Wild Sanctuaries [antikvár]

Foreword Many of us Americans think of National Wildlife Refuges as rigidly defined sanctuaries for wildlife. They are, of course, much more than this: imaginative management has found ways in which they serve elemental needs of both wildlife and man—because man and wildlife must live together, as probably rwenty million people are currently learning each year on the refuges. Perhaps we think of these areas in rigid definitions because the burgeoning human population of the United States is forcing too many of us to live in squares enclosing still smaller squares, closed and stacked an existence within a rigid geometry that stifles free spirits, beast or human. We need sanctuaries just as the animals need refuses. The graphic arts of every world culture are embellished with allusions to or representations of animals and plants. Art, literature, and the common references of conservation remind us, within our urban enclosures, of the wider ranges and freer creatures, thus stimulating our latent urge to replenish our souls by returning to our sources. In green pastures. on great sweeps of desert or in swamp solitude, wild sanctuaries restore the spirit of man and release him from rectangles. The refuges serve different specifics while preserving their basic purpose; they vary as the climate varies across the far-flung reaches of our wide land. In my native Arizona, where much space is still in the public domain, large refuges have been created from public lands to protect rare desert species such as the desert bighorn sheep, or for migrating waterfowl who need "wateringholes" in their arid flight, or to safeguard habitat that may be needed for a variety of species. Here the problem may be international: to guard the Sonoran pronghorn antelope, an international area has been set up for this endangered mammal along the border. Million-acred Cabeza Prieta Game Range in Arizona bears most of these antelope existing in this country. In these great Western refuges, there are far more acres than people over the face of the land. By contrast, consider new and comparatively tiny Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, from which you can almost see the storied towers of Manhattan. Here, at considerable expense to Federal funds and with large donations from interested citizens, many thousands of schoolchildren—and many an adult—are introduced to wild living things for the first time in their lives. A desert in Arizona and a swamp in New Jersey are very different in climate and size, but they have a clear common objective: protecting wildlife for human pleasure. We need the wildlife refuge and the human sanctuary in the midst of people—not in the metropolis, perhaps, but close to it. Consider Parker River Refuge on the Massachusetts coast, surrounded by twenty million people but offering a lonely bird walk among the sand dunes or a small cove for fishing, a resting place for waterfowl, a haven for shorebirds.