- Some people claim that a nation's government should preserve its wilderness areas in their natural state. Others argue that these areas should be developed for potential economic gain.
Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.________________________________________
Claiming that a nation’s government should preserve its wilderness areas in their natural state, many believe that the best way to protect the natural ecosystem is to minimize any kind of human interruption and even human interactions. In many ways, it is true that human involvements, however considerate they might be, may have certain kinds of undesirable consequences onto wildness areas and the natural environment in general. From my perspective, however, this view appears too much radical and impractical.
Of course, few would disagree that the nature sometimes needs some kinds of rests for its full recovery. Especially, considering the subtle interrelations within complex networks of the ecosystem, it is hard to deny that the nature can receive its best care from the God not from human interventions. Recently, biologists and ecologists in Korea have found that, after fifty years of enough rest, the Demilitarized Zone, a borderline area between the South and North Koreas where every human invasion has long been limited, has become a place a rich hurly-burly of many endangered species of animals and plants are harmoniously preserved and have been enriched, a phenomenon that human technologies for environment cannot accomplish. While even the most prudent and sophisticatedly designed program may inevitably yield some side-effects and distortions in the system, thorough shutting-down of any human intervention serves for the recovery and enrichment of the ecosystem.
Then, should we blame all kinds of human care for the wilderness areas? My answer is absolutely no. When it comes to the rapidly progressing decay in several wilderness areas across the globe, it seems indispensable for humans to take actions. Without certain kinds of actual treatment by us such as implanting protective trees, the alarmingly rapid desertification of Mongolian grasslands, for example, may incur many more disasters to people around the region; in fact, the claim that problems of the nature should be left to the nature itself is in this case a synonym of our irresponsibility.
Further, the wisdom of human interaction with the nature for the nature’s best preservation can be supported if we also consider the recent growth in scientific knowledge. Different from the biological knowledge of the twentieth century, that of our time has become sophisticated enough to take into account the complicated interrelationships in the ecosystem, advanced and far-sighted enough to consider most, if not all, side-effects of a particular remedy, and efficacious enough to already produce surprising results in helping many injured wilderness areas in Northern Europe to recover from various wounds.
"The most practical and effective way to protect wilderness areas is to attract more tourists to these areas through environmentally sensitive projects."
The speaker asserts that the most practical and effective way to protect wilderness areas is to attract more tourists to these areas through some environment-friendly projects. In several respects, making active policies to involve people with environmentally sensitive projects can be a wise approach to protect wilderness. However, artificial intervention may deteriorate environmental states even when these projects are as considerate and well-supervised as possible.
Of course, it is undeniable that the so-called “affirmative development” projects are beneficial to both nature and human-beings. With respect to securing the financial resource needed to continuous preservation of nature, some environment policies to connect human activities with environmental experiences would be one of the most effective approaches to protect wilderness areas for a long time. Since the late 1990’s, Japan have been successful in fortifying the financial ground needed to invest into preservation of nature with its extensive policies to utilize the unused northern islands as an environment-friendly eco-tourism area. This success tells us that the wilderness areas and the nature in general can be effectively protected through human interactions.
Moreover, active development is also beneficial to the general goal of protection of wilderness areas in other senses. When it comes to accumulation of technologies relevant to effective preservation of environment, it was the policy to attract people to these areas that helped Japan to have advanced knowledge and skills to treat the environmentally sensitive problems. From the experiences taken at the Honsue areas, which was once an abandoned area but now is a natural laboratory, Japan have been able to accumulate sizable knowledge on effective preservation of marine vegetations. This also indicates that it is a wise treatment for harmonizing human needs with preservation of wilderness.
Nevertheless, it does not necessarily mean that development-oriented policy is always a virtue to the wise protection of wilderness areas. With respect to the diversity of the internal eco-system, every human intervention tends to have more to do with disastrous rather than beneficial consequences. However carefully designed they might be, human processes including preservations combined with developments inevitably disturb the natural processes—balance between prey and predator, required time to be restorations of animal and plant species, and general evolution and adaptation process of them. In Germany, researchers recently found that, although there is a carefully designed governmental effort to preserve its wilderness, the number of species observed just after its reunification in its previously de-militarized zone has diminished significantly since its opening to the public. In general, human cannot outstrip nature when it comes to their abilities to maintain, restore, and heal wilderness.
Finally, with respect to the aggressive nature of private interests, the idea that preservation can best be made when it is combined with considerate development seems a kind of political rhetoric. From our commonsense, it is quite natural that investment and development produce and demand additional ones. The business of tourisms gives birth to the need of other conveniences and constructions such as hospital, road, recreational facilities, and facilities to maintain them. In this chain-reaction, we will someday find that wilderness areas are no longer wild. Especially, the idea that nature can be preserved by wise human usage has been widely used by greedy business people in many countries. Amazon has been devastated by the so-called “eco-friendly” plantation developers. Alaska’s wild areas have been injured after the wise politicians introduced their environmentally sensitive projects. After all, the idea seems not for nature itself but for corporate interests.
To sum, despite its economic and educational values, the notion that wilderness area can best be preserved by eco-friendly projects seems to be equivocating the truth. If we consider the inevitable harms of every type of human intervention and the greedy nature of private companies, we cannot say that environmentally sensitive projects are wise solutions to protection of nature.