The Coronavirus's Impact on our Parks and the Environment

Many have flocked to the outdoors during the pandemic
Source: 303magazine.com

The Coronavirus is affecting everything.  This statement is one I am getting a bit tired of reading in the news, but it is unfortunately true.  Mankind has expanded to the scale that our reach affects every corner of the globe; thus this new virus that is affect all of us will also be affecting the entire planet.  You have no doubt read countless articles speculating on the impacts on the economy, the education system, the health care system, and government.  But what about the natural environment and places like parks and reserves?  How will they fare amongst this global pandemic?

Simple logic may lead you to infer that parks and other natural places will do quite well.  Without all the people mucking about, it would make sense that these ecosystems would thrive.  But people are also the protectors of landscapes, whether they be rangers, scientists, wardens, or volunteers.  Just as many of them have been sidelined by the creeping virus.  This makes the answer more complicated than a simple "good" or "bad", and in reality we can only really speculate.  Like most everything else, we will have to wait until time has passed to know how things are going to end up.  Yet even with all of this uncertainty, it is safe to say that the parks and the like are under threat under the coronavirus pandemic.

The Burned Land Down Under

Flames were coming for people in their beds, in the middle of the night, announced with the dire and haunting words we became used to over these terrible months.  "It's too late to leave; shelter in place" -Lisa Pryor

Australian Wildfires Illuminate the Night
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It may seem distant history, at the rate with which the world moves from disaster to tragedy, but a few months ago the world was watching the progress of massive wildfires that blanketed Australia.  We saw the pictures of charred landscapes, ashen ruins of homes, and burnt animals approaching responders for help.   We read the statistics of the unprecedented natural catastrophe that was sweeping across the smallest inhabited continent.  Three thousand homes destroyed in New South Wales, 46 million hectares (or 114 million acres) of land burned, and thirty-four lives lost.

Yet, while news flashes kept us abreast of the extent of the destruction, the reason for this tragic disaster was more elusive.  Why were these wildfires so bad?  Was this year somehow different than other years?  Will the fires continue to get worse?  These were questions that most articles did not try to answer.  Those affected were too focused on survival to worry about causes or consequences.  Thankfully, the fires have been subdued for the time being and restoration has begun.  Now Australia and the world can take a breath to wonder why this devastating force arrived at this place and time.

The Wilderness Problem: The Need for a Modern Reevaluation

A Wilderness Scene from Denali National Park

The Grand Tetons, the geysers at Yellowstone, the African Savanna, the Great Barrier Reef, the Southern Alps of New Zealand; wilderness areas like these have become cherished in the popular mindset of recent years.  Tourists and adventurers flock to them in order to witness breathtaking views and rare ecosystems.  Environmentalists use them as lightning rods for their causes, citing the damage and threats to these places to push through legislation and protection.  We treasure wilderness now.  We use it to define our nations and utilize them for once-in-a-lifetime experiences of self-discovery.  It was not always this way.  The wilderness used to be thought of as a place of horrors, of danger, and of the other.  It was where children went missing, where monsters loomed, and where Jesus was tempted by Satan.  But, beginning in the 19th century in America, wilderness began to be thought of a finite resource and one worth celebrating.  It became a way to escape the pressures of modern society and this escape was being threatened by the ever encroaching mechanisms of industry.  The American frontier was disappearing and the protection of the few remaining pockets of wilderness became a desperate cause.

Eventually what emerged from this shift in attitude was the environmental and conservation movements.  Natural resources were no longer only to be exploited.  Wild places were to be preserved for their own sake.  Yet the otherness surrounding the wild remained.  Humans extolled the virtues of wilderness and nature, but they remained something apart from us that we could only ruin.  We created a dichotomy between the natural and the artificial or human.  Natural places became pure and pristine, while anything that contained the stain of human influence was deemed corrupted.

Recently, J.B. Callicott coined the phrase "the Received Wilderness Idea" to describe this way of thinking.  Its principles are simple.  Wilderness is nature as its most pure, with limited human influence, and such influence must be kept at an absolute minimum to preserve its purity.  On its surface, this philosophy seems a logical way to a manage wild places.  In truth, the Received Wilderness Idea is one of hidden falsehoods and flawed logic.  Despite our best intentions, human beings will always influence the natural environment and vice versa.  Creating walls around natural areas, physical and political, does not preserve them but isolates them to waiting dangers and isolates human beings from the natural around them.

Wilderness is in actuality a complete human construct.  While these areas may seem devoid of human interference, it is nonetheless there under the surface.  Wilderness exists because of the human histories of conquest, expansion, and relocation.  And now wilderness is deeply affected by our policies and impacts.  If human beings worldwide accepted the connection that wilderness has to mankind, it would greatly improve the manner in which we interact and manage these landscapes.  Like the shift in thinking that happened during the dawn of environmentalism, we need to change our mentality towards the wild and the remote.