Why Map? Why Map? Why Map?
A map, like any good picture, is worth a thousand words
Maps are intellectual tools which synthesize information in graphic form. Maps have been used by human beings since the dawn of human time to give direction, facilitate resource gathering and portray dreams.
Once a person is map-literate (grasps the meaning of a few symbols), maps overcome linguistic, cultural and political barriers. Depending on their scale, they can place smaller areas into a larger context or provide detailed information about a local site. Maps offer the ability to compare areas and information. They offer insight into the complex relationships between people and environment.
Esau Tuza, who came to the 1990 WILD conference in Hawaii from the Solomon Islands, explained his apprehension about maps. "Maps have always been used by the developers. They have caused the destruction of our islands."
In a letter to WILD following the conference, Alfred Munera, who came to the conference as a Columbian lawyer and writer working for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), responded to Tuza's challenge:
"The nonprofit sector has neither access nor resources to work with accurate maps. The governments keep relative secrecy about the wilderness areas to avoid the international concern that today is driving many politicians to care for their national resources. In other words, Latin America needs your help to map and protect many endangered ecosystems as well as the indigenous communities that live in them. There is a need for well informed non-government organizations to give their input in the development plans that drive our countries towards economic growth."
The latest detailed global survey of natural areas was conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in the 1950's. In 1972, the UN Conference on Environment in Stockholm recognized the need for a global inventory of all natural ecosystems--as necessary baseline data for sustainable land-use planning. Sine then, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has conducted some regional inventories of natural areas, notably of southern Asia and Africa (although copies of both reports are difficult to obtain).
The only recent map of global wilderness areas available to the public was produced by the Sierra Club in 1987. It showed roadless areas of one million acres or larger.
Map of Greek nature, by Stamatis, shows areas of biogenetic significancein Greece
Detailed maps have been prepared for some ecosystem types--for example, the Smithsonian Institute's maps of tropical rainforest and the Australian government's of that country. But non-governmental organizations have played a significant role in the production of many detailed maps: Fundacion Neotropica's mapping of Costa Rica's natural areas, S.O.S. Mata Atlantica's mapping of Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, Earth First's mapping of American wilderness areas (published in the Big Outside by Dave Foreman), the Audubon Society's mapping of ancient temperate rainforests in the American northwest, and Conservation International' mapping of ancient temperate rainforest in British Columbia.
In British Columbia, maps of existing ancient temperate rainforests were only made available to the public in 1990. Why is it that non-government organizations, indigenous people and local groups do not, on the whole, have access to the maps which tell us how little remains of our natural heritage? Could it be that such maps provide powerful impetus for the conservation movement?
As the space missions of the 1960's popularized the image of our planet as a fragile, blue-green globe, we believe that the WILD maps and publications will provide a startling picture of how little of earth's wilderness remains in the 1990's--a catalyst and justification for immediate wilderness-saving action and truly sustainable land-use planing.
