Uncommon Ground

Uncommon Ground

Environment

More thoughts about industrial tourism

Edward Abbey was undoubtedly right about industrial tourism. It deadens us to the world, and it disconnects us from the sublime. But does that mean that all national parks should ban cars? Protecting wild areas where human influence is minimal is undoubtedly important, and Abbey is right that cars trailers “tend to separate [us] from the world around [us].” But cars also provide access to parts of the world that some people would never see without them. Cars and wildness are incompatible. How do we choose between them?

The answer can’t be that every national park must completely exclude cars, if only because we’d have many fewer and much smaller national parks than we do now. The answer also can’t be to allow cars anywhere we can build a road, because that tramples on the interests of many people, like me, who value wildness. The answer must be that we balance the need for wildness with the need for access. But how do we do that?

The first step must be for those of us who value wildness to understand that there are those who value access as much as we value wildness and that their interests deserve respect from us in the same way that our values deserve respect from them. That is very hard. I shudder when I see a hillside covered with ATV or dirt bike tracks, but the people who made those tracks are people—human beings who deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity that expect from them. Given enough time I might be able to persuade them that their interests would be better served by enjoying the outdoors on foot or on horseback. But until I succeed, I have to respect their interests and seek a way to accommodate them without doing unreasonable damage to my own. Of course, they must do the same with me—respect my interests and find a way to pursue theirs that leaves wild spaces for me.

That first step is big. It requires trust on both sides. It requires me to trust that ATV riders will respect my interests because if I don’t trust them, I can’t trust any agreement we reach. If I don’t trust them, I will believe that they are taking advantage of me even if I can’t see how they’re doing it. And they, of course, have to trust me for the same reason. If you think about it a bit more, that first step I proposed is really the second or third step (and there are more steps to come).

The first step is to recognize that the problem isn’t to choose between cars and wildness. It is to find the balance between cars and wildness. Or to say it differently, it is to realize that cars and wildness are only partially incompatible.

The second step is to build trust among those with different interests. In taking the second step, we’ll cycle back and forth between building trust and building understanding. We may even circle back to the original conflict and find a new way to describe it that makes our interests more compatible than we originally thought.

October 12, 2026 Environment 0 Read more >

Industrial tourism

A Google search returns a list of sites that describe industrial tourism as “a type of travel that involves visiting active factories, decommissioned industrial plants, craft workshops, and industrial heritage sites to learn how things are made and explore economic history”1. I think of it differently.

I first encountered the phrase in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, a chapter entitled “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks.” Abbey’s polemic is directed at mechanized tourists, those who visit national parks in cars, trucks, and recreational vehicles and who rarely stray beyond the most convenient paths.2 His complaint? “Industrial Tourism” is a threat to the national parks. Why? Because

A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us—like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness—that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship.

Industrial Tourism deadens us to the world out there. It disconnects us from the sublime. Industrial Tourists see beautiful things, but they miss the sublime, which is “vast and mysterious, while the beautiful tends to be confined and groomed.”3

Congress recognized that places without industrial tourism should be protected when it passed the Wilderness Act of 1964.

In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. (Section 2(a))

It defined wilderness as a place “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (Section 2(c)).4

Abbey proposed three principles to govern the future of national parks:

  1. No more cars in national parks.
  2. No more new roads in national parks.
  3. Put the park rangers to work.

He was confident that millions of citizens would embrace the “adventure, difficulty, and challenge” of parks in which visitors traveled only by foot, horseback, muleback, or shuttle. I admire the vision he describes, but I do not embrace it.

He dismissed those “unwilling to crawl out of their cars,” either forgetting or ignoring those whose abilities do not allow them to travel far from their car. He avoided the dilemma of simultaneously protecting wilderness for those who can enjoy it and providing access for those who cannot hike or climb.

  1. From that AI Overview that Google provides. ↩
  2. Before going further, I should confess that I will soon be an industrial tourist. On Wednesday, my husband and I will fly to Salt Lake City. From there we will drive to Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches National Parks. We will only drive through Capitol Reef on our way from Bryce Canyon to Moab, and we will spend no more than a day in each place. ↩
  3. Marcus Willascheck, Kant: A Revolution in Thinking, Harvard University Press, 2023. ↩
  4. In 1964 even most scientists would probably have imagined that there were places in the world without human influence. We know better now. ↩

September 28, 2026 Environment 0 Read more >

Thinking about Rachel Carson

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea. (The Sea Around Us, p. 3)

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She is probably most remembered for Silent Spring, her 1962 book that led the US to ban DDT. Silent Spring helped sparked the modern environmental movement. She began her career in the mid-1930s with the US Bureau of Fisheries (now the US Fish & Wildlife Service) writing scripts for Romance Under the Waters, a series of educational radio broadcasts. After the success of The Sea Around Us, which spent 86 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and which won the 1952 National Book Award for Nonfiction, she left the Fish & Wildlife Service and bought a cottage on Southport Island, Maine.She lived there until she died in 1964.

Two years after her death, Congress established the Coastal Maine National Wildlife Refuge, which was renamed the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in 1970 to recognize both Carson’s dedication to conservation and her long connection to the coast of Maine. I’ve walked the Carson Interpretive Trailin Wells, Maine at least once a year since the early 1990s. Returning to the trail is like meeting an old friend. Every year the scene is familiar and timeless, but every year both of us have changed a little. Still, the affection grows deeper.

The Merriland River and Branch Brook wander through cordgrass, forming the eastern and western boundaries of the upland trail. Just beyond, they join to form the Little River, which bends lazily through the salt marsh on its way to the Gulf of Maine. A simple scene, but one that I treasure.

I took the photo at the top of this post a few days ago. It shows a view of the Merriland River from the Carson Interpretive Trail.

September 14, 2026 Environment, Uncategorized 0 Read more >

UConn Reads 2021 – Truth, Democracy, & Climate Change (the video)

Two weeks ago on the afternoon of March 25th, the UConn Humanities Institute hosted a panel discussion on Truth, Democracy, & Climate Change. Tom Bontly (Philosophy) moderated the panel, which included two distinguished philosophers, Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan) and Lee McIntyre (Boston University). For some reason, Tom also asked me to participate. After introductions and brief remarks, we had a lively discussion about why some people do not accept the evidence for human-caused climate change. Elizabeth mentioned, for example, Dan Kahan‘s idea that there are “conflict entrepreneurs” who purposely promote disinformation, not because it necessarily promotes the cause they appear to be supporting, but because they profit from the conflict in other ways. If you couldn’t join us on the 25th and you’re interested in learning more, you’re in luck. Like nearly every other seminar, meeting, or and panel in the last year, this one was held virtually. It was also recorded, and the edited video (with captions) is now available on YouTube.

April 5, 2021 Climate change, Science policy 0 Read more >

Presenting science to the public in a post-truth era – implications for public policy

Last Friday I attended a very interesting symposium entitled Presenting science to the public in a post-truth era and jointly sponsored by the Science of Learning & Art of Communication1 and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, more specifically its project on Humility & Conviction in Public Life.2 The speakers – Åsa Wikforss (Stockholm University), Tali Sharot (University College London), and Michael Lynch (UConn) – argued that the primary function3 of posts on social media is to express emotion, not to impart information, that not only are we more likely to accept new evidence that confirms what we already believe than new evidence that contradicts it, and that knowledge resistance often arises because we resist the consequences that would follow from believing the evidence presented to us.

I can’t claim expertise in the factors influencing whether people accept or reject the evidence for climate change, but Merchants of Doubt makes a compelling case that the resistance among some prominent doubters arises because they believe that accepting the evidence that climate change is happening and the humans are primarily responsible will require massive changes in our economic system and, quite possibly, severe limits on individual liberty. In other words, the case Oreskes and Conway make in Merchants of Doubt is consistent with a form of knowledge resistance in which the evidence for human-caused climate change is resisted because of the consequences accepting that evidence would have. It also illustrates a point I do my best to drive home when I teach my course in conservation biology.

As scientists, we discover empirical facts about the world, e.g., CO2 emissions have increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 far above pre-industrial levels and much of the associated increase in global average temperature is a result of those emissions. Too often, though, we proceed immediately from discovering those empirical facts to concluding that particular policy choices are necessary. We think, for example, that because CO2 emissions are causing changes in global climate we must therefore reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions. There is, however, a step in the logic that’s missing.

To conclude that we must reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions we must first decide that the climate changes associated with increasing CO2 emissions are bad things that we should avoid. It may seem obvious that they are. After all, how could flooding of major metropolitan areas and the elimination of low-lying Pacific Island nations be a good thing? They aren’t. But avoiding them isn’t free. It involves choices. We can spend some amount of money now to avoid those consequences, we can spend money later when the threats are more imminent, or we can let the people who live in those place move out of the way when the time comes. I’m sure you can think of some other choices, too. Even if those three are the only choices, the empirical data alone don’t tell us which one to pick. The choice depends on what kind of world we want to live in. It is a choice based on moral or ethical values. The empirical evidence must inform our choice among the alternatives, but it isn’t sufficient to determinethe choice.

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face in developing a response to climate change is that emotions are so deeply engaged on both sides of the debate that we cannot agree on the empirical facts. A debate that should be played out in the realm of “What kind of world do we want to live in? What values are most important?” Is instead played out in the realm of tribal loyalty.

The limits to knowledge Wikforss, Sharot, and Lynch identified represent real, important barriers to progress. But overcoming knowledge resistance, in particular, seems more likely if we remember that translating knowledge to action requires applying our values. When we are communicating science that means either stopping at the point where empirical evidence ends and application of values begins or making it clear that science ends with the empirical evidence and that our recommendation for action derives from our values.4

  1. A training grant funded through the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program ↩
  2. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation (story in UConn Today). ↩
  3. Note: Lynch used the phrase “primary function” in a technical, philosophical sense inspired by Ruth Milliken’s idea of a “proper function,” but the plain sense of the phrase conveys its basic meaning. ↩
  4. In the real world it may sometimes, perhaps even often, be difficult to make a clean distinction between the realm of empirical research and the realm of ethical values. Distinguishing between them to the extent possible is still valuable, and it is even more valuable to be honest about the ways in which your personal values influence any actions you recommend. ↩

May 29, 2019 Environment, Science policy 0 Read more >

Proposed revisions to US Endangered Species Act regulations

On Monday I pointed out that the US Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Service planned to propose revisions to regulations that affect how the Endangered Species Act is implemented. The proposed changes were published in the Federal Register today. There are three sets of changes. Here are links and the accompanying summary for each:

We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (collectively referred to as the “Services” or “we”), propose to revise portions of our regulations that implement section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). The proposed revisions to the regulations clarify, interpret, and implement portions of the Act concerning the procedures and criteria used for listing or removing species from the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants and designating critical habitat. We also propose to make multiple technical revisions to update existing sections or to refer appropriately to other sections. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15810/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-the-regulations-for-listing-species-and

We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, propose to revise our regulations extending most of the prohibitions for activities involving endangered species to threatened species. For species already listed as a threatened species, the proposed regulations would not alter the applicable prohibitions. The proposed regulations would require the Service, pursuant to section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act, to determine what, if any, protective regulations are appropriate for species that the Service in the future determines to be threatened. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15811/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-the-regulations-for-prohibitions-to

We, FWS and NMFS (collectively referred to as the “Services” or “we”), propose to amend portions of our regulations that implement section 7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. The Services are proposing these changes to improve and clarify the interagency consultation processes and make them more efficient and consistent. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15812/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-regulations-for-interagency-cooperation

The period for public comment ends on 24 September 2018.

July 25, 2018 Endangered species 0 Read more >

Proposed revisions to regulations implementing the US Endangered Species Act

The US Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service are charged with implementing the US Endangered Species Act. On Wednesday, they will publish three proposed rules in the Federal Register that modify existing regulations by which they implement the act. The proposed rules deal specifically with

  • Criteria for listing of species as endangered or threatened and for designation of critical habitat,
  • Aligning the way in which protections to threatened species are applied between USFWS and NMFS, and
  • Changing requirements and procedures associated with interagency cooperation on activities that affect endangered species.

If you are interested in how the Endangered Species Act is implemented in the United States, I urge you to read the proposed changes. If you want to comment on them, you have two options (on or after Wednesday, 25 July):

  1. Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal (http://www.regulations.gov), enter FWS-HQ-ES-2018-0006 in the search box, click on the “Proposed Rules” link, click on “Comment Now!”, and submit your comment.
  2. Deliver a hard copy of you comments by US mail or hand delivery to
    • Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS–HQ–ES–2018–0006; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, MS: BPHC, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041–3803
    • National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected Resources, 1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

If you submit comments, they will be posted at http://www.regulations.gov.

I expect to review the proposed changes over the next few weeks and to post my comments on each of the proposals here. Then I’ll collect them into a single comment and post them at http://www.regulations.gov. If you read my comments and disagree, please explain how and why you disagree in the comments. Your comments will make my the comments I share with USFWS and NMFS much better.

July 23, 2018 Endangered species 0 Read more >

Saturday afternoon at Trail Wood

OK. This is mildly embarrassing. I moved to Connecticut in 1986, I was one of the co-founders of the Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment in 1996, I’ve read A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm at least half a dozen times, and Trail Wood is less than 30 miles (40 minutes) from my home in Coventry, but it wasn’t until Saturday that I finally visited. It won’t be the last time. I expect to return once or twice a year to the Beaver Pond Trail, to cross Starfield and Firefly Meadow, and to visit the Summerhouse and Writing Cabin.

Black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) photographed at Trail Wood

A nice patch of black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) greeted me near the parking area, which is just a short walk from the house at Trail Brook. Rather than following Veery Lane, I turned left and followed the path through Firefly Meadow towards the small pond.

Edwin Way Teale’s writing cabin at Trail Wood

The Writing Cabin is on the southwest shore of the pond. I turned right and followed the northeast shore to Summerhouse. From there I followed a path along the stone wall bordering Woodcock Pasture until it met the Shagbark Hickory Trail.

Spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) photographed at Trail Wood

I found spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) along the Shagbark Hickory Trail , which I followed to the Old Colonial Road. From their I followed the Beaver Pond Trail to the edge of the pond.

Beaver Pond at Trail Wood

After sitting for a while on a nice bench at the south end of the pond, I backtracked on the Beaver Pond Trail and followed the Fern Brook trail through Starfield back to the house and then to the parking area. The whole walk was less than a mile and a half, and the total elevation gain was only 55 feet. It was definitely an easy walk, not a hike, but it was very pleasant, and it was nice to spend time on the old farm where Teale spent so much of his time.

So to anyone from UConn (or nearby) who reads this and hasn’t been to Trail Wood yet, take a couple of hours some afternoon, drive to Hampton, and explore. Trail Wood is easy to find, and it’s open from dawn to dusk. It’s a gem in our own backyard. And if you haven’t read A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, do it now. You’ll enjoy your visit to Trail Wood even more if you do.

July 16, 2018 Botany, Environment, Personal 0 Read more >

Climate change and Pelargonium in South Africa

For more than a decade my colleagues Margaret Rubega and Bob Wyss have co-taught a course to graduate students in science and engineering and undergraduates in Journalism.1 The purpose of the course is to help science students improve their skills in working with journalists and to help journalist increase their skills in interviewing scientists and developing stories from those interviews. One of the projects in this fall’s edition of the course was for the journalism students to interview one of the science graduate students and produce a short video describing the student’s research. Daniela Doncel interviewed Tanisha Williams, a PhD student in EEB whom I co-advise with Carl Schlichting. In addition to interviewing Tanisha, Daniela also interviewed Cindi Jones and me. She assembled a video that explains Tanisha’s work very well. I think Daniela did a very nice job of weaving the disparate interviews into a compelling story, and I think the video looks very good (even though it has me in it). I hope that you agree.

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December 29, 2017 Botany, Climate change, Science communication 0 Read more >

Rediscovering Adonis cyllenea

Adonis cyllenea

Adonis cyllenea – Photographed at the 8th International Alpine Conference, Nottingham, UK. Photo by Todd Boland (from the North American Rock Garden Society)

Adonis cyllenea was described in 1856 from a specimen collected in the Peloponnese Mountains of Greece (http://bit.ly/2xgG1lS). It was thought to be extinct in the wild until 1976 when it was rediscovered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis_cyllenea). It was recorded in the Giresun province of Turkey in 1867 and was just rediscovered there (http://bit.ly/2vfDPcO). Occasionally, there is good news about plants that were thought to be extinct. Mostly when they disappear, they are gone for good.

August 23, 2017 Endangered species 0 Read more >