The category beauty was an important factor for interviewees in deciding whether to view wilderness spread favourably or not. When the interviewees considered diversity and/or contrast in a landscape to be a prerequisite for judging it beautiful, the category beauty tended to correlate closely with the categories diversity and contrast.
Diversity
For some of the respondents, the dimension diversity appeared to be a goal to be reached and usually meant species diversity and less often the structural diversity of landscapes. “Giving up” the cultivation of previously tended areas was usually associated with a reduction in species diversity, and thus with a move further away from the desired goal of achieving the greatest possible diversity. A desire for greater species diversity tended, therefore, to be closely associated with a rather negative attitude towards wilderness spread.
No. 9: “…without human intervention we would have only forest, …because we want nature to be varied, people need to intervene.”
