THE IMPORTANCE OF WILDERNESS PRESERVATION
Hemlock clearcut in Algonquin Park with some shelterwood logging in the back. Photo taken in June 1972. The effects of logging are cumulative, pervasive and long-lasting. Photo: Daniel F. Brunton
Wilderness is not just remote scenic country suitable for canoeing, backpacking and other forms of outdoor recreation. It is fundamentally important to human existence. Wilderness is where unfettered natural Earth processes can unfold as they have for eons, where lifeforms develop and are sustained.
Pure stand of young paper birch trees. Is this a wild forest or the result of intensive commercial logging? Photo: Jennifer Beale
Wild areas must be large in order to function as true wilderness. They must also be free of roads, dams, mines, commercial logging operations and other large-scale human alterations. Only large areas like Algonquin Park, 7,500 square kilometres in size, are big enough to sustain native vegetation in various successional stages and big enough to house viable, self-reproducing, genetically-diverse populations of all native plant and animal species, including the large predators.
Conservation of biodiversity at all levels-genetic, species, ecosystems, and landscape-is fundamental to maintaining the integrity of nature. In today's world, where human industrial intervention is extending into every corner of the Earth, protecting wilderness is the only sure way to conserve biodiversity. Without wilderness, Earth will sink further into biological poverty and the wisdom of 4 billion years of unfettered evolutionary and ecological processes-represented in natural biodiversity-will be lost.
From a high vantage point in Algonquin Park, like beside, you can see the even-aged forest patches and absence of truly mature trees and snags (dead standing trees). From the air, the effects of logging become even more evident. One sees a very extensive and complicated matrix of logging access roads within the park. It is a highly fragmented landscape. The open edges alongside the roads affect bird populations and small animal movements. The science of conservation biology concludes that fragmentation of habitats into small disjunct units invariably leads to biodiversity impoverishment and ultimately to the decline and even extinction of some species. Photo: Simon Wilson
