from the Economist
"On January 11th the Senate voted to advance a bill that would designate almost 2m acres (800,000 hectares) of land as wilderness. If put together, the parcels of land would be one and a half times as big as the Grand Canyon National Park. It would be the biggest expansion of wilderness for 15 years." Read more in "Where the Wild Things Are" on Economist.com
This isn't really that big of a chunk of land, but we should be happy that anything is getting set aside. Perhaps this gesture signals the start of a land preserving trend for 2009? What is actually most interesting to me, is what has been clearly set aside for OTHER activities than wilderness. In the image above, the entire state of Nevada has been blatantly overlooked. Its land has, and will continue to be used, for activities that are definitely far from qualifying as "conservation". (See Day 98 Hard Lines, for more information.)
This isn't really that big of a chunk of land, but we should be happy that anything is getting set aside. Perhaps this gesture signals the start of a land preserving trend for 2009? What is actually most interesting to me, is what has been clearly set aside for OTHER activities than wilderness. In the image above, the entire state of Nevada has been blatantly overlooked. Its land has, and will continue to be used, for activities that are definitely far from qualifying as "conservation". (See Day 98 Hard Lines, for more information.)
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