Rethinking Our Relationship to Nature, 1920–1959 113
for the past several years, to the great detriment
of all the future. There must be no more need-
less, careless losses. There is no substitute for
wilderness. What we now have is all that we shall
ever have.Source: David Brower, “The Meaning of Wilderness to
Science,” in Brower, For Earth’s Sake (Salt Lake City:
Peregrine Smith, 1990), pp. 271-72.the system would make possible. There will be
important subsidiary benefits to recreation, to
watershed protection, and to the beauty of the
land.
A growing economy will have availed us noth-
ing if it extinguishes our all-important wilder-
ness. A gross misunderstanding of wilderness,
in which it is evaluated according to the num-
ber of hikers who get into it, has been fostered