National Geographic's Last Wild Places [antikvár]

Hre^^rd 've long believed in the John Muir maxim, "The clearest way into the Universe is through a wilderness." His statement takes on more weight now because that wild door to the universe has been slowly closing since he called it to our attention at the turn of the century. Ours may be the last generation with the opportunity to insure that wild places will always beckon to humankind, offering us a way to better understand our role in the cosmos. As a professional conservationist I have long worked to save natural areas, and with the help of generous and imaginative people more than 2,000 places have been set aside. My focus has been principally in the United States, but thanks in part to this book I now see opportunities for global preservation that can benefit people everywhere. I have been deeply moved by the scope and beauty of undeveloped areas remaining around the world as seen in these pages. The photographs illustrate the splendor of highly diverse landscapes, and the texts detail their uniqueness. I was stmck by the vastness of Australia's Queensland, fascinated by the richness of Africa's Okavango, heartened that on our own crowded North American continent there are still areas as untrammeled and forbidding as Wrangells-St. Elias and Kluane. Beyond their compelling beauty, these wild gems are important to us for very practical reasons. With fresh water constituting only 3 percent of the moisture on this planet—and most of that locked up in Arctic ice packs—the filtering and purifying capabilities of wilderness areas are becoming critical in our polluted world. As we continue to lose species whose potential benefit to us has not yet been documented, undeveloped areas become valuable banks of biodiversity. Many wild creatures that we enjoy observing migrate over considerable distances, and the retention of large areas of natural habitat