Protecting the Wild

Protected natural areas have historically been the primary tool of conservationists to conserve land and wildlife. These parks and reserves are set apart to forever remain in contrast to those places where human activities, technologies, and developments prevail. But even as the biodiversity crisis accelerates, a growing number of voices are suggesting that protected areas are passé. Conservation, they argue, should instead focus on lands managed for human use—working landscapes—and abandon the goal of preventing human-caused extinctions in favor of maintaining ecosystem services to support people. If such arguments take hold, we risk losing support for the unique qualities and values of wild, undeveloped nature.

“"Everything we have, need, use, or want comes from nature. Protecting the Wild is a powerful and urgent reminder that we must enlarge protected areas and connect them, as well as manage the surrounding landscape for conservation, to assure the survival of all forms of life, our own included, on this beautiful planet."”

"Everything we have, need, use, or want comes from nature. Protecting the Wild is a powerful and urgent reminder that we must enlarge protected areas and connect them, as well as manage the surrounding landscape for conservation, to assure the survival of all forms of life, our own included, on this beautiful planet."--George Schaller, field biologist, Panthera
"Protecting the Wild is an ambitious, passionate plea in support of a worthy effort."
-- "Ecology"
"Protecting the Wild is a monument."-- "San Francisco Book Review"
"[Protecting the Wild is] a powerful and impassioned push-back to what is becoming a kind of conventional wisdom among a certain clique of environmentalists."-- "Earth Island Journal"

George Wuerthner is the Ecological Projects Director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, where he does research and writes about environmental issues. For many years he was a full-time freelance photographer and writer and has published thirty-five books on natural history, conservation history, ecology, and environmental issues. Eileen Crist teaches at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society, where she is advisor for the undergraduate program Humanities, Science, and Environment. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and co-editor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. Tom Butler, a Vermont-based conservation activist and writer, is the board president of the Northeast Wilderness Trust and the former long serving editor of Wild Earth journal. His books include Wildlands Philanthropy, Plundering Appalachia, and ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth.

Protected natural areas have historically been the primary tool of conservationists to conserve land and wildlife. These parks and reserves are set apart to forever remain in contrast to those places where human activities, technologies, and developments prevail. But even as the biodiversity crisis accelerates, a growing number of voices are suggesting that protected areas are pass

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