Why do we have wilderness?
Wilderness protects landscapes, plants and animals. It allows the natural processes of evolution to continue with minimal interference. This means that the biodiversity - the total variety of life of these different environments - is conserved as a single functioning natural system.
Wilderness areas protect already rare and threatened plants and animals, and play an important role in helping to ensure that other species are less likely to become endangered.
Wilderness is also very useful to human society. These large, natural areas
- provide clean air and water
- are a storehouse of genetic material from which future generations may obtain new food crops, drugs, clothing and other valuable natural products
- do not close off any land use options for future generations, unlike many other land uses
- allow scientists to compare less modified natural landscapes with those areas that have been changed by modern human activity.
Wilderness areas can also have great cultural significance. They often contain many sites that are important to Aboriginal people, and their landscapes can be a reminder of the Australian environment before colonisation. For many people, they're also places of inspiration, renewal or recreation far from the bustle and pressures of modern life.
Wilderness is part of our national identity. Even at the start of the twenty-first century, the 'bush' and the 'outback' - landscapes so typified by wilderness - retain a central place in Australian culture.