ABSTRACT
Environmental policies regarding the Great Lakes forest stem primarily from the factor of human choice. Alternative policies arise from differences in the perception and meaning of forests to different people and the values they place upon forested areas. This chapter analyzes changing human choices about the forested wildlands—that area of sparse or no habitation beyond the city and the countryside—in the Great Lakes region between about 1840 and the present. This evolution has had three distinct stages: 1850 to 1910, when wood production predominated; 1910-l945, when out-migration took place and real-estate values declined; and 1945 to the present, a time of a revival of intense interest in the forest. The analysis is organized around three phenomena: changes in the way in which people perceived the Great Lakes forest and their relationship to it; the evolution and development of management perspectives; and the changing role of local communities as the specific context in which choices about the forest are made.
