SusanCampriello: My Works

Land usage is determined by the possible benefits of the land, be it an endangered species living there, an historical site, good soil composite, or scenic views.¹ The land use plan for the Adirondack Park in the years since 1972 follows the scheme set forth by Edward O. (E.O.) Wilson in The Diversity of Life;

Parcels of land will have to be set aside as inviolate preserves. Others will be identified as the best sites for extractive reserves, for buffer zones used in part-time agriculture and in restricted hunting, and for land convertible totally to human use.²

Wilson’s concept of animal worth, illustrated in “New Environmentalism” assesses the value of a wild species. Through this connection to economics, Wilson hoped to show that the natural flora and fauna could be viewed as economic assets to an area, thus giving rise to support of their conservation.³

The complexities of conserving the wilderness raise two fundamental questions: what is wilderness, and what does it mean to conserve this wilderness? The Wilderness Act (1964), written by Howard Zahniser, defines wilderness as lands still “untrampled by man.”⁴ In accordance with the Act’s specification, the 400,000 hectares (or about 1,500 mi. sq.) designated as “wilderness” in the Adirondack Park are open to foot traffic, camping, and fishing, but closed to motor vehicles.⁵ The meaning of conservation, however, is not as easily definable.

Conservation can be defined as “the wise use of natural resources to meet human needs and desires.”⁶ Conservation of a resource, be it land, oil, or animals, “demands the welfare of this generation first, and afterward the generations to follow.”¹⁷ The idea is to maintain the resource so that it benefits the greatest number of people for the greatest amount of time.⁸ Determining the exact benefit reaped at a future time is not an easy task. The concept of conservation grew out of the sense of stewardship felt by wealthy Americans. The two are linked by a definition, “an informed sense of responsibility that helps protect biological diversity by providing both the means and the motive to create and sustain bioregions in the face of economics, politics, and social pressures,” and by tensions within that responsibility.⁹ Whose needs are more important, those of the owners and user of the lands in question or those who would reap other benefits from further or alternative development of those lands; the needs of individual people or those of businesses and the State? These questions were raised by the creation of the Great Sacandaga Lake and, after seventy-five years, have yet to be resolved.

¹ Thomas Pasquarello, “Wilderness and Working Landscapes: The Adirondack Park as a Model Bioregion,” in Stewardship Across Boundaries, Richard L. Knight and Peter B. Landres, eds. (DC: Island Press, 1998), 284.
² Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 283.
³ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 286.
⁴ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 284.
⁵ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 284.
⁶ Theodore D. Goldfarb, ed, Notable Selections in Environmental Studies (NY: Duskin/McGraw Hill, 2000), 9.
⁷ Gifford Pinchot, excerpt from The Fight for Conservation in Goldfarb, Notable Selections, 10.
⁸ Pinchot, Fight, 11.
⁹ Pasquarello, “Wilderness,” 290.

This is a section of my Environmental Studies thesis, © Susan C. Campriello Kenyon College 2005. Interested? Click here for more.

The people of present-day Hamelin are quite proud of their claim to fame, the Pied Piper, who, according to legend rid the village of rats and then, after having his payment denied, led away the city’s children.¹ They hold a festival every year, which includes a reenactment of the rat-banishing, children-losing event. Monuments to the Piper and children stand all throughout the city, a fountain has a Pied Piper motif, and the town clock is even equipped with carved figurines of the Piper leading the rats out of town.² Tourism brings money into the city and the legend of the Pied Piper brings the tourists.

Hamelin has grown considerably since the thirteenth century and now embraces its past mistake, and so the tale of the Pied Piper has evolved as well. The brief notation in a manuscript from the mid-fifteenth century stating simply that children were led out of Hamelin on 26 June 1284, has developed into many different stories, each account complete with different motives and lessons to be learned.³ The European versions of the legend—recorded by Englishmen Richard Rowlands, Robert Burton, and Robert Browning, Frenchman Charles Marelles, and the German Grimm Brothers—said as much about their contemporary fears and situations as the “actual” events in the original tale.

¹ In German, the town is spelled “Hameln,” but in English, it is “Hamelin.”
² City of Hameln, “Pied Piper,” available from;
www.hameln.com/tourism/piedpiper/index.htm; Internet; accessed on 11 December 2004.
³ Werner Wunderlich, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin in History and Literature,” Michigan Germanic Studies, 19 (1993), 4.

This is a section of my History thesis, © Susan C. Campriello Kenyon College 2005. Interested? Click here for more.