The painter Thomas Moran was also part of the expedition commissioned by the US Congress in 1871 to explore the unexplored north-west of Wyoming.

While the rest of the group was busy with geological and geographical investigations, he drew waterfalls, lakes, geysers, canyons, mountain ranges - a landscape that he later wrote about that it combined the "magnificent, most beautiful, most wonderful" that nature could produce .

The fact that the American Congress decided exactly 150 years ago, on March 1, 1872, to found Yellowstone National Park and thus the first national park in the world also had something to do with the large-format pictures that Moran took after the end of the expedition.

The paintings, now icons of American landscape painting, anticipated what the area's declaration of a national park affirmed:

an elevation of nature to a place that you can visit, marvel at and then leave again as a human being.

Pure, autonomous, ahistorical.

Petra Ahne

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The fact that Native Americans had lived and hunted in the area for 11,000 years didn't fit into this picture, so they were literally removed from it and resettled on reservations.

Since the founding document stated that the new park was there "for the well-being and joy of the people", something else was disturbing: wolves and pumas were hunted until there were none left.

It wasn't about preserving an ecosystem, but an idea.

There are bears and bison again

In the past few decades, a great deal of energy has been expended on restoring the species richness of the past.

Wolves have been settled, there are bears again and so many bison that they can be released into other parks.

Yellowstone is one of the most popular national parks in the United States, seeing a record nearly five million visitors last year, most of whom park officials observe are less than a mile from their cars.

Even 150 years later, nature is still experienced here as an alternative to the troubles and, above all, the sins of civilization, just like in the other four thousand national parks that now exist worldwide.

As important as these are, it is also important to understand that such an idea from nature will not help to get the climate and biodiversity crisis under control - on the contrary, it has even helped to cause it.

Nature ensures survival

The new report published on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) precisely explains how global warming, the loss of biodiversity and the instability of ecosystems are related and how this in turn affects people's health and food supply - but also that nature conservation is climate protection.

Ecosystems such as moors, forests or grassland not only store a lot of CO, they are also characterized by a high level of biodiversity and ensure that nature can continue to do what it does: ensure human survival by providing clean water, among other things , air and ground provides.

It could be a positive effect of the IPCC report that the so-called nature-based solutions are given more attention.

At the last climate summit, the international community confirmed its intention to protect thirty percent of the earth by 2030.

But that won't mean all Yellowstone parks will be added.

Rather, it must be about a mixture of used and unused landscapes.

In Germany, this can include meadow orchards, moors on which reeds are cultivated, grassland on which ruminants graze and soil quality and biodiversity increase.

Fewer cattle on large areas also means less methane emissions - but this is only possible if people change their diet and eat less meat.

So the challenge is much greater than creating a few more nature reserves: it takes a definitive departure from the idea that there is one nature to be exploited unrestrainedly and the other to be admired.

The draft for the biodiversity agreement, which is to be adopted this year, contains a new wording: the aim is to live "in harmony with nature".

As did those who settled the Yellowstone area before it became a national park.