8 eH BE AIW:-D-O.B ONG BU biel 
tentionally selects for the strongest animals and thus the best genes that 
have been selected by nature are eliminated. 
For students in the land-use sciences, a virgin woods, dune, or prairie 
is a “living museum” of an ecosystem, an outdoor classroom, a “control” in 
the sense of an experiment, and a biological storehouse whose demonstra- 
tion value can never be overestimated in teaching. Without such areas, a 
teacher, no matter how good, cannot instill in his students an appreciation 
for the complexity, structure, and functioning of various ecosystems. 
Moreover, such areas are necessary for students to learn the some- 
times complicated methodology used in obtaining data for analyzing 
species or species to environment relationships. It is through the con- 
tinuum of knowledge passed from teacher to student that ideas and con- 
cepts are developed which lead to proper decisions involving environmen- 
tal resource management. 
@ Preservation vs. management: 
A quote by Hugh IItis (1959), regarding natural areas, states that 
they “must never be disturbed, cut, or grazed, except in the specific cases 
where management is necessary to preserve a vegetation type (e.g., the 
burning of prairies ).” This statement brings up a quite new idea in nat- 
ural area preservation: To preserve an area, it may be necessary to active- 
ly manage tt. 
Management here is not management in the sense of men obtaining 
products from an area (anthropocentric management), but is manage- 
ment in the sense of maintaining the integrity of communities within the 
ecosystem (biocentric management). The biocentric oriented manage- 
ment attempts to replace or duplicate a natural environment or periodical- 
ly reoccurring phenomenon that permitted communities or ecosystems to 
develop. 
Some environmental groups that desire to preserve an area may, in 
the long run destroy it, if they demand an “all hands off” policy on the 
part of the Administrative agency. Eventually, such groups will concede 
that natural areas will need to be managed in the biocentric sense or else 
the ecosystems or communities we wish to preserve will disappear. This 
situation occurs because (1) man through his activities has already in- 
fluenced the functioning of most ecosystems and (2) many ecosystems 
change through natural processes of succession. 
Many of the forest species and communities evolved with, and are 
adapted to, fire—thus the policy of immediate fire suppression has affected 
many forks and prairie ecosystems even where they have otherwise been 
undisturbed by cutting or grazing. For instance, in Yellowstone National 
Park, the Lodgepole pine forests which developed after wildfires of years 
ago are being replaced by either spruce-fir or Douglas-fir because fire has 
been excluded for decades. There is now a more liberal policy in Yellow- 
stone and Grand Teton National Parks toward allowing fires to run their 
course. In southern Illinois, sugar maple seedlings are now appearing in 
