The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate

摘要

In their original collection of essays on "the Wilderness Debate," Michael Nelson and Baird Callicott implied that they were putting to rest the belief that there are purely natural and wild places free from human influence which should be preserved for human benefit, what they call "the received wilderness idea." In the introduction to that volume, they wrote, "the received wilderness idea has been mortally wounded by the withering critique to which it has been lately subjected" (The Great New Wilderness Debate, 1998, 12). The publication of The Great Wilderness Debate Rages On seems to suggest that the idea is not dead yet, as this volume collects 42 additional essays, most of which were written after the initial volume and many of which defend the idea of wilderness.