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Book Review
| Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act. By Mark Harvey. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. xviii + 325 pages. Cloth $35.00.
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| In July 1964, Congress adopted Public Law 88–577, establishing a national system of wilderness areas. As executive secretary of the Wilderness Society, Howard Zahniser had taken the lead in advocacy. In Wilderness Forever, author Mark Harvey presents a first-rate biography informing discussions of the development of American environmentalism. |
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Zahniser's father was a Free Methodist preacher whose ethics deeply influenced his children. Zahniser came to feel that wilderness sometimes embodied "an aspect of eternity" or a sense of "God's transcendence" (pp. 136, 148). The spiritual renewal and renewed sense of perspective Zahniser found in wilderness formed but one part of his rationale for landscape preservation. In time he incorporated biological justifications, with wilderness representing a place for "respecting the world of living things" (p. 136). |
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In 1945, Zahniser left the security of editorial positions with federal agencies for the uncertainties of serving as executive secretary for the Wilderness Society, bringing along his particular talents with writing and language. While Olaus Murie provided strategic direction as his co-executive, Zahniser edited Living Wilderness magazine, organized and facilitated in Washington, D.C., testified at hearings, and brought together a disparate coalition. Around 1950, proposals for dam construction in Dinosaur National Monument catalyzed Zahniser's vision for a national system of wilderness preserves. His central concern, suggests Harvey, was that the entire system of land classification would lose force and meaning if nationally significant landscapes were developed. |
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Harvey insightfully discusses recent critiques of the wilderness idea. He rightly argues that most wilderness advocates from the 1930s through the 1950s did not have a singular ideal notion of wilderness. Biologist Olaus Murie, for example, was aware that human history was intertwined with the landscape. Advocates of the 1940s used the term "primeval" in general ways when comparing roadless areas to the built environment. Zahniser's advocacy was facilitated by the Forest Service's use of "wilderness" as early as 1949 when it started reclassifying existing primitive areas. For Zahniser, wilderness represented an uncontrolled quality, an "untrammeled" area that could be "intensely human" and "not always pristine" (pp. 119, 91, 117). Significantly, it was human association that gave wilderness its value. Zahniser did not overlook native peoples, writes Harvey, and "treasured developed landscapes as well as undeveloped ones" (p. 109). Wilderness advocates utilized a fluid understanding that resists simple categorization. Today, Zahniser's language "still speaks to accepted notions such as stewardship, responsibility, and respect for nature" (p. 253). |
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Patient and persistent, Zahniser remained convinced that people with fair intent would support wilderness if they learned enough about the issue. He worked out a crucial compromise in legislation with Congressman Wayne Aspinall (D-Colorado), who symbolized western resistance to the wilderness bill. Zahniser countered "the charge that wilderness was incompatible with democratic culture," arguing that wilderness was for all people (p. 246). Today's nongovernmental organizations might take a lesson from Zahniser's remark that advocates can accomplish much if "one did not need to take credit for every achievement" (p. 124). |
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Harvey's capture of the moment's uncertainties, deft treatment of political maneuvering, and apt description of a life lived with a "generosity of spirit" creates a compelling narrative (p. 124). An important contribution, Wilderness Forever will be required reading for anyone interested in wilderness. |
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James Pritchard is associated with the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, and the Department of Landscape Architecture at Iowa State University. His first book was Preserving Yellowstone's Natural Conditions: Science and the Perception of Nature (Nebraska, 1999). |
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