Image: NASA
Every now and again I'll come across some coal roller sporting a "wilderness what is it good for" bumper sticker (or bumper sticker to that effect), and, though it's clearly just a dull troll targeting ski-yuppies, the slogan will be completely baffling. Why on Earth is the notion of setting aside small, diminutive patches of land for safe-keeping offensive enough for that to be someone's big bumper stand?In any case, the answer to the question is above. The image is of a park/reserve in New Zealand, centered around Mt. Taranaki, an active stratovolcano on the country's North Island. The green stuff within the ring is protected native forest, and on the outside is what used to be native forest. Now, it's a patchwork of pastures.If anything, the message is that wilderness now is an illusion, a futile glimmer in the Anthropocene's march toward total control and total utility: full-on industry. Captured by the Landsat 8 satellite last summer, the image is among those found in a new NASA-supported book, Sanctuary: Exploring the World's Protected Areas from Space, published by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies."NASA and numerous other space agency partners from around the globe have used this view from space to make incredible scientific advances in our understanding of how our planet works," NASA administrator Charles Bolden writes. "As a result, we can now better gauge the impact of human activity on our environment and measure how and why our atmosphere, oceans, and land are changing.""As a former astronaut who has looked upon our beautiful planet from space," Bolden continues, "I hope that we can advance the use of space-based remote sensing and other geospatial tools to study, understand, and improve the management of the world's parks and protected areas as well as the precious biodiversity that thrives within their borders."