Wilderness and the American Mind

Within the context of this book, preservationism was a movement that recognized the need to protect wilderness lands in the US. It began in the mid-19th century, and its first proponents were intellectuals such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerging largely as a theoretical concept, preservationism argued that wilderness itself had inherent value and that its destruction would have negative consequences for civilization. The application of preservationism has evolved, and because of controversies surrounding natural resource harvesting, specifically at Hetch Hetchy in California’s Yosemite Valley, it grew into a full-fledged political movement.

An approach to ethics that takes a cost-benefit approach to problem solving, utilitarianism was and still is a way of analyzing the value of interference in wilderness areas. This was especially important when cultural views toward wilderness changed from seeing it as a threat to regarding it as a trait that represented the American national identity. Intruding into the wilderness to harvest resources, from a utilitarian perspective, recognized the need to protect wilderness but eventually found the potential benefit to society outweighed the environmental impact of the intrusion.