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271 From American Forests and Forest Life, October 1925, 599–604. aLdo LeopoLd the last stand of the Wilderness (1926) How many of those whole-hearted conservationists who berate the past generation for its short-sightedness in the use of natural resources have stopped to ask themselves for what new evils the next generation will berate us? Has it ever occurred to us that we may unknowingly be just as short-sighted as our forefathers in assuming certain things to be inexhaustible, and becoming conscious of our error only after they have practically disappeared? Today it is hard for us to understand why our prodigious waste of standing timber was allowed to go on—why the exhaustion of the supply was not earlier foreseen. Some even impute to the wasters a certain moral turpitude. We forget that for many generations the standing timber of America was in fact an encumbrance or even an enemy, and that the nation was simply unconscious of the possibility of its becoming exhausted. In fact, our tendency is not to call things resources until the supply runs short. When the end of the supply is in sight we “discover” that the thing is valuable. This has been true of the latest natural resource to be “discovered,” namely the group of things collectively called Outdoor Recreation. We had to develop tenements and tired business-men before Outdoor Recreation was recognized as a category of human needs, though the use of the outdoors for recreational purposes is as old as the race itself. This “discovery” that we need a national policy on Outdoor Recreation is in fact so new that the ink has barely dried on its birth certificate. And, as usual, we are becoming conscious of thousands of wasteful errors in the past handling of recreational resources which an earlier discovery might have avoided. I submit that this endless series of more or less postmortem discoveries is getting rather tedious. I for one am piqued in my sense of national pride. Cannot we for once foresee and provide? Must it always be hindsight, followed by hurried educational 272 REstoRation and manaGEmEnt of thE nativE landsCaPE work, laborious legislative campaigns, and then only partially effective action at huge expense? Cannot we for once use foresight, and provide for our needs in an orderly, ample, correlated, economical fashion? The next resource, the exhaustion of which is due for “discovery,” is the wilderness . The purpose of this article is to show why the wilderness is valuable, how close it is to exhaustion and why, and what can be done about it. Wild places are the rock-bottom foundations of a good many different kinds of outdoor play, including pack and canoe trips in which hunting, fishing, or just exploring may furnish the flavoring matter . By “wild places” I mean wild regions big enough to absorb the average man’s two weeks’ vacation without getting him tangled up in his own back track. I also mean big areas wild enough to be free from motor roads, summer cottages, launches, or other manifestations of gasoline. Driving a pack train across or along a graded highway is distinctly not a pack trip—it is merely exercise, with about the same flavor as lifting dumbbells. Neither is canoeing in the wake of a motor launch or down a lane of summer cottages a canoe trip. That is paddling—and the supply is unlimited. Is the opportunity for wilderness trips valuable? Let us apply the test of the market price. Any number of well-to-do sportsmen are paying from $3,000 to $10,000 for a single big-game trip to the wilderness regions of British Columbia, Alaska, Mexico , Africa and Siberia. It is worth that to them. Now how about the fellow who has the same tastes for wilderness travel but a lesser pocketbook, and who probably has more real need of recreation? He simply has to do without, subsisting as best he can on polite trips to summer resorts and dude ranches. Why? Because the old wilderness hunting grounds, formerly within his reach, no longer exist, having been opened up by motor roads. Right here I had better explain that motor roads, cottages, and launches do not necessarily destroy hunting and fishing, but they destroy the wilderness, which to certain tastes is quite as important. Neither do I imply that motors, cottages , summer resorts, and dude ranches are not in themselves highly valuable recreational assets. Obviously they are. Only they are...

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