About Loving Nature to Death

Visitors at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana

The preservation of wilderness areas in the United States has its roots in the early Nineteenth Century with the poet William Wordsworth and painter George Catlin, along with Naturalist John Muir, who many credited with being the “father” of wilderness protection and the environmental movement in the United States. These gentlemen inspired political leaders, such as Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, to establish protected wilderness areas in such areas as Arkansas and Yosemite Valley, California.

By the late Nineteenth Century, President Theodore Roosevelt led the crusade to establish America’s first true National Park, which became known as Yellowstone National Park. Today the nation's most popular National Park is the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. This park encompasses over 800 square miles along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina and sees over nine million visitors each year (source: PBS.org). According to a 2004 study done by the National Parks Conservation Association, Great Smoky Mountain National Park suffers the most air pollution of any in the country (source: NPCA.org.)

The establishment of national parks led states and local governments to begin setting aside wilderness and other natural areas for the preservation and enjoyment of the public. One such area is the popular Turkey Run State Park in west central Indiana that I fell in love with as a young boy and spent nearly every summer weekend growing up. This love of Turkey Run led me to a lifelong love of the great outdoors and to join the Boy Scouts, where I became an Eagle Scout. While working on my Eagle Scout project, I worked with the Director of Vigo County Parks to establish the hiking trails and install erosion control devices at the new Hawthorn Park near my hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana.

Turkey Run was established as Indiana's second state park in the early days of the Twentieth Century, led by Richard Lieber and a group of fellow conservationists. Today, Turkey Run is one of the midwest’s most popular state parks. According to Gary Warmoth, a manager at Turkey Run, they see a little over one million visitors each year. Like all wilderness and recreation areas, humans leave behind waste. I personally witnessed large amounts of human waste and pollution along the trails of the park as a young boy.

While we all love nature and our wilderness areas, human encroachment on wilderness always comes with a cost in the form of waste. We need to balance this love for nature with preservation. Some ideas that have been suggested include stricter rules for remote areas of parks, limiting the number of visitors by controlling traffic and entrance fees. This approach would also help to provide much needed funds for the park systems. We also need stricter enforcement of the rules already in place, but this approach would require funds and staffing that are not currently available at many parks.

The challenge facing our parks was poignantly pointed out by Peter Greenberg, travel editor for CBS News (article here):

There's no black-and-white solution to any of the problems facing our national parks, as each issue comes with its own history and, often, decades of debates. But the park system was put in place for enjoyment not just today, but for future generations, and regardless of where you stand on a particular issue, there are ways to get involved to help preserve the parks.

Other sources: NPS.gov & Walden.org