Martian conservation parks

An article at Nature Online reports that two European scientists have written a paper proposing the establishment of conservation parks on Mars, protecting seven areas they’ve identified as being of special interest.

Let’s put to one side for the moment the practical problems involved in enacting this sort of scheme and getting every entity - be it a nation state, corporate body, multinational agency, gang of libertarian-leaning tech billionaires and who knows what else besides - which might one day try to mount an expedition to Mars to sign up. Isn’t the real barrier to compiling a list of sites worth protecting that we simply don’t know which parts of the red planet are going to be of outstanding geological and scientific interest? Sure, you can identify the bits that look spectacular from orbit or which look interesting by the standards of geological formations on Earth, but the fun part of exploring other planets is discovering the limits of the knowledge set we’ve developed from a sample of one planet. I’m not saying conservation parks are a bad idea, just that we’ll need a lot more on-planet experience before we can figure out how to decide where to put them, let alone actually decide where to put them. Which is not to say, I repeat, that they’re a bad idea in principle.

The trouble is, I’m not quite clear on what the intent is behind the proposal. Is it to preserve some parts of Mars from whatever colonisation efforts the human race may launch half a century from now, or to stop even current exploratory efforts from polluting the Martian biosphere? The Nature article I linked to above paraphrases a comment from Charles Cockell, one of the proponents of the idea of conservation parks, to the effect that “the crashes [of unmanned probes like the Mars Polar Lander on the Martian surface] are as irresponsible as dropping robots over the Antarctic,” which suggests that the concern is to preserve a pristine biosphere - that’s “pristine” as in “Of, relating to, or typical of the earliest time or condition; primitive or original”, rather than merely “Remaining in a pure state; uncorrupted by civilization”. But the Nature article goes on to claim that:

The scientists are keen to see these areas explored, but say that the environmental impact of human activity must be limited. They suggest rules such as “no spacecraft parts to be left in the park”, and would allow access only along predefined routes, like hiking trails in terrestrial parks.

It’s a shame that the content of Space Policy, the journal where the article proposing the parks is to be published, doesn’t appear to be freely available online. I’d like to know how the authors suggest that Mars can be explored so those footpaths can be mapped out.

[Via Slashdot]