Defining Wilderness

What Does Wilderness Mean?

Wilderness is an emotive word, provoking different reactions in different people. It's a word which vibrates through a series of deep clear notes in my soul; it shimmers black and silver inside me. For me it's about modern humans relationship with people, places and animals which don't fit within the dominant economic or social system. Wild places don't have an obvious economic use, wild animals threaten industries and economies, nomadic or indigenous people's lifestyles don't fit into the laws or economy of the country they live in.

Most definitions focus on landscape and it being uninhabited or unchanged by man.  Old definitions of wilderness often reflect a lack of understanding of native people's role within landscapes and historical land use change.  What is Wilderness? Surveys undertaken by the University of Leeds exploring cultural perceptions of wild land in the UK found that wildness is an essential element of landscape character in remote and mountainous areas. Elements of wildness, include 'apparent naturalness and remoteness'.  Most definitions are to landscape and don't include wild animal species.

Personally I don't think a wilderness is something untouched by humans. Its not somewhere where no one lives, its not a protected reserve which native people are removed from. Humans are as much part of the landscape as any other species. But wild places and things live according to their own will. They aren't controlled by us, they aren't part of our economy or farming systems. 

There is a history of destruction and persecution of these people, species and places. We change the inherent intention because it isn't useful for us.  Wetlands are drained to make economically useful farmland, rivers are straightened and deepened so infrastructure can be sited in the floodplain, upland woods removed to enable sheep grazing. On moorlands managed by shoots birds of prey are poisoned and persecuted. Species which threaten human industries are labelled as ‘pests' or ‘vermin'.  In Europe this includes wolfs, lynx and wildcats, in the UK its stoats, weasels, rats, polecats, birds of prey, foxes and badgers. Forest dependant people are relocated and denied land rights in many countries, native Americans and Australian aboriginal people are restricted to ‘reserves' and in the UK gypsies are discriminated against and widely loathed.

A pattern emerges... all of these things are wild - untamed - not economically useful - they are self willed and represent a threat to a controlled situation.

When I try to understand this pattern it seems to be based in our survival drive. Controlling our environment would evolutionarily have provided us with some certainty, increased our survival chances and helped to guarantee food sources. A useful behaviour, but today that desire for certainty and control is affecting our management and relationship with the environment to such a degree that everything wild is threatened.

As a zoologist I support the creation of habitats for the sake of wildlife, and as a volunteer I help protect the lifestyle of forest dependant people - but as a religious person I could do more. There is an opportunity for religious organisations to support the right to exist of these wild places, with all their inhabitants - people and other animals.

Existing Definitions

There is no universally accepted definition of wilderness or wild land.  I'm gathering Druid definitions of wilderness. Please email yours to the Environmental Projects Coordinator.

The examples below are existing commonly used definitions.  When I receive your responses I will add them to this page. 

Etymologically, the word "Wil" means will, self-willed, wilful and "Deor" is the old English or Anglo Saxon for animal, "wildor" meant a wild beast. "Wildeor"then meant wild animal - creatures not under human control, so technically "wilderness" is a place where wild beasts live, not under human control.

The John Muir Trust has this definition for prime, exemplary areas of wild land in the UK; "Uninhabited land containing minimal evidence of human activity."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "wild" as: "in its original natural state".
1. "Occurring, growing, or living in a natural state; not domesticated, cultivated, or tamed."
2. "Not inhabited or farmed"
3. "Uncivilized or barbarous; savage."

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) defines wilderness as "a wild and uninhabited area."

Dave Foreman, the founder of the radical environmental protection movement Earth First! calls it wilderness "self-willed land".

Wilderness has been defined as "A tract of land, or a region, uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a wide, barren plain; a wild; a waste; a desert; a pathless waste of any kind."

The USA's Wilderness Act of 1964, defined wilderness as 'A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean ...an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions, and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least 5000 acres, or if of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational or scenic value'.

Quotes on Wilderness

Henry David Thoreau wrote that "in wildness is the preservation of the world"

Other Quotes on Wilderness (taken from: "Wilderness: Nice Idea"by Robert Macfarlane, TRAIL magazine, July 2004).

"With some 60 million people sardined into some 250,000 square kilometers, humans have besmirched every corner of these islands. The wild is something we go abroad to seek. Britain is wilderness-bankrupt"

"Wilderness must be an entirely non-human environment, we must return it to nature and regard the presence of people, or the traces of people past, as compromising of wildness"

"Wildness is everywhere in Britain, if only we will stop in our tracks and look"

" Wilderness is a noun which acts like an adjective" by which wilderness is not a
condition of a place, but a condition of mind.

"One mans wilderness is another's roadside picnic ground"

"It is any natural place where we can temporarily lose our bearings, or happily
abscond from the familiar. And there are innumerable places in Britain outside
Scotland where that can happen - if we are prepared to let it"