Jon Christensen's column in the Jan-Mar 2006 issue of Conservation In Practice, What Does “Wild” Really Mean?, briefly explores the perennial dispute about the words "wild" and "wilderness" by reviewing articles in the Wildlife Conservation Society "status report", State of the Wild 2006.

You would think that the Wildlife Conservation Society might have a grip on what it means to be wild. The society grew out of the venerable Bronx Zoo to become one of the most respected wildlife conservation organizations in the world. . .

But the inaugural 2006 edition seems to be deeply troubled by a question that has plagued conservationists of late: What does “wild” really mean?

It’s ironic that Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature (2), has literally the last word in an afterword to the State of the Wild 2006. McKibben is in many ways responsible for starting this most divisive of debates in modern conservation. But there is a surprising twist here which gives me hope that, when all is said and done, this may turn out to be one of the most productive intellectual showdowns in the history of conservation.

In The End of Nature, McKibben argues that greenhouses gases and global warming mean that the heavy hand of man is now all over nature. William Cronon, an environmental historian, joined the debate in 1996 with an essay titled “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Cronon pointed out that our ideas about nature and wilderness exist within a social and historical context. McKibben’s “end of nature” is just the end of an idea of nature as separate from human culture — and maybe that is not such a bad thing to let go.

I think that an important aspect of Cronon's insight is that "wilderness" is a mythic and religious concept, not a rational idea.

Read Cronon's essay. Perhaps reread the previous post when you finish with Cronon.