Connecting federal employees, scientists, educators, and the public with their wilderness heritage

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Wilderness Fundamentals Toolbox

The Wilderness Fundamentals Toolbox is a 'work in progress' and represents only the information available. In addition to the resources provided here, you may also be able to obtain advice and recommendations through discussion on Wilderness Connect. Date of last update: 10/4/10.

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Introduction and Overview

Goal
The goal of this toolbox is to promote wilderness awareness - a clear and concise understanding of the wilderness concept and the legal description of wilderness as provided in the 1964 Wilderness Act and subsequent wilderness laws. It is also intended to provide a stable reference for terminology and management principles that will survive changes in staffing, funding, politics, downsizing, and the cultural evolution of agencies and society.

Further, wilderness management and stewardship must be viewed as a shared responsibility of every employee of wilderness managing agencies. The level of responsibility will differ with the position. Wilderness advocates also share a degree of responsibility. Wilderness is an integral component of federal land management and is part of the larger land community of which we are members. Simply put, wilderness is part of an array of interrelated resources managed by federal land managers and the conservation of all of these resources is a community responsibility.
Objectives
1. To assemble easy-to-use tools for field-level managers, resource specialists, and volunteer stewards. It also should be very useful to other agency employees and anyone interested in promoting awareness and protection of the Nation's wilderness resources.
2. To provide an educational tool for promoting the values of the wild in wilderness.
3. To encourage mangers, stewards, and other interested people to continuously refer to the Wilderness Act of 1964 as a touchstone to answer questions and to solve problems on the use and management of wilderness values.
4. To encourage managers, stewards, and wilderness advocates to pursue an intense and ongoing educational campaign and to educate and reeducate land managers and the public about wilderness values and the expertise needed to conserve wilderness areas.
5. To provide this wilderness awareness material in an easily accessible package on www.wilderness.net.
Achieving Wilderness Awareness
"Awareness implies vigilance in observing or alertness in drawing inferences from what one experiences," according to Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. Ideally, any effort to instill wilderness awareness would include; first, a good introduction to agency policy, legal definitions and management direction that Congress has provided; second, a hands-on involvement to gain an understanding of the practical aspects of managing the wilderness resource preferably gained inside wilderness and; and the third might be described as the experiential component which helps the manager see wilderness from the wilderness advocates perspective. It grows an appreciation of the spiritual benefits of wilderness and promotes a desire to work assertively to protect wilderness values for future generations. Finally, it can be plainly stated that one’s wilderness awareness is advanced much more rapidly in the mountains, deserts, canyons, swamps, rivers, and forests than it is by studying in front of a computer monitor or at wilderness symposiums.

In the course of the last two centuries in North America, specifically in the United States, the concept of conserving the vestiges of wild North America has evolved and continues to evolve culturally, politically, and legally. For many people, wilderness offers unique recreational and profound spiritual experiences, some have simply found the wilderness designation useful tool for legislating a roadless condition while still others find it to be an intolerable obstacle to development.

The passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 was a significant milepost in perpetuating the wilderness concept. The ’64 Act provided the legal definition of wilderness, established a National Wilderness Preservation System, and provided management direction for included areas. Subsequent laws have added additional acreage to the system (from 9.1 million in ’64 to about 106 million in 2004) and have amended parts of the original law. Several laws including NEPA, RPA, FLPMA and NFMA have also subtly amended the Wilderness Act by requiring the Forest Service to view wilderness as a component in an ecosystem management framework. These more recent laws have mandated an ecosystem context for planning for wilderness. They also specified that using an interdisciplinary management approach involving the interested public sector in planning and management. In partnership with the public, wilderness managers have a responsibility to preserve an enduring resource of wilderness where natural processes generally operate freely and humans are visitors who do not remain and their works and impacts are not apparent.

Simply designating an area as wilderness does not assure its preservation. An understanding of wilderness values needs to guide all activities in wilderness, including grazing, access to private lands, mining, fish and wildlife, cultural sites, fire management, and insects and disease. Management is needed to minimize the impacts of the wilderness visitor on the immediate environment and on the experience of other visitors. Wilderness management applies guidelines derived from social and natural sciences to preserve the qualities for which wilderness was established.

Environmental politics, especially heated during classification battles, produce innumerable compromises and special stipulations that are written into contemporary wilderness legislation. These special stipulations and other factors have tended to promote a wilderness definition drift that allows less natural and more domesticated, rather than truly wild lands, to be added to the national Wilderness Preservation System.

The long-term value of wilderness in our society and the world will be their naturalness and wildness, and their protection from human influence. We need to better understand these values and strive to keep human influence to a minimum while still providing opportunities for visitors to enjoy and experience the wilderness.

A final introductory thought is that wilderness conservation and management is a field of specialization in natural resource management not unlike forestry, wildlife biology, fisheries, or hydrology. It demands education, experience, and skill development to assure that it’s managed as an enduring resource. And perhaps more than any other specialty it requires an ecosystem management approach with heavy involvement from all the appropriate sciences including the social sciences.

Throughout this paper the 1964 Wilderness Act, and the books Wilderness Management; Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values, 3rd edition, by Hendee and Dawson, Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash, and Doug Scott’s The Enduring Wilderness strongly influence the discussion.

For more information visit the following websites:
Historical context for the wilderness concept
1. Wilderness Perspectives (4.12 MB)
Wilderness Values, Benefits, and Threats
- Introduction
- Wilderness Character and Characteristics
Pinchot Institute for Conservation Report: Ensuring the Stewardship of the National Wilderness Preservation System (also known as the Brown Commission Report)

Wilderness Laws With National Implications
A thorough discussion of the 1964 Wilderness Act can be found in Chapter 4 of Wilderness Management. A chronological listing of wilderness designating laws is provided in Appendix B of Wilderness Management. Abstracts of wilderness laws from 1964 to 2000 are provided in Appendix C of the same book. Additional discussion can be found in Chapter 5 of Wilderness Management on important wilderness legislation after the 1964 Act.

After Congress passed the ’64 Wilderness Act there have been more than 130 additional laws enacted between 1964 and 2000 adding acreage to the NWPS. More than half of these laws contained special provisions affecting specific wilderness areas, parts of the system or in a few situations all of the NWPS. To fully understand some of these special provisions, the full text of the law, the Congressional record, and an appreciation of the issues that spawned the special provisions are often needed.

Because of the multitude of special provisions included in wilderness legislation a manager of any one area is required to be knowledgeable of the ’64 Act plus the act that added the area in question to the NWPS and additionally any legislation that added acreage to that area. Further there are several pieces of legislation that provide broad management direction for a number of previously designated areas.

The files in this section summarize some of the primary laws that effect management of wilderness in the national forest system. Additional information is also available on how an area becomes designated as wilderness. The full text of wilderness legislation can be found in the Wilderness Library, and two additional searchable databases exist on legislative history and special provisions.

Historical background information useful in understanding the meaning of various portions of the Wilderness Act can be found in: Scott, Douglas W., A Wilderness-Forever Future: A Short History of the National Wilderness Preservation System, American Wilderness Campaign, Washington, D.C., 2001.

Also, see The Wilderness Act E-Learning Training Course.

Other Laws Directly Affecting Wilderness
The legal direction contained in the Wilderness Act of 1964 and subsequent wilderness legislation must be followed as intended. But, other laws also pertain to management of lands and resources inside designated wilderness and some provisions of these laws appear to conflict with the provisions contained in wilderness laws. Do the wilderness laws ’trump’ the other laws or vice versa?

In general, managers must meet the intent of all applicable laws and no law trumps another (unless indicated by specific language in a subsequent law). For example, if actions are needed in wilderness to conserve a species listed under the Endangered Species Act, those actions must be considered but implementation should occur in a way that minimizes adverse effects to the wilderness character.

File in this section summarize other laws applicable to wilderness management.

Multiple Use, Sustained Yield Act of 1960
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969
Antiquities Act of 1906, National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979
Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973
Clean Air Act of 1970
Clean Water Act of 1972
Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990

Wilderness Management Principles

The Four Cornerstones of Wilderness Stewardship

Appendix

Reading List