there. …Once theyget a handle on where they are and justthe immensity of the type of work that’sbeen up there over millions of years, thenyou realize, well, nobody could ever dothat. (An air-taxi voice)

By the time I unloaded and whoever Iwas taking in there, and loaded up thepeople that were wanting to go home,why the fog builds up on the runway orsomething and you just can’t go, andthere you are. And so, it is, in fact, wil-derness and you figure that out prettyquick if you have to spend any time there.(An air-taxi voice)

Well, by definition I think wilderness iscertainly devoid of mankind. There’s nopresence, or the presence of human life isconfined, you know, to a dot here and adot here that’ll get pointed out to you. Butthe rest is just, I mean, it’s owned by na-ture. It’s not owned by, owned orcontrolled by anything but nature work-ing its course. That’s wilderness. (Aflightseer’s voice)

ConclusionThese Denali voices are not the only onesthat can describe human experiencesthere (see figures 2 and 3). Besides theclimbers and flightseers, there are back-packers, skiers, campers, dog mushers,people viewing wildlife, scientists, edu-cators, managers, and people engaged insubsistence activities in this large, remotearea. Denali has many meanings to manydifferent people. We have only glimpseda few of these meanings here. IJW

REFERENCESHedin, R., and G. Holthaus. 1989. Alaska:

Reflections on Land and Spirit. Tucson: TheUniversity of Arizona Press.

McPhee, J. 1979. Coming into the Country. NewYork: Bantam Books.

Strickland, R. 1992. Alaskans: Life on the LastFrontier. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books.

Waterman, J. 1998. In the Shadow of Denali:Life and Death on Alaska’s Mt. McKinley.New York: Dell Publishing.

ALAN E. WATSON, KATIE KNOTEK, andNEAL CHRISTENSEN are, respectively,research social scientist, research assistant insocial science, and social science analyst at theAldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,Box 8089, Missoula, MT 59807, USA.Alan E. Watson e-mail: [email protected].

Figure 3—“It’s like walking on the moon.” Aclimber’s voice in Denali National Park & Preserve.Photo by Fernando Ferrer.

Denali has many meaningsto many different people.


STEWARDSHIP

Two-thirds of National Park System acreage and overhalf of the U.S. National Wilderness PreservationSystem is located in Alaska. In some units, such as

Denali National Park and Preserve, history spans manydecades. Federal legislation enacted from 1916 to 1980describes the purposes and values that guide managementat Denali National Park and Preserve.

The 1916 National Park Service Organic Act outlinesthe purposes of national parks and the National Park Ser-vice and the range of values to be protected for the Americanpeople:

To conserve the scenery and the natural and historicobjects and the wild life therein and to provide for theenjoyment of the same in such manner and by suchmeans as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoy-ment of future generations. (U.S.C., Title 16, sec. 1)

In 1917 Congress established Mount McKinley NationalPark as a “game refuge” (see figure 1) to be “set apart as apublic park for the benefit and enjoyment of the people...for

recreation purposes by the public andfor the preservation of animals, birds,and fish and for the preservation ofthe natural curiosities and scenicbeauties thereof” (39 Stat. 938).

The Alaska National InterestLands Conservation Act (ANILCA)(Public Law 96-487) in 1980 estab-lished 104 million acres (42.1million ha) of federal conservationsystem units (CSUs) in Alaska andmore than doubled the acreage of theU.S. National Park System (NPS1991; Williss 1985; Landres and

Meyer 1998). This act nearly tripled the size of the origi-nal park and redesignated it Denali National Park andPreserve. Of the new 6-million-acre (2.4 million ha) Denaliunit, nearly two million acres (0.8 million ha) (most of theold park) was designated wilderness. According to the Wil-derness Act (Public Law 88-577), designated wildernesslands are to be

administered for the use and enjoyment of the Ameri-can people in such manner as will leave them unim-paired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness,and so as to provide for the protection of these areas,the preservation of their wilderness character, andfor the gathering and dissemination of informationregarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness.

One of ANILCA’s purposes of the park additions and pre-serves is to “preserve for the benefit, use, education, andinspiration of present and future generations” (ANILCA1980).

Legislative Direction for aConservation System Unit in Alaska

The Case of Denali National Park and Preserve

BY ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM and MICHAEL J. TRANEL

Article co-authors Adrienne J. Lindholm and Mike Tranel, both of the National Park Service. National Park Service photo.


Conflicting Interpretationsof ANILCACongress debated over ANILCA forseveral years, and the final version in1980 included a mix of preservationand utilitarian purposes, leaving value-laden choices to the administrativeprocess (Ross 2000). Many conflictsover Alaska national park manage-ment decisions hinge on interpretationof ANILCA Section 1110. This sectionprovides for special access and accessto inholdings. Of particular interest arethe guarantees for special access—including motorized access—acrosspublic lands that are not generallyallowed in national parks or wilder-ness areas outside of Alaska.Subsection (a) reads in part:

Notwithstanding any otherprovision of this Act or otherlaw, the Secretary shallpermit…the use of snow-machines (during periods ofadequate snow cover, or frozenriver conditions in the case ofwild and scenic rivers), motor-boats, airplanes, and non-motorized surface transportationmethods for traditional activities(where such activities arepermitted by this Act or otherlaw) and for travel to and fromvillages and homesites. Suchuse shall be subject to reasonableregulations by the Secretary toprotect the natural and othervalues of the conservation systemunits…and shall not be pro-hibited unless, after notice andhearing in the vicinity of theaffected unit or area, the Sec-retary finds such uses would bedetrimental to the resourcevalues of the unit or area.

The debate over what types ofactivities are “traditional” and thussubject to Section 1110(a) is ongoing.Some stakeholders believe “traditionalactivities” refers to activities mentionedin the Senate Report on ANILCA,

which states that the Committeeamendment guarantees access subjectto reasonable regulation by the Secre-tary “…for traditional or customaryactivities, such as subsistence andsport hunting, fishing, berrypicking,and travel between villages.” Otherstakeholders believe that varying typesof recreational activities should also beconsidered traditional. Since no statu-tory definition for “traditionalactivities” exists, and only the uniqueOld Park area of Denali National Parkand Preserve has a definition in regu-lation, federal land managers grapplewith appropriate ways to managemotorized access to national parksunder ANILCA.

Competing Values onFederal Lands in AlaskaManaging federal lands in Alaska ischallenging because state residentsand visitors often value areas for dif-ferent and sometimes competingreasons. Many of the protected valuesof Denali National Park and Preserveare described in Title I and II ofANILCA and in the park’s enablinglegislation. Section 101 of ANILCAdescribes the broad purposes of thenew conservation system unitsthroughout Alaska, including enlargednational parks and preserves such asDenali. These purposes and associatedvalues include benefit, use, education,inspiration, scenic and geologicalvalues associated with natural land-scapes, wildlife populations and

habitat, unaltered ecosystems, historicand archaeological sites, wildernessresource values, wilderness recre-ational opportunities, scientificresearch, and opportunities for ruralresidents to engage in a subsistenceway of life.

Planning processes at Denali havebrought out advocates for a wide rangeof values that include tangible re-sources such as scenery and wildlife,and intangible resources such as in-spiration and opportunities forchallenge and self-reliance (Tranel2000). The National Park Service iscommitted to protection of this fullrange of values.

Fran P. Mainella, 16th director ofthe National Park Service, wrote for theSeattle Post-Intelligencer on January 20,2005:

Americans long have recog-nized that history endowscertain places with special

Figure 1—Mount McKinley National Park was established in1917 as a game refuge. Photo courtesy National Park Service.

Planning processes at Denali have brought outadvocates for a wide range of values that includetangible resources such as scenery and wildlife,and intangible resources such as inspiration and

opportunities for challenge and self-reliance.


meaning. Our national parksshelter some of our most richnatural and cultural resources,sites that help shape us as apeople and define us as anation. These special placesprovide a home for wildlife, aplayground for outdoor enthu-siasts, a place to reflect upon ourgreatest battles and a venue forhistoric moments. Our nationalpark system is the key to pro-tecting our nation’s heritage.

As is common in other protected ar-eas (Tranel and Hall 2003), challenges atDenali arise when some of these intan-gible values compete with economic andother “use” values. For example, somepeople find aesthetic, artistic, educational,

recreational, humanitarian, intellectual,mystical, scientific, and spiritual value inwilderness, whereas other advocates as-cribe value to the place only if it can beused for economic benefit. Others seeopportunities to merge economic devel-opment and the continuation of aself-reliant way of life in remote, aestheti-cally pleasing frontier settings. IJW

REFERENCESANILCA. 1980. Alaska National Interest Lands

Conservation Act codified at U.S. Code 16(3170) sec. 1110(a).

Landres, P., and S. Meyer. 1998. National Wil-derness Preservation System database: Keyattributes and trends, 1964 through 1998.General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-18.Rocky Mountain Research Station, ForestService, US Department of Agriculture.

National Park Service. 1991. The NationalParks: Shaping the System. Washington, DC:U.S. Department of the Interior.

Public Law 88-577. Wilderness Act. 88th Con-gress, 2nd session. Sept. 3 1964, codifiedat U.S. Code 16(2000), sec. 1131–1136.

Ross, Ken. 2000. Environmental Conflict in Alaska.Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Tranel, Michael J. 2000. Incorporating non-material values in wilderness planning forDenali National Park and Preserve, Alaska,USA, Parks 10 (2): 35–48.

Tranel, Michael J., and Adrienne Hall. 2003.Parks as battlegrounds: Managing conflict-ing values. In David Harmon and Allen D.Putney, eds., The Full Range of Values: FromEconomics to the Intangible (64–70). NewYork: Rowman & Littlefield.

Williss, F. G. 1985. Do Things Right the FirstTime: The National Park Service and theAlaska National Interest Lands ConservationAct of 1980. Denver, CO: National ParkService, Denver Service Center.

ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM is park planner atDenali National Park and Preserve, workingout of Anchorage, Alaska ([email protected]), and MICHAEL J. TRANEL is chiefof planning at Denali National Park andPreserve, also working in Anchorage([email protected]).

Managing federal lands in Alaska is challengingbecause state residents and visitors often value areas

for different and sometimes competing reasons.

From SYMBOLIC VALUES on page 27

a sense of humility is better than ma-nipulating wilderness with a heavyhand and a mind full of hubris, but itstill defiles wilderness and leaves mewith a heavy heart. IJW

REFERENCESBrown, James K. 1992. A case for management

ignitions in wilderness. Fire ManagementNotes 53–54: 3–8.

Cole, David N. 2000. Paradox of the primeval:Ecological restoration in wilderness. EcologicalRestoration 18(2): 77–86.

———. 2003. Agency policy and the resolu-tion of wilderness stewardship dilemmas. TheGeorge Wright Forum 20(3): 26–33.

Cole, David N., and Peter B. Landres. 1996.

Threats to wilderness ecosystems: Impactsand research needs. Ecological Applications6: 168–84.

Ehrenfeld, David W. 1981. The Arrogance ofHumanism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Graber, David M. 2003. Ecological restorationin wilderness: Natural versus wild in NationalPark Service wilderness. The George WrightForum 20(3): 34–41.

Harvey, Mark W. T. 1994. A symbol of wilderness:Echo Park and the American conservationmovement. Albuquerque: University of NewMexico Press.

Hendee, John C., and Chad P. Dawson. 2002.Wilderness Management: Stewardship andProtection of Resources and Values, 3rd ed.Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.

Kaye, Roger W. 2000. The Arctic National Wild-life Refuge: An exploration of the meanings

embodied in America’s last great wilderness.In Stephen F. McCool, David N. Cole, WilliamT. Borrie, and Jennifer O’Loughlin, comps.,Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Con-ference, Volume 2: Wilderness within the Con-text of Larger Systems. USDA Forest ServiceGen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-P-15-VOL-2: 73–80.

Scott, Douglas W. 2001. “Untrammeled,” “wilder-ness character,” and the challenges of wilder-ness preservation. Wild Earth 11(4): 72–79.

Zahniser, Ed., ed. 1992. Where Wilderness Preser-vation began: Adirondack Writings of HowardZahniser. Utica, NY: North Country Books.

DAVID N. COLE is a research geographerat the Aldo Leopold Wilderness ResearchInstitute, Box 8089, Missoula, MT 59807,USA; e-mail: [email protected].


Out of a statewide total of approximately 365 mil-lion acres (147.7 million ha), the state of Alaskawill soon own more than 100 million acres (40.5

million ha) of land, not counting land beneath navigablewaterbodies and extensive tidal and submerged lands.Alaska is the only state in the union that can be describedas an Owner State; that is, the state retains most state-ownedland and waters for the benefit of all citizens of Alaska.Unlike most states where a large percentage of land withinthe state’s boundaries is privately owned, only 13% of landin Alaska is under private ownership. Native corporations,however, own 44 million acres (17.8 million ha), whichconstitutes most of the private land in Alaska (AnchorageAlaska Public Lands Information Center 2001). As statedin the Alaska Constitution, Article 8, “The legislature shallprovide for the utilization, development, and conservationof all natural resources belonging to the State, includingland and waters, for the maximum benefit of its people.”No other state has comparable language in its constitution.

According to former Alaska governor Walter Hickel(2002), champion of the Owner State concept, a locallyoriented, democratic government can harness the natu-ral resources it owns and the efficiency of the privatesector to provide its citizens opportunity and an envi-able quality of life. The government of Alaska holdsAlaska’s fish, wildlife, waters, and minerals in commonownership for the benefit of the people of Alaska. Alaska’sgovernment and citizens are then tasked with the careof its natural resources in a manner that benefits all Alas-kans. If managed and developed responsibly, Hickelbelieves that all Alaskans will have an opportunity toprosper, and the state can provide government serviceswithout taxing its residents.

Denali National Parkand Preserve

A Federal Conservation System Unit in an Owner State

BY ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM and MICHAEL J. TRANEL

Managing a Federal ConservationSystem UnitManaging a federal CSU in Alaska does not elegantly fitinto the Owner State model, and the relationship betweenthe federal government and the state of Alaska since pas-sage of the Alaska National Interest Lands ConservationAct (ANILCA) in 1980 remains challenging, even whilecommunications have steadily improved over the years.Since statehood in 1959, Alaska has focused on resourcedevelopment, improving the state economy, and preserv-ing its self-reliant, rural way of life. It has, however, beenreluctant to embrace the federal obligation to the Americanpeople to protect the more intrinsic, or nonuse, values oftheir parks and wilderness, especially to the extent they areperceived to thwart the mission of the owner state.

One reason the state is reluctant to protect nonuse val-ues is because it does not currently receive the same levelof economic benefit from resource protection as it does fromresource development. This situation is changing however,as tourism is the only industry in Alaska that has growncontinuously since statehood (Colt 2005). Preservation ofwilderness and its related values is part of the foundationon which the tourism industry will continue to grow.

Federal land managers are often challenged when theyengage the Alaskan public in their planning processes. Theyfind the public is relatively unaware of the legal obligations

STEWARDSHIP

Most federal management actions arebased on some level of involvement

with affected publics.


federal land managers have whenmanaging federal CSUs. It is often dif-ficult to understand that just as thegovernor of Alaska is tasked withmanaging the Alaska commons (state-owned land, waters, fish, and wildlife)for maximum benefit for the peopleof Alaska, federal land managers aretasked with ensuring that a range ofvalues important to the American peopleare accommodated in federally desig-nated CSUs. At the same time, nationalconstituencies often have difficultyunderstanding all of the provisionswithin ANILCA, especially those relatedto traditional activities. This dual chal-lenge requires new understandingsby both Alaskans and federal landmanagers.

Most federal management actionsare based on some level of involvementwith affected publics. Alaskans some-times have a difficult time with thefederal public involvement process fortwo reasons.

1. Alaska residents most affected byrules that govern access to, and useof, federal lands have a diluted rolein the process by which the rulescan be changed. When advocatingfor a particular position on an is-sue, local Alaskans must voice theiropinions in a forum that includesopinions from the entire country,not just from Alaska. Alaskans areaccustomed to having access tomanagers and politicians due tothe state’s small population, butthey may sometimes feel like theirvoice is lost in a public arena thatincludes the entire nation. Thisview can lead to feelings of pow-erlessness and sometimes a distrustfor and unwillingness to work withfederal land managers.

2. Active management (for example,monitoring programs, enforcementof park rules by field personnel) isoften perceived as an intrusion byoutside interests. Because the federal

land management agencies areheadquartered in Washington, DC,federal employees have beenviewed as coming in from outsidethe state to impose inappropriatepolicy on local people. This con-cern persists, even though anincreasing number of managersand park employees are knowl-edgeable members of theirrespective local communities. Attimes, federal land managers haveattempted to make long-termdecisions without a full under-standing of Alaska’s uniquecharacteristics.

Principles to Guide FederalLand ManagementFrom experience in dealing with manyof these issues in backcountry man-agement planning at Denali NationalPark and Preserve, we suggest thesenine principles to guide federal landmanagement in an Owner State.

1. Increase communication with allconstituents to exchange ideasabout the legislated purposes andvalues of the unit. It is imperativethat the public understand thepurposes of the park unit, whichare described in ANILCA and theenabling legislation for the indi-vidual unit. Federal land managersmust clarify for the public theframework within which manage-ment decisions must be made.Planners at Denali National Parkhold regular informational meet-ings in local communities andbegin the discussion by outliningthe purposes of the park and legalresponsibilities for management.In this way, the public gains anunderstanding of what aspects ofmanagement are nonnegotiable sothey can more effectively contributeto the decision-making process,

Figure 1—Federal land managers grapple with appropriate ways to manage motorized and nonmotorized access to nationalparks. Photo courtesy National Park Service.


and managers continue to improvetheir understanding of local valuesand needs.

2. Acknowledge the full range of val-ues in management decisions. It isimportant that land managers ac-knowledge all values that fit withinthe legal framework for which theunit was established (see figure 1).In Denali’s Draft Backcountry Man-agement Plan, the goal is toprovide a range of opportunitiesfor all Americans, with the under-standing that every use can’thappen everywhere. Managementzoning ensures that all appropri-ate values will be protectedsomewhere within the park andpreserve. Managers can provideopportunities for visitors who arevery self-reliant and have a desirefor extended expeditions in ex-tremely remote locations. In otherregions of the park, managers canprovide for a greater intensity andvariety of appropriate recreationalactivities and can provide moreservices and facilities.

3. Improve understanding of incen-tives for Alaskans to participate.Many Alaskans do not see directeconomic incentives in managingparklands to protect intrinsic val-ues. Managing parklands to protectwilderness resource values ofteninvolves self-restraint and sacrificeon the part of individuals. UnlessAlaskans value its protection, theywill be reluctant to make those sac-rifices. Parks contribute to anenviable quality of life for localcommunities. It is difficult to mea-sure the value of clean air, cleanwater, and the good feeling thatmany residents have from livingnext to a place that some visitorsspend their entire lives dreaming

about. It is easier to quantify therevenue generated by the increasedvalue of homes that are locatednear parklands; food, lodging, gas,and retail purchases associatedwith tourism to parklands; ex-panded infrastructure in localcommunities that results frombeing located next to a nationalpark; and increases in jobs that areprovided by the park or park-re-lated tourism. National parksprovide long-term and short-termeconomic benefits to local Alas-kans; land managers must take amore active role in helping localcommunities capitalize on tourismopportunities and plan for long-term growth of their community.

4. Demonstrate support for thepeople and communities most af-fected by the park. Federal landmanagers must recognize that na-tional parks impact localcommunities. Land managers can

look for opportunities to facilitatefunding for local communities toplan for their futures (see figure 2).Denali National Park and Preservehas provided funding and facilita-tion for local communities toundertake comprehensive plan-ning in Talkeetna, Trapper Creek,and the Y Area. These planningefforts empower local residents tomanage traffic, crowding, eco-nomic growth, and seasonalpopulation fluctuations that areassociated with gateway commu-nities. The National Park Servicealso sponsored a Gateway Com-munity Workshop in April 2005 tohelp local leaders make decisionsthat will support sustainable com-munity growth and developmentwhile retaining the communityqualities that made the area desir-able in the first place.

5. Make sure local voices are heard.It is important that Alaskans feel

Figure 2—Regular informational meetings give agencies and constituents an opportunity to exchange ideas about the futureof Denali National Park. Photo courtesy National Park Service.


invested in the planning process.Managers and residents should takeadvantage of the low population ofthe state, which affords residentseasy access to land managers. Lo-cal residents have the opportunityto be more engaged in managementdecisions than in areas with highpopulations. At Denali NationalPark and Preserve, managers holdregular informational workshops inlocal communities, attend meetingsin local communities to stay abreastof community issues that affect thepark and its relationship with thecommunity, respond to all com-ments received, and incorporatelocal ideas into planning effortswherever possible.

6. When necessary, take decisive ac-tion to protect the full range ofvalues. To protect the values forwhich the conservation systemunit was originally established,managers must be prepared to takedecisive action, especially in theface of conflict. Hardin (1968)warns that the values that visitorsseek in the parks are steadily be-ing eroded, and this changethreatens parks as commons, forthey will be of no value to anyone.Managing national parks demandsan approach that errs on the sideof conservation because once a re-source such as wildernesscharacter is damaged, it cannoteasily be rehabilitated to a level

In a study of environmental valuesand ethics, Manning, Valliere, andMinteer (1996) measured support forintrinsic values in addition to severalvalues associated with public use.They concluded that visitors valueparks for many different reasons, andthat intrinsic values are not only ratedas important, but may comprise amajority of total park value.

7. Work closely with state and localgovernments on a regional solution.It is important to maintain goodcommunication with state and lo-cal governments and look atrecreational and development op-portunities for Alaskans in aregional context. Federal managersmust question whether an activityis compatible with the purposes forwhich the unit was established. Aspart of the backcountry planningprocess at Denali National Park andPreserve, the National Park Serviceconsulted regularly with the stateof Alaska. These discussions havebeen fruitful and led to a RevisedDraft Plan that broadens the rangeof alternatives. In addition, the Na-tional Park Service provides partialfunding for a position in the state’sANILCA Coordination office to fa-cilitate state review of park planninginitiatives throughout Alaska.

8. Support the local labor force. Thecritique of the federal governmentas outsiders can be partially alle-viated by hiring more local peoplefor federal positions. A majority ofemployees at Denali National Parkand Preserve are longtime Alaskansand have lived in local Denali com-munities for many years. Thisconnection to community helpsthe National Park Service make

where it holds the same values.Recent experiences in U.S. nationalparks outside Alaska show thatecosystem restoration is extremelyexpensive. Wilderness characterholds symbolic value—even if fishpopulations are restored or astream bank rehabilitated, in theminds of many Americans thecharacter of the area has been per-manently scarred. Some valuescannot be restored.

Managers must realize that someuses are incompatible with park pur-poses and must not be afraid to restrictthat use. Clem Tillion, a perennialspokesperson for commercial fishinginterests and a former state legislator,stated, “If you’re afraid to put pressureon people, you shouldn’t be manag-ing a resource. The living resource ismost important. If you have to inflictpain [on people] to take care of theresource, inflict pain.”

Management of the Old Park areaof Denali (the former Mount McKinleyNational Park, most of which was des-ignated as the Denali Wilderness inANILCA) uses a quota and permit sys-tem, which is generally accepted asreasonable. And, as the National ParkService heard in 2004 during scopingfor the South Denali ImplementationPlan, “Some kind of land managementrestrictions should be implemented tokeep the area’s natural values for thefuture…without some conscious con-trol we will forever lose this.”

Alaska’s tradition as an Owner State, and federalland management in which the final say in decisionmaking comes from Washington, DC, add a levelof complexity that is not the case in National Park

Service units in other parts of the country.

Continued on page 48


During the summer, the sun rises over our homecountry from the faraway northeast, its golden lightilluminating a glorious mosaic of flatlands that

extends from our remote cabin south through Denali Na-tional Park and Preserve to the rugged foothills and soaringmountains of the Alaska Range. Intricate systems of goldand green swamps and azure lakes segue into a broad ex-panse of black spruce, muskeg, and taiga brokenintermittently by lakes, glacial rivers, old burns, and thevegetated ridges of ancient sand dunes.

In midwinter, this wilderness lies in the shadow of therange until late morning, when the sun finally rolls alongthe rim of Denali or Mt. Foraker to make a brief, dilutedappearance. Moose, caribou, wolves, bears, and smallergame move freely through the land, for there are no signifi-cant human-made structures to divert them. Even theboundaries demarcating the park are invisible, figments ofthe human mind except where they follow rivers.

This is where we live. The area wedged between theMcKinley and Foraker Rivers provides the two of us withour vocation, our groceries and supplies, and our emotionaland spiritual well-being.

The Life We Choose“August 6, 1984. Picked raspberries on spit—1 & 1/3 gal. Caughtsalmon—3rd King, 1 dog so far.”

Although entered in Miki’s diary more than 20 years ago,she might have made this same report in 1974 or 2004.Throughout this vast untrammeled wilderness, from HultCreek to Spencer Creek to the Twelve-Mile, we move qui-etly, year-round, searching to fulfill our needs. Unlike thosewho visit a wilderness seeking diversion and rejuvenation,our requirements are more complex and diverse, for we area permanent part of the land, dependent on it for basicsurvival as well as needs of the heart and soul.

The subsistence life flows with the seasons and the har-vest varies yearly, but the goals remain the same: to live in

the wilderness as independently as possible, touching theland lightly while preserving a way of life that has grownincreasingly rare. It’s a life that has fulfilled and sustainedus for decades. Our parents lived it to a lesser extent, andwe completely devoted ourselves to it after graduation fromthe University of Alaska in Fairbanks in 1981.

In addition to harvesting wild provisions, we rangewidely for other resources: cabin logs, moss, and bark; birchand spruce for lumber and firewood; peat for garden soilenrichment, and wildflowers, sand, stones, and willow twigsfor numerous projects. Our water comes from untreatedlocal sources, and much of our electricity is provided bywind and solar systems. Furbearers provide materials forwarm clothing and cash income from sales of raw fur andvalue-added handcrafts; they also furnish meat for humanor sled-dog consumption. Nets produce fish for dog andhuman consumption, garden fertilizer, and trapline bait.The subsistence lifestyle requires ranging and harvestingover extensive areas. Even a few newcomers could greatlyimpact certain resources.

STEWARDSHIP

Customary and TraditionalA Continuing Way of Life at Denali

BY MIKI COLLINS and JULIE COLLINS

Article authors: Miki Collins (left) and Julie Collins (right) in Denali National Park and Preserve.Photo courtesy of Miki and Julie Collins.


“September 12, 1994. Pulled half thepotatoes, some carrots. To P.O. withDaddy. Hauled freight w. pack horses… .9:30 too dark to shoot [cloudy].”

The harvest culminates by earlywinter, when the freezer, meat shed,root cellar, and larder are packed withmoose meat, canned fish, garden veg-etables, and five-gallon buckets of wildberries; stacks of firewood and frozenwhitefish for dog food fill nearby sheds(see figure 1). The gratification and in-dependence gained from providing forone’s self in such a fundamental waygives us a strong sense of identity, self-worth, and pride as well as a powerfulconnection to the wilderness.

We live this way by choice. Somesubsistence users find the life too dif-ficult or isolating; some wish to escapebut cannot; some love the life but mustabandon it because the Alaskan bushgets too expensive. You literally can-not afford to take the time required tolive off the land if you have medicalor education bills to pay.

The Importance ofConservation“December 18, 2000. To WX (traplinetent camp), wolves scratched bait out ofalmost every set & ate 2 marten. p.m.—split wood, tied tent up better, put damperin stove; sewed on baby hat [a fur itemfor sale].”

Although we are not native—ourparents came to Alaska in the 1940s andwe inherited our trapline from a Swedewho arrived in the early 1900s—muchof the Native culture has filtered natu-rally into our life, from skin-sewing to aspiritual respect for the wilderness. Oneof the important indigenous principleswe adhere to is avoiding waste. Fish gutsgo to the dogs, moose viscera and hoovesmake trapline bait, animal skulls can bemarketed, and even tiny fur scraps areutilized for small handcrafts that sellsmartly. The tops of trees cut for cabinlogs can be used for other projects.Composted garden refuse and manureproduces fertilizer.

This conservative approach in-cludes recognizing the stewardship wefeel for the thousand square miles thatwe range across. The wilderness is ourgarden, our supply store, our place ofworship. Although the home cabin isoutside Denali Park, the whole area isour home on a very personal level.This wilderness has provided humansustenance for millennia, but in themodern context human impacts arepotentially so great that the delicateecological dynamics can be easily andpermanently unbalanced. We musttherefore tread more cautiously thanthose before us. In a way, this is easierthan in the past: If a resource may bejeopardized by harvesting it, we canback off and turn to commercialgoods, whereas in the past, ”backingoff” might have been synonymouswith starvation.

If we were to damage this land, wewould be damaging our own way of

life. This knowledge motivates us tokeep our impact as light as possible.In this regard our motives directlyalign with those of the National ParkService. When the Park Service wasmandated to permit customary andtraditional subsistence in the AlaskaNational Interest Lands ConservationAct (ANILCA) additions of Denali Parkin 1980, it allowed us to continue pre-serving an ancient and fundamentalway of life, while ANILCA helped toprotect this landscape from the en-croaching civilization that can destroywilderness and hence a lifestyle.

From our aspect, conservationmeans more than using and recyclingevery scrap of a resource (see figure 2).We select large mature birch trees forfirewood but leave some of the moreancient ones for bird habitat. We takecare not to damage berry bushes toensure future production.

When trapping marten, our maincatch, we run 60 to 80 miles of the 120miles of trail that we maintain, leavingthe rest fallow to ensure vigorous popu-lations of this abundant but vulnerablefurbearer. Carefully recording eachanimal’s sex and age tracks the healthof local populations: a high ratio of oldfemales indicates that we’re impactingthe breeding population and need tomove or pull out to ensure a sustain-able yield. In this inaccessible area,animal populations fluctuate far morein response to environmental pres-sures—weather, predation, starvation,disease—than to human impacts. Aconsistent sustained yield isunachievable in most animals, espe-cially those such as lynx that swingthrough extreme natural cycles.

The subsistence life is highly oppor-tunistic; the time and work investedmust yield a payback or it would notbe worthwhile, resulting in a naturallyconservative approach. If the net isn’tcatching enough fish to be worth

Figure 1—Using the windspeed of the moving boat, Mikiwinnows leaves from her blueberry harvest. Photo courtesy ofMiki and Julie Collins.


checking, we pull it, reducing pressureon the population. If grouse numbersdecline, we don’t invest much timehunting them. When blueberries arescarce, we shift our efforts to cranber-ries, but pursue blueberries seriouslyduring productive years. If the wolfpopulation skyrockets, an increase intrapping effort yields a greater numberof pelts, with the added benefit of re-ducing predation on moose. Thisultimately enriches the wolves, as moremoose become available.

Evolving Relationshipswith the National ParkServiceWhen our subsistence harvest areaswere engulfed by the park expansion,we found ourselves increasingly con-nected to the Park Service and itsemployees. Information and assistanceflows in both directions. The Park Ser-vice clarifies regulations and helps usthrough permitting processes. Theyprovide study and survey results so webetter understand animal movementsand population cycles. The sled dogsfrom their kennel inject fresh bloodinto our aging team, and their air-planes provide glorious overflights enroute to meetings and programs.

Conversely, we have participated instudies ranging from traditional cabinuse to subsistence harvest. We com-ment orally and in writing on ParkService proposals that affect us or theNorthern additions. We have helpedwith wolf studies, provided marten-trapping records, and have donatedbiological specimens ranging frombody tissues to whole animals andprepared skulls.

Perhaps most importantly, we helpeducate park employees, both man-agers and interpreters, explaining theresponsible harvest of wild resources,the importance of our relationshipwith the wilderness, and how we are

cognizant of the consequences whenoutside perceptions of our activities donot reflect reality. People who feel thatevery individual animal life must beprotected at all costs will never sym-pathize with our activities, but thosewho understand that habitat protec-tion and population dynamicsholistically are environmentally moreimportant on a global scale usuallyappreciate our small efforts to workand live in synchrony with our wil-derness environment.

Being intimately and intrinsicallydependent on the land has given ourfamiliarity with it a depth unachievableby seasonal park employees and non-resident scientists who rarely see thebackcountry. When an anthropologistwondered why prehistoric aboriginalschose a particular winter site, we knewthat location provided year-round openwater. When a botanist initiating a cli-mate study marched deep into a birchforest and wondered whether his cho-sen site had been altered by humanactivity, we pointed to a scarred treebeside him whose bark had been har-vested decades ago.

This rapport with the Park Servicehas proved enlightening and mutuallybeneficial. The effort we invest in therelationship has been well worthwhile,especially when confusion or conflictsarise, because trust has been built overdecades of cooperation.

A Changing Place“May 24, 1985. [Paddled canoe] down OldChannel, up Igloo Cr. to cabin [and back]home. 7 moose. Water up 5 ft. in 1 wk.”

Over the 45 years we’ve lived in thiswilderness, some facets of our life havebeen subject to change, both natural andhuman induced. Flexibility, adaptabil-ity, tenacity, and optimism are importantin maintaining our way of life.

Weather often dictates our schedule.Warmer weather, whether due to globalwarming or natural cyclic variations, af-fects us significantly. Since the late 1980s,late freeze-ups have delayed huntingsuccess and impeded trapping. Highlyvariable snow conditions slow our dogteam (see figure 3), affecting fur catchesas much as furbearer populations. Theincreased rate of permafrost melt makestrails rough and has the potential to

Figure 2—Moss makes good insulation on cabin roofs. Miki uses her Icelandic horses to pack moss to an old trapping cabinwhose roof is being repaired. Photo courtesy of Miki and Julie Collins.


completely change local habitats andpopulation dynamics. The garden canbe planted earlier, but fish move less inwarmer water.

Global events impact our small livesto a surprising degree. The worldeconomy dictates fur prices, thus wehave been personally touched by thedisintegration of the Soviet Union, theSeptember 11 crisis, and the rapid ex-pansion of the Asian economy. The valueof our furs varies greatly; over the yearsa prime marten has ranged from under$30 to more than $100 per pelt. Fluc-tuating values combined withunpredictable weather makes our pur-suit of this cash crop speculative at best.

Increasingly, high-altitude air pollu-tion drifting in from distant countriesexacerbates springtime arctic haze thatobliterates the uplifting views we nor-mally enjoy. Only recently have studiesbeen initiated to determine if persistentorganic pollutants from distant areas arecontaminating our wild foods.

On a more local scale, increasingtourism has impacted our lives as well.After a life of solitude it is shocking tosee tourists on an isolated trapline trail.During our rambles when we dip intothe Wilderness Area of Denali Park,the persistent drone of flightseeingtraffic and Park Service aircraft makesus appreciate heavy-weather days thatground the planes.

Wilderness Lifestyleas a Legacy“February 25, 2005. –5/+5° early/late. Randogs to GCC, snsh [snowshoed] about 4miles HTT (trapline trails) pulling traps. 2marten GC, poor sign; 7 on HTT, good sign.Bear & MiteyMan [dogs] loose up HTT toteach them the trail. Snsh 5 _ hours. Dogsfast—45 GCC-SCC, Clarence in single lead(1st time) but 3 loose leaders [set the pace].7:50 total. Beautiful sunny day.”

We hope this lifestyle perseveres andpeople in congested localities value thatsome wilderness areas sustain smallnumbers of people who immerse them-selves in natural cycles. Although wefear that writing about the life mightencourage an influx of imitators thatoverwhelms the delicate ecology, we dowant to preserve local traditionsthrough our writing. We wish to share

the knowledge that a lifetime in thewilderness brings: Banking a cabin withsnow insulates it against -50° weather;the heat of decomposition can rot icein swamps; shaking a small tree mightintimidate a bear when noisemakers donot; wolves travel a frozen stream pointto point, otters hug the bank, lynx crossperpendicularly.

Then, too, we wish to share some-thing of the life and the wildernessitself, the daily sense of enjoyment andaccomplishment. A day’s work in thebush can yield three gallons of berries,a repaired sod roof, or a three-weeksupply of firewood.

Our lifestyle provides an intimateknowledge of many hundreds of squaremiles. On a bend of a river where thescent of silt mingles with the rich boggysmell of the swamp, we once lured a bullmoose across a hip-deep marsh to theriverbank near our boat where we har-vested him. Thirty miles distant, ShellCreek emerges from the frozen muskeg,flowing year-round with bright springwater, harboring water ouzels through-out the winter. In another location anice lens created giant permafrost banks,great scalloped cliffs that slowly melt andslump into the river. Over one lake, awolf trailed the dog sled. On a stream20 miles south, a winter grizzly chargedthe dog team. Cranberries produce pro-lifically in one spot during hot years, andanother spot in wet years.

It is important to us that distantpeople understand this subsistenceway of life and appreciate the value ofits protection. IJW

MIKI and JULIE COLLINS, twin sisters,studied biology and journalism beforegraduating from the University of Alaska–Fairbanks to continue life at their bushhome. They have authored several booksand numerous articles depicting thesubsistence way of life. They can bereached by U.S. mail at Lake Minchumina,Alaska 99757, USA.

The area wedged between the McKinley andForaker Rivers provides the two of us with ourvocation, our groceries and supplies, and our

emotional and spiritual well-being.

Figure 3—Although travel sometimes occurs on skis, onsnowshoes, and on a snowmachine, the dog team is the primaryform of transportation on the trapline. Photo courtesy of Mikiand Julie Collins.


Gudgel-Holmes (1999), summarizes early Native occ-upation of the Denali area, stating that for morethan 12,000 years the resources of what is now

Denali National Park and Preserve have supported humanoccupation (see figure 1). The earliest evidence of humanoccupation is found in the surviving stone tools that wereused to kill large mammals on the steppe tundra. Morecomplex technologies appearing in the archaeological recordabout 6,000 years ago heralded the advance of the borealforest and post–ice age animal populations. The appear-ance of forest, however, required adaptation. Peopledeveloped new ways of living based on large game hunt-ing, but with fewer species than before. Survival was thereward for making appropriate responses to environmen-tal or resource fluctuations. Distinctive archaeologicalartifacts suggest that the ancestors of current interior Alas-kan Native people were present in the Denali Park regionat least 1,000 years ago. The cultures were never static, butalways in the process of changing, just as they are today.

Athabaskan CultureCollins (1998) suggests that the mountainous areas of DenaliNational Park and Preserve were often used by more thanone band of Athabaskans. The Athabaskan people adaptedto this country by organizing themselves into small bandsof 25 to 100 people who maintained kinship ties with sur-rounding bands. Each band had the exclusive use of anarea that often stretched along major rivers to the distantmountains. In order to survive, they had to have an exten-sive knowledge of large areas of land, knowledge of theseasonal presence of fish and wildlife, and the skills to makethe necessary tools to harvest them.

Athabaskan people moved frequently to locate and har-vest seasonally available resources as a matter of survival.Over time, people identified dependable food sources and

their locations in the upper Kuskokwim and upperKantishna River areas and they returned to those placesrepeatedly. The Alaska Range played a key role in the yearlycycle. The mountainous regions were inhabited by Dallsheep, and the foothills were occupied by caribou andgrizzly bears in the summer and fall, and more recentlyhave become important habitat for moose. There were otheradvantages to hunting in the mountains of what is nowDenali National Park and Preserve. The firm ground of the

STEWARDSHIP

Native People andWilderness Values at Denali

BY HOLLIS TWITCHELL

Athabaskan understanding of thewilderness and its fellow inhabitants

often runs counter to Western ways ofthinking about the world.

mountains and foothills made traveling cross-country lesschallenging than in the lowlands and boreal forested areaswhere numerous swamps and bogs drain into small streamsthat flow into creeks and major rivers. The rivers are themain highways for travel both in summer and winter.

A yearly cycle for these people might begin with relocat-ing to a fishing site in the late spring to take advantage ofthe fish runs that began moving upriver at breakup (Collins2004). Chinook (king salmon) was one of the prime fishsought because of its large size and nutritional value. Theoriginal method for catching these fish was by construct-ing a fence and weir in a shallow side stream that was utilizedfor spawning. Nets were made of babiche or willow barkand required substantial maintenance. If left in the waterfor very long they would rot and fall apart, so they had tobe taken out and dried frequently.


After a good supply of fish was cut,dried, and stored for the winter, themen, women without small children,and children old enough for the walkheaded for the park area to hunt. Af-ter upstream travel by canoe wasconstrained, each person would pro-ceed with just what they could carryin a pack, walking the river bars of thethen-braided stream toward themountains. There they would huntand dry meat until they had enoughhides to make a skin boat and enoughmeat to fill it up, then rejoin those whohad remained in other campsdownriver. After freeze-up the youngmen would be sent back out to thefoothills to hunt for meat for the en-tire village (Collins 2004).

At times there were periods of star-vation in the late winter whenresources were depleted. Some foodwas obtained by snaring rabbitsaround the camp and hunting grouseand ptarmigan. In spring, when thefish and other meat supplies ran low,

beaver and muskrat provided somefood as well as fur. By midspring, therivers would begin to thaw and ducksand geese returned, fat from a winterof feeding in the south. TheAthabaskan people knew the lands in-timately. Their total dependence on theland and its resources gave them apowerful bond to it that was bothphysical and spiritual. Traditionally,they are taught respect for all livingthings, taking only what is needed andsharing with family and friends.

Athabaskan cultures of Denali un-derwent a period of immense changeafter Western contact, with the arrivalof explorers; missionaries; traders andtrade goods such as firearms; trappersand the fur industry; prospectors andgold rush boomtowns; new perma-nent settlements and mandatoryattendance at schools; development ofthe Alaska railroad; establishment ofMt. McKinley National Park; and ex-periencing firsthand the ravages ofepidemic disease in their homeland.

Haynes, Andersen, and Simeone(2001) describe the Native culturalchanges that have taken place sinceWestern contact:

Amazingly, survivors [Nativepeoples] of this era coped withthese challenges by concentrat-ing at or near settlement loca-tions, integrating into themarket economy by participat-ing in wage employment op-portunities, and utilizingtechnological innovations suchas the fishwheel and outboardmotors to maintain resourceharvesting activities and tradi-tional ties to the land. Whatemerged from these decades ofremarkable change is the vil-lage-based framework of con-temporary Athabaskan cultureand society in Interior Alaskais still present today.

Athabaskan Viewson NatureChanging economic and social oppor-tunities in some communities haveinfluenced the level of use and depen-dence on subsistence resources. Still,for many Native residents these natu-ral resources ensure more thansurvival, they sustain a traditional wayof life. Athabaskan understanding ofthe wilderness and its fellow inhabit-ants often runs counter to Westernways of thinking about the world. Fa-ther Oleska (2002) gives us aninteresting Native cultural perspectiveregarding wilderness. He writes:

Most of us learned in gradeschool about the hunting tech-niques and prowess of NativeAmericans. We were told thatIndians could move silently andstealthily through the forest, andI’m sure they assumed that wasnecessary for them to succeed insurprising and overpoweringtheir prey. Noisy hunters wouldscare all the game away.

Figure 1—More than 10,000 years ago people followed caribou trails through what is now Denali National Park andPreserve. Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute photo.


But Father Oleska (2002) quicklylearned in rural Alaska that this is notwhy traditional tribal peoples tried tomove silently into the wilderness.

Traditional hunters believe thatthe animals are smart. They seethings humans can’t see. Theyhear things humans can’t hear.They smell things humans can’tsmell. They therefore knowthings humans don’t know.And besides this, they are incahoots. They understand oneanother’s languages, so that ifthe moose with his huge noseand ears did not somehow de-tect the presence of a humanpredator, the sparrows or squir-rels warned him. Nowadays,hunters make no pretense ofsneaking up on animals. Theydrive four-wheelers andsnowmachines. In summertheir outboard motors can beheard miles away. Only deafanimals could be surprisedwhen encountering a hunter inthis century. But in the tradi-tional perspective, deceivingthem was never an option.

According to Father Oleska, NativeAmerican hunters enter the wildernesssilently not because they are trying totrick their prey but because they areaware that they are entering their home.The forest and tundra are their birth-place, and humans come only as closelywatched guests—who all too often mis-behave. Ungrateful, wasteful humanscannot succeed in locating or harvest-ing game. The animals will withholdthemselves from such disrespectfulcreatures. And hunters believed thatwithout the cooperation, the self-offer-ing and sacrifice of the animals, theyhad no chance of success.

Father Oleska also describes theEuropean view of animals as inferiorlife-forms, of lesser sensitivity and in-telligence than humans. To be turnedinto an animal is often described as a

curse from which the victim can es-cape only with the magic of true love.But in Native American stories, beingable to change into an animal is oftenviewed as a positive transformation.To become an animal is a promotion.For Europeans, conquering the wilder-ness and putting it to human use is aGod-given right, but for traditionaltribal peoples, trying to subdue or con-trol the earth constitutes the height ofarrogance. The appropriate human re-lationship to the ecosystem, in theirview, is not one of dominance but ofcooperation and mutual respect.

So what about roads into the Alas-kan wilderness? Oleska (2002) relates,

To Europeans, a road is a socialand economic path way estab-lished by humans for their con-venience, prosperity andpleasure. They have every rightto carve a road anytime, any-where, as their needs and de-sires dictate. But for Nativepeoples, a road is a threat to theecosystem that has nourishedand sustained them for millen-nia. A road brings humans intoan area they otherwise wouldnot have had access to, andtherefore noise, disruption and,potentially, the destruction ofthe plant and animal species. Aroad scatters the game, drivesanimals from their naturalhome, and destroys their habi-tat. And if the animals leave,those who depend on their self-offering cannot survive thereany longer either.

Oleska concludes:

To city residents, roads may bea great blessing, the means bywhich you are linked to the restof the world and to the frontierup to which the roads extend.But, if you live in a village, theidea of connecting your com-munity to a city frightens andtorments you. A road could

mean the end of your cultureand possibly your life. Not onlyoutside culture, but many of itsleast desirable products—spe-cifically cheaper alcohol and il-licit drugs—will flow into yourtown like poison into bloodalong that highway.

National Park Service andSubsistence UseWith the passage of the Alaska NationalInterest Lands Conservation Act(ANILCA) in 1980, the Americanpeople made a promise that is impera-tive to keep: to preserve and protectsome of our nation’s most splendidnatural ecosystems and treasured land-scapes while providing the opportunityfor those engaged in a traditional sub-sistence way of life to continue to doso. ANILCA also directed the establish-ment of Subsistence ResourceCommissions for most national parksand monuments in Alaska to providemeaningful participation and involve-ment of local subsistence users inplanning and management decisions af-fecting subsistence.

Figure 2—The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act(ANILCA) created new additions to the park and designated 2million acres (0.8 million ha) of wilderness.


Denali’s National Park SubsistenceResource Commission, made up ofboth Native and non-Native subsis-tence users, have addressed theirconcerns about new roads or railroadsin Denali National Park and Preserve(see figure 2) and have stated their con-cerns in a letter to the secretary of theinterior of the United States. The com-mission met on February 21, 2003, andonce again discussed North Access pro-posals to build either a railroad or a roadfrom the George Parks Highway nearHealy to Kantishna within Denali Na-tional Park. The commission hasexpressed strong opposition to any newroads within Denali National Park andPreserve through a formal Hunting Planrecommendation passed in 1986. Thecommission reviewed North Access is-sues in 1993 and 1995 and passedmotions to oppose any new accessroads or railroads through Denali Na-tional Park.

The commission is concerned thatdeveloping new access routes and roadsinto areas traditionally used for subsis-tence purposes would alter the characterof traditional use patterns and couldnegatively impact important subsistenceresources. Specifically, the commissionmembers are concerned about moose,caribou, furbearers, and chum salmonpopulations and habitats in the NorthAccess area. Increased access could openareas, presently used by local subsistence

users, to resource impacts or vandalism,which could result in hardship to sub-sistence users.

The commission is also concernedabout impacts to Denali’s natural land-scapes. Even if such an access route wereopen only seasonally, it would bring suchan increase in the human populationthat the object of the visit—to see wild-life and experience wild landscapes forwhich the park was established—wouldbe diminished. Development of a NorthAccess route would be extremely expen-sive, not only to construct, but tomaintain, and would require additionalmanagement responsibilities on thepart of the National Park Service. Mem-bers of the commission believe that anew road is not necessary and wouldbe a permanent, irreversible feature ofthe landscape, with a potential to im-pact customary and traditionalsubsistence uses.

Collins (1998, 2004) sums up theNative land use ethic. TheAthabaskans were able to live here forthousands of years with minimal im-pact on their environment. Both theirtools and the items they made withthem were from local materials, andthe harvest was very selective. In spiteof use by traditional Athabaskans forthe last few thousand years, the natu-ral landscapes and ecosystems of thepark have remained much the same,showing little trace of their presence.

One of the aspects of Denali NationalPark and Preserve that should be re-membered and honored by those whocurrently use and appreciate the parkis that it is part of the heritage of theInterior Athabaskan people. Their re-cent relatives and their ancestors usedthese lands for hundreds, if not thou-sands, of years but left a very lightfootprint. The park retains much of itsoriginal wilderness character, not be-cause it has been protected from humanuse, but because the people who usedit for thousands of years did not attemptto change its basic nature. IJW

REFERENCESCollins, R. 1998. The Athabaskan legacy. Denali

Alpenglow XX (summer): 18.Collins, R. L. 2004. Dichinanek’ Hwt’ana: A His-

tory of the People of the Upper Kuskokwimwho live in Nikolai and Telida. DenaliNational Park and Preserve, National ParkService, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Gudgel-Holmes, D. 1999. Traditional Use ofCabins and Other Shelters in the North.Additions to Denali National Park and Pre-serve: Ethno-Historical Context and Back-ground, Ownership and Transfer Norms,and the Choice of Cabins or Tents as WinterTrapline Shelters. Denali National Park andPreserve, National Park Service, U.S. De-partment of the Interior.

Haynes, T. L., D. B. Andersen, and W.E.Simeone. 2001. Denali National Park andPreserve: Ethnographic Overview andAssessment. Denali National Park andPreserve, National Park Service, U.S.Department of the Interior.

Oleska, M., Father. 2002. A new road throughthe wilderness can be dangerous thing. An-chorage Daily News, November 17, 2002.

HOLLIS TWITCHELL of Denali National Parkand Preserve serves as coordinator for thepark’s Subsistence Resource Commission byproviding technical and administrativesupport. He is a good source of informa-tion about subsistence hunting andtrapping in the park and preserve. E-mail:[email protected].

In spite of use by traditional Athabaskans for the lastfew thousand years, the natural landscapes andecosystems of the park have remained much the

same, showing little trace of their presence.


IntroductionThe symbolic values of wilderness have been largely over-looked, compared with the ecological and experientialvalues of wilderness. The prominence of the word untram-meled as a descriptor of the wilderness ideal suggests thatthe primary general symbolic value of wilderness is as asymbol of a human–environment relationship character-ized by restraint and humility. This value is compromisedwhen wilderness is manipulated for human purposes. Thisarticle notes several ways in which the symbolic values ofwilderness are mischaracterized and trivialized as being amatter of philosophy (as opposed to science), as beingmerely aesthetic, and as being only a temporary concern.Symbolic values need to be legitimized and better articu-lated so their importance can be fairly considered inattempts to prioritize management and to resolve discordbetween conflicting wilderness values.

Wilderness has many different values. Some of the values ofwilderness are readily apparent and easy to describe; others arenot. Some values were prominent reasons for creating the Na-tional Wilderness Preservation System in the United States (andare reflected in the language of the Wilderness Act); other val-ues (e.g., economic values and biodiversity values) are ancillarybenefits of wilderness designation. The most commonly recog-nized values that are clearly articulated in the Wilderness Actare the ecological and experiential values of wilderness. Eco-logical values derive from the preservation of natural conditionsand lack of interference with the free play of natural processes.The Wilderness Act states that wilderness is “land retaining itsprimeval character and influence” and is “protected and man-aged so as to preserve its natural conditions.” To maximize theecological values of wilderness, anthropogenic influences on wil-derness ecosystems must be minimized. To the extent possible,natural fires should not be suppressed, invasive species shouldbe eliminated, pollutants should be kept from the wilderness,and the impacts of allowed wilderness uses, such as recreation

and grazing, should be keptto a minimum (Cole andLandres 1996).

The experiential values ofwilderness stem from theprovision that wilderness“shall be administered for theuse and enjoyment of theAmerican people,” subject tothe constraint that theselands remain “unimpairedfor future use and enjoymentas wilderness” (The Wilder-ness ACT, P.L. 88-577)Wilderness experiences aremost commonly conceivedas being recreational, but formany the experience is bet-ter described by other terms,including spiritual, educa-tional, and transcendental.Few words in the act are devoted to the nature of wildernessexperiences, and those few words are not well defined. Thetype of recreation that should be available in wilderness is tobe “primitive and unconfined.” This suggests a minimum ofdevelopment to make access and recreational use easy andconvenient. It also suggests that, to the extent possible, regu-lations and restrictions on behavior should be kept to aminimum (Hendee and Dawson 2002). The only descriptorof experience contained in the act is the word solitude, and theact merely says that wilderness is an area that “has outstand-ing opportunities for solitude.”

Symbolic ValuesMost management attention has been devoted to protect-ing the ecological and experiential values of wilderness.

STEWARDSHIP

Symbolic ValuesThe Overlooked Values That Make Wilderness Unique

BY DAVID N. COLE

Figure 1—Backpacking in the Buckskin Gulch of theParia Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness managedby the Bureau of Land Management in Arizona andUtah. Photo by Peter Druschke.


Much less attention has been devotedto protection of the less commonlyarticulated symbolic values of wilder-ness. A symbol is something that hasmeaning and value far beyond what isphysical and tangible. The Statue ofLiberty, for example, is a symbol offreedom in the United States. Its sym-bolic value—as an expression offreedom—greatly exceeds the value ofthe metal and concrete from which itis constructed. Through time andacross cultures, societies have often setlands aside for symbolic purposes. Thedesignation of wilderness in theUnited States follows in this tradition(Harvey 1994). Such places embody(are symbolic of) significant intangiblevalues. Among their other qualities,symbols allow humans to connectwith times and places they may neverbe able to physically experience.

My intent in this article is not toprovide a definitive treatment of whatthe symbolic values of wilderness are.My less ambitious goal is to argue forthe importance of better understand-ing and articulating these values andfor giving them more consideration

than they currently receive. To narrowthe scope of discussion further, I dif-ferentiate between the symbolic valuesof wilderness in general and the sym-bolic values of individual wildernesses.Each individual wilderness has variedidiosyncratic meanings to differentgroups and individuals. Symbolic val-ues vary among cultural and religiousgroups, as well as among individuals.For example, wilderness lands in thesouthwestern United States have sym-bolic meaning for aboriginalpopulations as well as for “New Age”groups. Kaye (2000) describes a num-ber of symbolic meanings that variouspeople ascribe to the Arctic NationalWildlife Refuge. My interest in thisarticle is with the symbolic values andmeanings that can be generally ascribedto all wilderness lands.

Much of this general symbolic valuestems from the idealized definition ofwilderness in the Wilderness Act as“an area where the earth and its com-munity of life are untrammeled byman.” Untrammeled is among the mostimportant and the most misunder-stood words in the Wilderness Act.

“Too often, this word has been mis-read as untrampled, or misinterpretedas some synonymous variation ofuntrampled, with the erroneousconnotation that it describesthe...ecological condition of the land”(Scott 2001, p. 74). When drafting thelanguage of the Wilderness Act,Howard Zahniser purposely rejectedthe word undisturbed, choosing theword untrammeled instead. “Synony-mous with unconfined, unfettered andunrestrained,” untrammeled suggests“freedom from human control ratherthan lack of human influence” (Cole2000, p. 78). Understood in this way,keeping wilderness “untrammeled’’ isseen to be a very different notion fromkeeping wilderness “natural.” There issome overlap. But wilderness as un-trammeled is about means more thanends—about how humans interactwith wilderness ecosystems more thanthe effect of that interaction. That iswhy the extent to which wilderness isuntrammeled has more to do with thesymbolic value of wilderness than ei-ther the ecological or experientialvalues of wilderness.

By choosing the word untrammeledas the primary descriptor of ideal wil-derness, Zahniser makes it clear that,above all else, wilderness designationis a symbol of human restraint andhumility. Wilderness lands are the onlylands where humans refrain from say-ing that they know best. To maintainthe symbolic value of wilderness asuntrammeled, wilderness should notbe intentionally manipulated for hu-man purposes. Manipulation of landsfor human economic gain is ubiqui-tous, and wilderness is commonlyrecognized as a contrast to that. Butthe notion of untrammeled goes be-yond this difference. Manipulation forany human purpose—even to mimica natural fire regime or to compensatefor the effects of acid precipitation—

Figure 2—The Arregetch Peaks in the Gates of the Arctic Wilderness managed by the National Park Service in Alaska. Photoby George Wuerthner.


trammels wilderness and compro-mises its symbolic value. Thearrogance of science, the belief that weknow enough to correct problems cre-ated by earlier managers, or tocompensate for environmental im-pacts, is often considered to be ahallmark of modern society (Ehrenfeld1981). Wilderness can only be a con-trast to the arrogance of modernsociety if we refrain from manipulat-ing wilderness—even to enhance itsecological or experiential values.

Symbolic ValuesAre IgnoredThe symbolic value of wilderness asuntrammeled increasingly conflictswith the ecological value of wildernessas natural. This conflict is emergingas perhaps the primary dilemma ofwilderness management (Cole 2000,2003). Inadequate appreciation of theimportance of symbolic values and thedifficulty of articulating them makesit difficult to give this conflict the de-liberative attention that it deserves.Only by fairly articulating the valuesin conflict and weighing the costs ofcompromise for all legitimate wilder-ness values can we move towardmeaningful resolution of this dilemma.Let’s look at an example.

Wilderness fire managers and sci-entists often promote intentionallyigniting fires in order to bring morefire back into the wilderness landscape(Brown 1992; Graber 2003). Thiswould increase the ecological value ofwilderness (assuming natural condi-tions have been compromised by firesuppression), but it would decreasethe symbolic value of wilderness. Ad-mittedly, fire suppression interfereswith natural processes, and the resultcan be considered a trammeling of thewilderness. However, the purpose ofsuppression usually has more to dowith reducing fire risk outside of wil-

misunderstand me here. I am not ar-guing that igniting fires isinappropriate. What I am arguing isthat such an action should only betaken following a fair accounting ofwhat would be gained and what wouldbe lost.

It is not uncommon, when talkingabout this dilemma, to hear people saythat igniting fires provides substantialecological benefits, but that it conflictswith “wilderness philosophy.” Thisposition tends to portray the choiceas being between science and philoso-phy. It detracts attention from whatwould be lost with a program of man-agement ignitions—the symbolicvalues of untrammeled and untamedwilderness. The choice before wilder-ness managers is not a choice betweenscience and philosophy. The choice isbetween two different sets of values,both of which relate to somewhat con-flicting views of what wildernessshould be and the appropriate rela-tionship between humans and

intentional manipulation can be tem-porary; it “need not representpermanent loss” of wilderness charac-ter (Graber 2003, p. 39). Continuingwith the fire example, this argumentholds that fires can be intentionally lituntil the system gets back to a naturalstate, after which natural fire can takeover again—and nothing is perma-nently lost. This argument is a goodexample of failing to appreciate thesymbolic values at play and merelyfocusing on the more tangible ecologi-cal values that many ecologistspersonally hold most dear. This argu-ment is similar to suggesting that lossof virginity is not permanent becausethe condition of being pregnant is onlytemporary. Much as the condition ofnot being pregnant is not equivalentto the symbol of virginity, the condi-tion of not currently being in an alteredstate is not equivalent to the symbolof untrammeled wilderness.

I have also heard intangible symbolicvalues referred to as being “merely” aes-

Efforts to protect ecological values are compromisingthe symbolic value of untrammeled wilderness

and vice versa.

derness than with attempting to ma-nipulate conditions within wildernesstoward a desired state. The purposeof igniting fires in wilderness, in con-trast, is usually to intentionally moldwilderness conditions to be more inline with the way humans think wil-derness ought to be. This represents amuch more severe degree of trammel-ing, taming, and engineering thewilderness than fire suppression—ac-tions that are clearly opposed to thenotions of humility and restraint fromhuman control. It may be the appro-priate action to take. Please don’t

wilderness. Whichever course of ac-tion is taken—allowing managementignitions or not—something will belost. Similar dilemmas abound in wil-derness, with ecologists promoting theaddition of lime to streams to raise pHthat has been lowered by acid deposi-tion, and promoting the breeding andplanting of rust-resistant whitebarkpine to replace populations decimatedby the alien pathogen, white pine blis-ter rust.

Another unfortunate assertion thatsome have made about this dilemmais that trammeling wilderness from


thetic or experiential in nature. Wilder-ness wildlife biologists recognize thatit is controversial to place radio collarson wolves in order to obtain informa-tion that will enhance the restorationof natural wolf populations. Some ofthem ascribe the source of controversyto people not liking to see collars onthe wolves—suggesting there wouldnot be a problem if the collars wereinvisible. Again, there is a widespreadlack of appreciation that the more se-rious problem may be the loss ofsymbolic value that comes when awilderness’s wolves have been cap-tured, fitted with tracking devices, andremotely observed. Wolves that havebeen captured and handled inevitablylose some of their wildness. Wolvesthat can be tracked—so we knowwhere they are and what they are do-ing—lose some of their mystery. It isloss of wildness and mystery—sym-bols of untrammeled wilderness—thatmust be weighed against the benefitsof enhanced ecological understandingand the restoration of natural wolfpopulations.

ample, some managers have proposedthat fires suppressed in wilderness bereignited in the same places, duringconditions when the fires could be al-lowed to burn. Choosing to ignite afire where it was suppressed by hu-mans, rather than where it would mostcompensate for fire suppression ef-fects, suggests that the symbolic valueof naturalness is given precedence overbroad ecological values.

Symbolic Values MakeWilderness UniqueLack of appreciation of the symbolicvalues of wilderness is particularly trou-bling because they are so central to thewilderness idea. The ecological andexperiential values that can be foundon wilderness lands—while highly sig-nificant—can also be found on landsoutside wilderness. Many large roadlessareas, in particular, also have largelynatural ecosystems and provide oppor-tunities for wilderness-like experiences.What is most unique about wildernessare the symbolic values, particularlywilderness as untrammeled—lack ofintentional manipulation, humility, andrestraint. Read the writings of HowardZahniser and you will find that he wroterelatively little about the natural eco-systems of wilderness and therecreational opportunities they provide.These were clearly important values ofwilderness, but not the ones Zahniserwent to the most trouble articulating.In 1955, in “The Need for WildernessAreas,” Howard Zahniser (in Zahniser1992) wrote that “the distinctive minis-tration of wilderness [emphasis his]” is“to know a profound humility, to rec-ognize one’s littleness, to sensedependence and interdependence.”

The symbolic values of wildernessare the most radical elements of thewilderness idea. They are the valuesthat contrast most with modern soci-ety—with its faith in scientific

Wilderness is symbolic of muchmore than uncontrolled and self-willed places. Naturalness is anothersymbolic value of wilderness. Al-though this symbol is much less inconflict with other values, such as theecological values of wilderness, con-cern for symbolic naturalness caninfluence wilderness management de-cisions. For example, given a goal ofreducing vegetation density and fuelsthat have built up from decades of firesuppression, some wilderness advo-cates are comfortable with using sawsand rakes to cut trees and remove fu-els; others are not. This choice seemsto turn largely on the importance ofnaturalness as a symbolic value. Sup-porters of saws and rakes assert thatthe end of eliminating the effects offire suppression in wilderness is mostimportant and that saws and rakes arethe most effective way to do that. Ad-herents of the opposing position arewilling to compromise this end tosome degree for the symbolism of let-ting nature find its own way to reducevegetation and fuels. In another ex-

Figure 3—Salmon Glacier in the Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness managed by the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska.Photo by Lynn Kolund.


knowledge and reliance on technologi-cal solutions to problems. This can beclearly seen in the difficulty that manywilderness ecologists have in graspingthe importance of symbolic values incontrast to the ecological values theyhold most dear. It can also be seen inthe difficulty that wilderness accessgroups have in grasping the importanceof these values in contrast to the expe-riential values that they hold most dear.

ConclusionsOf the diverse values of wilderness,symbolic values are among the mostoverlooked and misunderstood. Somesymbols are unique to each individualwilderness, whereas others are gener-ally shared across wilderness areas.The most important general symbolicvalues reflect a unique human relation-ship with the natural world. They stemfrom the notion of wilderness as un-trammeled—as places where humansexercise humility and refrain frommolding the land into their image ofwhat they think it should be. Althoughthey are less tangible and more diffi-cult to describe than ecological andexperiential values, symbolic valuesare what make wilderness mostunique. Given this, it is ironic thatsymbolic values are often trivialized asbeing temporary or of merely aestheticor philosophical (as opposed to sci-entific) interest.

Inadequate understanding of andattention to symbolic values is prob-lematic because society needs todialogue and deliberate about the rela-tive importance of different wildernessvalues. Protection of wilderness de-mands resources, and the resourcescurrently available for protection areinadequate. Consequently, we mustfocus available resources on protect-ing those values that are most dear.When debating management prioritiesit is not uncommon to hear the senti-

ment, “Why do we focus wildernessmanagement on recreation impacts,mere scabs on the land, when weshould focus resources on more sig-nificant threats to ecosystem health?”This view makes complete sense if weall agree that the ecological values ofwilderness are more important thanthe experiential or symbolic values ofwilderness. But are they? And who getsto decide?

More critically, different wildernessvalues increasingly conflict with eachother. In particular, efforts to protectecological values are compromisingthe symbolic value of untrammeledwilderness and vice versa. Somepeople don’t want to recognize thisconflict—perhaps because they fearthe consequences of conflict within thecommunity of wilderness advocates,but often because we tend to be blindto values other than our own. How-ever, the wisdom of decisions abouthow and when to compromise differ-ent values (e.g., decisions about theappropriateness of ecological restora-tion) will depend on a comprehensive

experiential values of wilderness. Butsuch a decision should turn on therelative importance of different valuesand not on mischaracterizations ofsome values as being less scientific ormore temporary than others.

Let me close with a personal note,so my intent in writing this article isnot misunderstood. My hope is not toconvince anyone that the wildernessvalues I personally hold most dear arethe most important values of wilder-ness. Rather my hope is that this piecewill help people pause to think abouttheir own values and how they maydiffer from the values of others whoare concerned about wilderness andits future. I believe we will make wiserdecisions about wilderness if we rec-ognize and legitimize all wildernessvalues (including the hard-to-articu-late symbolic values) beforeattempting to identify a course of ac-tion that minimizes costs to the mostimportant of those values. Amongother things, I am a trained ecologistwith a profound love of natural envi-ronments. The ecological values of

The symbolic values of wilderness have been largelyoverlooked, compared with the ecological and

experiential values of wilderness.

accounting of the costs and benefitsof each course of action (or inaction)to all wilderness values. This account-ing should inform a deliberativeprocess in which the symbolic valuesof wilderness are given as much legiti-macy as the more commonlyrecognized ecological and experientialvalues of wilderness. Ultimately, soci-ety may decide that it is better tocompromise the symbolic values ofwilderness than the ecological and

wilderness are extremely important tome, causing me to believe that activemanipulation of wilderness ecosys-tems will often be necessary to offsetserious human insults to those sys-tems. However, I also care about thesymbolic values that will be lost indoing so and recognize that these costsare not trivial. Manipulating wilder-ness with the minimum tool and with



I first heard of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the mid-1960s as a graduate student at the University of Min-nesota. My major professor, Larry Merriam, had just com-

pleted his dissertation research concerning the costs and benefitsof managing the Bob Marshall Wilderness—one of the first so-cial science studies of wilderness stewardship in the country.Nearly 20 years later, I began my direct association with the“Bob”—the complex including the Bob Marshall, Great Bear,and Scapegoat wildernesses juxtaposed into one massive roadlessarea encompassing more than 1.5 million acres (600,000 ha) ofstunning rivers, forests, mountains, and valleys.

This association came on two fronts beginning in the early1980s. First, Rocky Mountain Research Station wilderness sci-entist Bob Lucas and I collaborated on replicating his 1970study of visitor use patterns, attitudes, and motivations in theyear 1982. Second, the extant wilderness staff officer for theFlathead National Forest, Jerry Stokes, asked me to join himin designing and facilitating a new planning process for man-agement of the wilderness complex. This new planning processwould combine the pioneering Limits of Acceptable Change(LAC) planning system being designed by my colleagues

George Stankey, David Cole, Bob Lucas, Margaret Peterson,and Sid Frissell, with the notion of transactive planning, atheoretically radical approach (for the times) to planning putforth by urban planner John Friedmann. The combination ofthe research on visitors (in both the social domain and thebiophysical domain—led by David Cole), the use of transactiveplanning (which had translated itself in our application to a“task force” made up of citizens, managers and scientists), andLAC ultimately led to the development of a new recreationmanagement direction for the complex.

This was a large and continuing collaborative effort involv-ing wilderness managers, members of the public representing avariety of interests—backpackers, outfitters, backcountry horsepeople, pilots, activists—and scientists. This group met two orthree times a year for about five years, applying research, sug-gesting solutions, collaborating and negotiating on management,suggesting monitoring protocols, and so on. It still meets once ayear to discuss management issues, review research, and pro-vide feedback on proposed management actions.

The plan was innovative in a number of ways, includingits broad citizen involvement (which continues today and

Social Science Research andPlanning in the Bob Marshall

Wilderness ComplexBY STEPHEN F. McCOOL

SCIENCE and RESEARCH

Steve McCool in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.


presaged the current interest in collabo-rative planning), annual meetings withthe public, scientist and manager par-ticipation, use of indicators andstandards, a defined monitoring proto-col, and its call for decadal visitorexperience monitoring. Through the fi-nancial support of the National ForestSystem, the Aldo Leopold WildernessResearch Institute (ALWRI) and TheUniversity of Montana, we have beenable to conduct this monitoring to thepoint where we now have a better un-derstanding of changes and constants inwilderness visitor characteristics, moti-vations, attitudes, and behaviors. Thisinformation has helped contemporarymanagers consider the continuing va-lidity of the original plan, build greaterconfidence in the usefulness of the datain informing decisions, and generallyhave a better understanding of the con-sequences of management decisions.

One of the important aspects of thefindings over time has been the constancyin the dimensions of wilderness experi-ences that visitors seek: achievement andadventure, learning about and appreciat-ing scenery, solitude and stress release,strengthening family and friendship ties,and physical exercise. These dimensions

have remained relatively stable, but whathas changed has been the pattern of use,generally from longer to shorter trips; largerto smaller group sizes; some changes intypes of users, generally from younger toolder visitors; and to visitors that havemuch higher levels of formal education.

The 2003 visitor study was inter-rupted by an intense fire season: Trailsand trailheads were closed to use, oftenfor lengthy and uncertain periods. Butthrough the generous support of theALWRI, a modest replication of the 2003study was conducted in 2004. That study,led by scientists Bill Borrie of The Uni-versity of Montana and ALWRI socialscientist Alan Watson, provided an op-portunity to assess the consequences ofthe fires on wilderness visitors and theirattitudes and behaviors. Although thisresearch documented substantial changesin visitor behavior (as they shifted itiner-aries to avoid the fires), nearly every otheraspect studied did not change.

We’ve learned a great deal from theresearch process in the “Bob”—not onlyabout visitors, but also about the processof wilderness and natural resource plan-ning, about the fundamental questionsand trade-offs involving recreational ac-cess and protection of wilderness values

and conditions, about integrating differ-ent forms of knowledge into planning,about the practical realities of monitor-ing and adaptive management, and abouthow scientists, managers, and the publiccan work together to achieve a commonvision. It’s been an honor that I have beenable to participate in this process—as sci-entist, facilitator, educator, wildernessvisitor—for nearly 25 years.

The Bob Marshall Wilderness Com-plex is a spectacular setting, the“flagship” of the National WildernessPreservation System in many people’sminds. From my perspective, it hasserved as an ideal scientific laboratory—science has contributed to its continuingstewardship, while the stewardship hascontributed to the science of wildernessvisitors and planning. The research ex-perience and the planning process therehas laid a foundation for many othersimilar efforts in other wildernesses,backcountry areas, and reserves, notonly here in the United States but else-where as well. IJW

STEPHEN F. MCCOOL is a professor in theDepartment of Society and Conservation atThe University of Montana, Missoula, MT59812, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

Chief’s Excellence inWilderness Stewardship Research Award

Dr. Stephen F. McCool has been selected as the 2004recipient of the research award to recognize his

long-term development of and accomplishment withstudying wilderness visitors and using the Limits ofAcceptable Change (LAC) planning framework in theBob Marshall Wilderness Area and elsewhere. Dr.McCool is a professor in the Department of Society andConservation at The University of Montana in Missoula.He has been a leading researcher, author, and educatoron the use of wilderness planning processes that originallyfocused on the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montanaand then were extended for use in many wilderness areas

within the National Wilderness Preservation System. Onecolleague noted his appreciation for Dr. McCool’s willing-ness to stay engaged in the Bob Marshall project over manydecades and to use that research and insight to furtherdevelop the application of planning for sound wildernessstewardship management in numerous areas. Anothercolleague expressed admiration for Dr. McCool’s career-long commitment to wilderness research and hisexcellence in conducting managerially useful research. TheIJW editorial board is pleased to jointly recognize Dr.Stephen McCool for this award and a lifetime of achieve-ment for wilderness stewardship.


At the 2005 Biennial George Wright Society Confer-ence on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sitesin Philadelphia, March 14 to 18, there were many

sessions relevant to wilderness. One session provided focuson a priority research area of the Leopold Institute: under-standing the effects of management actions on relationshipsbetween people and wilderness. A great majority of wilder-ness social science has historically focused on understandingrecreation visitors’ responses to on-site conditions encoun-tered during wilderness visits. These responses are often atthe core of Limits of Acceptable Change and other indicator-based planning models used to select indicators, establishstandards, and monitor conditions in wilderness. A new lineof research at the Leopold Institute, strongly illustrated byseveral examples in Alaska, demonstrates the need to under-stand how these on-site management actions influence therange of relationships people have with wilderness.

Brian Glaspell (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and KatieKnotek (Leopold Institute) presented findings from research atGates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and WrangellSt.-Elias National Park and Preserve. Their principle messagewas that wilderness visits enable lifelong relationships with wildplaces in Alaska, and those relationships in turn influence useand stewardship of Alaska’s wilderness. Historical examples in-clude John Muir, Bob Marshall, and Mardy Murie, all withsignificant influences on wilderness protection in Alaska today.Following their trips, many current visitors also describe newand potentially lasting relationships with Alaska wilderness placesbased on experiencing challenging travel conditions, vast wild-life habitats, and traditional rural lifestyles and relateduse-values—much as those historic visitors once described.

Ralph Tingey, of the National Park Service’s regional of-fice in Anchorage, responded to findings from researchconducted by Alex Whiting in the Native village of Kotzebuein the western Arctic of Alaska. Ralph pointed out the im-portance of understanding local, rural connections withfederal protected lands. Although some of the values thenative Inupiaq of Kotzebue attach to the wilderness of theWestern Arctic Parklands—such as identity, humility andsurvival—are not clearly specified among the purposes ofthe Wilderness Act, these values are at the root of much ofthe interaction between managers and local people. Ralphacknowledged that local, rural people can be threatenedby the perception that outsiders desire locals to evolve arelationship with wilderness more like the one describedin the Wilderness Act: “a place where man is a visitor whodoes not remain.”

Joan Kluwe of URS Corporation, a consulting firm in An-chorage, spoke of the importance of understanding relationships

P E R S P E C T I V E S F R O M T H EA L D O L E O P O L D W I L D E R N E S S R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E

SCIENCE and RESEARCH

Research on the Relationshipbetween Humans andWilderness in Alaska

BY ALAN E. WATSON



here are no heroes in the wilderness, justwisemen and men who aren’t so wise,” saidGrant Pearson, a ranger in the early days of

Denali National Park. He was referring to the simple andharsh rule of the remote north: Survival was your responsi-bility and no one else’s. A lot has changed since RangerPearson conducted solo snowshoe patrols in thebackcountry in 1925, but the simple idea of personal re-sponsibility in the wilderness is still a timely rule to live by.

Alaska has long been regarded as the “last frontier,” withsome of the most remote and rugged wilderness terrain onearth. The quest for solitude and adventure lures thousandsof enthusiasts from around the world into the Alaskabackcountry each year. These wilderness journeys offerstimulation, natural quiet, and a place to appreciate oursmall but important place in this world.

A hundred years ago wilderness survival skills were away of life in the United States. We have grown sociallyand culturally forgetful that people not too long ago simplylearned or died. Today most people live in metropolitanenvironments and grow up in an urban culture where wil-derness travel and survival skills are rarely learned. Theresult is that many wilderness-bound travelers have unre-alistic expectations about their knowledge and abilities andabout the responsibility of society to come to their aid inremote settings.

Each year in Alaska, agencies and volunteer rescue groupsconduct backcountry searches and rescues that should neverhave been needed. Unfortunately, some of these incidentsresult in fatalities. Many of these accidents occur as a resultof people forgetting, or refusing to acknowledge, that themost important trip objective and their first priority is a safejourney out and back. An assessment of numerous mishapsin the Alaskan wilderness shows that a great number of res-cues and deaths involve people who have underestimatedthe consequences of their decisions. They didn’t intention-

EDUCATION and COMMUNICATION

Humility in theAlaskan Wilderness

BY DARYL R. MILLER

ally set out to get rescued or diebut because of mistakes madeabout their own safety, that’swhere they ended up. There area variety of reasons for accidentsin the backcountry and wilder-ness, and there are manyadventurers who unnecessarilyend up in harm’s way.

A Spectrum of UserSafety ProblemsOn one end of a spectrum of safety problems are people whoenter into the backcountry unaware of the dangers because oftheir inexperience. Outdoor proficiency should come from along, mentored apprenticeship that presents opportunities todeal safely with precarious situations. But there are fewer andfewer opportunities for those skills to be learned in wildernesssettings today. The journey for the inexperienced typically startswith inadequate equipment preparation or insufficient atten-tion to other planning details, which exposes them immediatelyto many environmental hazards. In Alaska, this lack of prepa-ration, along with small mistakes, can then be compoundedby severe weather, rugged terrain, and remoteness. Inexperi-enced travelers are often more dependent on equipment andless on their own competence in wilderness settings, and theylack the experience to apply sound judgment to their situa-tion. Compounding the threat to their safety, they choose notto leave a trip itinerary with anyone and consequently no oneknows where to look for them when they do not return. Somepeople feel that the rugged terrain and remoteness of the Alaskawilderness impedes their ability to get back on their own andconsequently justifies a rescue.

At the other end of the spectrum is a very skilled and elitegroup of backcountry users. They are often multitalentedand proficient, with many outdoor skills. They are typically

Article author Daryl Miller (photo by JudyAlderson).

“T


good athletes attempt-ing intense pursuits thatallow for no mistakes.Their quests include avariety of sports, in-cluding climbingunforgiving mountainroutes or paddling rag-ing rivers with extremeclass rapids. Thesetypes of risk takers havechosen to embark onadventures that will putthem in harm’s waywith no room for mis-calculations. Some oftheir accidents, how-ever, result from a lack

of fear, which masks the dangers oftesting their outdoor skills and abili-ties. I was once told by a rodeocontractor that courage is “controlledfear,” and when people lack fear theycannot make good decisions aboutstaying alive.

In between these two groups arepeople who are generally prepared andunderstand the risks but often suc-cumb to an unplanned medicalemergency or experience an unusualact of nature, both of which are diffi-cult to anticipate.

Wilderness users of all types some-times fail to make the right choices dueto an inaccurate assessment of theirown capabilities. Unfortunately, ourvirtual-reality society has some prob-lems in recognizing risk. Some

backcountry users have come to be-lieve that risk is a quest instead of awarning. The “fearless” philosophyalso pushes visitors to navigate reck-lessly in the backcountry regardless ofthe elements or the possible conse-quences. This concept operates on agamble at best, with a faulty under-standing of possible injuries and thefalse premise that help is just a callaway. Moreover, this attitude cansometimes create a dangerous andunnecessary situation for the peoplecalled upon to save them.

Judging the Risks as aClimbing Ranger at DenaliWorking as a rodeo clown in Montanaduring the 1970s, I was expected tofree every cowboy hung up in a ropeor save each one from being mauledby a bull. My work decisions were notbased on considerations for my ownsafety but more on saving the cowboy’slife regardless of what happened to me.This was a very high-risk and injury-prone job, which never even paid mymedical bills. I quit after some signifi-cant injuries forced me into retirement,and I took up mountain climbing,which seemed much safer in contrast.I could at least manage the risks Ichose in climbing mountains.

As a mountaineering ranger I lookat life differently than I did during myrodeo days. My first attempt to climbDenali in 1981 ended up as a hum-bling experience for me. I suffered

from altitude sickness, physical ex-haustion, and depression. Ourexpedition endured a brutal nine-daystorm at 17,000 feet in which we losttents and some of our equipment. Ialso had my ego checkmated at 19,000feet and left Alaska demoralized be-cause I didn’t summit. It was not untilyears later that I understood how valu-able that lesson in humility would be.

After that trip I came back time andtime again, learning more about Denaliand understanding why I needed pa-tience to climb big mountains. Iwitnessed many tragic climbing acci-dents during those years. They weremostly caused by human error, begin-ning with impaired judgment and thencompounded by extreme altitude, re-lentless winds, and severe cold. I knownow, after numerous body recoveries,that many mistakes in judgment arenever fully realized until it’s too late.

My responsibility now is to over-see search-and-rescue operations inDenali National Park and Preserve. Myprimary job is to minimize the risksduring missions to ensure that all ourstaff return safely after each incident.That duty is very clear to me after twoof my volunteers tragically died onmountaineering patrols while climb-ing Denali. It is a personal nightmare,especially if you are in charge. It wasalso emotionally overwhelming toeven attempt to understand the fami-lies’ grief when I tried to explain whathappened. The lives of these two fami-lies stopped in time and will never bethe same. These two tragic incidentshave forever changed my life and par-ticularly how I look at wildernessrescue. It reinforces the fact that noteveryone will get rescued on mywatch, especially when the risk is toogreat for our staff.

Technology has made it possible tocall for rescue from almost anywhere,making backcountry travel seem sim-

Figure 1—Responsibility,education, and accountabilityare the primary tools forself-sufficiency in Alaskawilderness travel. Articleauthor Daryl Millercrossing the Alaska Rangein early March with a-30F° temp and a 30-plusknot wind. Photo courtesyof Daryl Miller.

Our expedition endured a brutal nine-day storm at17,000 feet in which we lost tents and some of our

equipment. ... It was not until years later that Iunderstood how valuable that lesson

in humility would be.


pler and less risky. However, in today’sworld most rescue attempts arescreened before they are launched witha careful risk assessment for the res-cuers’ safety. Safety factors alone coulddetermine whether or not the rescueis launched or a victim is rescued.Backcountry users starting a tripshould firmly understand that rescuersafety is the first priority and the vic-tim a distant second. Rescue insidewilderness areas is not always assuredand by no means automatic.

Through the years I have heardsome climbers and backpackers com-plain that rangers or other rescuegroups were not needed and were evenan infringement on their outdoor ex-perience. Some of the same people thatcomplained ended up being rescuedand were of a different mind afterward.Most of us will never need a rescue,but if we do we all want the fastestand best rescue possible. Rescue is anact of caring and valor. Most victimsfeel extremely grateful, and in hind-sight they never imagined it wouldhappen to them.

Controlling the Risks ofWilderness Travel andRescue in AlaskaThe wilderness environment in Alaskais some of the most challenging andcommitting terrain in the world. Bar-riers include icy cold glacial rivers,huge snow-covered glaciers with deephidden crevasses, and vast mountainranges up to 20,000 feet that createtheir own extreme weather patterns.This environment is extremely un-friendly to humans who ignore basicwarning signs about impendingweather events. It is indifferent andunforgiving, caring nothing aboutyour résumé, how long you have livedin Alaska, or previous backcountryexperience. It provides harsh penal-ties for the unprepared attempting

river crossings or alder bashing dur-ing backcountry treks. On top of that,the Alaskan scale is easily underesti-mated. Many people set unrealisticexpectations. Ten miles cross-countryin the trailless wilderness is notequivalent to 10 miles on trail sys-tems—it is more like 30 or 40 trailmiles. There are some additional fun-damental rules of the wilderness,especially here in Alaska. For example,bears have the stream rights, berryrights, fishing rights, and the completeright-of-way whenever encountered.Simple but unforgiving rules in theAlaskan backcountry demand totalrespect; when they are ignored, we canbe subjected to nature’s wrath.

Given that, trips into the Alaskanwilderness are some of the most re-warding on earth. My experience tellsme you are much safer in the wilder-ness with sound and prudentjudgment than on Alaska’s winterhighways with the increased darkness,slick roads, unpredictable moose, anddrivers who travel too fast for condi-tions. In the wilderness youconsistently have control of your owndestiny if you understand your riskand make timely and prudent deci-sions where your personal safety isinvolved.

In my job I have focused on edu-cating backcountry visitors throughwritten materials and verbal briefingson potential backcountry hazards, self-sufficiency, and resource protection.Our own personal backcountry expe-rience is important because we canconvey firsthand information and theself-sufficiency message with credit-ability. I believe responsibility,education, and accountability are theprimary tools for self-sufficiency inwilderness travel. A humble approachto the wilderness gives us a far-reach-ing awareness of our surroundings.This attitude creates a pattern of be-

havior that will be more effective inmaking sound decisions about yourown safety. Adventures in the wilder-ness come with a personal and a moralresponsibility to make all decisionsbased on returning unaided and safelyon your own. Only friends and familywill know when you do things rightand get home safe, but thousands ofAnchorage Daily News readers willknow if you are rescued.

The definitive wilderness experi-ence for me in Alaska is a remotesetting, untamed and full of unsafeexperiences in a trailless landscape. Itis a place where I can be away fromthe luxuries of civilization and travel-ing on foot without the aid ofmotorized transportation. It is wherethe forests and animals have uncon-ditional rights and are greatlyprotected from human-caused de-struction. Encounters with otherpeople are low to none, and there isno expectation of immediate help forany emergencies from anyone for anyreason. It’s a place where rescue is notautomatic or guaranteed, and wherewords are stamped in bold letters onthe educational brochures or on abackcountry permit “YOUR emer-gency may not be OUR emergency”and made plain before you embark. It

Figure 2—Everyone has responsibility to maintain self-sufficiencyin the wilderness and should always base decisions on getting backon their own. Denali climbers pack up for an extended stay onthe mountain. Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute photo.


is a place where all of us have a per-sonal responsibility for leaving novisual signs of our visit, allowing forthe next adventurers to have the samepristine and isolated experience. Andit is where our humility and soundjudgment take us on the journey of alifetime, and return us on our ownpower to our everyday world.

I have realized through my yearsthat wilderness has given me some ofthe best and most devastating mo-ments of my life. I now walk in peacein the backcountry knowing that Idon’t need to search for challenges, asbeing there is challenge enough. I or-ganize my own backcountry trips andthe trips of those who work for mearound these basic principles:

• Everyone has responsibility tomaintain self-sufficiency in thewilderness and should always basedecisions on getting back on hisor her own. Failure to recognizeyour own limitations in the wilder-ness can put you immediately inharm’s way.

• The wilderness scale is easily un-derestimated in regards to terrain,leaving people unrealistic abouttrip expectations—especially mile-age per day.

• Glaciers and glaciated rivers aresignificant barriers that always de-mand respect and planning.

• Your best resource is the ability tothink in a controlled manner whena life-threatening crisis is happening.

• Educate yourself on the logisticsand current conditions before at-tempting trips into the wilderness.

• Remoteness compounds problemsthat otherwise might be manageable.

• Avalanches are regularly underes-timated, especially their speed andpower.

• A well-thought-out and respon-sible contingency plan should beestablished for self-evacuation be-fore your trip.

• Prevention, not treatment, is whatultimately will save your life in thewilderness.

• Failure to leave important informa-tion with the right peopleregarding trip plans has cost nu-merous lives and resulted inunnecessary searches.

• The ability to improvise and useavailable resources is often the keyto survival in emergency situationsin the wilderness.

• Panic and confusion have longbeen inseparable partners and areyour constant adversaries duringan emergency.

• There is a notable difference be-tween a gamble and a calculatedrisk. A calculated risk considers allthe odds, justifies the risk, andleads to an intelligent decision

based on conservative judgment.A gamble is something over whichyou have no control and whoseoutcome is like a roll of the dice.

• You cannot make intelligent deci-sions in the wilderness if you donot understand the risks.

• Firsthand knowledge of your mis-takes on previous trips into thewilderness is often an invaluabletool when making significant de-cisions regarding your life.

• Never give up, as the will to live isa valuable asset. People often per-ish simply because they fall shorton perseverance.

• Getting into an accident in thewilderness is like a bad relation-ship—typically easier to get intothan get out of.

• Wilderness rescues are often dan-gerous to the rescuers, and theability to accomplish them is al-ways weather dependent.

• People do not realize the devastat-ing impact that their accidentshave on friends and loved ones.

• The prerequisite to misadventure isthe belief that you are invincible orthat the wilderness cares about you.

DARYL R. MILLER is the South Districtranger for Denali National Park andPreserve, directing search and rescue onDenali. He was the first American to beawarded the Targa D’argento (the SilverSolidarity Medal), the international alpinecommunity’s highest accolade, honoringperilous mountain rescues. He has alsoreceived the Valor Award from the U.S.Department of the Interior for his rescuework. He and fellow Alaskan Mark Stasikcompleted the first winter circumnavigationof Denali and Mount Foraker in 1995 (350miles/45 days).

The definitive wilderness experience for me in Alaskais a remote setting, untamed and full of unsafe

experiences in a trailless landscape.


In the 1930s the Dall sheep population of what is nowDenali National Park and Preserve crashed. As was themood of the time, public officials and public sentiment

assumed wolf predation was the cause, and both cried forthe immediate implementation of a wolf eradication pro-gram. The National Park Service, however, hired a lonebiologist to study the situation and ascertain the cause ofthe sheep’s demise. After thousands of hours in the field,biologist Adolph Murie (see figure 1) concluded that a se-ries of harsh winters was to blame for the population crash.Using Murie’s scientific conclusion, park officials managedto hold wolf eradication proponents at bay.

As a direct result of Adolph Murie’s scientific work, thebiological integrity of what is now Denali National Parkand Preserve remains intact. The new Science and Learn-ing Center in Denali (see figure 2) bears the Murie name asan acknowledgment of Adolph’s work and other membersof the Murie family, who served as passionate advocates forthe biological integrity of our national parklands.

Although located in Denali National Park and Preserve,the Murie Science and Learning Center is a collaborativeeffort between Denali National Park and Preserve, sevenother Alaska national parks, and several park partners. Itsmission is twofold: to promote scientific research in ournational parks and to provide science-based education pro-grams and information to students, educational institutions,and the visiting public. The center offers a classroom area,exhibits, and workspace for visiting and resident research-ers. It also serves as the winter visitor center for Denali.Other center facilities include a dining facility and a re-mote field camp.

Working with partners,the Denali Park staff hastaken an innovative ap-proach to education andresearch that employswireless technology andvideoconferencing. For ex-ample, a wireless networkextends over 40 miles ofthe park road corridor. Us-ing a specially equippedschool bus created by theDenali Borough SchoolDistrict to boost the signal,it is possible to communi-cate from the field throughthe Science and LearningCenter to anywhere in theworld via the Internet. Thismakes it possible for researchers in the field in Denali to con-duct classes for students anywhere on the planet. The park isalso working with the Office of Naval Research to developradio-tracking collars that will be compatible with this wire-less system. Such collars would make it possible to track wildlife24 hours per day, 7 days a week, which would provide parkresearchers with movement data never before collected.

The wireless network will be put to the test during the 2005weeklong Denali Science and Storytelling camp offered for thesecond year in a row in partnership with the Denali BoroughSchool District. Equipped with digital cameras, GPS units, datarecorders, and curious minds, the middle- and high-school stu-


Science and Learning in theAlaska Wilderness

BY INGRID NIXON

An enlightened public is essential in order that there will not existunfair pressures born of ignorance.

—Adolph Murie et. al. 1948

Figure 1—Adolph Murie. Photo courtesy of theNational Park Service.


dents will explore the wilds of the parkand record their impressions on DVD.

Through partner Denali Institute, thecenter offers a series of short daily pro-grams and multiday educational seminarsand teacher trainings throughout thesummer months. These popular pro-

grams based out of the center’s remotefield camp explore a variety of topics frombear research to wildflowers.

To get kids up to their elbows in wil-derness, the park has teamed with theDenali Foundation to offer a new DenaliBackcountry Adventures program aimed

at high-school students. Piloted in 2005,participants will spend a week in Denali’sbackcountry collecting impact-monitor-ing data for park managers.

The Murie Science and LearningCenter is one of a growing network ofresearch learning centers in develop-ment as one facet of the National ParkService’s Natural Resource Challengeinitiative. The goal of the Challenge isto promote more and better sciencein our national parks, to use scientificfindings to make sound managementdecisions, and to share what is learnedabout these natural areas more effec-tively with the public. IJW

REFERENCESMurie, Adolph 1948. As quoted in Timothy

Lawson, 2001, Changing tracks: Predatorsand politicians in Mt. McKinley Natural Park(230). Anchorage: University of Alaska Press.

INGRID NIXON is the education coordinatorfor the Murie Science and Learning Center;e-mail: [email protected].

Figure 2—Murie Science and Learning Center, Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Photo courtesy of Fred Bayler andthe National Park Service.

with the wilderness resource in order toidentify the agency’s role in resolving con-flict between sport anglers and localvillage residents in the Togiak NationalWildlife Refuge in southwest Alaska.

Mike Tranel of Denali National Parkand Preserve described the relationshipair-taxi operators have with the park andthe visitors they shuttle in to climb Mt.McKinley or visit glaciers within thepark. As a group, these commercial ser-vice providers have a long-standingrelationship with portions of the Denaliarea that predates their addition to thepark in 1980. This relationship is key tounderstanding how current air-taxi op-erators view their own role as well asthat of the Park Service.

Alan Watson and Neal Christensen ofthe Leopold Institute closed the sessionby describing research on the Tongass Na-

tional Forest in southeast Alaska. An ini-tial study there concentrated onunderstanding conditions encounteredby sport anglers and how their visits maybe changed due to potential changes inmanagement to protect on-site conditionsalong the Situk River. Local interest byYakutat village residents, however, led toa second study to understand how theydescribe their relationships with this riverthat runs from the Russel Fiord Wilder-ness to the Gulf of Alaska, and how someof the proposed changes in managementof on-site conditions may change thoserelationships.

These presentations on recent re-search in Alaska suggest the following:

• Visitor experiences enable individualand societal relationships with anarea, and human relationships de-

veloped through these experiencescan greatly influence the area.

• Federal agencies need to understandlocal meanings attached to wildplaces and how management actionsinteract with those meanings.

• Conflicts between recreation andsubsistence users of public lands inAlaska are complex and deeply re-lated to differences in relationshipspeople have with those places.

• Commercial service providers haverelationships with federal landsand are intermediate influences onrelationships developed by thepublic with these places.

• We need holistic research and man-agement approaches that considerhow on-site management actionsaffect relationships between variouspublics and public lands. IJW

From ALDO LEOPOLD on page 30


John Muir, one of the pioneers of wilderness preserva-tion, knew and understood the benefit of preservingareas as wilderness. He penned these thoughts in a let-

ter he wrote in October 1874: ”I am hopelessly andforever a mountaineer. … I care to live only to entice peopleto look at nature’s loveliness” (Muir 1915, preface). TheU.S. Congress passed the Wilderness Act (P.L. 88-577) andset a precedent for preservation, and thousands of wilder-ness visitors, taking Muir’s wilderness ideology to hearttrekking to the mountains “to look at nature’s loveliness.”Managers are faced with the impact caused by those whoare drawn to the wilderness, and Mt. McKinley in Alaska’sDenali National Park and Preserve is no exception. Eachyear, more than a thousand mountaineers attempt to climbto the 20,320-foot (6,194-m) summit of the highest peakin North America (see figure 1). The 2001 climbing seasonbrought a record number of 1,305 climbers, and 84% at-tempted the West Buttress route (Denali National Park andPreserve 2001b). It is not uncommon to have 700 climberson the mountain at one time during the height of the climb-ing season (Rosen 2001). The accumulation of impacts fromsuch a significant number of climbers concentrated on oneroute over the years—in addition to the fact that moun-taineers’ attitudes vary in respect to low impact practices(Dyck, Schneider, Thompson, and Virden 2003)—has ledto evident degradation of this wilderness. However, in or-der to combat this human impact, the National Park Service(NPS) has taken a pragmatic approach for managing trashand human waste disposal on Denali.

Garbage and Fuel Can MonitoringSimilar to other wilderness areas, a “pack it in pack it out”philosophy has been in force on Denali since the mid-1970s

(Denali National Parkand Preserve 2003a),yet abandoned garbagewas still a commonproblem. Rangerscleaned up 700 pounds(318 kg) of trash fromthe 14,200-foot (4,328-m) camp alone in 1997(Denali National Parkand Preserve, 2000).According to climbingranger Roger Robinson,each climber producesbetween 0.24 to 0.5pounds (0.1 to 0.2 kg)of garbage each day,(Denali National Park and Preserve 2001c; Chesak 2002),which adds up to approximately 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg)of garbage that could potentially be left on the mountaineach season (Denali National Park and Preserve 2002a).Fortunately, the garbage situation has never reached thoseproportions; and with current protocol, it never will (DenaliNational Park and Preserve 2000).

Denali rangers took a proactive approach in 1998 tomanage the garbage situation, an approach they continueto utilize today. Expedition numbers are assigned to eachgroup upon registration. This number is then transferredto each of the expedition’s fuel cans, as well as the bluegarbage bags that are distributed at the ranger station inTalkeetna. Additionally, preprinted cache markers are dis-tributed to each expedition in order to discouragepermanent or abandoned caches. Each party is responsible


Minimizing MountaineeringImpacts in Denali National

Park and PreserveBY WHITNEY C. WARD

Whitney Ward on the West Buttress of Denali. Photo byDallen Ward.


for returning the empty fuel cans, bluegarbage bags, and removing allcaches—the violation of which couldresult in a citation and/or fine (DenaliNational Park and Preserve 2003a).Despite the record number of climb-ers during 2001, many veteranclimbers agreed that the mountain wasthe cleanest it has been in modern his-tory (Denali National Park andPreserve 2001b).

Human Waste DisposalA more significant problem was hu-man waste disposal. A pit toilet wasfirst created at base camp (7,200 feet;

ranger Robinson to experiment dur-ing the 2000 climbing season with atoilet system designed to remove hu-man waste (Denali National Park andPreserve 2000). Robinson’s trialprompted the Denali ranger staff towork with Paul Becker of GTS, Inc.,in developing Clean Mountain Cans(CMC), a smaller and much lighterversion of the common toilet box thatriver guides and outfitters use (DenaliNational Park and Preserve 2003a).

Following this initial experiment,the NPS conducted a pilot study witha conservation grant from the Ameri-can Alpine Club (AAC) and 21volunteer groups during the 2001climbing season to see if human wastecould be effectively removed from themountain (Denali National Park andPreserve 2001c). The volunteers re-sponded with generally favorablefeedback (Denali National Park andPreserve 2001c). An additional AACgrant was awarded in 2002 to provide200 more CMCs on the mountain inorder to further the study (OutdoorNetwork 2002). The main focus of the2002 study was to determine whetheror not a large number of climberscould remove their human waste fromabove the 14,200-foot (4,328-m)camp (Denali National Park and Pre-serve 2002b). The NPS encouragedmountaineers to use the CMC alongthe entire West Buttress route in addi-tion to other areas of the park; inreturn they were awarded the PMI/NPS Denali Pro pin (Denali NationalPark and Preserve 2002b). The studyand trials determined that the CMCwas feasible for the average climber(Denali National Park and Preserve2003a).

The box toilet was removed fromthe 17,200-foot (5,243m) camp priorto the 2003 climbing season, and allclimbing parties who attempted theWest Buttress route were required to

Figure 1—Climbers on the summit ridge of Denali. Photo by Whitney Ward.

2,195 m) in 1977,an additional pittoilet was added atthe 14,200-foot(4,328-m) camp,and in 1989, a boxlatrine was estab-lished at the17,200 (5,243-m)foot camp (Chesak2002). Since the1980s, a commonpractice in campsthat did not havea latrine was tobag the humanwaste and disposeof it in a crevasse(Chesak). Dispos-ing of waste increvasses and thelatrines helped toalleviate some ofthe human wasteproblem; however,it was still a con-cern. Severe weatherconditions, un-suitable crevasses,and climber neglectmade proper wastedisposal at the1 7 , 2 0 0 - f o o t

(5,243-m) camp a growing problem(Denali National Park and Preserve2000). Compounding the disposalproblem was the fact that human wastedoes not readily break down at highaltitude. Human waste, especially onthe upper mountain, became an in-creasingly significant health and socialconcern. In fact, the most frequentlyreported complaint in climbers’ post-trip reports was the improper disposalof human waste on the mountain(Denali National Park and Preserveand Preserve 2001c).

The extensiveness of the humanwaste on the mountain led climbing


carry CMCs above the 14,200-foot(4,328-m) camp (Denali NationalPark and Preserve 2003c). UsedCMCs were returned to the 14,200-foot (4,328-m) camp and placed incargo nets. They were then flown tobase camp by helicopter, and then onto Talkeetna by plane for professionalcleaning (Denali National Park andPreserve 2002b). The CMC remainedoptional for other routes on themountain and below the 14,200-foot(4,328-m) camp; however, of the1,179 climbers who attempted Denaliduring the 2003 season, 148 (13%)climbers removed approximately 500pounds (227 kg) of human waste byopting to utilize a CMC the entireroute (Chesak 2002; Denali NationalPark and Preserve 2003a).

The demand for CMCs was highduring the 2004 climbing season, withall 500 CMCs issued at one point intime (Denali National Park and Preserve2004). The NPS distributed CMCs fromthe base camp (7,200 feet; 2,195 m)during the 2004 climbing season forclimbers on the West Buttress route andfrom the Talkeetna ranger station forother climbs in the Alaska Range(Denali National Park and Preserve2004). It was anticipated that the climb-ers on the West Buttress route wouldutilize the CMC the entire route withthe main focus of use at high camp(Denali National Park and Preserve2003c). Unfortunately, it was discov-ered that several expeditions merelycached the CMC lower on the moun-tain; therefore, the NPS plans once

again to distribute CMCs from the14,200-foot (4,328-m) camp in thefuture to help remedy this problem(Denali National Park and Preserve2004). Even with the unexpected is-sues of CMCs being cached along theroute, they are becoming standard formountaineering on Denali.

After several design revisions, theCMC offers a lightweight, climber-friendly alternative to traditionalmethods of human waste disposal.Currently, each canister weighs 1.75pounds (.8 kg) and is designed to hold1.86 gallons (7 l) of human waste. Itis 8.2 inches (20.8 cm) in diameter and11.75 inches (30 cm) tall. An inte-grated harness system, which locksdown the lid, allows the CMC to besecured to a sled or pack. The CMC is

Figure 2—Denali National Park and Preserve is managed by the National Park Service. Photo by Chad Dawson.


sturdy enough to be sat upon and comeswith a disposable foam ring (Denali Na-tional Park and Preserve 2003a).However, the NPS is currently workingwith GTS, Inc., to redesign the CMC sothat it will be easier to clean and to elimi-nate the foam ring (Denali National Parkand Preserve 2004).

Garbage and fuel can monitoringhave proven to significantly reduce theimpacts of mountaineers on Mt.McKinley. As such, these simpleprojects will not only help maintainand restore the pristine quality of the

responsibility, but is everyone’s, as “Weare all, in some sense, mountaineers,and going to the mountains is goinghome” (Muir 1992, p. 33). IJW

REFERENCESChesak, C. 2002. The American Alpine Club

asks climbers to rally ’round the can: Part-nership with Denali National Park has globalaim. American Alpine Club Press Releases.Retrieved October 27, 2003, from http://www.americanalpineclub.org/docs/AACPR-CMCgrant.pdf.

Denali National Park and Preserve. 2000.Cleaning up Mt. McKinley. 2000 Mountain-eering Report. Retrieved October 27, 2003,from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/

———. 2002b. Denali becomes even cleaner!2002 Mountaineering Summary. RetrievedOctober 27, 2003, from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineer-ing/summary/reports/2002%summary.pdf.

———. 2003a. Clean mountain cans—Moun-taineering. Retrieved October 27, 2003,from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineering/cm/cans.html.

———. 2003b. Mountaineering booklet. Re-trieved October 28, 2003, from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineer-ing/booklet/mbenglish.html.

———. 2003c. Statistical year in review. An-nual Mountaineering Summary Report—2003. Retrieved October 27, 2003, fromhttp://www.nps.gov/dena/home/moun-taineering/summaryreports/home.html.

Denali National Park and Preserve. 2004. Sta-tistical year in review. Annual Mountaineer-ing Summary Report—2004. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2005, from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineer-ing/summaryreports/MNT2004.pdf.

Dyck, C., I. Schneider, M. Thompson, and R.Virden. 2003. Specialization among moun-taineers and its relationship to environmen-tal attitudes. Journal of Park RecreationAdministration 22(2): 44–62.

Muir, J. 1915. Travels in Alaska. New York:Houghton and Mifflin.

Muir, J. 1992. John Muir: The Eight Wilderness Dis-covery Books. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers.

Outdoor Network. 2002. Access Fund awardsover $30K in climbing preservation grants.Retrieved October 27, 2003, from http://w w w . o u t d o o r n e t w o r k . c o m /ton_assnnews_archive/2002/03/28/eng-outdoornet-000007/eng-outdoornet-000007_170512_5_08699306519702.html.

Rosen, Y. 2001. Controls eyed for anticipatedgrowth at Denali. Retrieved October 27,2003, from http://forests.org/archiev/america/coeyanti.htm.

WHITNEY WARD is a student in theDepartment of Recreation and ParkAdministration, Indiana University, HPER133, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA; email:[email protected].

The Denali National Park and Preserve rangersare setting a high standard of mountaineering

Leave No Trace ethics for others to follow.

Denali Wilderness Area, but couldeasily enhance the wilderness charac-teristics of other areas. Already,Auyuittuq National Park Reserve inCanada has expressed interest inimplementing the use of CMCs(Chesak 2002).

The Denali National Park and Pre-serve rangers are setting a high standardof mountaineering Leave No Trace eth-ics for others to follow. The currentprotocols for garbage and fuel canmonitoring and the use of CMCs havealready significantly reduced the wasteon Mt. McKinley in just a short amountof time. However, minimizing impactin wilderness areas is not just the NPS’s

moun ta ineer ing/summar yrepor t s/2000summary.pdf.

———. 2001a. Mountaineering Summary Re-port—2001. Retrieved October 27, 2003,from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineering/summary reports/2001.html.

———. 2001b. Statistical year in review. Moun-taineering Summary Report—2001. Re-trieved October 27, 2003, from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineer-ing/summaryreports/2001stats.html.

———. 2001c. Talking trash on Denali. 2001Mountaineering Summary Report. RetrievedOctober 28, 2003, from http://www.nps.gov.dena/home/mountaineerning/summaryreports/2001trash.html.

———. 2002a. Climbing clean—Mountaineer-ing. Mountaineering Booklet. RetrievedOctober 28, 2003, from http://www.nps.gov/dena/home/mountaineer-ing/booklet/climbclean.html.


Peace Parks Foundation, as facilitator of TransfrontierConservation Area (TFCA) development in south-ern Africa, coordinates and participates in a wide

range of activities, offering support on multiple levels. Onone such level, spatial information in the form of hard-copy maps or digital interactive websites (seewww.peaceparks.org) is distributed to all the stakeholdersinvolved, such as scientists, park managers, and staff, aswell as community members. The disseminated informa-tion ranges from being detailed for small areas to coarse forlarge areas and varies from three-dimensional views to pat-terns of landscape ecology, infrastructure, and land use (seeAfrica Geographic, February 2004). Over time, thefoundation’s spatial information products have proven tobe an indispensable part of multinational stakeholder fo-rums and community workshops where executive decisionsare made regarding TFCA development.

Recently, scientists have started to encourage the use ofspatial information frameworks as strategic decision-mak-ing tools in the management of conservation areas, that is,frameworks through which one can generate objective,unbiased information based on transparent and repeatablemethods. Scientists argue that by adopting strategic frame-works in decision-making activities, it becomes possible tocombine a host of factors (e.g., natural, cultural, political,economic, and institutional) in an objective, unbiased man-ner. This is especially important in the management ofTFCAs where decision makers are compelled to balancedevelopment and conservation mandates. As pressures onnatural resources and biodiversity increase, the long-termsurvival (as well as economic sustainability) of protectedareas in southern Africa ultimately depends on such strate-gic conservation planning initiatives.

Accordingly, the foundation has been working closelywith South African National Parks (SANParks) to develop

a set of strategic methods, labeled the Conservation Devel-opment Framework (CDF), to identify priority areas forconservation action and guide the management of differentland use options (e.g., recreational areas, roads and lodges,lookout points, cultural sites, areas with high biodiversity)inside TFCAs. Until now, the CDF has been applied to SouthAfrican parks only, but once finalized Peace Parks Founda-tion will apply it to TFCAs in the rest of southern Africa. ACDF process has two main phases. the first is centered ongenerating detailed information on the ecological sensitiv-ity and aesthetic value of the landscape as well as the tourismpotential of the area in question. In the second phase, ex-pert knowledge is combined with the information generatedin the first phase to partition a park into definable areas,referred to as use zones. The use zones cascade from Wil-derness to Remote through Buffer areas into Low and HighIntensity Leisure zones.

The figures below illustrate some of the CDF informa-tion outputs for a hypothetical area. Figure 1 is an exampleof the information generated to reveal visually sensitiveareas in a park. Visual sensitivity is one of the factors con-tributing to the aesthetic value of a park, which washistorically not considered a natural resource. Using state-of-the-art software from the Environmental SystemsResearch Institute, it is now possible to treat it as suchand locate potential development sites (e.g., for telecom-munication towers, power lines, and roads) that will beinvisible to visitors in certain areas of the park. This makesit possible, for the first time, to strategically identify areasfrom where none of the infrastructural development wouldbe visible so that visitors could have a true wildernessexperience.

A CDF also relies on information that indicates areas ofbiodiversity that are ecologically sensitive to development.Figure 2 illustrates this for an area in a range of values

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Transfrontier Land Use Planningin Southern Africa

BY WILLEM VAN RIET JR. and NADIA VAN DER MERWE


The final output of a CDF is a map displaying boundaries ofvarious land use options within a park (see figure 3). Once thefinal output of the CDF has been generated, it is presented tothe various ministries of the governments involved with theTFCA. Following their authorization, the land use zones arethen adopted as management guidelines for a period of fiveyears, after which the whole process is reviewed.

In essence the CDF is an iterative and participatory processthat needs input from scientists, local communities, and regionalplanners alike. By encouraging the use of this spatial frame-work in planning and stakeholder workshops, the foundationhopes to standardize management practices across the interna-tional borders of TFCAs in southern Africa.

AcknowledgmentsSpecial thanks to SANParks Planning, especially Paul Brittonand Dr. Steven Holness. IJW

WILLEM VAN RIET JR., PPF Land Use Planning, Millennia Park, 16Stellentia Avenue, Die Boord Stellenbosch 7613, South Africa; e-mail:[email protected].

Figure 3—The Final Conservation Development Framework, showing the various usezones according to which the park will be managed.

spanning from low (cream color) to highly sensitive (red color).Information on the ecological sensitivity of areas is primarilyderived from data on the biophysical character of the landscape.

Figure 1—The range of areas from where a telecommunications tower would be visible ifit were to be built at the location indicated.

Figure 2—Areas sensitive to disturbance as well as areas where the impact ofdevelopment could possibly be mitigated.

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The 8th World Wilderness CongressThe 8th World Wilderness Congress (8th WWC) will takeplace in Anchorage, Alaska, September 30 to October 6,2005. Organized by The WILD Foundation (USA), andhosted by many Alaskan and international organizations,the theme of the 8th WWC is Wilderness, Wildlands, andPeople—A Partnership for the Planet. The Congress willinclude technical working sessions in the symposiumcochaired by Leopold Institute social scientist Alan Watsonand Sawtooth National Recreation Area land manager LieseDean entitled Science and Stewardship to Protect andSustain Wilderness Values. For more information regard-ing the 8th World Wilderness Congress, visit the officialwebsite at http://www.8wwc.org.

Chad Dawson Receives Awardfor Contributions toAdirondack Wilderness ProtectionThe New York State Department of Environmental Conser-vation (DEC) presented the 13th annual AdirondackStewardship Award to Dr. Chad P. Dawson for his “contri-butions to protecting wilderness values in the AdirondackForest Preserve.” The Adirondack Stewardship Award is pre-sented by DEC to groups or individuals who demonstrateoutstanding stewardship of the natural resources of theAdirondacks. The award was presented at the 40th Anni-versary National Wilderness Conference in Lake George,New York, hosted by the Association for the Protection ofthe Adirondacks. In presenting the award, DEC commis-sioner Erin Crotty stated:

The history, culture, and natural beauty of theAdirondack Forest Preserve make it one of the most

important regions in the country. The Department isfortunate to have partners like Dr. Chad Dawson toassist us in planning for and managing these valu-able lands. Dr. Dawson is recognized nationally forhis contributions to protecting wilderness values, andwe are grateful for his involvement in State efforts.

A plaque was presented to Dr. Dawson recognizing “hisstature in the national wilderness management communityand his substantial contributions to Adirondack Forest Pre-serve planning and land stewardship efforts.” Dr. Dawsonhas had a great influence on the protection and manage-ment of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. He has authorednumerous research papers on wilderness and forest pre-serve subjects for regional, national, and internationalaudiences, including the 5th and 6th World WildernessCongresses. He has mentored more than half a dozen gradu-ate students in research on Adirondack Forest Preserveissues and written numerous technical reports and studiesin support of the state’s natural resource planning and man-agement. Dr. Dawson is chair of the Forest and NaturalResource Management Department at the State Universityof New York, College of Environmental Science and For-estry in Syracuse, where he also teaches courses andconducts research in wilderness and recreation manage-ment. He is managing editor of the International Journal ofWilderness and coauthor of the textbook Wilderness Man-agement: Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values(John Hendee and Chad Dawson, 2002, Fulcrum Publishing).IJW joins with Chad’s many U.S. and international col-leagues in congratulating him on this well-deservedrecognition of his wilderness leadership. John Hendee, IJWeditor in chief. Source: http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/press/nwrel3.html.

Submit announcements and short news articles to STEVE HOLLENHORST, IJW Wilderness Digest editor. E-mail: [email protected].

Announcementsand Wilderness Calendar

COMPILED BY STEVE HOLLENHORST

WILDERNESS DIGEST


Bush Reverses Protectionfor Roadless ForestThe last 58.5 million acres (23.7 mil-lion ha) of untouched national forests,which President Bill Clinton had setaside for protection, were opened topossible logging, mining, and othercommercial uses by the Bush adminis-tration. Ninety-seven percent of it is in12 states: Alaska, Arizona, California,Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada,New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washing-ton, and Wyoming. Governors cansubmit petitions within 18 months tostop road building on some of the 34.3million acres (13.9 million ha) where itwould now be permitted, or request thatnew forest management plans be writ-ten to allow the construction on someof the other 24.2 million acres (9.8 mil-lion ha). Eight days before leaving officein 2001, Clinton acted to take decisionsabout roadless forestland away from lo-cal federal managers. Environmentalistssaid the managers often were too closeto logging companies and other devel-opers. The Forest Service will have finalsay over the governors’ petitions. But theagency is creating an advisory commit-tee to help put the rule in place. Theagency said petitions from the statescould be based on requests to protectpublic health and safety; reduce wild-fire risks; conserve wildlife habitat;maintain dams, utilities, or other publicworks; or ensure that people have roadaccess to their private property. Agricul-ture undersecretary Mark Rey, whooversees forest policy, emphasized thatthe rule probably would not lead to abig spurt of road building.

Four Clear Goals forWorld Commission onProtected AreasThe four strategic priorities for IUCN’sWorld Commission on Protected Areas(WCPA) over the next four years are set:conserving biodiversity, developing ca-

pacity, improving protected area manage-ment, and addressing issues ofgovernance, equity, and livelihoods. Thefour-day WCPA Steering Committeemeeting was attended by 20 WCPA re-gional and theme vice-chairs from aroundthe world. They developed a strategicplan focused on implementing the Con-vention on Biological Diversity’sProgramme of Work on Protected Ar-eas—which recognizes WCPA as one ofits main parties—the Durban Action Plan,and the Millennium Development Goals.The Steering Committee also reviewedthe existing WCPA Task Forces and theirmandates in light of these new strategicdirections. Regional priorities were espe-cially highlighted, such as the urgent needto develop country-level capacities to im-prove protected area management. TheSwiss government supported the WCPASteering Committee meeting with an ex-cursion to the Col du Marchairuz in theParc jurassien vaudois (Jurassic Park ofthe Swiss Canton of Vaud). This field tripwas accompanied by a presentation on anovel approach to protected area estab-lishment, initiated through an agreementreached amongst landholders to developa protected area. For more informationon the activities of the WCPA Steer-ing Committee, visit http://www.i u c n . o rg / t h e m e s / w c p a / w c p a /steeringcommittee.htm.

Importance of Wildernessand Roadless LandsTrout Unlimited (TU) released state re-ports for Idaho and Oregon thatdemonstrate graphically the link be-tween remaining roadless publiclands—Bureau of Land Management(BLM) and Forest Service (FS) wilder-ness areas, BLM roadless areas, and FSinventoried roadless areas—and thebest cold-water fish and wildlife habi-tat and the best fishing and huntingopportunities. Through the use ofmaps, TU has conveyed the important

connections between wildlands, gamespecies habitat, and recreational oppor-tunities. It is clear that both wildernessand roadless lands are important, notonly to preserve fish and wildlife habi-tat and protect remaining threatenedspecies populations, but to preserve op-portunities for fishing and hunting thatmany Americans enjoy. To review themaps, visit http://www.wilderness.net/.

Parks Canada BudgetIncreases over the NextFive YearsOn February 23, 2005, the governmentof Canada announced a massive budgetincrease of $315 million in the 2005budget for the Parks Canada Agency toconserve the country’s national parksand national historic sites. Of this total,$209 million over five years is budgetedfor refurbishing park and site infrastruc-ture, a significant increase from itsoriginal annual budget of $40 million;$60 million over five years are approvedfor restoring ecological damage in theparks, which comes on top of the $75million received in the 2003 budget; fi-nally, $46 million over five years forCanadian Historic Places. “The ParksCanada Agency is entering a new era ofoptimism, based on a solid financialbasis that will allow us to provide memo-rable experiences to future visitors whileprotecting these national treasures,” saidAlan Latourelle, CEO of Parks Canada.The allocations are part of an overall $5-billion package in the government ofCanada’s 2005 budget to support a sus-tainable environment over the next fiveyears. For more information, visit http://www.fin.gc.ca/budget05/pamph/pagree.htm.

Mountain Biking inWilderness ControversyThe blanket ban on bicycling in wil-derness areas and its effect on future


trail access continues to be a focus forthe International Mountain BicyclingAssociation (IMBA) in 2005. IMBA ispursuing a controversial four-part strat-egy to protect access for mountainbicycling while preserving natural ar-eas. IMBA believes mountain biking, alow-impact, muscle-powered recre-ation, is an appropriate use of trails onpublic lands and is consistent with thevalues of wilderness land protection,which includes recreation in naturallandscapes. When proposed wildernessareas include significant mountain bik-ing opportunities, IMBA reportedlypursues boundary adjustments and al-ternative land designations that protectnatural areas while preserving bicycleaccess. (More at http://www.imba.com/news/news_releases/02_05/02_10_wilderness.html.) Part of the contro-versy is based on the lack of specificreference to wilderness in a recentagreement between the National ParkService and IMBA, which can be readat http://www.peer.org/docs/nps/05_19_5_imba.pdf. The WildernessSociety and Public Employees for En-vironmental Responsibility have soughtto ensure compliance with NationalPark Service regulations that governbicycles. (More at http://www.peer.org/docs/nps/05_19_5_ npsltr.pdf.)

3rd Annual WildernessTherapy SymposiumNaropa University’s Center for Wilder-ness Therapy Training is hosting thethird annual Wilderness Therapy Sym-posium from September 23 to 25, 2005,at Naropa’s Boulder, Colorado, campus.The symposium brings together clini-cians, wilderness guides, fieldinstructors, university faculty, and otherinterested parties to share specific skillsthrough hands-on, experiential work-shops. The symposium provides a forumfor the exchange and development ofideas and allows for collaboration be-

tween various areas of the field of wil-derness therapy. Keynote speakersinclude Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.,John Acker, Ph.D.; Jay Huffine, Ph.D.;Hilary Moses, LCSW; Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.;and Roger Strachan, Ph.D. Extendedworkshops offered include equine as-sisted therapy, centered rock climbing,integrating gestalt and wildernesstherapy, rites of passage, self-created cer-emony in wilderness settings, addiction,and family. The symposium also in-cludes opportunities to meet humanresource representatives from wildernessprograms and to network with otherconference participants. For more infor-mation and to register, go to http://www.naropa.edu/wilderness/sympo-sium/index.html.

Nominations Sought forWilderness StewardshipResearch AwardThe U.S. Forest Service is seeking nomi-nations for the Excellence in Wilder-ness Stewardship Research Award. Theaward is coponsored by the Interna-tional Journal of Wilderness and theUSDA Forest Service. Wilderness Stew-ardship Research Award nominationswill be accepted through January 31,2006, for accomplishments in calendaryear 2005. This award recognizes ex-cellence in an individual or team wil-derness research accomplishment, orresearch accomplishment in relatedfields that has direct application to U.S.wilderness. Employees of the federaland state governments, other private orpublic organizations, and private indi-viduals are eligible under five criteria:(1) ability to identify management im-plications of the research; (2) creativityand innovation in scientific method; (3)effectiveness of research accomplish-ments in addressing wilderness stew-ardship issues of critical importance; (4)effectiveness in communicating re-search results to management; and (5)

where appropriate, an interdisciplinarydesign of the research project occurredrecognizing the interactions betweenthe physical, biological, and social com-ponents of the wilderness resource. Toobtain specific instructions for submit-ting nominations, contact Alan Watson,Aldo Leopold Wilderness ResearchInstitute ([email protected]).

Motorized Incursions intoKalmiopsis WildernessBlocked by U.S. FederalCourtFederal magistrate John P. Cooney hasruled that a group of investors who paid$150 to patent a mining claim in theSiskiyou National Forest will not be ableto develop unregulated motorizedaccess to build a destination resort inthe heart of the Kalmiopsis WildernessArea. The judge ruled that the “undis-puted evidence” before himdemonstrated that the claims broughtby the plaintiffs in the case had no merit.Moreover, the court held that it need noteven reach the substance of the plain-tiffs’ claims because the investors werenot the proper parties to bring the suitand that they had waited too long to filetheir case. The judge ruled that, by itslanguage explicitly prohibiting perma-nent roads within a wilderness area, thepassage of the Wilderness Act of 1964should have placed the public onnotice that the United States did notbelieve that there were any permanentroads or historic rights-of-way locatedwithin the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area.Accordingly, any claims that a partywished to bring asserting that suchaccess rights did exist should have beenbrought within the 12-year statute oflimitations imposed by law, that is, nolater than 1976. Plaintiffs did not file thissuit until 1999, long after the timeallowed by the Court. More informationat http://www.westernlaw.org/.


Letter to the EditorDear IJW readers,

On the North American continentthere is one place that sticks out aboveall others (pun intended), and that isMt McKinley, or as the Natives call it,“Denali,” the Great One. North, south,and west of Denali lies a vast countrythinly populated by a rare breed ofhumans, still living their lives in har-mony with the land. Very few peopleeven know we are here. It is probablyone of the last strongholds on earthfor people like us. Due to our unob-trusive lifestyles, we have very littlepower to protect this land we love anddepend on for our livelihood. I amproud of our lifestyles, and have al-ways had a burning desire to share thispride in writing with others. Thankyou for the opportunity to do that.

Americans are well known for theirpioneering spirit, and the frontiers be-ing all but gone doesn’t erase the factthat some of us are still born with thesame spirit and need wild places to ex-ist, just as the wildlife that surrounds usdoes. Interior Alaska is a land of extremesin about every way you can imagine,from the people to the land itself andeverything in between. Winter is formost Alaskans the most favored season;summer is to be endured, with springand fall brief pauses between.

My wife, Fran, and I live on theKantishna river country north ofDenali, and on clear days the NorthFace of Denali is ever-present and is abig part of our lives. We grow and huntfor almost all of our food needs. Gar-dening is not one of the things you

decide to do on an impulse; gardenstake years to develop where we live.

By the time November arrives eachyear, the boats and fishwheels have allbeen put to bed for the winter, meat is in,berries and gardens are all taken care of,and our heating bill is covered by the largewood pile at the main cabin. The two orthree 600-mile round-trips to town bring-ing in supplies we need are over. This isthe time to earn our year’s needed cash.First, last, and foremost I am a trapper. Ido not enjoy killing animals; the reverseis true. I love, admire, and respect them.When not engaging in harvesting my wildneighbors, I enjoy watching, taking pic-tures, and protecting them, as mosttrappers do.

Wolves around Denali comprise a bigissue where I live. The National Park Ser-vice has been doing intensive research onDenali Park’s wolves for over 20 years.Nobody in Alaska wants the wolves tobe wiped out. They are a big part of Alaskaand Denali, but I think we need con-trolled management of wolves, along withall the other species, to give us viablepopulations of them all. If we can’t do it,nature will, with the boom-and-bustmethod. Any person who has witnessedthe effects of overpopulation with its star-vation, diseases, and cannibalization, andthe long periods it takes to reverse, shouldand probably would support wildlifemanagement by the people who reallycare. The result will continue to be abun-dant wildlife for all causes.

Another big issue of the countrywest and north of Denali Park is thesafety of the country itself. It is a landthat is classified as critical habitat andneeds to be treated accordingly. It seems

someone is always proposing putting aroad or railroad out through the coun-try west of Denali, or someone withtourists in mind wants to reopen oldmail trails or cat roads to make thecountry easily accessible to public traf-fic. So far the residents of the countryitself, along with plenty of other con-cerned people, have been able to stallthe Alaska Department of Natural Re-sources from issuing permits allowingall this to happen. But our days arenumbered without caring people. Thecountry is being literally torn up byheavy equipment doing gas and min-eral exploration. If left alone startingtomorrow, it would take centuries forthe land to heal and in some areaswould still be permanently scarred.

This land north, south, and west ofDenali needs to be protected. Otherwise,it will also be gone, with Denali NationalPark an island unto itself, stuck right inthe middle, the only protected land. Idon’t mean to lock up the land fromhuman use by any means. In fact, thefolks who live here now and love theland are its biggest defenders. But weneed help to keep it as it is, because onceit is gone, it will be gone forever.

With proper management, the landand the animals will remain in goodhealth. We don’t need to go overboard inprotecting the animals, but by protectingthe wildlands we ensure the animals oftheir home and substance. We need tohave both. And there still might be roomin it for people like Fran and me.

Mike TurnerPO Box 646

Nenana, AK 99670 USA

WILDERNESS DIGEST


Book ReviewsLandscape Ecology andResource Management:Linking Theory with Practice

Edited by John A. Bissonette and IsleStorch. 2003. Island Press, Washington,DC, and Covelo, CA. 480 pp., $65.00(hardcover).

Academics currently provide at least twomajor challenges to wilderness preser-vationists. First, deconstructivists havechallenged the realist perspectives ofmost wilderness supporters, denyingthat wilderness independently exists,and highlighted the fact that the termwilderness is a cultural construct, com-plete with sometimes questionableassumptions. The battle between real-ists (e.g., David Forman) and relativists(e.g., J. Baird Callicott) has often beenheated, and some suggest that this battlehas weakened progress and support forcreating strict wilderness preserves.

The second, less direct challenge hascome from landscape ecologists and con-servation biologists, who suggest thatmany traditional practices in wildernesscreation and management do not reflectecological realities and may not protectwilderness in the medium to long term(indirectly supporting some of the argu-ments of the deconstructivists). LandscapeEcology and Resource Management: Link-ing Theory with Practice attempts to teaseout practical conservation strategies fromthe many theories being created by land-scape ecologists around the world.

An important message in this bookis the realization that the majority oftraditional ecological studies focus onsmall-scale field sites, yet their find-ings can not be successfully applied

to larger scales. Similar problems withthe relevance of data occurs at the tem-poral scale: Research findings obtainedfrom one time period will not normallybe relevant at other time periods, es-pecially given the extremely rapidanthropogenic changes occurring inthe 21st century. This is in part due toecological “thresholds,” especially atthe landscape scale, which suggeststhat even small amounts of habitatdisturbance or fragmentation at a lo-cal scale may have much larger,nonlinear impacts at the regional orlandscape level. If this is the case, cre-ating relatively small wilderness areasmay not protect ecological integrity atthe large scale or in the long term.

Other complex issues include ques-tioning the effectiveness of thecommon practice of using indicatorspecies to manage wilderness, notingthat most protected areas are too smallto maintain necessary wildlife popu-lations and ecological processes (andeven more disturbingly, suggestingthat even large wilderness areas maynot be enough to maintain wildlifepopulations), and the problems of eco-logical “time lags” in understandingthe impacts of human activity.

One of the strengths of this book isthe critical view the editors give theirdiscipline. The link between observation(data) and reality is acknowledged asbeing tenuous at best. Although thebook never really manages to provideclear management strategies for landmanagers, it is more than successful atidentifying the complex, adaptive natureof ecological systems and identifyingmany issues that will concern wilderness

managers. In addition, the book high-lights the need for land managers tobetter understand how ecosystems“work” and the utility of critically assess-ing their own approaches to preservationto protect wilderness from their greatestthreat: human excess.

Review by JOHN SHULTIS

Voyageurs National Park: TheBattle to Create Minnesota’sNational Park

By Fred T. Witzig. 2004. University ofMinnesota Press, Minneapolis. 304 pp.,$24.95 (paperback).

The creation of both this book andVoyageurs National Park seem to havebeen a long labor of love. Author FredWitzig, who was involved in the 12-year-long battle to create the park, firststarted researching the book in 1978.Voyageurs National Park reviews ingreat detail the political, bureaucratic,and public struggles required to cre-ate Minnesota’s first national park.

All the typical conflicts and argu-ments encountered in park creationwere present in Minnesota. The majorstumbling blocks to having the parkdesignated included antagonism be-tween the National Park Service and theUSDA Forest Service; partisan politicsat the local, state, and national levels;interpersonal ill will between support-ers and opponents; behind-the-scenesefforts by extractive industries to pre-vent park creation and influenceboundaries; profit-seeking private in-terests; antifederal attitudes at the localand regional levels; bureaucratic iner-

WILDERNESS DIGEST


tia; attempts to have the area designatedas other types of protected areas (e.g.,national recreation area or state park);and challenges to park boundaries dur-ing and after designation. Indeed,perhaps the greatest value of this bookis that it identifies and describes theseemingly endless amount of battlesand conflicts that most proposed parksencounter. Reading through the manyheartbreaks and crises along the longroad toward designation, one cannothelp being amazed at the strength andtenacity of the park boosters, mainlyprivate citizens, but also supportivepoliticians. The fight to createVoyageurs was made even more diffi-cult by the requirement that the statesolve the thorny issue of how to deal

with the considerable private land par-cels within the proposed park. Thisbattle took an extra four years afterPresident Richard Nixon signed theauthorizing legislation in 1971.

The efforts of several individuals veryfamiliar to wilderness advocates arenoted in the text. In 1921, ArthurCarhart developed a plan for the ForestService that emphasized the recreationalvalue of the area. The role of ErnestOberholtzer, an ardent and influentialadvocate from the region, is very brieflynoted, and the steadying and powerfulinfluence of Sigurd Olsen—a key figurein the U.S. wilderness movement—isrevealed throughout the text.

In these dark days, when the politicsof consumption and anti-environmental-

ism seem to rule the American federalpolitical landscape, this book reminds usof the ultimate power of strong publicsupport for parks, and gives us hope thatthis support may be more important andpowerful in the long term than short-termpolitical doctrines. The book also remindsus of the immense difficulty of creatingparks—even in the hallowed days of the1970s—and of the extreme efforts thathave always been required to successfullyoverturn the still dominant powers of ex-traction and consumption. With so manyopponents, the war is never won, butmany important battles—like the creationof Voyageurs National Park—have beenwon along the way.

Review by JOHN SHULTIS

more informed decisions and helpsAlaskans realize that the federalgovernment is also their neighbor.If local people are involved in moni-toring use and enforcing rules, arearesidents feel as though they havemore input and are not being over-run by outside influences. Localemployees often have good ideasabout what’s best for an area, andlocal people tend to be more famil-iar with the history and naturalhistory of an area; these are certainlyattractive qualities for a park rangeror manager. Denali National Parkand Preserve uses the local-hire pro-gram extensively, with about half ofits workforce locally hired.

9. Define ambiguous terms inANILCA. Federal agencies need towork with the state of Alaska andother constituents to define am-biguous terms in ANILCA so landmanagers and the public have aclearer understanding of park man-

dates and common expectations.

ConclusionThere have been a wide variety of chal-lenges to managing Denali NationalPark and Preserve, especially as the Na-tional Park Service implements theprovisions of ANILCA. Managementpriorities of the National Park Serviceand the state of Alaska have differedconsiderably, as decisions are made toprotect various types of competing val-ues and because of conflictinginterpretations of ANILCA. Alaska’s tra-dition as an Owner State, and federalland management in which the final sayin decision making comes from Wash-ington, DC, add a level of complexitythat is not the case in National ParkService units in other parts of the coun-try. However, there has beenconsiderable progress in recent yearsbecause of improved understandingand communication between federaland state land managers, greater pub-lic involvement at all levels, and the

recognition of public interest in pro-tecting a wide range of values in DenaliNational Park and Preserve. IJW

REFERENCESAnchorage Alaska Public Lands Information

Center. 2001. Alaska Land Status SpecialReport. Anchorage: Anchorage Alaska Pub-lic Lands Information Center.

Colt, Steve. 2005. ANILCA then and now. Pre-sentation at Alaska Wilderness Recreationand Tourism Conference, Alyeska PrinceHotel, Girdwood, Alaska.

Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the com-mons, Science 162: 1243–48.

Hickel, Walter J. 2002. Crisis in the Commons:The Alaska Solution. Oakland, CA: ICS Press.

Manning, Robert E., William A. Valliere, andBen A. Minteer. 1996. Environmental val-ues and ethics: An empirical study of thephilosophical foundations for park policy,The George Wright FORUM 13 (2): 20–31.

Tillion, Clem. 2005. Managing the Alaska commons.Lecture at University of Alaska, Anchorage.

ADRIENNE A. LINDHOLM is park plannerat Denali National Park and Preserve. She canbe reached at [email protected] J. TRANEL is chief of planning,Denali National Park and Preserve([email protected]).

From DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE on page 14

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