The idea of ​​wilderness is celebrating its birthday: 150 years ago, almost 9,000 square kilometers of mountain, river and volcanic landscape were placed under protection in the Northwest of the United States - an area more than ten times the size of Berlin.

Yellowstone National Park was born, the oldest national park in the world.

Katja Gelinsky

Business correspondent in Berlin

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The area is "hereby reserved and barred from settlement, occupancy and sale," according to the 1872 law. Ulysses S. Grant signed it without comment, the chroniclers report.

The 18th President of the United States was not particularly interested in nature.

Yellowstone has nevertheless become a myth: “Something is awakening.

They [the people] get a connection to history again, to what was North America.

And you can't put any financial value on that, that sense of wilderness,” enthuses a park biologist in a radio interview.

National parks attracted the military

However, the history of the national parks is ambivalent.

Just like the supposed appreciation of wilderness.

Yellowstone was designed as a "public park".

Wilderness as a place of longing for people - with disastrous consequences for the animals living there: the American military moved in to kill pumas, bears and wolves.

The settlers came and hunted the bison - until only a puny herd remained.

"For the benefit and pleasure of men" Yellowstone should be protected.

This did not refer to the indigenous tribes that had lived and hunted in the area for more than 11,000 years.

They were driven into reservations.

The American military ensured that the "Native Americans" could not return to the national park.

So what is the value of wilderness?

What exactly needs to be preserved?

And who bears the costs?

These questions are more urgent than ever.

The destruction of the natural foundations of life has reached such proportions that it is becoming increasingly difficult to change course and the time to do so is becoming increasingly scarce.

The record of the past five decades is devastating

Global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have declined by 68 percent since 1970, according to the Living Planet Report by the environmental protection organization WWF.

Astronauts can now observe deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest and coral death from space.

Scientists have therefore been warning for a long time that the loss of biodiversity, i.e. the extinction of animals and plants and the destruction of natural habitats, belongs at the top of the list of political priorities.

This also happens rhetorically: There is often talk of the “twin crisis” on climate change.

"But we must now finally enter the decade of action," says Florian Titze, officer for international biodiversity issues at WWF Germany.

At the end of August or beginning of September - an exact date has not yet been set - the representatives of the international community will meet for the UN Biodiversity Summit.

The conference venue is Kunming, the capital of the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

The long-term goal: a life in harmony with nature.

Admittedly an “ambitious project”, write the organizers of the UN.

That's a gross understatement.

Even the short-term goal of the conference is not even remotely within reach.