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Welcome to your wilderness. In
the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is.
That is what makes America what it is. -- Gertrude Stein
In the last 100 years, Americans have built
more cars and roads than anyone else. Roads made it possible for us to see our
beautiful country. They made the wilderness accessible to tourists, loggers,
miners and builders. Roads meant progress which, sadly, also meant destruction
to the American wilderness.
However, as wilderness shrank, the movement
to protect it grew and America did something no other country had done. America
passed a law to protect its vast remnants of wilderness forever.
Today, over half of our wilderness can be
found in Alaska and is protected by four legal entities: The National Park
Service (NPS), The Bureau of Land Management, The USDA Forest Service and U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service. One of the most visited designated wilderness areas
can be found in the Denali National Park and Preserve. Here, park managers are
working to make the park accessible to the public while protecting the
wilderness land according to the laws put in place in the last century. This
seems a perfect spot to investigate the legal ramifications of protecting
wilderness for a broad range of purposes and people. |
