By Andrew L. Rypel
. . .
[This article first appeared on Tangled Nature.]
It’s one of the first memories. Getting into the little v-hull aluminum boat with Dad on the shoreline of a small sandy lake. It’s summer in northern Wisconsin and water lilies surround the deep parts of the lake like ancient ecological armor. There are only a few homes – no other boats. I’m probably only 6 or 7 years old, which would have made Dad around 45 years old then (roughly my age now). It was tricky getting the sturdy vessel into the water. The narrow landing was immediately adjacent to the road; just big enough to slip the small trailer into without jackknifing, provided the driver is sufficiently deft. Of course, Dad expertly negotiates the exchange and parks the empty rig along the narrow shoulder of the road. Soon, we are on the water, and the smell of nature hits fast – like a good drug. There is a pleasurable freshness to everything. It smells wild. Peering down into the water, I see the submerged cabbage plants shooting up from the depths. They look to my youthful eye like an army of plant aliens rising to attention (Fig. 1). What else lives down there? Soon, we’re fishing for whatever bites, and out of nowhere, my rod bends deeply. Several minutes later, the fish was in the boat. It’s a nice northern pike, and I was enthralled, with all of it.
“It's always a bad idea to bet against openness.” ~Joe MacMillan
Fast forward a couple decades, and that same little landing is gone. For some, it’s hazy exactly how it happened. However, I will now demystify the clandestine process. In the early 2000s, a rope was stretched across the landing, as if to announce “closed for business”. Five or so years later, after the saplings grew up along the shoreline so as to make the landing unpassable, they posted it (no trespassing). See, the landing was on private land. But by law in Wisconsin, anyone can access navigable waters by road up to the high water mark. Probably, the land changed hands, and the owner came up with a scheme to close access to ‘their lake’. Although capable of challenge, the simple veneer of private land and fear of breaking the law was enough to drive most folks away. And in time, after the saplings turned into mature trees, access was gone – just like that. You can’t tell that a landing used to be there at all now. This lake was walled off from the public, accessible now only to lakefront property owners.
What makes us so strongly desire to lay claim over nature? Economics is part of the answer. Ecosystems are valuable, and we use them to make money – lots of it (Costanza et al. 1997). The Natural Capital Project at Stanford is devoted to understanding this dynamic better, and providing reliable numbers. Another likelihood is that our inclinations towards nature are baked right into the cake. There is abundant evidence that access to nature is central to the human condition. In the last Tangle Nature blog, I discussed the concept called biophilia. That is, our human tendency to seek connections with nature and biological life (Wilson 1986). Certainly for most of our 3M year evolutionary history, survival hinged on access to nature, including for food, water, firewood, and shelter. Research also shows how nature was central to spirituality and most any culture. This book by Karen Armstrong is a nice exploration of this topic. When we don’t experience nature, we often get sick. Certainly, the therapeutic benefits of nature are real. In a systematic meta-analysis, Lackey et al. 2019found 90% of studies observed at least one positive association between nature-based recreation and mental health. Notable patterns included improvements in cognition, sense of emotional restoration and well-being, and declines in depression and anxiety. So, the value of nature to humans is real, and perhaps then it is no surprise we strongly crave it.
Our tendency to wall off or claim nature is certainly not new. Throughout history, people did their best to own ecosystems and their animals. During the Han Dynasty in China, nature was managed by the state, with appointed officials overseeing hunting, logging and land management to ensure resources met the emperor’s needs. Certain animals like tigers were even labeled as imperial property and used for tributes, such as in menageries or as gifts from conquered lands. In feudal Europe, but especially England, wildlife was similarly claimed as property by the royalty. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Forest Laws under the Norman kings effectively claimed vast areas exclusively for royal hunting. Commoners faced harsh penalties for poaching. This was after all the plot line of Robin Hood. Those thieves are hunting the king’s game…how dare they!
It is important to recognize (and celebrate) that when our American democracy was founded, it went in the total opposite direction. And they were unambiguous about this. Natural resources were to belong to the people, not the state. Rather, the state was to act as trustees of these resources, and manage them, on behalf of the people. This concept is now widely known as the public trust doctrine and is the bedrock of natural resource management in the USA. Throughout American history, there were many court cases challenging the doctrine. Almost universally, they were struck down, primarily because the founders were so clear that they did not want to be like England in this exact way. Even seemingly impenetrable western water rights (i.e., ‘first-in-time, first-in-right’), are in fact limited if the state deems these not in the interest of the public trust (Börk et al. 2022). America’s founders wanted people to access nature, and to be able to hunt and fish widely. It’s clearly a better system, but one in which nature is still claimed – by individuals this time rather than the state.
We are certainly well-practiced in our attempts to capture the wild. We simply can’t resist our own urges. We fenced off the vast grasslands of the West. We post property incessantly to keep others out (Fig. 2). We cut trails through forests of our own idiosyncratic design. We collect giant clam shells that are decades-to-centuries old as decorative natural artifacts for our urban homes (Fig. 3). We put feeders in our yards to attract birds and wildlife to ‘our land’. We erect high fences around huge plots of land to entrap wildlife. We then pork these animals up to hunt and kill them with ease while simultaneously contributing to the spread of wildlife disease like CWD.
Because access to nature conveys intense benefit, it is rightful to ask questions about the distribution of that access amongst the population. And to explore ways in which access to nature might be changing over time. Low-income neighborhoods have the lowest access to parks and natural areas (Rigolon and Flohr 2014). Another study shows that access to simple things like tree cover is predicted by socioeconomic status of communities. In lake heavy landscapes of Minnesota, rising economic inequality between lakeshore owners and everyone else is literally segregating the population by social class and age (Winkler 2016). Relatedly in Minnesota, acquisition rates and maintenance of public water access points is declining with time (Fig. 4), a trend likely occurring alongside the steep rise in lakefront property values. Who is standing up for those that cannot afford access to nature?
There are heroes in this struggle. When I was 21 years old and just out of college, I worked for a district fisheries biologist with the Indiana DNR (Department of Natural Resources). His name was Jed Pearson and he managed the northeastern fisheries quadrant of Indiana. Jed grew up in that area, and by then, was already a hardened DNR veteran. If you drove through this part of the world, you might think nothing of it – cornfields and nothing else. But, interestingly this area is one of the southernmost extents of the Pleistocene glaciers in North America. So, there are lakes here – alot of them. Some are very deep and contain declining coldwater fish like Cisco. Yet these ecosystems are interwoven into a matrix of modern ag and private ownership. Predictably, this mix makes it hard for the public to access these lakes. In my short time there, I saw Pearson fight hard for public access to these ecosystems. Jed talked openly about the importance of providing public access to Indiana lakes. This was the seed corn for the next generation of anglers and conservationists. In one case, I watched him reject in-person the permit application of a riparian landowner who wanted to build a gigantic seawall right on top of a major wetland where native sportfish spawned. This piece is a rightful celebration of Pearson’s accomplishments after 49 years (yes – you read the number of years right) with the DNR. Below I share one particularly salient quote:
“In my eyes, providing public access was one of the most important things we could do as a fisheries agency. It is permanent and not something that is here today and gone tomorrow.” ~Jed Pearson
So I’d like to conclude this little essay with some thought experiments, and I’d like you to consider your own too. What if the landing I opened this blog with had already been walled off when I encountered it with my Dad? What are we losing through the increasing privatization of our ecosystems? What if, instead of experiencing nature in the visceral way I did that day, I was inside watching YouTube, playing video games, or whatever? What if, going forwards, the benefits of nature are only reserved for the rich? Fishing and hunting license sales are declining, and have been doing so for years. Is it any wonder though, when no one can afford to access water, a boat, or a deer stand? It is not lost on me that my experience was itself a privileged one by comparison. Many kids increasingly grow up without any experiences like this, or with only low grade versions. At the end of the day, I believe that is wrong. Everyone deserves an experience like I had on the lake.
About the Author
Andrew L. Rypel is Director of the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences at Auburn University. He is a former professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, & Conservation Biology at UC Davis and was the previous Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Further Reading
Armstrong, K. 2023. Sacred Nature: Restoring our Ancient Bond with the Natural World.
Börk, K., A.L. Rypel, S. Yarnell, A. Willis, P. Moyle, J. Medellin-Azuara, J. Lund, and R. Lusardi. 2022. Considerations for developing an environmental water right in California. https://californiawaterblog.com/2022/06/12/considerations-for-developing-an-environmental-water-right-in-california/
Constanza, R., R. d’Arge, R. de Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B. Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, R.V. O’Neill, J. Paruelo, R.G. Raskin, P. Sutton, M. van den Belt. 1997. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387: 253-260.
Lackey, N.Q., D.A. Tysor, G.D. McNay, K.H. Baker, and C. Hodge. 2019. Mental health benefits of nature-based recreation: a systematic review. Annals of Leisure Research 24: 379-393.
Lucas, J.S. Giant clams. Current Biology 24: PR183-R184.
Rigolonm A., and T.L. Flohr. 2014. Access to parks for youth as an environmental justice issue: access inequalities and possible solutions. Buildings 4: 69-94.
Rypel. 2025. Ooze, order and disorder. https://tnature.substack.com/p/ooze-order-and-disorder
Wilson, E.O. 1986. Biophilia: the human bond with other species. Harvard University Press.
Winkler, R. 2016. Living on lakes: segregated communities and inequality in a natural amenity destination. The Sociological Quarterly 54: 105-129.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_trust_doctrine
https://naturalcapitalproject.stanford.edu
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