Because these basic resources are such a large part of our daily lives, it is important that we manage them responsibly to ensure future generations have what they need. Human civilization heavily impacts the environment and the rich natural resources we depend on. All communities face the challenge of managing resources responsibly, not only for themselves, but for the sake of the world around them. Learn more about how individuals and communities can manage their resources to support themselves and the world around them.
Biodiversity refers to the variety of organisms found in a particular habitat. It is important to maintain biodiversity because we rely on it for ecosystem services, which fall into four main categories: provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting. The earth provides these to us for free and they are critical to achieving a planet in balance.
Use these resources to explore the diverse species that exist across the globe, and encourage your students to become good stewards of life on earth. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom.
Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Springtime comes to the million acres of wilderness of Glacier National Park. Henry David Thoreau. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Websites Wilderness. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
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But despite the growing human footprint, there are still wild places where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal disturbance from urbanization, energy and transportation infrastructure, agriculture, mining and logging.
Though those last untouched spaces are shrinking at a harrowing rate. Comparisons between recent maps of wilderness areas and those in show that an estimated 1.
This is equivalent in area to half of the continent of Australia or twice the size of Alaska. Hardest hit were South America, which has experienced a percent wilderness loss, and Africa, which has experienced a percent loss—in just over two decades.
However, if Western conservationists in central Papua New Guinea know that the Gimi believe all matter is here for eternity, that it simply changes form over time, they will be better equipped to work with local communities in the preservation of biodiversity. But if they dismiss that cosmology as primitive animism and seek to impose Western science and religion on the Gimi people, their conservation initiative will almost certainly fail.
Of course, the final arbiters in this scientific conflict should be indigenous peoples themselves, the very people that early advocates for Yellowstone Park said had no interest in raw nature or the park area.
They were alleged to be afraid of the geysers and fumaroles Not true. They cooked over them. The truth is that much of what the rest of us know about nature and have incorporated into the various sciences we use to protect it — ecology, zoology, botany, ethnobotany — we learned from the very people we have expelled from the areas we have sought to protect.
Mark Dowie is an award-winning journalist and former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine. Stretching the mind across time can help us become more responsible planetary stewards and foster empathy across generations. Vincent Ialenti Aug Vincent Ialenti Jun Philip Laughlin Jun If history is any indication, an unstoppable wave of competitive innovations is heading our way again.
Per Espen Stoknes Apr 9. The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans For over a century, conflicting views of wild nature created a rift between indigenous people and misguided conservationists. By: Mark Dowie. Ansel Adams filled thousands of human-free negatives with land he knew the Miwok had tended for at least four thousand years.
Image: Wikipedia. The wilder nature, the better it pleases many people. Wilderness provide a counterbalance to the cultivated landscape. Body and soul come to rest.
This is why Wilderness areas are popular tourist destinations around the world, attract tourists and artists and strengthen rural regions. We rightly demand the protection of tropical rainforests or African savannahs.
But undisturbed nature must also be possible with us. This is what the federal government wants. Not much in international comparison. We should do that.
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