Shared stewardship for the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), or the creation of partnerships, is integral to the completion of basic and fundamental stewardship tasks within wilderness (e.g., trail work, Leave No Trace education, monitoring).
The inaugural issue of the IJW announces the 6th World Wilderness Congress (Bangalore, India 1997), and an editorial welcome by John C. Hendee, the managing editor of the Journal. He states the vision of the journal as “an international voice integrating the wilderness and wild-land concerns of scientists, planner, managers, educators and citizen environmentalists, worldwide.” This issue also includes an article by Dr. Ian Player, founder of WILD, in which he tells the story of his friend and mentor Magqubu Ntombela’s words that prompted Ian to start the World Wilderness Congress and the organizations that now form The Wilderness Network.
Max Oelschlaeger offers a fantastic feature “Soul of the Wilderness” in this issue of the IJW. His insightful article, Oelschlaeger references Dr. Player’s article in IJW vol 1 issue 1 and delves further into how wilderness helps define civilization and echoing Thoreau’s assertion that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”