Staying with the Trouble with Wilderness: Reworking Nature and Culture in the Plantationocene

This essay analyzes the use of fire on Upland Island Wilderness Area (UIW) to examine how postindustrial wilderness sites rework operative notions nature, wildness, and preservation within U.S. environmental thinking politics. Postindustrial areas complicate conceptualizations nature as pristine, unspoiled, or even beautiful, challenging us address biodiversity ecosystem function in ways that are less centered human(ist) values. An intensively managed pine plantation prior designation, UIW blatantly transgresses liberal humanist boundaries culture, ecology industry. I draw feminist posthumanist theory demonstrate contestations surrounding resituate ethical epistemic implications management, offering a critical counterpoint prioritization pristine politics demanding approaches complex forest ecologies plantationocene.