<
https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/involuntary-parks-human-conflict-is-creating-unintended-refuges-for-wildlife/>
"Few locations on Earth are as haunting or deeply ironic as so-called
involuntary parks — places too toxic, dangerous, or otherwise made off-limits
for human habitation, but which have paradoxically and unintentionally become
sanctuaries for wildlife in our absence.
As the name coined by science fiction author Bruce Sterling suggests,
involuntary parks weren’t established for conservation — and in many cases
aren’t formally recognized as preserves.
Some encompass former nuclear, military or manufacturing complexes and/or their
buffer zones. Some are sites of major environmental disasters, former
battlefields laced with unexploded munitions, or slices of no-man’s land
demarcating tense borders between geopolitical rivals.
Despite their often destructive origins, a growing number of these involuntary
parks have, over time, been officially designated as protected wildlife refuges
or cross-border peace parks, actively managed by government organizations and
advocated for by citizens and researchers — not so “involuntary” anymore.
It’s an attractive narrative. But without sufficient context, the genesis of an
involuntary park (a process also controversially dubbed passive rewilding) can
“imply that nature simply fixes itself, or that in the absence of human
intervention, a favorable recovery inevitably occurs at sites that may still be
seriously degraded or hazardous,” cautions David Havlick, a professor at the
University of Colorado Colorado Springs in the U.S. Thus, the violent (and
still potentially hazardous) human past may be “greenwashed from view,” he
says."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-tax-us-more-say-the-super-rich/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
