Nations should pass laws to preserve any remaining wilderness areas in their natural state

With increase in global warming causing polar ice sheets to melt and sea level rising, controlling the temperature has become the matter of the hour today. More trees are being cut than planted. With lesser number of trees, the amount of oxygen produced by them would be far less than the amount of carbon dioxide produced and thus breaking the balance of the nature. Many people have now recognized the importance of forests on Earth. Governments around the globe are working towards protecting the forests and wilderness as a whole. Should the wilderness areas be protected in their current state without human interference or should humans take special interest in them is the topic of debate. I believe human interference should be required to some extent to protect the wilderness areas.

To begin with, due to selfish extraction of resources on Earth by humans over years, we have exhausted most of the natural reserves and have caused many species to extinct and many more are at the brink of extinction. Hence simply protecting an area would mean the species would simply become extinct as they do not have necessary habitat or food to which they are adapted to. Humans would need to step ahead and make necessary arrangements to protect the species and this has to be done in a very broad sense. Species might need proper nourishment, treatments, protections from predators etc. For example, black rhinos in Africa are considered critically endangered which mean there are only handful of black rhinos on Earth. To protect such species, humans would have to intervene the natural activities. The young calf may be more prone to be attacked by predators and external protection might be needed apart from the protection provided by the mother. Another issue for endangered species is that, since there are only few animals/plants, it is hard for them to reproduce and multiply. Hence humans would have to put species together or produce an offspring in the labs. This is not only the case in animals, human intervention will be required in plants too.

Along with protection of endangered animals and plants that are caused indirectly by human activities, it is important to prevent direct impacts too. Forest areas are very difficult to access and people may thus misuse to earn more profits. People can take advantage of remote places and lay traps of animals that has high value in the market. It is also possible that an illegal mining activity may be taking place deep in the forest. It is important for the government to asses such things and prevent such illicit activities from taking place. Laws should be lay down where all the ongoing and future projects in the forests should be banned. More importantly, humans should work on restoring the damage to avoid more damage in the future. Let’s consider a certain area of land has been deforested and it is left in its natural state, a very hot summer may cause forest fire as there are no thick trees full of moisture to put the fire out in the first place. It is also important to track movements of certain species to get their counts and their increasing population to help government plan more laws around the protection. For instance, when tiger population in India went down, the government decided to track all the tigers down and observe their movements. This helped the forest department to protect the areas that tigers move in and hence protect the area and also monitor deadly traps and rescue those who are fallen into such traps.

The proponents of the statement may claim that it is important for nature to take its course. The extinction of species like dinosaurs were not due to humans as they were extinct much before the evolution of humans. Similarly, one can argue that nature has its own way of producing and terminating species and humans are part of it. Humans should not interfere and simply avoid direct impacts that are destroying the area. However, when humans have the ability and resources to protect a living being, we should choose to protect and not let it die on its own.
To conclude, nations should pass the law to protect wilderness areas but should not leave it on its natural state. The damage that has done may affect seriously in the future. So, humans should strive to restore the damage in whichever way possible.