SCIENCE@home

“Wilderness” revisited: Is Canadian park management moving beyond the “wilderness” ethic?

Megan Youdelis,Roberta Nakoochee,C. O'Neil,E. Lunstrum,Robin Roth

Published 2020 in The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien

ABSTRACT

This paper questions whether the rescaling of conservation practice in Canada to include local and Indigenous communities, NGOs, and private market-based actors represents a move away from wilderness-thinking in conservation, and what implications this might have for the future of conservation in Canada. We explore the links between Cronon’s “wilderness” ethic and coloniality, racism/sexism/classism, and political economy, and the extent to which recent trends in conservation practice, such as co-management arrangements, private tourism proposals, and a shift in programming to attract a diverse public to parks, help us to move beyond the limited vision for conservation and environmentalism that the wilderness ethic provides. We interrogate the ways in which the concept of wilderness is being employed, resisted, and transformed by a multitude of actors in three parks and conservation areas across Canada. We argue that although recent developments in conservation practice help to redress some of the worrisome aspects of wilderness-thinking in parks, they also reinforce and re-emphasize problematic lines of thinking and praxis. While the wilderness character of Canadian parks has shifted a great deal since the turn of the 20 th century, the wilderness ethic remains deeply embedded within conservation discourse and practice.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2020

  • Venue

    The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien

  • Publication date

    2020-02-11

  • Fields of study

    Political Science, Sociology, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1111/cag.12600
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-36 of 36 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-29 of 29 citing papers · Page 1 of 1