2018 Conference

Poster Presentation

Our understanding of the wild, wilderness, and wildness influence how we shape landscapes and ecosystems from the ways we approach conservation methodologies like rewilding all the way to the construction of human-to-nature relationships. We conceptualize wildness as being inherently separate from humanness. Dehumanizing the wild allows us to exploit and misuse it, pitting humanness and wildness at odds with one another. Wolves are romanticized by humans as the epitome of wildness. Looking through the lens of Yellowstone National Park’s wolf reintroduction, this capstone aims to explore the boundary between wildness and humanness.

Wildlife is, in many ways, a commodity within the national park system. It is the focal point that keeps together a multi-million-dollar hunting and outfitting industry, as elk, mule deer, moose, and bighorn are all principal game species that are maintained through wilderness conservation (Magoc 1999). As the first national park in the United States, designated in 1872, Yellowstone has a long history as a wild landscape. It was the first location to become a place-holder within the rapid development to remind us of our past, where virgin wilderness was conserved. In this way, Yellowstone became a park where tourists could escape the frenzy of development sweeping the west.

Human-to-nature relationships describe how and why humans interact within nature and what we believe it means to be natural. They are the lens through which we perceive, experience, and construct natural landscapes and ecosystems. Rewilding is the process of how our conceptions of the wild influence our constructions of the wild.  In the case of Yellowstone National Park’s rewilding efforts, the wolf is emblematic of the missing link within the ecosystem that, when reintroduced, produces the outcome of a wildscape. How do public conceptions of wilderness, wildness, and the wild influence rewilding efforts in Yellowstone National Park?”