Can Wilderness be Accidental?
An announcement from the Society of Environmental Journalists highlighting winners of the SEJ’s 10th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment alerted me to a great article from Portland-based writer Dave Wolman entitled Accidental Wilderness.
Published in the May 24, 2010 edition of High Country News, the article chronicles the biological richness of lands owned by the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. The sites have familiar names: Hanford, White Sands Missile Range, Nevada Test Site, and more. Many of these lands were acquired in the 1940s and 1950s and have huge security buffers. With limited human interference on roughly 90% of the holdings, they’ve been allowed to flourish.
The lands have also become defacto safe havens for endangered species reintroductions, such as with the Aplomado Falcon on the White Sands Missile Range. Perhaps good can come from what was previously considered bad.
