Gabourel 1 Rhianna Gabourel Ms.

Gillhespy ENC 1102 13 February 2013 An Endangered Idea: David Quammens Hallowed Ground: Nothing is Ever Safe They are extraordinary and sacred; they hold childhood memories of natural beauty and wonder for all of us. They are parks, and like those memories they are fading right before our eyes. The 2006 issue of National Geographic features a piece by David Quammen. Quammen expresses the need to save our national parks and expresses the uncertainty of our national parks future, as well as his fire to fight for them. In David Quammens feature article Hallowed Ground: Nothing is Ever Safe he effectively argues the lack of intensity and ideals our society has for protecting our National Parks, he appeals to pathos and logos as well as considering the highly diverse audience of National Geographic. Quammen effectively appeals to pathos throughout this article. By using pathos, he adds personal opinions and thoughts making the issue hit home for readers. Landscape and memory combine to tell us certain places are special, sanctified by their extraordinary natural merits and by social consensus. We call those place parks, and we take them for granted(Quammen 1). From the beginning paragraph, Quammen appeals to pathos. He wants to draw out any kind of memory readers have of parks and wants readers to remember their wonder and magnificence and then he brings them back to reality, hitting them with the unquestionable truth. We are taking parks for granted. We are leaving them unprotected and we are going to lose them, as well as the species that inhabit them. Some are large, spectacular, and wild- such as Yellowstone and Kruger. Some are intimately local-such as Buttes-Chaumont, set within a

Gabourel 2 busy neighborhood of Paris. Many are threatened by pressures from the societies that surround them, even as our hunger for the respite they provide grows ever greater (Quammen 1). He makes several humanizing statements throughout the article making it engaging and simple to follow even if the reader had no previous knowledge of the controversy facing the protection of our national parks. Though Quammen provides numerous amounts of personal input, he backs each statement with factual evidence making the personal accounts creditable. If this entire article was just Quammens opinion it would not be as effective. His style of writing also conveys logic and credibility. For example, in one paragraph he talks about Yellowstone Park and its grizzle bear population, he says To retain grizzlies within Yellowstone Park, so that your greatgrandchildren may have a chance of glimpsing one there- eating Yampa roots and clover in the Hayden Valley or gnawing on a moose carcass along the Lamar Riverit will be necessary to protect every possible acre of their current habitat outside the park as well as within it (Quammen 7) He follows that statement with statistics about the bill congress passed for protecting Yellowstone. This pattern continues throughout the piece, allowing the reader to infer that Quammen knows what he is arguing about. Quammens piece is the featured article in National Geographic: Places We Must Save Issue. Quammen took time to consider the audience he was writing for. His piece is wellrounded offering, unbiased data and various sides to the argument, as well as strong personal ideals. He took into account that National Geographic isnt just for the scholarly but for those who enjoy reading about issues that plague our present day society, and is written just so. Hallowed Ground: Nothing is Ever Safe is a brilliantly thought out and wellexecuted article. Being the featured piece in a highly credible magazine is no surprise. Not only

Gabourel 3 does he lend credence to the several other sides of this ongoing argument, he effectively offers his stance to readers without being overly biased. In the field of conservation you usually only get one side or the other, you see overly scientific or a 5- page rant on why conservation matter. Quammen wrote a piece that appealed to both. Readers are able to take away not only knowledge and understanding of park conservation, but also an effective well-articulated stance on the subject. As Quammen has said Our national parks are as good, only as good, as the intensity with which we treasure them (Quammen 4)

Gabourel 4 Works Cited Quammen, David. Hallowed Ground: Nothing is Ever Safe. National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Society, Oct 2006. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.