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Web Bit 28-2: The Wildlands Project By Jennie Dusheck
The Wildlands Project is a non-profit organization whose radical goal is to preserve the species still left in North America. Wildlands would do this by putting into practice the theories of conservation biologists and setting aside half of all land in North America as "wild land" protected from use by humans. According to the Wildlands Project, in 100 years half of the land in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico could consist of four types of areas. The first three are "outer buffers," available for hunting and fishing; "inner buffers," where people could hike and camp, but not hunt or fish; and "core areas, closed to cars and people. Core areas might range from a minimum of 100,000 acres, about the size of a medium national park, to as large as 25 million acres, a figure just a little less than all the national parks in Alaska combined. In addition, protected corridors would connect core areas. These would serve as extensions of reserves, allow seasonal migration and long-distance migration in case of climate change, and dispersal and gene flow between core reserves. Corridors would have few roads, little or no human use, and be wide enough to minimize edge effects. The Wildlands Project recommends that corridors be three times wider than the longest distance penetrated by edge effect, so that a ten-mile corridor would be about one mile wide. The Wildlands Project was established by the founders of the radical environmental group Earth First! According to the Wildlands Project, "[founder Dave] Foreman intends for the Wildlands Project to take preservation of biological diversity to a new level. To evolve into a more sophisticated version of Earth First!, without the civil disobedience, the eco-terrorism, and the flagrant disregard for authority. The Wildlands Project is Earth First! all grown up." You can visit the Wildlands Project's Web site at http://www.wildlandsproject.org/. |