A hundred years ago this month, the forester Aldo Leopold proposed to the Forest Service that the federal government create the first ever wilderness area in the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico. Nearly 900 square miles of land at the center of the forest were designated wilderness in 1924. This month, National Geographic magazine's cover story is about the history and future of the area and its inhabitants. Photographer Katie Orlinsky spoke with KUNM about her time there, beginning with her first impressions
KATIE ORLINSKY: There's five different ecosystems within the Gila wilderness, right? So they're the typical southwest canyons, but then you can get into these green valleys. You can get into shrub lands with lots of cactus, you can get into ponderosa pine, really wooded dense forest and it just changes as you go. So you really never know what to expect. And there are trails, but it's a really rugged place. It's not like a national park with roads, there's no cabins, it's all camping. I've done both, I've gone into the Gila on horseback, and I've also done it on foot. And on horseback really is the way to go. It is such rugged terrain.
KUNM: You had a number of encounters with animals - tell me about those
ORLINSKY: The difference with a wilderness area and something like a national park is, hunting is permitted in wilderness areas. So these animals know to be fearful of people. It's very, very difficult to see animals in the Gila, because they know how to run away. And there's just so much terrain that's completely not reachable by humans that they can escape into.
KUNM: So how did you end up finding them?
ORLINSKY: So it wasn't until I was all alone and camping alone that I ended up seeing animals the first night that I slept out alone. I woke up that morning. And because I hadn't really seen any of the larger predators, I hadn't even thought about it. And I woke up super early to capture the sunrise. And I had forgot my glasses in my sleeping bag. And I'm stumbling along, and I hear rustles and so I have to use my camera zoom to see that far away. And I pick up my camera and there's a black bear, like right there.
KUNM: Also there are images of wolves in your story, how did you see them?
ORLINKSY: So seeing the wolves is also very difficult. But something that's really incredible about the Gila is that they've been working on this reintroduction program for the Mexican wolf. And they're such small wolves, so seeing them was going to be close to impossible. But I did set up camera traps throughout the wilderness. And I did follow people that were involved in the reintroduction program. So I managed to photograph some of those wolves and also some of the wolf pups.
They basically bring captive bred wolf pups of this breed of the Mexican wolf and they put them in a backpack, they bring them to the wolf mother's den. And once we arrive, the mother runs away. And so then the [NM Department of Game & Fish], and it was the biologists, grab the existing wolf pups, the wild ones, and then they mix those with the captive bred pups. And they cover them all in each other's urine, and feces and what have you, so that they all smell alike, and then they put them back in the den. And so when the Mother Wolf returns, she raises them all as her own. And I feel like that's a really good metaphor for what the Gila wilderness is.
KUNM: How do you mean? What sort of a wilderness is it?
ORLINSKY: Because it's this place, where we're trying to figure out what is wilderness even means right now. I mean, does it mean sectioning off an area of land, to put it back in its natural state? Because what is its natural state, because humans have shaped the landscape since the beginning. So this is an area that had a variety of different Apache tribes living there for centuries, they were kicked out in the 1890s by the US military, but up until then, they protected this area from colonial settlers, which is kind of why this wilderness is so spectacular, and then they were pushed off the land.
So this idea of preserving it in a way that it's always been, it's always had people in it. So I think of some of these contradictions as far as, how do we manage wilderness? And what does it mean if a species goes extinct? Is that natural? Should we be reintroducing it? And then if you reintroduce it, how are you going to impact other species in the Gila? They also reintroduced elk and they also reintroduced the Gila trout. So it's this very interesting, almost melting pot experiment of, how humans – what does human intervention mean in creating a wilderness space? Or what is wild?
