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Welcome
to the Policy Symposium on the Plate Boundary Observatory proposal put before
the National Parks Service in Alaska by EarthScope.
EarthScope
is an organization dedicated to providing a foundation for fundamental and
applied research throughout the United States that will contribute to the
mitigation of risks from geological hazards, the development of natural
resources, and the public's understanding of the dynamic Earth. In this
proposal, EarthScope scientists want to place the PBO installations or
monuments in or near wilderness lands in Alaska. As experts in the science,
legal and local communities, you have been called together to evaluate this
proposal and make a recommendation to the parks service.
Some managers, seeing ever increasing
threats to wilderness, may be relatively undecided about the need for or
importance of many proposed scientific activities in designated or suitable for
wilderness areas. Others may agree with Graber (1988), a research scientist
with extensive experience working in national park wilderness, who suggests
that:
"… the appropriate standard that
managers must apply is whether the benefits that will accrue to wilderness
conservation, society-in-general, or human knowledge…by scientific
research outweigh the costs imposed on wilderness by those research
activities." |
