From The Editor: A Wild Legacy

I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the mark we leave on the planet. It’s something that rattles around deep in the back of my mind often enough without ever really bubbling to the surface, but it’s this issue’s feature story on the 50th birthday of The Wilderness Society that’s brought it more to the fore. It’s an incredible achievement, making it to fifty, whether it be as a human (until recently in our species’ history, our life expectancies were barely nudging thirty), as a business, or as an environmental NGO like TWS.

TWS was borne from the thankfully successful campaign during the 70s and 80s to save Tasmania’s Franklin River from a proposed hydro-electric dam. Just look at Grant Dixon’s gorgeous gallery image on p24 to see what would have been inundated, and then remember this would have been just the smallest sliver of what would have been lost forever. Australia, and in fact the entire planet, is full of such places. Without action and community effort, innumerable precious forests and river valleys would have been chainsawed, bulldozed, or flooded.

Now, if you regard yourself as an environmentalist, or better yet, as a greenie activist, little of this is news. But I want to speak to those who read Wild primarily as adventurers; more specifically still, I want to speak to those adventurers who recreate in our wild places but are not yet involved in environmental activism in any way. Because here’s the thing: few national parks—which in Australia tend to be the loci for adventurous activities—simply just ‘happened’. They usually came into being after a long period of people fighting for their creation.

Many of those people came to conservation via adventure. One of the best things about adventuring is not merely the adrenaline, nor merely the new places, the friendships, the challenges, the life insights or the joys; it’s that adventure is a pathway to recognising the natural beauty of our wild places, of the forests we walk through, the rivers we paddle, the rocks we climb, the peaks we scale. Spend enough time adventuring, and it becomes hard not to recognise the fundamental importance of the health of natural ecosystems. Hopefully, it also becomes hard not to recognise that these natural ecosystems, and the plants and critters contained therein, are intrinsically valuable, whether or not they offer even a whit of utility to us humans. It should not matter whether they help clean the air, provide pure water, or offer pristine playgrounds for our adventures; they deserve protection for simply being.

In fact, there are few better examples of adventure leading someone to conservation than Bob Brown himself. He told me in conversation that, prior to him rafting the Franklin in 1976 (he was actually, along with Paul Smith, the first to do it in a modern, inflatable raft), his experience in environmental activism was “None. Zero. Zilch.” But seeing the beauty of the Franklin, and seeing what was going to be lost, galvanised Bob, and it soon led to the meeting at his place during which The Wilderness Society was formed.

Of course, it was not Bob Brown alone who saved the Franklin. It was a community of tens if not hundreds of thousands, ranging from those who put their lives on hold so they could engage in direct action to stop the dam, to those who wrote letters to or petitioned politicians, to those who gathered in massive demonstrations in Australia’s capital cities to protest the dam.

In the decades since, there have been many thousands of similar campaigns, some huge, others far smaller and quieter. Some have been successful; others, sadly, have not.

So if you recreate in the wilds, do what you can to get involved. I’m not saying you should (although it’d be awesome if you did) immediately go and get involved in direct action; I recognise that’s a path trodden by only a courageous and self-sacrificing minority (for an example, read the Two-Dogs Ratu profile starting on p60). But consider, if you don’t already, at least supporting the NGOs and community groups that are fighting for our wild places.

Join a group yourself. Offer financial support. Sign a petition. Get on the ground and get dirty and pull up weeds or fix trails or repair damaged landscapes. Do something. Anything. Even if it’s small. Because leaving a truly adventurous legacy means leaving behind a flourishing planet that allows others to follow in your footsteps.

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