Highway built through Alaska Wilderness

Wilderness is known to mankind, it is important in many aspects, but I guess not to the people in Alaska. In eight months and a half they built this huge highway that connected from one end to another allowing the Alaskan to get from one point to another. The reason why this highway was built was because of World War II. It connected a line of air strips, which helped move airplanes to Americans during the war. They hacked through uncharted wilderness, hard rock and mosquito ridden muskeg. The heavy equipment that was brought in to destroy this land; which had many muddy bogs, which many people could not get out of and was left there. It took about 11,500 service men that were mainly African American slaves that worked 12 to 16 hrs. in the sun trying to build this highway. They went through about 150 miles of forest killing a lot of animal's homes just to build a highway, probably many of them weren't able to make it out and some animals became extinct.

http://www.suite101.com/content/construction-of-the-alcan-highway-world-war-ii-a89969

One of the readings that we did about wilderness, Leopold makes a great example, "neither the wolf nor the mountain agree with the death," this shows no matter what people might think that it is okay and that they are not affecting the environment but really they are. When a person is looking outside and see a squirrel running up a tree or a bird making a home for the its babies, they don't see it as wild or nature. Human has it in their head like a paradox that nature is only wild that it is in an inhabited area that are wilderness areas that are not touched. They don't see it as a home for many animals, In Alaska they thought by building the highway it would make it easier to transport materials and supplies that are need for survival when they didn't look at the bigger picture. Leopold explains the ecosystem and how it has an effect on the environment but also us, humans. He shows our ecosystem as a pyramid for example if you kill a pack of wolf what tends to happen. One you over populate the area with deer, next they eat up all the vegetation, deer dies because of starvation, erosion tend to happen because no more plants, then everything else dies because they are not able to off one another. It's a circle of life and in the Alaska article that is what they did they went through 150 miles of land and destroyed the ecosystem in it. Sometimes we think that our actions won’t put another in danger but really we do.