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Thread: there's very little wilderness left in the lower 48 states

  1. #41
    Senior Member WalkingTree's Avatar
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    Silent Running is a good movie.

    ----

    I feel like this post would be a continuation of something I was talking about in post #15 here -

    http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...nd-Pasteurians

    We may need to do something along the lines of a suggestion made by Edward O. Wilson, elucidated in his book 'Half Earth' -

    http://www.amazon.com/Half-Earth-Our.../dp/1631490826

    (click the 'read more')

    You Tube -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq3w7cldgMU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ANire8E240

    Also -

    https://nature.berkeley.edu/breakthr...half-the-earth

    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...952379/?no-ist

    More on Edward O. Wilson -

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
    Last edited by WalkingTree; 05-24-2016 at 12:29 AM.
    The pessimist complains about the wind;
    The optimist expects it to change;
    The realist adjusts the sails.

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  2. #42

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    [QUOTE]Let's just hope this remains fiction:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TckJBvl_uT0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WVspvb3c3o[QUOTE]

    I hope it does remain fiction, can you imagine the ramifications of a card playing robot. You think a good pokerface is hard to read, that robot didn't have a face at all, and no emotions. Nobody had a clue it was just sitting on a full house. As for the wilderness. Recently I was in the hickory creek wilderness. Its small (8663 acres)but when I got inside it was good enough for me to enjoy. Is it real wilderness? Maybe not but didn't bother me when all I could hear was running water and birds singing.

  3. #43
    Senior Member WalkingTree's Avatar
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    "The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help."

    - Albert Schweitzer

    http://www.spiritualityandpractice.c...pts/view/14836
    The pessimist complains about the wind;
    The optimist expects it to change;
    The realist adjusts the sails.

    - William Arthur Ward

  4. #44
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    Oppenheimer Funds is currently running a commercial that says by 2025 all homes will have robots in them. So....get ready.

    https://www.ispot.tv/ad/A1Ta/oppenhe...n-is-beautiful

  5. #45

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    Thanks for pointing out the E O Wilson book Half-Earth (2016?). I will try to find it. The few section I have been able to look up indicate that our present geological age needs to be called the Anthropocene (Plasticicene or Syntheticene) Yes, future geologists will identify our era by the layer of plastic wrappers and computer chips they find. The really frightening thing is that Wilson wants to conserve half the earth for nature while admitting that world human population may soon reach 11 billion

    I still haven't seen the Silent Running film but I wonder if space colonies and satellites may not be too far off .
    Meanwhile, we can develop more game shows and home shopping networks

  6. #46
    Senior Member WalkingTree's Avatar
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    (Faiaoga) Yes...one hard reality and the options for addressing it, which few want to face or admit to knowing or comment on, is the fact that there are so many of us and will be many more very quickly...despite any future technological advances or changes in societal structures, you can't solve the problem by just developing more land for one use or the other. At some point, we run out of land. Period. You can't wait until then to find another approach, it needs to be done now. And it's not only about the square footage that we directly inhabit or use for agriculture or other purposes, etc...it's not that simple. So much more is going on, such that more land and more than human related activities is required for the whole system to survive, and we're already very close to our limit and point of no return.

    You can label this thinking, you can stigmatize it, you can blame the messengers, you can whine and put the messenger on the spot and make them responsible for coming up with a solution...but it's there nonetheless. Inevitably. And everyone needs to face it, and take responsibility for addressing it however it needs to be.

    I am all for space/off-earth endeavors, but that kind of thing is not going to help us either any time soon. It won't work like that. Whether we become able to exist off-earth and elsewhere or not, the human condition and situation on earth has to be revolutionized nonetheless. And now. Or else.
    Last edited by WalkingTree; 05-24-2016 at 02:59 PM.
    The pessimist complains about the wind;
    The optimist expects it to change;
    The realist adjusts the sails.

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  7. #47
    Senior Member Manwithnoname's Avatar
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    I read the initial post and saw it was by a banned member who's other posts I've read have never impressed me none. I was about to just forget the whole thing until I read the last couple of sentences which I cannot let slide for my 4 legged friends. Hopefully someone else already addressed it but I'm not reading all the pages to find out, the initial post was enough for me but I've got to make sure the record is set straight. Not just horses, but equines in general can sneak right up behind you in complete stealth scaring the bejesus out of you when leaning in over your shoulder to see what's up or stealing your hat or grabbing a good hold on your coat knowing there ain't a thing you can do about it to get away until he's ready to let you go. I swear I heard him laughing!!

  8. #48

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    Using man as a marker for the supernatural influence on an environment suspends the truth. We are a natural creature of evolution.

    The example of the American bison's rise and fall and resurgence. Native American cultivation practices involved clearing forests with fire. This created better grazing lands for bison whose numbers exploded.

    Towards the end of the precolumbian period a plague hit the natives. Most of the inhabitants of North America died before the pilgrims arrived. That left vast agricultural lands and cleared lands left to graising animals and a population bomb went off.

    Florida has been inhabited by man for at least 12,500 years. The glades were a desert then and most of the villages were off of Florida's modern coast in forests that have lied under water for thousands of years now. The glades started forming about 4,000 years ago. And resembled their precolumbian state around 2,500 ago. The folks that were here when Hernando DeSoto came through left in the 1700's and the Miccosukee and Seminole people replaced them a hundred years later in very small numbers. 50 people in the 1850's.

    Flash forward over 100 years and they went from a wild people to federally recognized tribes. They chose that route of recognition over just living in the glades because we cut the hydrology of the glades with the Tamiami Trail in the late 1920's.

    We have had a greater and greater influence on the land. But, given that an estimated 99.9% of all organisms that have lived have gone extinct. It is a good bet we are all temporary.

    We had a thread here that defined a wilderness as so far from the paved road. I think 14 miles. If you hike in 5 miles or 10 miles you are still getting it done! Have fun and screw the labels!

  9. #49
    Senior Member WalkingTree's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Batch View Post
    Using man as a marker for the supernatural influence on an environment suspends the truth.
    What does this part mean?
    The pessimist complains about the wind;
    The optimist expects it to change;
    The realist adjusts the sails.

    - William Arthur Ward

  10. #50
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    You have to own a piece of land or ask the government permission(A.K.A. State parks) camp on it.. let alone live. You just need to find secret spots that nobody knows of and you'l be fine to practice your bush-craft. Just pretend you got dropped behind enemy lines during Vietnam, lay low and leave a small foot print. If you get caught just pretend your lost.. so you don't become a POW.

    Just don't let them catch you with wild carrots in your mouth.
    "Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets." - George S Patton

  11. #51
    Senior Member hunter63's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by One View Post
    You have to own a piece of land or ask the government permission(A.K.A. State parks) camp on it.. let alone live. You just need to find secret spots that nobody knows of and you'l be fine to practice your bush-craft. Just pretend you got dropped behind enemy lines during Vietnam, lay low and leave a small foot print. If you get caught just pretend your lost.. so you don't become a POW.

    Just don't let them catch you with wild carrots in your mouth.
    So, You are suggesting trespassing?
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  12. #52

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    Quote Originally Posted by WalkingTree View Post
    What does this part mean?
    We have people who define wilderness as untouched by man as if man is not natural. We treat ourselves as if we are not a natural creature.

    Then people try to define wilderness as untouched by man when man has lived there for millennia.

  13. #53
    Senior Member WalkingTree's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Batch View Post
    We have people who define wilderness as untouched by man as if man is not natural. We treat ourselves as if we are not a natural creature.

    Then people try to define wilderness as untouched by man when man has lived there for millennia.
    Yea...but that's why I use this approach to how to think of it -
    Quote Originally Posted by WalkingTree View Post
    ...an expanse of geography wherein non-human species and their ecosystems rule much more than humans, and there is very little or no climate control taking place.
    It's a matter of our place in nature...exactly how we do things, how we affect things, and how much. When we've been in a place before, and things changed because of our presence...it was still there. And by 'it', I mean some form of self-sustaining natural system to some degree. But we're getting closer and closer to this not being the case...affecting and changing things so that 'natural' systems don't exist or operate anymore.

    Viruses and bacteria have always existed in our bodies. They have been here before. Are still here right now. But when we have a case of a virus or bacteria trying to kill a person, we don't disregard the incident and let that person die by saying "they have always been here, so it's nothing to worry about. That person's body (aka 'wilderness') is still there, even though it's actually dead now".
    Last edited by WalkingTree; 05-29-2016 at 08:22 PM.
    The pessimist complains about the wind;
    The optimist expects it to change;
    The realist adjusts the sails.

    - William Arthur Ward

  14. #54

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    Last spring I had to clear about 20 hemlock trees of varying sizes off a small portion of my property.
    Dead due to an imported invasive adelgid. The ones in the state forest behind me are a standing fire hazard.

    Saturday I went for a long drive across the state. Every single white pine I saw had some form of wilt. There were sections of hillsides well off the roads that were completely dead brown. People here are blaming salt damage or old-tree stress or maybe borers introducing stain fungus. All of them. Betting most will be dead by August. The ones that aren't probably won't make the winter.

    Man and his ability to travel globally within hours has totally changed the face of this earth whether he has walked into an area or not. Nothing here is untouched by man.

    More and more food crops are being attacked by traveling insects and diseases. Orange tree greening? Cavendish bananas? The seriousness of bee colony decline?

    The issue of overpopulation cannot be discussed. There is no monetary incentive for having fewer consumers in the world. We'd much rather sell Cap&Trade or more fertilizer, more GMOs and more Roundup, or more land to housing developments and solar farms, tobacco fields and cane plantations. A world where all of nature is considered less important than feeding one more man.
    I'm hoping the world can hold out for another 25-30 years.
    But I do feel sorry for the kids today.
    Last edited by LowKey; 05-30-2016 at 11:16 AM.
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  15. #55
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    Where to place the blame???

    I remember a few years back when the pine forests of Tennessee were turning into wasteland. Standing dead trees for miles.

    Acid rain generated in Memphis and Nashville was blamed and the federal and state governments jumped on the pollution prevention bandwagon, closing smokestacks and turning people out of work in "pollution generating businesses" by the thousands, muzzling our car engines, raising the cost of vehicles and gasoline.

    Then some observant young grad student from one of the local colleges discovered the southern pine beetle was the culprit. Nothing humans had anything to do with.

    Apparently no one that knew "jack" had ever examined the trees, they had simply jumped on the latest and greatest social trend because it fit their needs.

    I play that "this used to all be woods and fields" game as I drive down the road, but not as I drive through the Federal and State wilderness areas. In fact, those areas are growing as people and companies donate more land to offset some that they have used in the past. You give a company a good tax break and you would be amazed at what they will do to grab it.

    I know that Ohio boasts hundreds of thousands of acres of ReCreation project land. I have camped on that land, hunted on it and fished the lakes. And almost every other piece of "National Forest", including the Great Smoky Mountains, was bought from private ownership and placed in public trust.

    While out west much of the land now seen as public property was never owned by anyone and the fight was to keep it out of private hands, here in the east our public use land is growing each year.

    I know it is hard to believe but east of the Mississippi River almost 1/3 of the land is owned/controlled by Federal, State or local governments. The number jumps to 50% of the land west of the Mississippi.

    Most of it will never be seen as long as one stares down the blank page we call the interstate highway system, because all the off ramps look the same.
    Last edited by kyratshooter; 05-30-2016 at 01:05 PM.
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