Why are wildlands important?
Today over 95% of the earth’s land-surface is zoned for human uses such as building and road construction, farming, fishing, ranching and logging. Even those few remaining wild areas where human impact has historically been minimal are being encroached upon, converted to other uses, and their plant and animal communities degraded or depleted. We at WCS believe that conservation of wildlands is important because they are the last bastions where ecological and evolutionary processes remain largely unfettered by the influence of humans. Wildlands are extraordinary places because they still support richly diverse and abundant assemblages of plants and animals including those that are particularly susceptible to and intolerant of human behavior. Moreover, wildlands are natural laboratories that can continue to teach us much about how the natural world works.
