Weekly Prompt: Wilderness Found

This week we’re explorers of new wild places to set our stories

In reserching this month’s theme I came across a fact that I found at first surprising but when you review it on a map it makes a lot of sense.

70% of the world’s wilderness is in five countries

The five countries are Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada. The Sahara is that big African spread of wilderness hosted in many countries.

Our shrinking wilderness — purple areas are wilderness lost since 1993, green is what remains. Source: Daily Mail and James Allan UQ UQ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

As a South African, proud of our natural heritage, I was saddened to see that The Kruger National Park is not even a pixel on this map. Game Reserves don’t count it seems, which makes sense if we consider them man-made.

The Kruger has a web of roads and rest camps and is enclosed by fences on most sides. So indeed perhaps not a wilderness.

University of Queensland researchers define wilderness as

A biologically and ecologically largely intact landscapes that are mostly free of human disturbance.

This does not exclude people, as many wild places are critical to certain communities including for indigenous peoples.