Seventy-five years of conservation and the Wisconsin State Natural Areas program

Global land conservation has historically prioritized vast, scenic landscapes. Early national parks and preserves protected often unproductive yet esthetically impressive natural features (Runte 1997). Subsequent wilderness preservation through the 20th century designated vast landscapes as areas where humans are a “visitor who does not remain” (Wilderness Act 1964). Implicit in both cases is the psychological and physical separation of humans from nature (including many indigenous communities; Spence 1999). While the protection of national parks and wilderness areas may contribute to a cohesive, albeit hegemonic, national identity (e.g., Nash 1970), nature, for most people, becomes distant. Facing a contemporary “extinction of experience” that threatens human connection to the natural world (Soga and Gaston 2016), how, as William Cronon (1996) asked, “can we take the positive values we associate with wilderness and bring them closer to home?” In the United States, occurring in parallel to national land preservation initiatives were local, place-based efforts to preserve what Richard Judd called “democratic spaces” (Judd 2023). Led by governmental and non-governmental organizations, this late-19th-century movement sought to protect nearby examples of cultural and natural heritage for people’s enjoyment. Natural spaces for common use were woven into a quilt of other agricultural, residential, and industrial land uses, and could only be effectively managed through cooperative efforts between individuals and their institutions. Though originating in densely populated New England, local land preservation took place anywhere there were people. In the midwestern United States, this manifested in several state-level conservation initiatives, beginning 75 years ago with the Wisconsin State Board for the Preservation of Scientific Areas.