Rocca Calascio is a mountaintop fortress in the province of L'Aquila in Italy. It bears witness to the long relationship between humanity and mountains, and how natural landscapes are also culture ones.
UNESCO
Often thought of as eternal, mountains are vulnerable to climate change and tourism. To protect them, they should be recognised for their cultural values, not just their natural characteristics.
Traffic at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park on Aug. 20, 2015.
Neal Herbert, NPS/Flickr
It’s hard to preserve national parks “unimpaired,” as US law directs, when they’re overrun with tourists who stray off paths, strew trash and harass wildlife. A parks scholar calls for crowd control.
John James Audubon relied on African Americans and Native Americans to collect some specimens for his ‘Birds of America’ prints (shown: Florida cormorant), but never credited them.
National Audubon Society
US ideas about conservation center on walling off land from use. That approach often means expelling Indigenous and other poor people who may be its most effective caretakers.