April IJW Now Available

The April issue of the International Journal of Wilderness is now available! Renew your subscription today - and you’ll receive April’s issue within the next few weeks and the August and December issues when they arrive. The April IJW highlights El Triunfo RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) and the continued work of our in Europe, working tirelessly to expand the wilderness concept in this region of the world. The issue is also full of great feature articles, editorials, book reviews and announcements, as is each and every issue of the IJW. Be sure to renew today!

Subscribe to the International Journal of Wilderness

Now in its 13th year of publication, this multi-disciplinary journal is a product of the cooperation between WILD and other pre-imminent institutions such as the Universities of Idaho and Indiana, the Aldo Leopold Research Institute, and the State University of New York. Sponsorship is provided by leading NGOs and federal government agencies active in wilderness conservation. It presents the latest in wilderness management, research and recreation, while also covering related issues on the sustainability of wildlands internationally, community involvement in protected areas, and policy issues.

IJW is the tool of choice for wilderness managers and advocates. Every issue contains peer-reviewed articles and feature presentations from numerous countries, as well as a Wilderness Digest, book reviews and illustrations.

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Amazonian Wilderness

In today's Guardian there is an article with the depressing assessment that the Amazon jungle could be lost in 40 years:

"The Amazonian wilderness is at risk of unprecedented damage from an ambitious plan to improve transport, communications and power generation in the region, conservationists warned yesterday." - Read full article.

This is in addition to a recent article by the Brazil-based humanitarian aid worked Conor Foley called 'Threatening the Amazon', which lays out in some further detail some of the things that are going wrong. Meaning, in other words, that not much has changed since we attended the RSA 2006 Angus Millar Lecture where Chris Clark, President of Associazione Amazonia Onlus, told a distinguished Edinburgh audience about the extreme difficulties conservation efforts in the Amazon face. Transcript here .

The issues facing rainforests like the Amazon will be in particular focus at the next World Wilderness Congress - which will be held in South America in 2009 - including follow-up on the Resolution on Tropical Protected Areas as adopted by the 8th World Wilderness Congress.

Now you can help by getting informed. We have a suggested starting point for your reading in preparation for the next for the next World Wilderness Congress. You may also find it useful to go through some related articles from the International Journal of Wilderness:

• An Overview of the World Wilderness Congress
• The 8th World Wilderness Congress
• The 7th World Wilderness Congress - Wilderness and Human Communities

Learn more about and subscribe to the International Journal of Wilderness

Last but not least, here's on from our archive about the very first congress: Findhorn and the World Wilderness Congress 1983

Latest issue of Journal of Wilderness now out

As reported by our friends at Wild:

"This issue features the keynote speech given by WILD Founder Dr. Ian Player at the 8th World Wilderness Congress titled “Soul of the Wilderness” and Bittu Sahgal’s piece “It’s a Wonderful World.” Bittu was recently recognized with the WILD Writing Award for his life-long commitment to the spirit of wild nature and human rights."

Learn more and subscribe.

A few Wilderness Resources for Academics

In addition to reading the International Journal of Wilderness - which:

"...links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interested citizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management, and allocation strategies; education; research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship."

Select articles available courtesy of the Wilderness Task Force including:

• Support Is Building for Global Wilderness Conservation
• An Overview of the World Wilderness Congress
• Strengthening Wilderness in South Africa

You may also want to check out the Wilderness Research page (US focused) compiled by the Wilderness Institute at The University of Montana's College of Forestry and Conservation, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute.

They have a handy index of Graduate Research related to Wilderness and here are some highlights of articles that can be found on just one subject close to our hearts:

• Wilderness Education for Youth at Risk: An Interpretive Case Study
• Set outs lessons learnt elsewhere that we are also drawing on for our Turn Around programme.
• Theoretical basis, process, and reported outcomes of Wilderness therapy as an intervention and treatment for problem behaviour in adolescents
  
• "The social importance of wilderness therapy and its emergence as an accepted treatment for more seriously troubled adolescents poses challenges and opportunities for wilderness conservation. Wilderness is being valued for more than just protected biodiversity and recreational opportunity, but also as a healing source for adolescents who are not being reached by traditional therapeutic techniques."
• Youth at Risk in Wilderness
• This paper concludes that when using Wilderness as part of an intervention programme for youth at risk, it is essential that the participants don't feel that they're mandated to take part as it leads to what the study calls 'adverse incidents' - This is of course makes complete sense - put differently, Wilderness only works on the willing and we take that into account in the core design of our Turn Around programme.

The search stretches much further - there are articles about Wilderness in Fine Arts, Folklore, Environmental Sciences, Anthropology, Archaeology, Biology and Botany. You name it.






Here in the UK we are working closely with the University of Essex, as regular readers will know. - You can still watch Jo Peacock (as more than a thousand people have done already) the lead researcher on the project talk about the conclusions reached so far:
- Get out into wilderness and boost your self esteem!: On YouTube / TeacherTube.