By the 1800s, progress had run rough-shod over the East and Lewis and Clark were sent out to explore the yet-undeveloped West.
By 1900, men with a sense for nature were seeing the coast-to-coast need for restraint in where plows, saws and steam engines were deployed.
President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first Forest Service chief, sought to balance the reckless exploitation of the country’s limited natural resources with what they called a “conservation” movement.
According to the text of the act, “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Wilderness advocates are still looking for common ground with recreational and industrial groups that oppose more restrictions on public lands. Bulldozers are still on the job. In 2008, the Forest Service estimated that development was eliminating 6,000 acres of open space every day.
Earth isn’t expanding in size, but the U.S. population is 314 million and growing. That’s up from 293 million 10 years ago when we were observing the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.
Like a good parent, the law draws some boundaries that shouldn’t be violated for our own good and for future generations.
Population growth in the US is a large driver of development as infrastructure is needed to support a growing population and leads to a large portion of the 6,000 acres in the US developed each day.
Between 2010 and 2050, the Census Bureau is predicting population growth of 41% or 127,000,000, greater than the entire population of the US in 1930. According to the Census Bureau, 96,000,000 or 75.6% of this projected growth will be from immigration.
It would appear that those seeking to limit development should also favor limiting in immigration. Observation shows that in general, those in favor of limiting development favor immigration and those in favor of limiting immigration favor growth. Something of a disconnect, is it not?
