A dramatic expansion of road building is underway in the Congo Basin fuelled by private enterprise, international aid, and government aspirations. Among the great wilderness areas on earth, the Congo Basin is outstanding for its high biodiversity, particularly mobile megafauna including forest elephants (Loxodonta africana cyclotis). The abundance of many mammal species in the Basin increases w...

The efforts to increase protected area coverage are overlooking the importance of remaining wilderness areas.

In keeping with the South African definition of wilderness (National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act No. 57 of 2003), the policy is to preserve natural conditions by allowing natural ecological processes to operate without human interference. This policy presents managers with a dilemma for wilderness fire stewardship: What is the natural or historical fire regime, and is wilderne...

1 Corresponding author: [email protected] ABSTRACT: Climate warming is predicted to cause boreal forests in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), Minnesota, to shift to savanna and/or temperate forest in the next century. Invasive earthworms, exotic tree pests, and deer overabundance will magnify the impacts of warmer temperatures. Seldom do we assess potential threats to ecosystem ...

The Intermountain West is currently experiencing increased growth in oil and gas production, which has the potential to affect the visibility and air quality of various Class I areas in the region. The following work presents an analysis of these impacts using the Comprehensive Air Quality Model with extensions (CAMx). CAMx is a state-of-the-science, "one-atmosphere" Eulerian photochemical disp...

Understanding how setting attributes influence the nature of the visitor experience is crucial to effective recreation management. Highly influential attributes are useful indicators to monitor within a planning framework, such as Limits of Acceptable Change. This study sought to identify the setting attributes perceived to have the most profound effect on the ability to have "a real wilderness...

Human pressure threatens many species and ecosystems, so conservation efforts necessarily prioritize saving them. However, conservation should clearly be proactive wherever possible. In this article, we assess the biodiversity conservation value, and specifically the irreplaceability in terms of species endemism, of those of the planet's ecosystems that remain intact. We find that 24 wilderness...

Natural disturbances are critical to wilderness management. This paper reviews recent research on natural disturbance and addresses the problem of managing for disturbances in a world of human-imposed scales and boundaries. The dominant scale issue in disturbance management is the question of patch dynamic equilibrium. The dominant boundary issue in disturbance management is the effect of bound...

Twentieth century fire patterns were analyzed for two large, disparate wilderness areas in the Rocky Mountains. Spatial and temporal patterns of fires were represented as GIS-based digital fire atlases compiled from archival Forest Service data. We find that spatial and temporal fire patterns are related to landscape features and changes in land use. The rate and extent of burning are interpret...