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I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Journal of WildernessAPRIL 2004 VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1

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FEATURESEDITORIAL PERSPECTIVESIJW Salutes Forty Years of the Wilderness ActBY JOHN C. HENDEE and CHAD P. DAWSON

SOUL OF THE WILDERNESSWildernessProgress after Forty Years under theU.S. Wilderness ActBY JOHN C. HENDEE and CHAD P. DAWSON

STEWARDSHIPThe Wilderness Act at FortyLooking Back, Looking AheadBY DOUGLAS W. SCOTT

The Idea of WildernessBY TINAMARIE EKKER

A Special Piece of Alaskan WildernessWe Need to Save Such PlacesBY MICHAEL McBRIDE

Portable Fence Roller Facilitates Fence Removal byVolunteers in Steens Mountain WildernessBY CINDY WITZEL and JERRY SUTHERLAND

SCIENCE AND RESEARCHLegislative Intent, Science, andSpecial Provisions in WildernessA Process for Navigating Statutory CompromisesBY ALAN E. WATSON, MICHAEL PATTERSON,NEAL CHRISTENSEN, ANNETTE PUTTKAMMER, andSHANNON MEYER

Information about Wilderness Visitorsand Recreation ImpactsIs It Adequate?BY DAVID N. COLE and VITA WRIGHT

SCIENCE AND RESEARCH, CONTINUEDPERSPECTIVES FROM THE ALDO LEOPOLDWILDERNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTEMapping the United States NationalWilderness Preservation SystemBY DAVE SPILDIE

EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATIONWilderness-Related Courses in Natural ResourcePrograms at U.S. Colleges and UniversitiesBY CHAD P. DAWSON and JOHN C. HENDEE

Naropa University LaunchesWilderness Therapy Symposium SeriesBY SUZANNE CASWELL and ROB MELTZER

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVESThe 8th World Wilderness CongressAlaska and SiberiaBY VANCE G. MARTIN

The End of the RoadThe Darien JungleBY HAVEN COOK

WILDERNESS DIGESTAnnouncements and Wilderness Calendar

Book ReviewsWilderness: Earth’s Last Wild Places

by Russell A. Mittermeier et al.REVIEW BY JOHN SHULTIS

Making Parks Work: Strategies for PreservingTropical Natureedited by John Terborgh, Carel van Schaik,Lisa Davenport, and Madhu RaoREVIEW BY JOHN SHULTIS

FRONT COVER image is a Sonoran desert landscape, taken in Arizona,USA, donated by Fred Koehn, www.superstitionwilderness.com.

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2 International Journal of Wilderness APRIL 2004 • VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1

EDITORIAL BOARDPerry Brown, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USA

Vance G. Martin, WILD Foundation, Ojai, Calif., USAAlan Watson, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont., USA

John Shultis, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, B.C., CanadaSteve Hollenhorst, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

Wayne A. Freimund, University of Montana, Missoula, Mont., USARebecca Oreskes, White Mountain National Forest, Gorham, N.H., USA

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJohn C. Hendee, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho, USA

MANAGING EDITORChad P. Dawson, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, N.Y., USA

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—INTERNATIONALGordon Cessford, Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand; Karen Fox, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Andrew Muir,Wilderness Foundation Eastern Cape, South Africa; Ian Player, South Africa National Parks Board and The Wilderness Foundation, Howick, Natal, Republic ofSouth Africa; Vicki A. M. Sahanatien, Fundy National Park, Alma, Canada; Won Sop Shin, Chungbuk National University, Chungbuk, Korea; Anna-LiisaSippola, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland; Franco Zunino, Associazione Italiana per la Wilderness, Murialdo, Italy.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS—UNITED STATESGreg Aplet, The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colo.; David Cole, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, Mont.; John Daigle, University ofMaine, Orono, Maine; Don Fisher, USFS, Washington D.C.; Joseph Flood, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.; Lewis Glenn, Outward Bound USA,Garrison, N.Y.; Glenn Haas, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.; Troy Hall, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; William Hammit, ClemsonUniversity, Clemson, S.C.; Greg Hansen, U.S. Forest Service, Mesa, Ariz.; Dave Harmon, Bureau of Land Management, Portland, Oreg.; Bill Hendricks,California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Ed Krumpe, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; Jim Mahoney, Bureau of Land Management,Sierra Vista, Ariz.; Bob Manning, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; Jeffrey Marion, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.; Leo McAvoy,University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.; Michael McCloskey, Sierra Club; Christopher Monz, St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y.; Connie Myers,Arthur Carhart Wilderness Training Center, Missoula, Mont.; Roderick Nash, University of California, Santa Barbara, Calif.; David Ostergren, NorthernArizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Marilyn Riley, Wilderness Transitions Inc., Sausalito, Calif.; Joe Roggenbuck, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.;Holmes Rolston III, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colo.; Susan Sater, U.S. Forest Service, Portland, Oreg.; Tod Schimelpfenig, National OutdoorLeadership School, Lander, Wyo.; Rudy Schuster, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, N.Y.; Elizabeth Thorndike, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Jay Watson, The WildernessSociety, San Francisco, Calif.; Dave White, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.

International Journal of Wilderness

International Journal of Wilderness (IJW) publishes three issues per year(April, August, and December). IJW is a not-for-profit publication.

Manuscripts to: Chad P. Dawson, SUNY-ESF, 320 Bray Hall, OneForestry Drive, Syracuse, N.Y. 13210-2787, USA. Telephone: (315)470-6567. Fax: (315) 470-6535. E-mail: [email protected].

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Subscription rates (per volume calendar year): Subscription costs are inU.S. dollars only—$35 for individuals and $55 for organizations/libraries. Subscriptions from Canada and Mexico, add $10; outside NorthAmerica, add $20. Back issues are available for $15.

All materials printed in the International Journal of Wilderness, copyright© 2004 by the International Wilderness Leadership (WILD) Foundation.Individuals, and nonprofit libraries acting for them, are permitted to makefair use of material from the journal. ISSN # 1086-5519.

Submissions: Contributions pertinent to wilderness worldwide aresolicited, including articles on wilderness planning, management,and allocation strategies; wilderness education, including descriptionsof key programs using wilderness for personal growth, therapy, andenvironmental education; wilderness-related science and research fromall disciplines addressing physical, biological, and social aspects ofwilderness; and international perspectives describing wildernessworldwide. Articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, photos, bookreviews, announcements, and information for the wilderness digest areencouraged. A complete list of manuscript submission guidelines isavailable from the managing editor.

Artwork: Submission of artwork and photographs with captions areencouraged. Photo credits will appear in a byline; artwork may be signedby the author.

World Wide Website: www.ijw.org.

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SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS• Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute • Indiana University, Department of Recreation and Park Administration • NationalOutdoor Leadership School (NOLS) • Outward Bound™ • SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry • The WILD®

Foundation • The Wilderness Society • University of Idaho Wilderness Research Center • University of Montana, School of Forestryand Wilderness Institute • USDA Forest Service • USDI Bureau of Land Management • USDI Fish and Wildlife Service • USDINational Park Service • Wilderness Foundation (South Africa) • Wilderness Leadership School (South Africa)

The International Journal of Wilderness links wilderness professionals, scientists, educators, environmentalists, and interestedcitizens worldwide with a forum for reporting and discussing wilderness ideas and events; inspirational ideas; planning, management,

and allocation strategies; education; and research and policy aspects of wilderness stewardship.

International Journal of Wilderness APRIL 2004 • VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1 3

FEATURES

E D I T O R I A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

IJW Salutes Forty Years ofThe Wilderness ActBY JOHN C. HENDEE AND CHAD P. DAWSON

This year, 2004, marks 40 years since The Wilder-ness Act (P.L. 88-577) was passed by the U.S. Con-gress and signed into law by President Lyndon B.

Johnson on September 4, 1964. The Wilderness Act begana “legislated wilderness” movement in the United States. Itwas followed by enactment of more than 130 additionalwilderness designation laws to create today’s National Wil-derness Preservation System (NWPS) that comprises 662wilderness areas and more than 105 million acres(42,848,900 ha). And this is not the end of the legislatedwilderness movement. Millions of acres of roadless landsare targeted by advocates for wilderness designation in thenational parks, national forests, fish and wildlife refuges,and Bureau of Land Management lands.

This year, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the act,wilderness managers, educators, advocates, and visitors arerecommitting themselves and their organizations to the ongo-ing work of protecting America’s wilderness legacy. For somepeople, wilderness provides employment; for volunteers, it is“heart work,” for others it is a place for treasured personalexperiences; and for tens of millions, wilderness is the sourceof ecological services such as clean air, water, and geneticbiodiversity. Join with colleagues in celebrating the 40th anni-versary of The Wilderness Act by participating in a “walk forwilderness” or by attending a conference—look for specialactivities in your area on these websites: www.wilderness.net,www.leaveitwild.org, and www.wilderness.org.

In recognition of the 40th anniversary of The WildernessAct, this issue of IJW (marking our tenth year of publication)features key articles relevant to the act. First is our Soul of theWilderness column, which is a progress report on what’s beenaccomplished in 40 years under The Wilderness Act—an in-spiring list of achievements in support of wildernessconservation. Next, lifetime professional environmentalistDoug Scott describes the history of The Wilderness Act, in-

cluding important legislativedevelopments and insightsinto people and events lead-ing to the act’s passage.Then, TinaMarie Ekker,policy analyst for Wilderness Watch, describes some keyconcepts in the act that give wilderness meaning, and theirimplications for wilderness management.

Next, Mike McBride, wilderness advocate and owner ofKachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge in Alaska, provides vividdescriptions of Alaskan wilderness resources, stunning intheir remote wildness and beauty, but often at risk. Mikereminds us that wilderness advocates can only lose once.Cindy Witzel and Jerry Sutherland, members of the legis-latively established—but new and unique—cooperativemanagement advisory committee that guides managementof the Steens Mountain Wilderness, describe how a newlyinvented “fence hand roller” made it possible for volun-teers to remove miles of fence to reestablish wildernessconditions in the Steens Wilderness cow-free zone.

Wilderness management is, in large part, people manage-ment, and legislative history and surveys of past and presentusers can provide insights contributing to better understand-ing and management of permitted uses under The WildernessAct. Watson and others illustrate this in the case of jet boat useon the Salmon River in the Frank Church–River of No ReturnWilderness. And in the last article addressing The WildernessAct, prominent wilderness scientist David Cole and Vita Wrightsummarize what is known about wilderness users and theirimpacts on campgrounds and trail conditions.

We celebrate 40 years under The Wilderness Act! It hasbrought more permanency and consistency to wildernessdesignation and management and increased responsibilityand opportunity for all of us to be involved in stewardingwilderness resources and values.


Evolution of the Wilderness Idea into aU.S. Wilderness SystemThe idea of wilderness conservation, meaning protectionof a nation’s most pristine and wildest remaining publiclands, was born and evolved in the United States. The ori-gin of the concept goes back to early exploration of theUnited States and the romantic art and literature of the1800s, and was reflected in early national park and na-tional forest creations in the early 1900s. Later, it was moreclearly articulated in The Wilderness Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-577), whose 40th anniversary is being celebrated this year.Subsequently, between 1964 and 2000, a total of 132 addi-tional wilderness designation laws were passed by the U.S.Congress to add areas to the National Wilderness Preserva-tion System (NWPS), further defining what lands wouldqualify for wilderness and clarifying special managementrequirements for particular areas.

Thus, in addition to The Wilderness Act, 40 years ofsubsequent legislation has clarified congressional intent toprotect and manage our nation’s wildest remaining landsas wilderness and has expanded the NWPS to more than105 million acres. It is hard to identify any natural resourceissue—or any issue—for which Congress has so consis-tently and so often confirmed their intent as they have withwilderness.

The National Wilderness Preservation SystemThe United States has 662 congressionally designated wil-derness areas in 44 states, totaling 105,667,891 acres(42,774,361 ha) in 2003. The smallest is the Pelican IslandWilderness in Florida (5 acres; 2 ha), and the largest is theWrangell-St. Elias Wilderness in Alaska (9,078,625 acres;3,675,025 ha).

Four U.S. federal agencies administer the NWPS: theBureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service (FWS) and the National Park Service (NPS)in the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Forest Ser-vice (FS) in the Department of Agriculture. Table 1 showswilderness acreage by agency.

S O U L O F T H E W I L D E R N E S S

FEATURES

WildernessProgress after Forty Years under

the U.S. Wilderness Act

BY JOHN C. HENDEE and CHAD P. DAWSON

Agency Wilderness Percent of agencyacreage land managed as

wilderness

BLM 6,511,891 4%

FS 34,862,975 18%

FWS 20,686,134 22%

NPS 43,616,250 55%

Total 105,677,891 15%

Table 1—U.S. Federal Agencyadministration of NWPS.

Article authors John Hendee and Chad Dawson in the North Maricopa Wilderness, Arizona(managed by the BLM). Photo by Marilyn Riley.


Wilderness areas comprise about 4.6percent of the total land area in theUnited States. The amount of area indesignated wilderness is substantial butis less than the 6.1 percent of land inthe United States devoted to urban andrural residential areas and the 20percent or so devoted to cropland.

Wilderness Stewardship IsNow a Natural ResourceSpecialtyDuring the 40 years since theWilderness Act was passed, the naturalresource community has developedwilderness stewardship into a well-recognized natural resource specialty.Several accomplishments reflect thisprogress:

• All four wilderness-managingagencies have developed manualsto guide their evaluation of landsfor possible wilderness designationand to direct stewardship of theirwilderness lands and areas identi-fied as having wilderness potential.

• Several natural resource profes-sional societies and citizenenvironmental organizations haveactive wilderness working groupsor committees.

• Over 45 wilderness courses are nowoffered in U.S. colleges and univer-sities, and a recent survey docu-ments more than 1,500 studentsenrolled in wilderness courses in2001–2002. (see Dawson andHendee, page 34).

• Agency and multiagency wildernessmanagement training sessions takeplace annually, and several nationalwilderness management and re-search conferences have been held.

• Three editions of a wilderness man-agement textbook have beenpublished since 1978 and each wasendorsed by all the wilderness agen-cies (Hendee and Dawson 2002).

• The Aldo Leopold Wilderness Re-search Center and Arthur CarhartWilderness Training Center havebeen operating for a decade andconduct nationwide research andtraining activities for the four fed-eral agencies.

• A “wilderness information system”(www.wilderness.net) at the Univer-sity of Montana provides electronicaccess to wilderness facts, figures,documents, and links to othersources of wilderness information.

• Reflecting the growing interna-tional as well as U.S. interest inwilderness, seven World Wilder-ness Congresses (WWCs) havebeen held in six different countries,with delegates from as many as 60nations in attendance. The 8thWWC will be in Alaska in 2005.

• The IJW (www.ijw.org) is startingits 10th year.

Wilderness Has Expandedto Other NationsMany other countries have embracedthis uniquely American idea that iswilderness. Since the creation of theNWPS, seven other nations have passedlaws to legally designate wilderness. Inaddition, several other countries protectwilderness with administrative zoningand numerous more provide wilder-ness protection by recognizing it inother conservation programs. Othernations are exploring ways to protectcomparable values and lands. Since1992, the World Conservation Union(IUCN) has recognized wilderness as aCategory I Protected Area, defined as“Strict Nature Reserves and Wilderness

Areas,” and an international WildernessTask Force has been formed underIUCN auspices.

All of the countries recognizingwilderness have drawn on the U.S.model and look to the United States fortechnical leadership as well as inspirationfor their wilderness conservation efforts.In response, several international shortcourses have evolved in U.S. universities,and international participants have beeninvited to U.S. agency wildernesstraining.

As mentioned earlier, every few yearsdelegates from around the world gatherat a WWC sponsored by the U.S.-basedWILD Foundation (www.wild.org) toengage in dialogue about wilderness,report progress, participate in workshopsand training, and discuss the current andpotential role of wilderness in theirnation’s conservation efforts. WWCproceedings from these events andmaterial included in the IJW, bothproduced by Fulcrum Publishing(www.fulcrum-books.com), provide animpressive compendium of informationabout international wilderness. TheIUCN process leading to its formalrecognition of wilderness began with aresolution from the 1983 WWC inScotland.

Wilderness for Wildlifeand BiodiversityHenry David Thoreau was right whenhe wrote long along ago, “In wildnessis the preservation of the world.” Manyspecies of wildlife are wildernessdependent, meaning they depend onwilderness conditions for their exist-ence. For example, in the lower 48

It is hard to identify any natural resource issue—or anyissue—for which Congress has so consistently and so

often confirmed their intent as they have with wilderness.


states, grizzly bears, all three speciesof wolf (gray, red, and Mexican), alli-gators, wolverines and several otherspecies rely on wilderness for theircore habitat. Dozens of additional spe-cies depend on wilderness conditionsto maintain wildness in their genes andhabits since cultivated crops and hu-man activity elsewhere alter theirhabitat and behavior.

The positive response and recovery ofmany threatened wildlife species to wil-derness protection is an amazingconservation success (see Figure 1). Oneexample is the successful restoration ofCalifornia condor populations in or nearthe Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wil-derness in Arizona and the Ventana

Wilderness in California. Wildernessareas containing unaltered pristine habitatare like biodiversity banks for many speciesof plants and animals. For example,the lush riparian habitat along AravaipaCreek in the Aravaipa Canyon Wilder-ness of southern Arizona protects sevenspecies of native trout, desert bighornsheep, an extensive variety of mammalsand reptiles, and at least 238 differentspecies of birds. We are still discoveringthe full array of wilderness plants, insects,birds, fish, and wildlife and how theyinteract and depend on wilderness ecosys-tems. Protecting wilderness ecosystemsfrom invasion of noxious and nonnativespecies has become a major wildernessstewardship challenge.

Wilderness for HumanBenefitsRecreation is one of the obvious appealsof wilderness, and data indicate 40years of steadily increasing use levels,now about 20 million visitor days peryear and projected to increase by 3 to5 percent per year. Most use is by smallhiking groups of family and closefriends (see Figure 2), with only a smallamount of total use facilitated by com-mercial outfitters and organizations.

The use of wilderness for science andeducation is also an important humanbenefit. Two surveys during the past twodecades suggest 550 and 800 active sci-entific studies, respectively, inwilderness. Wilderness is used for highereducation purposes—providing sites forclass field trips and in some cases entirecourses, study areas for student research,and as a source of instructional ex-amples. Other data document theexistence of over 200 education-orientedwilderness programs—excluding highereducation institutions and youth orga-nizations. A 1987 survey of NWPSmanagers found that 39 percent of themreported that environmental and con-servation education programs werebeing conducted in their areas.

The use of wilderness for personalgrowth and healing is a substantial andgrowing industry. Recent surveys identi-fied 230 “wilderness experience pro-grams” (WEPs) designed for personal

Figure 1—Wilderness conditions include the presence of wildlife, like seeing an egret, a fox, or young alligators in the flooded forests of the Okefenokee Wilderness, U.S. Fish andWildlife Service (Georgia). Photos by Pam Sikes.

Figure 2—Hikers on Mount Washington overlooking the Presidential Range-Dry River Wilderness, U.S. Fish andWildlife Service (New Hampsire). Photo by Chad Dawson.


growth and leadership purposes.These WEPs take paying clients intowilderness or comparable lands, rang-ing from large programs such as Out-ward Bound (about 30,000 clients in1998) to smaller organizations serv-ing less than 100 clients annually.Another survey identified 38 morespecialized WEPs providing wilder-ness therapy. These are three- to eight-week programs, mainly for at-riskyouth struggling with substance abuse,resistant and defiant behavior, emo-tional adjustment, and, occasionally,psychological problems. Projectionsfrom these data suggest there were12,000 wilderness therapy clients in1998 and 392,000 field days of use.Wilderness therapy—or outdoor be-havioral healthcare as it is being calledin the industry—represents an increas-ing use of wilderness.

The Future of WildernessBecause wilderness includes the mostpristine remaining environments on theplanet, the importance of protecting theseareas will continue to grow in value forprotecting biodiversity, intact ecosystems,and threatened or scarce wildlife andplants; for their ecosystem services, suchas clean air and water; and for scientificand educational use to document and un-derstand natural processes (see Figure 3).These natural values of wilderness are alsowhat the public likes most about them.National surveys indicate that the top fivevalues of wilderness reported by 75 per-cent or more of the populations surveyedare protection for water quality, for wild-life habitat, for air quality, for endangeredspecies, and for future generations. Theincreasing trends in wilderness use reflectthe needs and desires of people to expe-rience solitude and primitive forms ofrecreation—opportunities promised byThe Wilderness Act. The growth in wil-derness use for personal growth andhealing reflects the benefits from such

opportunities. The opportunity to expe-rience natural environments and solitudewill become even more important in thefuture for people seeking relief from thegrowing pressures of 21st-century life.

Future WildernessConservationWith a growing U.S. and internationalpopulation, wilderness will be an in-creasingly scarce resource, protectingremnants of functioning ecosystemsand natural landscapes and providingplaces to escape the pressures of mod-ern life. How much will be added tothe U.S. wilderness system in the fu-ture? Perhaps another 1 percent of theU.S. land area, or about 25 millionacres (10.1 million ha). With a limiton future opportunities to expand theNWPS, the stewardship of the wilder-ness areas already designated, waitingto be designated, or being evaluatedfor possible designation will becomeever more important.

Internationally, there are many op-portunities to expand wildernessresources and values in land protectionsystems appropriate to each nation’sculture. Nevertheless, the generalmodel for wilderness designation andstewardship is set forth in the U.S. Wil-derness Act, and the know-how ofwilderness conservation is embodied inour wilderness professionals and citi-zen environmentalists. While wecelebrate the 40th anniversary of thishistoric act and its important lessonsand legacy for America and its people,let us also consider the value of wilder-ness conservation in the rest of theworld. Evidence continues to growabout the global importance of protect-ing the world’s most pristine remainingecosystems. A larger commitment tointernational wilderness protectionwould be a fitting tribute to 40 years ofprogress under the U.S. Wilderness Act.

AcknowledgmentsThis article is based on information docu-mented in Hendee and Dawson (2002),at www.wilderness.net, and in the otherarticles about The Wilderness Act andNWPS in this issue of the IJW.

REFERENCESHendee, John C., and Chad Dawson. 2002.

Wilderness management: Stewardship andprotection of resources and values (3rd ed.).Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing.

Wilderness Act, Public Law 88-577, 88th Cong.,2nd sess. (September 3, 1964), codified atU.S. Code 16 (2000), § 1131–1136.

JOHN C. HENDEE is professor emeritusand former dean, College of NaturalResources, University of Idaho, Moscow, IDand editor-in-chief of the IJW. E-mail:[email protected] P. DAWSON is professor and chair,Faculty of Forest and Natural ResourceManagement, SUNY College of Environ-mental Science and Forestry, 320 BrayHall, One Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY13210, USA, and managing editor of theIJW; e-mail: [email protected].

Figure 3—Of the 747,956 acres (302,816 ha) within YosemiteNational Park boundaries, National Park Service (California),over 94 percent is designated wilderness. Photo by ChadDawson.


On September 3rd, 2004, Americans will celebratethe 40th anniversary of The Wilderness Act (P.L.88-577), a landmark in world conservation history.

Four decades later, it is difficult to comprehend just howcompletely that law recast the context within which agencywilderness stewards and citizen wilderness activists dotheir work.

The Weakness of Administrative ProtectionBefore there was a Wilderness Act, wilderness was, at best,an afterthought. Only the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) hadactually delineated wilderness areas, propelled by visionar-ies within its own ranks—William Greeley, Aldo Leopold,Arthur Carhart, Leon Kniepp, and Bob Marshall (Gilligan1953; Sutter 2002). By 1939, the agency had protected14,235,414 acres (5,762,500 ha) by administrative order.Then the work of designating new wilderness areas all butstopped. No significant net additions were made in the 25

years that followed. Moreover, politically driven adminis-trative boundary changes commonly eroded wildernessdiversity within the few protected areas. Peaks and ridgesabove timberline were added to compensate for forests ex-cised to be logged in the boom that followed World War II(Gilligan 1954).

The National Park Service (NPS) responded to the post-war tourism boom with seemingly boundless enthusiasm formore park development. Conservationists had long viewednational parks as reservoirs of wilderness, but the agencyadamantly refused to define any specific lands as permanentlyoff-limits to development (Gilligan 1954; Sellars 1997).

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Fishand Wildlife Service provided no explicit protection forwilderness. As for management, even in the relatively fewnational forest wilderness areas and the yet-undevelopedpark backcountry, wilderness stewardship practices wereoften haphazard and inconsistent.

Facing the onslaught of national forest and national parkdevelopment, conservation organizations mobilized theirmembers to urge more and stronger wilderness protection.Leaders pleaded the case with agency officials but werelargely rebuffed. As Congress began consideration of theso-called Wilderness Bill in 1956, the USFS and NPS op-posed it in behind-the-scenes lobbying and in formaltestimony, a posture that changed only when the Kennedyadministration came to office in 1961.

In opposing the Wilderness Bill, agency leaders foughtto preserve their administrative discretion. The chief of theUSFS told Congress the bill would “tend to hamper thefree and effective application of administrative judgmentwhich now determines, and should continue to determine,the use, or combination of uses, to which a particular na-tional-forest area should be devoted” (McArdle 1957).

To draw the line against further development and to standby that decision regardless of pressures requires a degree of

STEWARDSHIP

The Wilderness Act at FortyLooking Back, Looking Ahead

BY DOUGLAS W. SCOTT

Figure 1—Signing of the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson.


institutional commitment inconsistentwith realities of how large hierarchi-cal agencies operate, given conflictingmandates, powerful development con-stituencies, and ever-shifting politicalleadership (Gilligan 1954). The headof the Izaak Walton League wrote in1939: “There is no assurance that anyone of them [wilderness areas], or allof them, might not be abolished asthey were created—by administrativedecree. They exist by sufferance andadministrative policy—not by law”(Reid 1939). Disappointment with ad-ministrative protection, reinforced intest case after test case, drove conser-vation group leaders to conceive theWilderness Bill and lobby it throughCongress (Scott 2001; Harvey 1994).

Explaining the rationale for remov-ing administrative discretion overwilderness designation, one of the Wil-derness Bill’s leading sponsors, SenatorRichard Neuberger, a Democrat fromOregon, stressed:

This bill in no way reflects onthe wonderful career serviceswhich now are in charge ofwilderness areas and similaroutdoor realms, but it actuallyseeks to safeguard thesesplendid men and womenfrom undue political pressure,no matter what the source.(Neuberger 1957)

A 1956 conservation group pamphletwritten to rally grassroots support sum-marized the case for the Wilderness Bill:

Our rare, irreplaceablesamples of wilderness can bediminished at the will of theadministrator, without thesanction of Congress. … un-der the bill Congress wouldprotect the wilderness interioras well as the boundaries ofall dedicated wilderness. Thiswould strengthen the hand ofthe good administrator, steadythe hand of the weak one.(Trustees for Conservation1956)

serve “wilderness character” (Wilder-ness Act, §1133[b]).

Wilderness advocates understoodthat decisions made by Congresswould be inherently political, buttheir experience showed that thesecretive upper echelons of federalagencies were no less political, justless visible and less open to effectivecitizen influence.

Advocates also knew that the laby-rinthine process of enacting lawsaffords disproportionate opportunitiesto its opponents to delay or kill a bill,as the eight-year odyssey of The Wil-derness Act demonstrated (Zahniser1964a). But they saw in this immu-table fact of legislative life the key topreserving wilderness in perpetuity.Once Congress has designated a wil-derness area, those seeking reversal orboundary deletions face this steep pro-cedural burden. Most recently,Congress altered a wilderness bound-ary by just 31 acres—but it took a lawto do so (Mount Naomi WildernessBoundary Adjustment Act 2003). Asfor all earlier boundary changes, con-servation groups agreed to the change.

The Wilderness Act:Protection by CongressHad citizen activists not doggedly lob-bied The Wilderness Act into law, howmuch wilderness would be officiallyprotected behind real boundaries inAmerica today? The answer, it is fairto say, would be dramatically less thanthe 105,852,000 acres (42,848,900ha) now comprising in the NationalWilderness Preservation System(NWPS) by January 2004. And it is afair question to ask how much landonce-protected as wilderness would alater administration have thrown opento development. The 1964 actchanged everything about wildernesspreservation in the United States:

• It set a national goal to preserve“an enduring resource of wilder-ness” in perpetuity (WildernessAct, § 1131[a]).

• It designated the first 9,139,721acres (3,699,760 ha) of the NWPS,all national forest lands.

• It required agency reports on hun-dreds of potential wilderness areas,including all roadless portions ofall units of the NPS and the Na-tional Wildlife RefugeSystem.

• It shifted the powerto decide which areasto protect from agen-cies to Congress, withan act of Congressrequired for eachnew designation.

• It proclaimed a com-mon mandate forwilderness steward-ship on all types offederal lands: to pre-

Figure 2—Lake Tahoe basin surrounded by mountains and coniferous forest,Desolation Wilderness, California. Photo courtesy of U.S. Forest Service.

Before there was a Wilderness Act, wilderness was,at best, an afterthought.


The Wilderness Act initiated threefundamental changes, more apparentnow than at the outset, each of greatportent for the future of wilderness:1. The wilderness advocacy movement

has decentralized for greater politicalimpact. Congress is a national body,but great deference is paid to theviews of the senators and represen-tatives from the state involved inany bill. For the wilderness move-ment to be effective, this legislativereality requires building citizenleadership from within the localstate and congressional district ofeach proposed area.

2. Congress does not defer to agency wil-derness recommendations, butreaches its own decisions. Agencyleaders play a powerful role in con-gressional decision making, butthe Congress has often designatedareas they recommended against,

expanding agency-recommendedboundaries where citizen groupshave made an effective case for thelarger area.

3. Stewardship of wilderness areas hasbecome a professional specialization.Agency personnel draw on a widerange of knowledge to meet theunique challenges of preservingwilderness character. Trainingcourses offered by the ArthurCarhart National WildernessTraining Center promote best prac-tices in wilderness stewardshipand encourage consistency amongthe four wilderness administeringagencies (Myers 2003).

Building the WildernessSystemAdministratively protected wildernessdid not grow appreciably in the 25

years before The Wilderness Act. Incontrast, Congress has since enacted114 laws, adding 96,712,191 acres(39,149,100 ha) beyond the originalareas designated in the 1964 act (seeTable 1). And, in 1976 Congress ex-panded the scope of the wildernesssystem by bringing the BLM under themandate of the 1964 act. In the 1970s,the USFS conducted two nationwideinventories of roadless areas with po-tential for designation as wilderness.

A wilderness system that began in1964 with 54 areas in 13 states nowincludes more than 650 areas in 44 ofthe 50 states, ranging in size from 5acre (2 ha) Pelican Island in Floridato a single wilderness complex of some13,000,000 acres (5,262,400 ha)within Gates of the Arctic NationalPark and Preserve and the contiguousNoatak National Preserve in Alaska.The progress of wilderness preserva-tion in the United States over thesefour decades can be assessed in an-other way: Today, 4.7 percent of allland in all ownerships in the UnitedStates, including Alaska, has been pro-tected under The Wilderness Act, andlooking only at the lower 49 states, 2.5percent of all land in all ownerships isstatutorily protected wilderness. Thisdramatic increase in the scale of wil-derness protection resulting from the1964 act reflects two factors:1. The American people overwhelmingly

support designation of more wilder-ness. A review of all public opinionpolls concerning wilderness takenbetween 1999 and 2002 found thatthe American people want more oftheir federal lands preserved as wil-derness—by very wide margins.Strong support is consistent acrossage groups and political affiliations,between regions of the country, andbetween urban and rural residents(Campaign for America’s Wilderness2003). Although the absolute size

Table 1—Historic Summary of Wilderness Protection and Designations.As of November1939 (end of As the Wildernessestablishment Act became law As of Januaryof primitive areas) in 1964 2004

Forest Service 14,235,414 14,617,461 35,036,737

(wilderness) (0) (9,139,721) (34,862,975)

(primitive areas for study) (14,235,414) (5,477,740) (173,762)

National Park Service 0 0 43,616,250

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 0 0 20,687,034

Bureau of Land Management 0 0 6,511,891

Total acres protected 14,235,414 14,617,461 105,851,912

Number of states with areas 13 13 44

Boundary changes can be made By administrative Only by an act Only by an actdecision of Congress of Congress

However much wilderness Americans may choose todesignate, through their elected representatives,

future generations are likely to judge that wepreserved too little, rather than too much.


of public support for more wilder-ness varies between polls and overtime, the spread between supportand opposition is dramatic (seeTable 2). In a political portent forthe future, strongest support is reg-istered among the youngest agegroup and within the fast-growingHispanic population (Cordell,Tarrant, and Green 2003).

2. Congress has been a more responsiveagent for designating wilderness thanwere the agencies when designationdecisions were in their hands. Thisvindicated the view BentonMacKaye, a founder of The Wil-derness Society, shared withHoward Zahniser, who led thecampaign for the Wilderness Act,in discussing an earlier legislativeconcept: “We have here the chanceperhaps to launch a constructivenational legislative campaign …toward the capture of a real wil-derness domain. It would make adefinitive manoeuver to shift ourground from the defense to theoffensive” (MacKaye 1946).

As a 1976 congressional reportnoted, “The Wilderness Act was the firstland conservation measure requiringpublic input into Federal land manage-ment decision making,” but “the Actaffects neither the President’s authorityto make recommendations to the Con-gress nor the authority of Congress toenact legislation absent an agency rec-ommendation” (U.S. Congress 1976).

Beginning with The Wilderness Act,designation of wilderness has alwaysdrawn bipartisan congressional sup-port. Through periods of disinterest,and even hostility, from the WhiteHouse or congressional leaders, con-tinuing expansion of the wildernesssystem is fueled by strong support fromthe general public coupled with sus-tained grassroots advocacy by citizensgroups, often with informal, if not offi-

That kind of grassroots citizen workcontinues. In many cases, Congresshas returned again and again to ex-pand individual wilderness areas. TheVentana Wilderness Area on the cen-tral California coast originated in 1931as a 54,857 acre (22,206 ha) nationalforest primitive area. When Congressdesignated it in 1969, it was expandedto 98,000 acres (39,670 ha). Congresshas since expanded it four additionaltimes (most recently in 2002) to nowcomprise a 239,688 acre (97,025 ha)statutory wilderness area.

cial, support of on-the-ground agencypersonnel.

Elected representatives respect thiskind of citizen advocacy. Representa-tive John P. Saylor, the PennsylvaniaRepublican who championed TheWilderness Act in the House of Rep-resentatives, sponsored a 1970 billcomposed of wilderness proposals for-mulated by grassroots groups. Heexplained:

Across the country groups ofcitizens are working skillfully… preparing inventories ofpotential wilderness areas invarious … jurisdictions.In cooperation withnational forest and otherappropriate agency offi-cials and working intask forces exhibitingimpressive professionaltalents, they are delin-eating outstanding defacto wilderness op-portunities, refiningproposed boundaries,and drawing up detailedmaps and supportivedocumentation. (Saylor1970)

Table 2—Percentage Spread between Public SurveysStudying Support and Opposition to Wilderness Issues (Scott 2001).

Poll Support Oppose Spread

Nationwide poll, Mellman Group, 1999, N = 800respondents (not enough wilderness designated vs.too much wilderness) 48.0 8.0 40.0

Nationwide federal poll, National Survey onRecreation and the Environment (NSRE), 2000–2001,N = 15,620 (not enough wilderness designated vs.too much wilderness) 49.2 5.9 43.3

NSRE (all respondents), N = 10,382 (designatemore wilderness in your own state?) 69.8 12.4 57.4

NSRE (Hispanic respondents), N = 10,382(designate more wilderness in your own state?) 75.2 6.8 68.4

California poll (Hispanic respondents), 2002, N = 500(designate more wilderness in California?) 81.0 12.0 69.0

Nevada poll, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, 2001,N = 625 (too little wilderness designated in Nevadavs. too much wilderness) 56.0 4.0 52.0

Vermont poll, University of Vermont Center forRural Studies, 2002, N = 472 (more wilderness shouldbe designated on Green Mountain National Forest?) 73.0 20.0 53.0

Figure 3—Aerial view of Cedar Keys Wilderness, Florida. Photo courtesy of U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service.


Howard ZahniserFATHER OF THE WILDERNESS ACT

“The wilderness that has come to us from the eternityof the past we have the boldness to project into

the eternity of the future.” In these words Howard Zahniserdistilled the essence of the preservationist impulse—and thenhe infused it into federal law (Zahniser 1957).

When “Zahnie” became executive director of The Wil-derness Society in 1945, there was little prospect thatwilderness could survive in America except in scraps andbackwaters. Zahniser and his colleagues concluded thatthe seemingly inevitable loss of wilderness could bereversed only by a wilderness law.

A painstaking evangelist for wilderness, Zahniespent a decade patiently building the coalitionessential if any bill were to be politically plau-sible. Only then did he draft the bill. Its evoca-tive language and precise word choices reflect hisgenius as draftsman. (Scott 1968)

Consider Zahniser’s later explanation of his choice of theword untrammeled in the definition of ideal wilderness:

The idea within the word “Untrammeled” of [wil-derness areas] not being subjected to human con-trols and manipulations that hamper the free playof natural forces is the distinctive one that seems tomake this word the most suitable one for its pur-pose within the Wilderness Bill. (Zahniser 1959)

While the second sentence in the definition provides whata key senator described as a “somewhat less ‘severe’ or‘pure’” definition, the first “is a definition of pure wilder-ness areas. … It states the ideal” (Anderson 1961). Whenthe act commands that wilderness stewards preserve “wil-derness character,” it invokes this ideal (Scott 2002).

With final success in sight, Zahniser looked ahead in aspeech in mid-April 1964: “I can see now that [preservingwilderness is] going to be served better by our successorsthan by us who are already falling away and getting out ofbreath, but that objective requires the establishment of basic

Howard Zahniser. Photocourtesy of James Marshall.

policies” (Zahniser1964a). Ten dayslater, he testifiedduring the finalcongress ionalhearings. Seven

days after that, hedied. In eulogy, his

close colleague, DavidBrower, wrote:

What made the mostdifference was one man’s

conscience, his tireless search for a way to put anational wilderness policy into law, his talkingand writing and persuading, his living so that thisAct might be born. …

Wilderness that lives on is the most fitting ofmemorials to the man who did not turn, whogave the most of all, to give wilderness thatchance. (Brower 1964)

In his first detailed outline of the idea of the Wilder-ness Bill, in 1951, Zahnie expressed the core of hiscommitment to wilderness:

We are a part of the wilderness of the universe.That is our nature. Our noblest, happiest charac-ter develops with the influence of wildness. …

Some of us think we see this so clearly thatfor ourselves, for our children, our continuingposterity, and our fellow men we covet with aconsuming intensity the fullness of the humandevelopment that keeps its contact with wildness.Out of the wilderness, we realize, has come thesubstance of our culture, and with a living wil-derness—it is our faith—we shall have also a vi-brant culture, an enduring civilization of healthfulcitizens who renew themselves when they are incontact with the earth. (Zahniser 1964b)

Agencies continue to recommendadditional wilderness as they periodi-cally revise their comprehensive landuse plans. As of January 2004, politi-cal appointees of the George W. Bushadministration in the Department of

Agriculture have approved 2,264,570acres (916,700 ha) of new wildernessrecommendations in completed na-tional forest plan revisions. By contrast,Bush political appointees in the Depart-ment of the Interior exhibit open

hostility to wilderness. In April 2003,in secretly settling a lawsuit they didnot bother to defend, they reversedwell-established policy to block theBLM from even considering recommen-dation of new wilderness to Congress.


More Wilderness in OurFutureThe wilderness system will continueto grow.

• In 2002, President George W. Bushsigned four laws designating526,395 acres (213,085 ha) of newwilderness.

• Bills proposing more than20,000,000 acres (8,096,000 ha)of new wilderness in six states werepending in Congress in January2004, with major bills being pre-pared for additional states. Amongthe strongest prospects for enact-ment are proposals in whichconservative Republicans are tak-ing a lead.

• Also pending in Congress arepresidential recommendationsfrom earlier administrations forwilderness designation in manynational parks, national wildliferefuge units, and on BLM-admin-istered public lands in states wherethe current congressional delega-tion is disinterested or hostile tothe proposals.

Many factors influence the pace ofcongressional additions to the wilder-ness system, including the attitude ofleaders of congressional committeesthrough which wilderness legislationmust pass and the degree of WhiteHouse support. Long-pending agencyrecommendations (particularly thosefor national park wilderness) and somecitizen-initiated proposals will takemore years to be resolved, for theyinvolve states where current politicalleaders are hostile to further wilder-ness protection. As always in legislativebodies, compromise is part of theequation.

Many current proposals expandhigher elevation wilderness areas toinclude lower elevations, enhancingecological diversity and year-round

wilderness recreation opportunities.Often the addition of lower elevationvalleys also means more difficult landuse conflicts to resolve during congres-sional consideration.

The challenges of wilderness stew-ardship are now the daily work ofthousands of federal employees, aidedby thousands of volunteers. It is heart-ening to listen to these dedicatedpeople discuss the conundrums ofprotecting the naturalness of wilder-ness ecosystems and the wildness ofwilderness recreational experiences.They revere The Wilderness Act as thetouchstone for each decision.

“An Enduring Resource ofWilderness”In a delicate balance of idealism andpracticality, detailed direction and re-alistic flexibility, the 40-year-old Acthas proved itself what Bob Marshalldreamed of: “as close an approxima-tion to permanence as could berealized in a world of shifting desires”(Marshall 1934). The concept of wil-derness has become what it was notbefore 1964: “an imperative in Ameri-can life” (Broome 1964). Wildernesshas real meaning for tens of millionsof Americans, and this, too, is part ofwhat we celebrate on this 40th anni-versary. This broad publicunderstanding wasachieved “in large partbecause of the battle forthe Wilderness Bill”(Brower 1964).

Nearly six decadesago, Bob Marshall spokeof the possibility:

For American citi-zens to enjoy whatcan be enjoyed infew other countries,a twofold civiliza-tion—the mecha-nized, comfortable,easy civilization of

twentieth-century modernity,and the peaceful timelessnessof the wilderness where vastforests germinate and flourishand die and rot and growagain without any relation-ship to the ambitions and in-terferences of man. (Marshall1936)

Soon after the Wilderness Act be-came law, U.S. Supreme Court JusticeWilliam O. Douglas observed that “welook backward to a time where therewas more wilderness than the peopleof America needed. Today we look for-ward (and only a matter of a few years)to a time when all the wilderness nowexisting will not be enough” (Douglas1965). In the final analysis, how muchwilderness will be preserved—orshould be? The answer is unknowable,appropriately left to the Americanpeople and the Congress they elect.

Nonetheless, I will venture my ownprediction: However much wildernessAmericans may choose to designate,through their elected representatives,future generations are likely to judgethat we preserved too little, rather thantoo much.

REFERENCESAnderson, Sen. Clinton P. 1961. Statement of the

chairman. Wilderness Act, Hearings beforethe Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,United States Senate, on S. 174. 87th Cong.,1st sess., February 27–28, 1961: 2.

Figure 4—Barchan sand dunes in the Cadiz Dunes Wilderness, California. Photocourtesy of Bureau of Land Management.


Broome, Harvey. 1964. Quoted in 1906 …Howard Clinton Zahniser … 1964. The Liv-ing Wilderness 86 (Winter–Spring): 3.

Brower, David R. 1964. Wilderness and theconstant advocate. Sierra Club Bulletin 46(6) (September) 46(6): 2–3.

Campaign for America’s Wilderness. 2003. Amandate to protect America’s wilderness: Acomprehensive review of recent public opin-ion research. Washington, D.C.: Campaignfor America’s Wilderness. http://leaveitwild.org/reports/polling_report.pdf.

Cordell, H. K., M. A. Tarrant, and G. T. Green.2003. Is the public viewpoint of wildernessshifting? IJW, 9 (2): 27–32.

Douglas, W. O. 1965. Foreword. In Harvey Man-ning, ed., The Wild Cascades: ForgottenParkland, 14–15. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Gilligan, J. P. 1953. The development of policyand administration of Forest Service primitiveand wilderness areas in the western UnitedStates. PhD diss., University of Michigan.

———. 1954. The contradiction of wildernesspreservation in a democracy. In Proceedings,1954 Annual Meeting, Society of AmericanForesters 119–122. (Reprinted in 1955 inThe Living Wilderness: 20 (52): 25–29).

Harvey, M. 1994. A Symbol of Wilderness: EchoPark and the American Conservation Movement.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

MacKaye, B. 1946. Benton MacKaye to HowardZahniser, January 31. Wilderness SocietyArchives, Denver Public Library.

Marshall, R. 1934. Suggested program for pres-ervation of wilderness areas. RobertMarshall to Harold Ickes, April. NationalArchives, Record Group 79, file 601-12,Parks-General Lands-General-WildernessAreas, pt. 1.

———. 1936. Maintenance of wilderness ar-eas. In Proceedings, 30th Convention, In-ternational Association of Game, Fish andConservation Commissioners, August 31–September 1, 1936, 35.

McArdle, R. E. 1957. Statement. National Wil-derness Preservation Act: Hearings beforethe Committee on Interior and Insular Af-fairs, United States Senate, on S. 1176. 85thCong., 1st sess., June 19–20, 1957: 93.

Mount Naomi Wilderness Boundary AdjustmentAct, Public Law 108-95, 108th Cong., 1stsess., October 3, 2003, U.S. Statutes atLarge 117 (1165–1166). http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ095.108.

Myers, C. G. 2003. Celebrating a decade ofservice: The Arthur Carhart National Wil-derness Training Center. IJW 9 (2): 18–21.

Neuberger, R. 1957. Speaking on proposedNational Wilderness Preservation System onFebruary 11, 1957, 85th Cong., 1st sess.,Congressional Record 103, pt. 2: 1906.

Reid, K. A. 1939. Let them alone! OutdoorAmerica, November, 6.

Saylor, J. P. 1970. Speaking on saving the

American wilderness on October 14, 1970,91st Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record116, pt. 27: 36758.

Scott, D. W. 1968. The Origins and Develop-ment of the Wilderness Bill, 1930–1956.Draft master’s thesis, University of Michigan.

———. 2001. A Wilderness-Forever Future: AShort History of the National WildernessPreservation System. Washington, D.C.:Campaign for America’s Wilderness. http://leaveitwild.org/reports/A_Wilderness-Forever_Future.pdf.

———. 2002. “Untrammeled,” “WildernessCharacter,” and the challenges of manag-ing wilderness. Wild Earth 11, 3–4 (Fall–Winter): 72–79.

Sellars, R. W. 1997. Preserving Nature in theNational Parks: A History. New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press.

Sutter, P. S. 2002. Driven Wild: How the Fightagainst Automobiles Launched the ModernWilderness Movement. Seattle: University ofWashington Press.

Trustees for Conservation. 1956. Pamphlet. SanFrancisco, June 5. Wilderness Society Ar-chives, Denver Public Library.

U.S. Congress. 1976. Designating Certain Landsas Wilderness. 94th Cong., 2nd sess., Sep-tember 15, 1976. H. Rept. 94-1562: 2.

Wilderness Act, Public Law 88-577, 88th Cong.,2nd sess., September 3, 1964, codified atU.S. Code 16 (2000), § 1131-1136.

Zahniser, H. C. 1957. Editorial The Living Wil-derness (Summer–Fall): ii.

———. 1959, Howard Zahniser to C. EdwardsGraves, April 25. Wilderness Society Ar-chives, Denver Public Library.

———. 1963. Supplementary statement. Na-tional Wilderness Preservation Act: Hearingsbefore the Committee on Interior and Insu-lar Affairs, United States Senate, on S. 4.88th Cong., 1st sess., February 28 andMarch 1, 1963: 68.

———. 1964a The people and wilderness. TheLiving Wilderness (Spring–Summer): 41.

———. 1964b. How much wilderness can weafford to lose? Address to 2nd biennial wil-derness conference, March 31, 1951. In D.R.Brower, ed., 48. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

DOUGLAS W. SCOTT, a longtimewilderness advocate, is policy director ofthe Campaign for America’s Wildernessand frequently speaks on college campusesand at training sessions for agencywilderness stewards. His address is 705Second Avenue, Suite 203, Seattle, WA98104-1711, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

Figure 5—Viewing wildlife like this egret walking in the Okefenokee Wilderness is a primary activity of visitors. U.S. Fishand Wildlife Service, Georgia. Photo by Pam Sikes.


Wilderness Is RelationshipAll cultures across history have set some places apart fromthe routines and common behaviors of daily life. The pur-pose of these special places is to reorient our focus andperceptions in a setting conducive to reflection. We ap-proach such places differently than we do other places inour daily lives, and it is the way we interact with places setapart that makes them special and enables us to experiencethe unique values they provide in nurturing the humanspirit. Examples include shrines, memorials, and ceremo-nial sites. Wilderness also is such a place.

Like all special places set apart, wilderness is not just ageographic location, it is also an idea and an ideal. The idea ofwilderness encompasses certain values that we as a societyhave chosen to protect. Congress enacted the Wilderness Actin 1964 (P.L. 88-577), with the singular statutory purpose ofsecuring the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Con-gress to secure for the American people of presentand future generations the benefits of an enduringresource of wilderness. For this purpose there ishereby established a National Wilderness Preser-vation System (emphasis added) (The WildernessAct, sec. 2[a])

The Wilderness Act intended that wilderness should havemeaning, that it would be protected for something, not sim-ply be a place where certain activities, such as logging, donot occur. Although wilderness may look similar to otherundeveloped landscapes, such as national park backcountryor national forest roadless areas, how humans interact withwilderness is what makes it different from other landscapes.To assure that the benefits of wilderness will continue to

exist for generations tocome, The WildernessAct contains principlesand statutory direction in-tended to shape andguide our relationshipwith these special places.

In preserving wilder-ness, we are preserving anendangered experience andan endangered idea—theidea that self-willed land-scape has intrinsic value andshould exist. Wilderness of-fers an opportunity to experience a form of relationship betweenhumans and the more-than-human world that is increasinglyrare in these modern times, a relationship in which we humansdo not dominate, manipulate, or control nature but instead im-merse ourselves as members in the larger community of life.

What makes this possible is the authenticity of wilder-ness. The forces of genuine wild nature still shape the essenceof these special places as they have since time began. Wilder-ness offers us a portal into a world different from the onehumans have sculpted and now dominate. In wilderness,the beauty and mystery of wildness can still exist. It is be-cause wilderness is authentic that it has immense intrinsicvalue as part of the ancient history and fabric of Earth.

In wilderness, we leave the mechanized technologicalcontrivances of modern civilization behind and experiencewind, rain, bear, terrain, rivers, and ourselves on terms otherthan our own. Experiencing our connection to a world largerthan ourselves is the timeless symbolic value provided by allspecial places set apart.

STEWARDSHIP

The Idea of WildernessBY TINAMARIE EKKER

Wilderness is a place of restraint, for managers as well as visitors.

—Pinchot Institute for Conservation, Ensuring the Stewardshipof the National Wilderness Preservation System, 2001

Article author TinaMarie Ekker. Photo by Tim Ryan.


Keeping wilderness real and alive inour world today depends upon the at-titude and behaviors with which weinteract with these congressionally des-ignated landscapes. In this way,wilderness is not just physical geogra-phy, it is also an idea and a relationshipthat must be protected and preservedif wilderness—not just undevelopedlandscape—is to continue to exist forfuture generations to know and enjoy.

Defining WildernessWith passage of The Wilderness Actin 1964, Congress gave wilderness alegal definition:

A wilderness, in contrast withthose areas where man and hisown works dominate the land-scape, is hereby recognized asan area where the earth and itscommunity of life are untram-meled by man, where manhimself is a visitor who doesnot remain. (emphasis added)( Wilderness Act, sec. 2[c])

A defining aspect of wilderness is thatit will forever remain in contrast to mod-ern civilization, its technologies,conventions, and contrivances. The Wil-derness Act expressly prohibits motorizedequipment, mechanical transport, com-mercial enterprise, and the placement ofstructures and installations precisely be-cause allowing the routine intrusion ofsuch things blurs the distinction betweenwilderness and modern society. The morethese intrusions are allowed to occur inwilderness, the less meaning wildernesswill have. The more we as a society allowwilderness to become motorized, com-mercialized, and convenient, the lessopportunity there will be for present andfuture generations to know the uniquepsychological, symbolic, and experien-tial values that wilderness provides.

Opportunities to experience solitudeaway from modern civilization form anintrinsic component of an area’s wilder-ness character. Good wildernessstewardship requires protecting thisvaluable quality and not allowing it todiminish over time.

A second defining aspect of wildernessis that it is untrammeled. Untrammeleddoes not mean untrampled or undevel-oped. Untrammeled means unfettered,free of intentional interference or manipu-lation. By selecting the word untrammeledas a core defining quality of wilderness,Congress defined the kind of relationshipthat humans are to have with wilderness.By law, wilderness is to be self-willed,shaped by natural processes, not con-trolled or manipulated to conform tohuman goals and desires. Being in con-trast to civilization and untrammeled byhuman manipulation are key to the verymeaning of wilderness and are what dif-ferentiate wilderness from otherundeveloped landscapes.

Wilderness CharacterThe overarching mandate of The Wilder-ness Act is to preserve the wilderness

character of each area in the National Wil-derness Preservation System (NWPS).Wilderness character, like personal charac-ter, is made up of more than just physicalfeatures; it encompasses both tangible andintangible qualities. Preserving wildernesscharacter is vital to keeping alive themeaning of wilderness in America.

Some tangible components of wilder-ness character include the presence ofnative wildlife at naturally occurringpopulation levels; lack of human struc-tures, roads, motor vehicles, ormechanized equipment; lack of crowd-ing or large groups; few or no humanimprovements for visitor convenience,such as highly engineered and overde-veloped trails, developed campsites,signs, or bridges; and little or no signof biophysical damage caused by visi-tor use, such as denuded soil orhabituated or displaced wildlife.

Some intangible components ofwilderness character include outstand-ing opportunities for reflection,freedom, risk, adventure, discovery,and mystery; places where self-relianceand safety are a personal responsibil-ity; untrammeled, wild, and self-willedland; land that is uncommodified, notfor sale; opportunities to experienceour humanity as connected to thelarger community of life; places thatforever offer solitude and respite frommodern civilization, its technologies,conventions, and contrivances.

Wilderness solitude is a state ofmind, a mental freedom thatemerges from settings where visi-tors experience nature essentiallyfree of the reminders of society,its inventions, and conventions.Privacy and isolation are impor-tant components, but solitudealso is enhanced by the absenceof other distractions, such as largegroups, mechanization, unnatu-ral noise, signs, and other modernartifacts … it is conducive to thepsychological benefits associated

Figure 1—Visitors enjoy looking at wildlife and studying naturein wilderness, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Montana, U.S.Forest Service. Photo by Lisa Edison.


with wilderness and one’s freeand independent response to na-ture. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-vice, 2001)

Public UseThe Wilderness Act identifies a numberof allowable public purposes for wilder-ness: recreational, scenic, scientific,educational, conservation, and historical.It is important to keep in mind that thesepublic purposes are not the statutory pur-pose of the act. They are the appropriatepurposes for which the public may usewilderness, and althourgh these are al-lowable uses of wilderness, they are notmandatory uses. The public purposes oruses do not take precedence over the act’ssingular statutory purpose to preserve anenduring resource of wilderness by pre-serving the wilderness character of eacharea in the NWPS.

Except as otherwise providedin this Act, each agency admin-istering any area designated aswilderness shall be responsiblefor preserving the wildernesscharacter of the area and shallso administer such area forsuch other purposes for whichit may have been established asalso to preserve its wildernesscharacter. (emphasis added)(The Wilderness Act, sec. 4[b])

If any of the allowable public usesof wilderness conflict with the preser-vation of an area’s wilderness character,then, by law, protecting wildernesscharacter has priority. A wilderness canbe completely closed to one or all ofthese public purposes if such use woulddiminish or degrade components ofwilderness character. For this reason,there are several wildernesses that areclosed year-round to any public entryas well as some that are closed to thepublic for part of each year. “The pur-pose of the Wilderness Act is topreserve the wilderness character of theareas to be included in the wilderness

system, not to establish any particularuse” (Zahniser 1962, p.1300).

ConclusionThe idea of wilderness is premisedupon humans interacting with certainlandscapes in a manner that is differ-ent from how we approach any otherarea of landscape. Keeping alive themeaning of wilderness requires our par-ticipation in a relationship with theselandscapes that is very different fromthe commodity-oriented, utilitarianmanner in which modern society gen-erally interacts with the rest of nature.Wilderness depends on the continuedexistence of authentic wildness. Pre-serving wildness in wilderness requiresthat humans exercise humility and re-straint, not dominance and control overthe land, its creatures, and its naturalprocesses. The opportunity to experi-ence this form of relationship with therest of nature is an increasingly endan-gered experience in our modern world.Designated wilderness is the only land-scape where such a relationshipbetween humans and the rest of naturehas been written into law. “This is thechallenge of wilderness management,preserving what is unseen andunmeasurable” (Kaye 2000, p. 4).

The values and benefits of wildernesswill continue to be available to us and tofuture generations only as long as we con-tinue to treat wilderness as special placesset apart from the conveniences, contriv-ances, and routines of modern daily life.Preserving the meaning of wilderness de-pends on the attitudes and actions ofeveryone, visitors and managers alike, aswell as those who may never visit but findtheir spirits nurtured just in knowing au-thentic wilderness still exists.

REFERENCESKaye, Roger. 2000. Wilderness Watcher News-

letter 11 (2) (July).U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. Draft wilder-

ness stewardship policy. Federal Register, v66 no (10) (January 16).

Wilderness Act, Public Law 88-577, 88th Cong.,2nd sess., September 3, 1964, codified atU.S. Code 16 (2000), § 1131-1136.

Zahniser, Howard C. 1962. Hearing before theSubcommittee on Public Lands of the Com-mittee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Houseof Representatives, 87th Cong., May 7,1962: pp. 1300–1301.

TINAMARIE EKKER is policy director withWilderness Watch, P.O. Box 9175,Missoula, MT 59807, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

Figure 3—Seeing the water-formed and sculptured canyons inwilderness is a memorable visitor experience, Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, Arizona, Bureau of LandManagement. Photo by Peter Druschke.

Figure 2—An owl resting in the Okefenokee Wilderness,U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia. Photo by Pam Sikes.


Hidden deep in the Kenai Mountains lies a smalllake rimmed by towering snowcapped peaks. Fewof the peaks in this wildly scenic place have names;

in fact, the massive glacier whose blue ice face looks downover this lake is unnamed. Like a hidden Shangri-la fromanother land and time, the spruce-shouldered mountains leapdirectly up, out of the lake, to summits above 4,000 feet. Thegin-clear waters along the shores are peppered with scrappyrainbow trout, and below them the lake falls away to pro-found depths. Other than a few trappers from a bygone eraand a hiker or two ferried in by bush pilot, the place has beenlittle explored. It is known, well-known, by only a few.

It is my good fortune to have spent 30 years getting toknow this place. My wife and I built a cabin there, andduring the past three decades that cabin has become ourhome, and a home to many guests who have come to loveits majesty and wildness as we do. But it is more than atake-your-breath-away scenery kind of place, more thanlumber and tar paper; it is the axis of my heart, the center

of my being, myhidden refuge. Evenwhen I am not there,it comes to me indreams. It is part ofme, and if it wereblemished, dam-aged, destroyed, andeven when it hasbeen threatened, it isas if the knife ispoised over myheart.

So Many Special Places in AlaskaEvery Alaskan village, town, and city is encircled by and heldin the embrace of wilderness—special places such as mine.From any vantage point an observer’s gaze can fall upon track-less expanses that seldom see a person, and not far beyondthat, places that have never even seen a footprint.

My nameless valley is but one arm of a basin with four gla-ciers, and it represents an idealized sort of Alaska, for it hideswild places that no living person has ever seen. There are flower-strewn meadows as lovely as god ever made, and dark evergreenforests where low branches are hung with carpets of shamrock-colored moss. There are uncounted numbers of bears and moose,wolverines, wolves and coyotes, otters, minks, and beavers. Theirgame trails, as old as history, pulse with life and flow throughthis wildness like veins and arteries.

White-blanketed mountain goats gaze serenely down at thisidyllic scene from clouded pinnacles, while everywhere thereis the sound of moving water. As it has done since time out ofmind, water continues to lure and seduce, to rip and tear, topush and pull, and to shape the very soul of this place. Thereare murmuring trickles and pulsing freshets and melodiouswatercourses half hidden in boulder piles by deep mosses.There are white-feathered cataracts roaring from high cliffsand crashing to the valley below. There is crystal clear waterfrom melting snowfields, pond water tannic-stained as darkas chocolate, high country water as blue as a robin’s egg andglacial water so full of silica that it grinds between your teeth.It is simply not possible to be anywhere in the embrace of thisvalley without hearing moving water, and in salmon seasonthere are bright reds to be found in every clear stream. Thereare arctic char in fern garden pools, and there are birds. Thereare hawks and owls, eagles and falcons, ducks and geese and

STEWARDSHIP

A Special Pieceof Alaskan Wilderness

We Need to Save Such Places

BY MICHAEL McBRIDE

Article author Michael McBride. Photo by Vance Martin.


trumpeter swans and yes, even hum-mingbirds find refuge in thisglacier-carved fastness.

From its source at the crown of theglacier 5,000 feet above sea level, thismelt-water winds about l5 miles to theocean through some of the most pictur-esque country in the world. Thesenutrient-rich waters drain a vast ripariancorridor and then fertilize the intertidalestuaries of Kachemak Bay, documentedas some of the richest on Earth. Nineteenglaciers feed Kachemak Bay, and the 35-mile-long bay holds this vast amount offresh water inside a long sandbar, whereit mixes and remixes with oceanic waterto create a diversity and productivity earn-ing its recognition by the World Bankenvironmental assessment program asone of the l32 of richest marine environ-ments in the world.

Many Wilderness Areas inAlaska Are in JeopardyImpossible as it might seem in visual-izing such a place, the forests in thispriceless valley were sold for clear-cutlogging as recently as l0 years ago. Bull-dozers were poised to cross the bay bybarge and begin grading roads up thevalley and through this wilderness thathad remained unchanged since the landemerged out from under the ice sheetsof the Quaternary era. Alaska has a longhistory of the abuses of bulldozer andlog trucks permanently altering theproductivity of salmon rivers.

The reason that this area was sparedwas that a group of local people bondedthemselves together as the KachemakBay Citizens Coalition, and they even-tually overwhelmed the politicians in thestate capitol. Against all odds, $23 mil-lion was appropriated by the state, andthe lands were bought back from thelogging company and Native Corpora-tion. These lands are now protected inperpetuity for the use of local people,Alaskans, Americans from the lower 48,

and the people of the world. TheKachemak Bay State Park and the ad-joining Kachemak Bay State WildernessPark together comprise approximately345,000 acres (139,725 ha).

But care is needed, for the powerful interests thatwould destroy wilderness needlessly are unrelenting,and those who protect it can only afford to lose once.

Figure 1—Looking across Loon Song Lake toward Kachemak Bay State Park and Wilderness that togethercomprise 345,000 acres. Photo by Vance Martin.

global community, and especially in today’sinformation age, we can and must workharder, and work together, to save what’sirreplaceable and be sensible and careful indeveloping what wise heads agree we must.

Figure 2—Common loon whose soulful cry is anything butcommon. Photo by Vance Martin.

With colleagues around the worldwho are the keepers of wild areas, Alas-kans share the difficult and ongoingchallenge of balancing the need for re-source extraction with the values ofwilderness. Clearly, the money fromlogging, oil, fish, and minerals is neededto fund schools, roads, and the myriadother public needs, and Alaska needsmore such development. But care isneeded, for the powerful interests thatwould destroy wilderness needlesslyare unrelenting, and those who protectit can only afford to lose once.

Too often in Alaska and elsewhere deci-sion makers have waged the wildernessdebate as an either-or struggle. In our Continued on page 21


STEWARDSHIP

The Steens Mountain Cooperative Management andProtection Act of 2000 (Steens Act) created theSteens Mountain Cooperative Management and Pro-

tection Area (CMPA) within the Bureau of LandManagement (BLM) Burns District in southeastern Oregon.Within the CMPA, 170,085 acres (68,860 ha) were alsodesignated at that time as the Steens Mountain Wilderness.

In addition, the Steens Act designated 97, 229 acres(39,364 ha) of the wilderness as “cow free,” where grazingpermits were retired or traded and no future domestic com-mercial livestock grazing would occur. This is the first suchcongressionally designated zone in a wilderness in theUnited States.

When the BLM, ranchers, and environmentalists agreed ina 2001 environmental assessment on how to build the fencesand water developments to implement the cow free zone, theyincluded a provision to remove all unnecessary fences withinthe zone by October 2006 to begin restoring it to a more natu-ral condition. Thus, a minimum of 50 miles of barbed wire,and possibly up to twice that amount, must be removed fromSteens Mountain Wilderness over the next three years.

How to Remove the Fences?One approach to removing the fences would have been tocontract for their removal using motorized equipment andmechanized transport. Discussions between the SteensMountain Advisory Council (SMAC) and the BLM ulti-mately led to rejection of this idea due to concerns over useof motorized equipment and mechanized transport withinthe wilderness, even though contracting out the work usingthis approach was originally thought to be cheaper andquicker. SMAC members agreed that volunteer groupsremoving the fences, with some contracting to remove materialsby pack stock, seemed a better “minimum tool” and eco-nomical approach. But anyone who has “pulled fence” byhand knows that it is difficult, tiring work, and that the oldfence material—wire, posts, and clips—would have to becarried out of the wilderness on pack stock.

Even under the best of circumstances it would requireyears to accomplish the task by hand-rolling the wire. Hand-rolled wire coils are large, cumbersome, and irregular inshape, making them awkward, and even hazardous, tohandle. Hence, there were also safety concerns about vol-unteers hand-rolling large amounts of wire, as well as thedifficulty involved in packing out huge amounts of looselyrolled wire bundles on pack stock.

Portable Fence Roller FacilitatesFence Removal by Volunteers in

Steens Mountain WildernessBY CINDY WITZEL and JERRY SUTHERLAND

Figure 1—Members of the group Wilderness Volunteers with part of a day’s fence removal inSteens Mountain Wilderness. Left to right: John Oberhausen, Birnie McGavin, Ed Hill(kneeling), Patricia Schaffarczyk, Steve Haas, Bill Swanson (co-leader, with the Steens WireRoller), Joe Speight, Laurie Speight, Nancy Lehrhaupt, John Heasly, Kathleen Worley(coleader), Lois Mansfield. Photo by John Neeling.


But as good fortune would have it,one of the SMAC members, CindyWitzel, and her husband, John, operatea family business, Steens MountainPackers, Inc. John Witzel, an inventoras well as an experienced wildernessoutfitter and packer, created anonmotorized, manually operated, por-table fence remover that could quicklyand efficiently roll up barbed wire intofactory-size rolls (see Figure 1). Thus,John Witzel’s Steens Wire Roller becamea key to the fence removal project, mak-ing it possible to use volunteers in aminimum tool approach and increasingtheir efficiency and safety (see Figure 2).

During one recent volunteer workeffort, a group called Wilderness Vol-unteers removed and rolled two milesof fence in two days using the SteensWire Roller (see Figure 3). Less packstock is now required to pack out themiles of wire, because they are in com-pact factory-style rolls rather thanhand rolls. Furthermore, it is safer forthe pack stock as well. And, the wireand steel can more easily be recycledor used for other fencing.

BLM Burns District wilderness spe-cialist John Neeling mobilized thevolunteer effort to remove the fence.

Organizations such as the AmericanHiking Society, Wilderness Volunteers,Sierra Club, and Oregon Natural DesertAssociation, among others, are cooper-ating in this effort to “put the wild backin the wilderness” at Steens Mountain.It is hoped that sharing information inthis short IJW article will encourage simi-lar wilderness restoration elsewhere.

Additional InformationFor additional information on the por-table and manual fence remover, theSteens Wire Roller, and other outdoorinnovations, contact FrenchglenBlacksmiths, 39269 Highway 205,Frenchglen, OR 97736, USA. Tele-phone: 541-495- 2315. URL: http://www.steensmountain.com/wireroller.htm.For information on the Steens Moun-tain Wilderness, use of volunteergroups, or to volunteer, contact BLMwilderness specialist John Neeling [email protected] or tele-phone: 541-573-4400.

CINDY WITZEL is the recreational permitholder representative on the SteensMountain Advisory Council. Contact Cindyat [email protected] SUTHERLAND is the statewide

Figure 2—The Manual Wire Roller can hold 90pounds of rolled wire equal to 1/4 mile, which iseasily and efficiently rolled by the operator. Photo byJohn Witzel.

Figure 3—Here Cindy Witzel cranks in removedbarbed wire onto the Steens Manual Wire Roller.Photo by John Witzel.

The 8th World Wilderness Congress,in Anchorage, Alaska, September 30–October 6, 2005, will feature opendialogue about Alaskan and global wilder-ness and sustainable development issues.Make plans to be there. The dialogue andaction will be for the benefit of all people.

MICHAEL McBRIDE and Diane built andown Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge,P.O. Box 956, China Poot Bay, Homer, AK99603, USA. Telephone: 907-235-8910.E-mail and URL: [email protected];www.alaskawildernesslodge.com.

Figure 3—The backcountry tourism industry in Alaska is highly dependent upon the use of float and bush planesfor transportation. Photo by Vance Martin.

From SPECIAL PIECE OF ALASKAN WILDERNESS on page 19

environmental representative on SMAC.Contact him [email protected].


IntroductionMost wilderness research has focusedon providing information for manag-ing in order to meet the definition ofwilderness contained within section2(c) of the U.S. Wilderness Act. How-ever, there has been very little researchto guide implementation of section4(d), which deals with special provi-sions. This section of the act providesgeneral direction on preexisting legalexceptions such as use of aircraft ormotorboat; prospecting for minerals,water, or other resources; mainte-nance of reservoirs and transmission

lines; grazing livestock; and permitting commercial services.When legislation establishes protection for public lands

under the authority of the Wilderness Act, incorporating thesespecial provision guidelines is often quite controversial. TheCentral Idaho Wilderness Act of 1980 established the FrankChurch–River of No Return Wilderness (FCRNRW) (2.2million acres/0.9 million ha) and extended Wild and ScenicRiver status to the Main Fork of the Salmon River as it flowsthrough the wilderness (see Figure 1). This act passed theU.S. House of Representatives, with special provisions for

several preexisting uses, over the objection of Idaho’s twocongressional representatives. From 1979, when multiple billswere introduced by Senator Frank Church to establish thisprotection, until 1980 when a final bill was passed, hearingsaround Idaho and in Washington, D.C., produced many ar-guments and discussion in favor and in opposition to thespecial provisions contained in this legislation.

The purpose of this article is to describe research to un-derstand the historic context of special provisions incombination with an empirical understanding of current usersaccommodated (e.g., jet boats on the Salmon River) as inputto the current wilderness planning process. This understand-ing is provided by a review of legislative history, in-depthinterviews of jet boat association leaders, and a survey of thegeneral jet boat user population (see Figure 2).

Legislative HistoryMeyer (1999) offered a process for assessing congressionalintent. When facing an ambiguous situation in applying leg-islation, a structured analytical process can be used to examinethe explanations of legislators who created the law or thedocuments they used when they debated and passed the law(Folsom 1972). In such an examination of the Central IdahoWilderness Act (Meyer 2000), statutory language and ac-companying legislative discussions assure the continuing use

SCIENCE and RESEARCH

Legislative Intent, Science andSpecial Provisions in Wilderness

A Process for Navigating Statutory Compromises

BY ALAN E. WATSON, MICHAEL PATTERSON, NEAL CHRISTENSEN,ANNETTE PUTTKAMMER, and SHANNON MEYER

Abstract: In order to manage special provisions in U.S. wilderness, several research products are needed.Minimally, a complete understanding of the legislative intent of the provision, in-depth understanding of thedeep meanings held by the particular stakeholder community of interest, and some knowledge aboutthe larger population of interest are needed. In this study of jet boat use on the Salmon River in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to understandthe attachment jet boat users have to the activity and the place.

Senior article author Alan Watson.Photo by Leena Vilkka.

(PEER REVIEWED)


of jet boats on the Salmon River in theFCRNRW and “continued heavy rec-reational use.” From committee reports,Meyer (2000) learned that continuanceof “access by … motorboat,” was toassure that this “traditional means ofaccess” could still be used to “see andenjoy this splendid wilderness.” It wasclarified that the term motorboat wouldinclude the type of motorized jet boatsin use on the river in 1980. Continu-ing use of jet boats, however, was notintended to preempt the prerogatives ofthe secretary of agriculture (under theprovisions of the Wild and Scenic Riv-ers Act) to regulate motorized travel onthe river in times of low water, high firehazard, or for other reasonable purposes.

Committee reports emphasized thatthe amount of motorboat use wouldbe permitted to continue at a level notless than that which occurred duringthe calendar year of 1978. The secre-tary of agriculture, however, wouldretain the necessary flexibility to in-crease the use of motorboats on thebasis of a management plan, althoughany increase would not be allowed toresult in overuse by motorboats.

Congress accepted one administra-tion clarification offered in acommittee hearing: Appropriate regu-lation prescribed in the Central IdahoWilderness Act meant there would bean upper limit to the amount of jetboat traffic that the river environmentand the experience on it could toler-ate, and that some restrictions andregulations would eventually have tobe applied. However, the authority ofthe Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, notThe Wilderness Act, was to be used asthe basis for justifying any motorboatuse regulation on the river, eventhough it flows through one of thecountry’s largest wilderness units.

The legislative history established alower threshold (at least in principle)below which motorized use could not

be restricted, but it set no ceiling. Andalthough it established that protectionof the experience would be an appro-priate basis for setting an upper limit,the discussion was rather silent on theactual nature of the experiences to beprotected, primarily focusing instead onthe issue of maintaining access. There-fore, in addition to an analysis of thelegislative intent, there was also a needto develop an understanding of the na-ture of experiences, meanings, andrelationship to place among motorizedusers. An understanding of these issueswas constructed using both in-depthinterviews and a mail-back survey.

MethodsInitially, interviews were conductedwith five leaders of a prominent andpolitically active jet boat club in Idaho.In the second phase of the study, theanalysis of the first interviews guidedan extended set of interviews within thejet-boat-user community and to de-velop a mail survey designed to evaluatea set of propositions about the experi-ences, meanings, and relationship toplace within the jet boating population.

Qualitative InterviewsWhen developing an understandingabout the nature of experience and re-lationship to place, either richness ordepth of understanding of individualsis important. In-depth interviews wereselected to gain this understanding, andthe goal of sampling was not to deter-mine the extent to which different typesof experiences and meanings are dis-tributed across the population of jetboat users, but rather to outline and de-scribe in rich detail the range of experiencesand meanings associated with jet boat useon the Salmon River. Under this sam-pling logic, populations are representedby capturing the range of diversity inrepresentative types comprising thepopulation (Bellah et al. 1985).

Quantitative SurveysEvery effort was made to census identifi-able subpopulations of jet boat users onthe Main Salmon River; two subpopula-tions not included were privatelandowners and commercial jet boat op-erators. Targeted subpopulationsincluded (1) jet boat membership asso-ciation A (N = 281); (2) jet boatmembership organization B (N = 88); (3)1996 and 1997 Forest Service jet boatpermits (N = 72); (4) 1983–1984 and1993–1995 Forest Service jet boat permits

Figure 1—The Salmon River flows through the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. Photo courtesy of theSalmon-Challis National Forest.

Figure 2—There has been little research to guide implementationof section 4(d) of The Wilderness Act, which deals with specialprovisions. Photo courtesy of the Salmon-Challis National Forest.


(N = 42) (permits from other years couldnot be located); (5) jet boaters identifiedby jet boat membership association Aleadership as active in jet boating in 1978(N = 168); (6) unaffiliated operators iden-tified by survey respondents (N = 98); (7)passengers identified by survey respon-dents (N = 146). A total of 895 surveyswere sent out, with a postcard follow-upreminder one week later.

ResultsQualitative Interview ResultsAnalysis of the combined interviews (5with opinion leaders from phase 1 and20 interviews with 37 participants inphase 2) revealed insights relative to anumber of dimensions of relationshipto place. It is not possible here to fullypresent the insights for all of these di-mensions. However, a brief overviewof three of these dimensions is pre-sented below.

Nature and significance of bondDifferences in the depth of bond to placewas evident. At one end of the continuumwere individuals who, to a significantdegree, organized their lives around theSalmon River and/or the opportunity tojet boat on the river. At the other extremewere individuals with relatively low at-tachment who often acknowledged theywere different from those who viewed theSalmon as “their backyard.” In betweenwere individuals who valued the Salmonfor specific tangible/physical features thatwere often seen as unique. These distinc-tions are important for understanding jetboaters’ relationship to place. For ex-ample, those with the most deeply rootedemotional bonds organized their livesaround this place to such an extent thatconceiving of them simply as “visitors”would be a mischaracterization. Further-more, they often valued jet boats not justas an activity, but as a means of providingaccess to the Salmon across changing life

stages and situations. In other words, theirability to do physically demanding activi-ties in remote settings may diminish overtime, but their interest in spending timein the places they have recreated in alltheir lives did not, and jet boats were seenas a means to having this experience.

AccessMaintaining access was a key theme inthe legislative history regarding motor-ized use of the Salmon. During thecourse of the interviews, it also emergedas a key concept for understanding jetboaters’ relationship to place. For ex-ample, most of the jet boaters viewedthe Salmon River as a local resource.As local users, they were concernedabout protecting opportunities to ac-cess the area over short periods of times(e.g., weekends as opposed to extendedvacations) and opportunities to decidespontaneously to take advantage of asudden opening in their schedule.Some of the jet boaters felt that the cur-rent permitting system was not flexibleenough to allow this kind of access. Inaddition, the permit system was seenby some as problematic in light of howvariability in river conditions (e.g.,water level, debris following storms,timing of fish runs) affects jet boating.

Meaning of WildernessInterview participants valued the re-mote, undeveloped, primitive, pristine,wild, and roadless character of theSalmon River. In fact, the term wilder-ness was sometimes used to describe thearea. However, designated wildernessdoes not seem to be an adequate con-cept for describing the meanings to thesepeople. When asked about designatedwilderness, some respondents pointedout that designation is a recent event thathas not changed the character of the area.Others seemed to struggle to see the rel-evance of this designation because as aclass of places, the Salmon River country

Table 1—Propositions Generated from In-Depth Interviews ofJet Boat Association Leadership.

Propositions1. Being close to nature is important to jet boaters.

2. Opportunities to experience solitude in a remote setting is valued by jet boaters.

3. Jet boating is a family experience, or an opportunity to pass on importantvalues to others.

4. Jet boaters exhibit strong attachment to place, or opportunities to spend timein the Salmon River Canyon is important to them (they have a strong personalhistory, are deeply involved).

5. Jet boating is challenging, with a certain amount of risk as in any whitewateractivity, and current regulations influence the perception of safety by limitingthe ability of boaters to travel in groups.

6. Jet boats are consistent with wilderness and wild and scenic values to jet boaters.

7. Jet boaters appreciate the cultural history of the river corridor.

8. Jet boaters perceive some other users as having unrealistic expectations abouttheir journeys along the Salmon River.

9. River planning should be addressed from a regional perspective, not river by river.

10. Jet boaters believe that environmentally responsible behavior by all users isimportant in order to protect the resource.

11. It is important to teach river etiquette to all users.

12. Jet boaters believe in “responsible shared use”—fair, equitable access to theresource and opportunity for growth with other user groups.


is no different from many other wildplaces in Idaho in their view; that is byand large the nature of Idaho. Overall,interview participants primarily relatedto the Salmon River country as a spe-cific place rather than as a representativeof a class of places (designated wilder-ness). As a place, the Salmon Rivercountry has one characteristic that mark-edly differs from designated wilderness.As defined in The Wilderness Act, wil-derness is an area “where man himselfis a visitor who does not remain.” Incontrast, most of the interview partici-pants viewed the Salmon River countryas a place with an extensive human past,which was of great value to many ofthem, and a continued human presence.

From analysis of these interviews,a series of propositions were devel-oped about the relationship among jetboaters, jet boat use, the Salmon River,and the FCRNRW (see Table 1). Thesepropositions guided development ofthe quantitative survey of the jet boatuser population.

Quantitative Survey ResultsA total of 391 surveys were completedand returned. Forty-one were returnedundeliverable, and a follow-up telephonesurvey of nonrespondents found thatabout 8 percent claimed they had notreceived the survey, although it was notreturned undeliverable. The initial unad-justed response rate was estimated at 48percent (391 of 819). Of these 391 re-spondents, 39 had not been on a jet boatwithin the boundaries of the FCRNRWand were dropped from data analysis.From the follow-up telephone survey ofnonrespondents, it was estimated thatapproximately 50 percent of nonrespon-dents had not jet boated within theFCRNRW boundaries, suggesting thatthe 391 respondents represented 74percent of the potential respondentsto the mail-back survey who boatedin the FCRNRW boundaries.

Approximately 25 percent of jet boatoperators had entered into the activitysince 1993, 50 percent since 1986, and78 percent since 1978. Therefore, only22 percent of the current jet boat par-ticipants were engaged in this activityin the baseline year of 1978. For pas-sengers, the trend was a little different:nevertheless, only 43 percent were en-gaged in this activity in 1978.

Some of the propositions in Table 1were tested through responses to the sur-vey questions. For example, forProposition 2, 66 percent of all jet boatersindicated they do enjoy solitude while jetboating. However, 52 percent indicatedthat the number of other people they meeton the river is not important to the experi-ence they have, 70 percent said the numberof structures they might see is not impor-tant, and 85 percent said their experienceis not influenced by seeing small aircraftflying overhead (see Figure 3).

For Proposition 3, 68 percent enjoyspending time with their families whilejet boating, 85 percent think of this timeas an important family experience, and98 percent consider it important or veryimportant to protect access to this ac-tivity at this place for future generations.About 35 percent of respondents firstexperienced jet boating on the SalmonRiver as a child.

Proposition 6 was based on the jet boatassociation leadership’s re-peated assertion that theythought their experience injet boats was a wildernessexperience. In the survey,79 percent expressed agree-ment that their experiencewhile jet boating on theriver was the same as theexperience of nonmotor-ized floaters’, and 76percent thought the expe-rience was the same as thoseriding horses along the wil-derness trails. Only 33

percent, however, would go on the riverwithin the wilderness if they couldn’t goon jet boats.

DiscussionStatutory policy, such as The WildernessAct, represents an expression of howsociety values culturally significant re-sources. However, in a diverse society,national level policy will reflect compro-mises among subgroups due to variationin values, and this ultimately createsambiguities and sometimes apparentcontradictions that managers mustaddress when implementing the statutein specific instances. Section 4(d) of TheWilderness Act, which addresses specialprovisions within wilderness, presentsthis situation. Some interpret the provi-sions as creating “exceptions” to truewilderness, whereas others interpretthem as a means of accommodating dif-ferent orientations toward wilderness(Alessa and Watson 2002). When facedwith such diversity in interpretation ofstatutory accommodations, a socially le-gitimate process for negotiatingresolution is needed. This article sug-gests that a careful analysis of legislativehistory in conjunction with amultimethod scientific approach de-signed to develop an understanding ofcurrent stakeholders can enhance thelegitimacy of planning processes.

Figure 3—Sixty-six percent of all jet boaters indicated they do enjoy solitude whilejet boating; however, 52 percent indicated that the number of other people they meeton the river is not important. Photo courtesy of the Salmon-Challis National Forest.


In this case, with only 22 percentof the jet boaters present on the riveras operators and 44 percent as passen-gers at the time of the legislation thatestablished the special provision, therewas little understanding of the legalintent of that provision by these users.Thus the legislative history of the Cen-tral Idaho Wilderness Act provided avaluable basis for understanding thehistory of political compromises in away that can facilitate contemporarydiscussions. Acknowledgment by allparties that heavy recreation use wasanticipated on the Salmon River isimportant. And it became clear thatany change to management wouldneed to be justified within the foun-dation of the Wild and Scenic RiversAct, not The Wilderness Act.

And although most jet boaters wereaware that the agency was restricted fromreducing jet boat use below the esti-mated 1978 level, it was also significantthat this restriction was not intended topreempt regulation of motorized travelfor reasonable purposes. There was alsopotential for an upper limit to be estab-lished in order to meet the intent of theWild and Scenic Rivers Act.

The Central Idaho Wilderness Act,however, was silent on the nature ofthe experience to be provided. There-fore, a scientific understanding of usersin terms of their experiences and rela-tionship to the place was necessary tounderstand the potential ways man-agement decisions will influence thoserelationships. The in-depth interviews

provided a basis for generating propo-sitions and designing a survey toprovide a statistically generalizablecharacterization of the population.

For example, the majority of jet boat-ers reported that they enjoy solitude onthe Salmon River while jet boating, butover half said that the number of peoplethey meet is not important, most sug-gested that the number of planes theysee in the wilderness is not important,and over two-thirds are not troubled bystructures in the wilderness. On the onehand, this indicates jet boaters seek tra-ditional wilderness values, but, on theother, it reveals apparent contradictions.However, rather than reflecting a uniquesituation, these sorts of contradictionsor tensions are evident among otherwilderness users as well (Glaspell 2002).

The primary purpose of this articlehas been to present a process for ad-dressing legislated special provisions.The process may also be effective at amore general level for addressing new,emerging, or contested wildernessvalues that result from societalchanges or evolutions in the meaningof wilderness. One case of emergingwilderness values, the Alaska NationalInterest Lands Conservation Act, identi-fies a national interest in protectingopportunities for rural residents topursue subsistence lifestyles on federalpublic lands, including wilderness.What contested meanings emergewhen people are viewed as part ofwilderness ecosystem processes? Is sub-sistence a kind of wilderness experience

or means to some other value? Thesequestions might be meaningfullyaddressed by combining carefulreview of legislative intent, in-depthexploration of the meanings held bydifferent stakeholder groups, andbroader investigation of the distribu-tion of those meanings acrosspopulations of interest.

REFERENCESAlessa, Lilian and Alan E. Watson. 2002. Growing

pressures on Circumpolar North wilderness:A case for coordinated research and educa-tion. In, Alan E. Watson, Lilian Alessa, JanetSproull, comps. Wilderness in the CircumpolarNorth: Searching for Compatibility in Eco-logical, Traditional, and Ecotourism Values.Proceedings RMRS-P-26. Ogden, Utah: U.S.Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,Rocky Mountain Research Station.

Bellah, R. N., R. Madison, W. M. Sullivan, A.Swidler, and S. M. Tipton. 1985. Habits ofthe Heart: Individualism and Commitment inAmerican Life. Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press.

Folsom, Gwendolyn B. 1972. Legislative His-tory: Research for the Interpretation of Laws.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Glaspell, Brian S. 2002. Minding the meaningof wilderness: Investigating the tensions andcomplexities inherent in wilderness visitors’experience narratives. PhD. School of Forestry,University of Montana, Missoula.

Meyer, Shannon. 1999. The role of legislativehistory in agency decision-making: A casestudy of wilderness airstrip management inthe United States. IJW, 5 (2): 9–12.

———. 2000. Legislative History of Jet Boat Usein the Frank Church–River of No Return Wil-derness. Aldo Leopold Wilderness ResearchInstitute, Box 8089, Missoula, MT 59807.

ALAN E. WATSON is the research socialscientist at the Aldo Leopold WildernessResearch Institute, Box 8089, Missoula, MT59807, USA. E-mail: [email protected];MICHAEL PATTERSON is associateprofessor, School of Forestry, University ofMontana. NEAL CHRISTENSEN is thesocial science data analyst at the AldoLeopold Wilderness Research Institute.ANNETTE PUTTKAMMER and SHANNONMEYER were formerly wilderness researchassistants at the Aldo Leopold WildernessResearch Institute.

When legislation establishes protection for publiclands under the authority of The Wilderness Act,incorporating these special provision guidelines

is often quite controversial.


IntroductionThe Wilderness Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-577) established a Na-tional Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) to beadministered “for the use and enjoyment of the Americanpeople in such manner as will leave them unimpaired forfuture use and enjoyment as wilderness.” To provide for theuse and enjoyment of these areas while preserving their wil-derness character, it is important to study and monitorwilderness recreation visitors and the impacts they have. Somepeople state that The Wilderness Act mandates that recreationimpacts not be allowed to increase following wilderness des-ignation (Worf 2001). Ideally, baseline conditions should beinventoried at the time each area is designated as wildernessand added to the NWPS, and then periodically monitored inthe future to assess trends in conditions and the efficacy ofexisting recreation management programs. Such data will be-come increasingly valuable to future attempts to evaluate trendsin the wilderness character of each area in the NWPS.

Although baseline recreation conditions have been inven-toried in many wildernesses, data are lacking for many others.Moreover, the distribution of wildernesses with baseline rec-reation data is not equitable across the nation or the fouragencies that manage wilderness. In order to assess the ex-tent of baseline recreation data for the NWPS and todocument the data that do exist, we conducted a survey ofall wildernesses in the NWPS, asking about the availabilityof three types of data: (1) campsite impact data, (2) trail im-pact data, and (3) information about visitor characteristics.

MethodsThe process of compiling this information began in January1999 with a letter and one-page questionnaire sent to admin-

istrators of each of the 625 wildernesses in the NWPS (andthree additional wildernesses designated in 1999). The ques-tionnaire asked whether any recreation baseline data of thethree types we were interested in had ever been collected inany of the wildernesses managed by that office, either by themanagement agency or by someone else (such as an academicinstitution). If respondents stated that no data of any of thethree types had ever been collected, we accepted that response.

We conducted phone interviews with all the administra-tors who either responded that they had data or who did notrespond to our questionnaire. In each interview we beganby establishing whether the data met our criteria for inclu-sion. Sometimes, data were collected in such a nonsystematicmanner that we decided not to include them. However, forthis criterion we erred on the side of inclusion and simplynoted that the sample was an opportunistic one. There were


Information about WildernessVisitors and Recreation Impacts

Is It Adequate?

BY DAVID N. COLE AND VITA WRIGHT

Article co-authors David N. Cole and Vita Wright.


two other common reasons for exclud-ing data. First, in many wildernesses,trails are inventoried and informationis collected on the location of existingimprovements (e.g., drainage devicesor bridges) and segments that needmaintenance or improvement. Weonly included trail studies if they haddata on recreation impacts on trails,and relatively few wildernesses havesuch data. Second, many wildernesseshave systematically collected data onamount of recreation use but have nobaseline data on visitor characteristics.Data on amount of wilderness recre-ation use prior to 1995 are compiledin Cole (1996). For purposes of thisarticle, however, we only includedwilderness visitor studies if they haddata on more than amount of use. Ourcriteria for campsite data were lessstringent than for trail and visitor data.We included wilderness campsitestudies even if the only data collectedwere campsite locations. Virtually allwildernesses have maps of trail loca-tions in their official trail system.

In addition to interviewing agencymanagers, we searched for data thathad been published in outlets suchas journals, proceedings, theses, andreports. For this purpose, we con-ducted extensive literature searchesand ultimately located over 300 pub-lications that contained baseline dataabout wilderness campsite impacts,wilderness trail impacts, or wilder-ness visitors.

For each type of baseline data, wecollected information about when thestudies were conducted and how andwhere the data are stored. We asked

questions about the survey sample.Sometimes data were collected acrossthe entire wilderness; in other cases,data are only applicable to a portionof the wilderness or to a specific situ-ation (such as visitors to heavily usedtrailheads or campsites that are highlyimpacted). We also asked questionsabout the type of data that were col-lected (for example, photopoints,conditions classes, or detailed mea-sures). This detailed informationshould be helpful both to character-ize the types of studies that have beenconducted across the NWPS as wellas provide the specifics of a particularstudy in a wilderness of interest.

Baseline Recreation Datafor WildernessAbout one-half of the 625 wildernessesin the NWPS (56 percent) had baselinerecreation data of some type (see Table1). The availability of baseline data var-ied substantially among the agenciesthat manage wilderness. Most ForestService (77 percent) and National Park

Service (66 percent) wildernesses haddata; few Bureau of Land Management(17 percent) and Fish and WildlifeService (10 percent) wildernesses haddata. Variation among regions of thecountry was less pronounced. TheSouthwest (Arizona, Nevada, NewMexico, and Utah) was the only regionin which a majority of wildernesses hadno data. The region with the largestproportion of wildernesses with datawas the Rocky Mountains (Colorado,Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming).

Campsite data were the most fre-quently collected type of baselinerecreation data. Based on our criteria,about one-half of the wildernesses in theNWPS (51 percent) had baseline camp-site data (see Table 1). About one-quarterof wildernesses (24 percent) had visitordata and only 9 percent had trail condi-tion data. Forest Service wildernesseswere more likely than National ParkService wildernesses to have campsitedata, whereas National Park Service wil-dernesses were more likely to havevisitor and trail condition data. Wilder-nesses in the Southwest were least likelyto have campsite data. Wildernesses inthe Southwest, Pacific states, and Alaskawere least likely to have visitor data, andwildernesses in the central and north-east states and Hawaii were least likelyto have trail data.

Table 1—Number (%) of Wildernesses with Any BaselineRecreation Data, Campsite Data, Trail Data, or Visitor Data.

(Values are for each agency and for all wildernesses.)

Type of Data

Agency Any Camp Trail Visitor

Bureau of Land Management 23 (17%) 21 (16%) 3 (2%) 8 (6%)

Fish and Wildlife Service 7 (10%) 4 (6%) 1 (1%) 4 (6%)

Forest Service 308 (77%) 291 (73%) 46 (12%) 122 (31%)

National Park Service 29 (66%) 22 (50%) 9 (20%) 20 (45%)

All wildernesses 349 (56%) 321 (51%) 56 (9%) 148 (24%)

Note: Because some wildernesses are managed by multiple agencies, the sum of thewildernesses managed by each agency exceeds the total number of wildernesses.

About one-half of the 625 wildernesses in theNWPS (56 percent) had baseline recreation

data of some type.


Wildernesses that were designatedlong ago were somewhat more likelyto have baseline data. For example, ofthe 54 wildernesses designated in1964 (all managed by the Forest Ser-vice), 92 percent had campsite impactdata, 22 percent had trail impact data,and 48 percent had visitor data.

Wilderness Campsite DataIn 2000, although one-half of the 628wildernesses in the NWPS had sometype of baseline data on campsite con-ditions, just over one-third (37 percent)had data for all the campsites in thewilderness (see Table 2). Another 5percent had data for a sample of camp-sites considered to be representative ofall campsites in the wilderness. A widevariety of campsite monitoring tech-niques is available (Cole 1989); theeasiest technique is simply to map thelocation of sites. In 31 of the wilder-nesses with campsite data, location wasthe only information collected (seeTable 2). Another 12 wildernesses alsohad established photopoints at camp-sites. In 12 wildernesses, conditionclass ratings had been assigned tocampsites, but no site measurementshad been taken. In 150 wildernesses,multiple impact parameters had been

evaluated, but evalua-tions consisted of eithercategorical ratings orquick measures. Finally,116 wildernesses haddetailed measures ofmultiple impact param-eters, the most preciseand expensive data.

The earliest campsitedata were collected in theearly 1960s on samples ofcampsites in the Mt. Rainierand Glacier Peak Wilder-nesses (Thornburgh 1962)and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area(Frissell 1963). The first surveys of camp-sites across entire wildernesses wereconducted in the early 1970s in theYosemite and Olympic Wildernesses. In 44wildernesses (7 percent of the NWPS), somebaseline campsite data had been collectedprior to 1980 (see Figure 1). By 1990,baseline campsite data had been collectedin 136 wildernesses (21 percent of theNWPS) and had increased to 321 wilder-nesses (50 percent of the NWPS) by 2000.

Wilderness Trail DataMost wildernesses had data on theextent of their official trail system, andmany periodically monitor the loca-

tion of places that require some sortof improvement such as a water baror bridge. However, only about 9 per-cent of wildernesses had baselineassessments of the trail-system condi-tion such as condition class ormeasures of trail depth and erosion.Twenty-six wildernesses (4 percent)had baseline data for all official trailsin the entire wilderness, and anothereight wildernesses (1.3 percent) haddata for a sample representative of allofficial trails (see Table 3). Seventeenwildernesses (2.7 percent) had data forsocial trails that develop informally asa result of user traffic.

Trail condition data can be collectedusing either a census or sampling-based approach (Leung and Marion2000). In 14 of the wildernesses withtrail information, photopoints were allthat was available (see Table 3). Inanother 15 wildernesses, conditionclass ratings were assigned to trails, butno measures were taken. In the re-maining wildernesses with trail data,measures of trail condition were taken.In 22 wildernesses, measures of thespatial extent of impact (e.g., the num-ber of occurrences of erosion or thelength of trail with muddiness prob-lems) had been taken. Measures of theseverity of impact (e.g., trail depth)had been taken in 24 wildernesses.

Table 2—Number (%) of Wildernesses with BaselineCampsite Data of Various Types.

Sample Type

All campsites in the entire wilderness ............................................... 234 (37%)

All campsites in a portion of but not the entire wilderness .................. 22 (4%)

Only a sample of sites representative of the entire wilderness ............. 32 (5%)

Only a sample of a particular type of campsite ................................. 29 (5%)

Only an opportunistic sample of campsites ......................................... 9 (1%)

Data Characteristics

Detailed measures ......................................................................... 116 (18%)

Categorical ratings or quick measures but not detailed measures ....... 150 (24%)

Condition class ratings but no individual impact parameters .............. 12 (2%)

Photopoints but no quantitative data ................................................. 12 (2%)

Only locations of campsites ............................................................. 31 (5%)

Figure 1—Location of wilderness campsite studies (Cole and Wright 2003).


The earliest reported data on trail con-dition were photopoints taken in the1960s on problem trail segments in theNorth Absaroka and Washakie Wilder-nesses. The earliest measures of trailcondition were collected in the early1970s on selected trail segments in theLee Metcalf (Dale 1973) and Selway-Bit-terroot (Helgath 1974) Wildernesses.The first survey of trails across an entirewilderness was also conducted in theearly 1970s in the Yosemite Wilderness.In 11 wildernesses (1.8 percent of theNWPS), some baseline trail data had beencollected prior to 1980 (see Figure 2). By1990, baseline trail data had been col-

lected in 23 wildernesses (3.7 percent ofthe NWPS); this increased to 56 wilder-nesses (9 percent of the NWPS) by 2000.

Wilderness VisitorCharacteristics DataAlthough about one-quarter of the 628wildernesses in the NWPS in 2000 hadsome type of baseline data on visitorcharacteristics, only 17 percent (107wildernesses) had data representative ofthe entire wilderness (see Table 4). An-other 3 percent had data for all thevisitors in a portion of the wilderness.In most of the wildernesses with baselinevisitor data, only main season visitors

were included in studies.Information on off-seasonusers was available for 47wildernesses. In mostvisitor studies, all of thecommon modes of travelthat occur in that wilder-ness were included.Hikers, visitors travelingwith pack stock, and wa-ter-based users wereincluded in studies con-ducted in 135, 95, and 14wildernesses, respectively.Occasionally, visitor stud-

ies focus on either day visitors or, morecommonly, overnight visitors. Conse-quently, overnight users were includedin studies in 130 wildernesses, and dayvisitors were included in studies in 125wildernesses.

Many of these visitor studies havebeen conducted by academic institu-tions rather than managementagencies. Results of such studies areoften carefully analyzed and reported,and written reports are available for373 (93 percent) of visitor studies.However, the original data often arenot carefully archived. With only a fewexceptions, the data from these stud-ies have not been stored in electronicformat nor copies filed at a manage-ment agency facility.

The earliest data on wildernessvisitors were collected in the late 1950sin the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wil-derness (Taves et al. 1960). In 1960, datawere collected in the Bob Marshall, JohnMuir, and Gila Wildernesses (WildlandResearch Center 1962). In 42 wilder-nesses (7 percent of the NWPS), somebaseline data on wilderness visitors hadbeen collected prior to 1980 (see Figure3). By 1990, baseline campsite datahad been collected in 59 wildernesses(10 percent of the NWPS), and thisincreased to 148 wildernesses (24percent of the NWPS) by 2000.

ConclusionAbout one-half of the wildernesses inthe NWPS have no baseline data of anytype regarding recreational visitors andtheir impacts. In these wildernesses,management programs are beingimplemented with minimal under-standing of current conditions andtrends and without the data necessaryto evaluate the success of manage-ment. The protection of something asvaluable and vulnerable as wildernesscharacter is unlikely under these cir-cumstances.

Table 3—Number (%) of Wildernesses with BaselineTrail Data of Various Types.

Sample Type

All official trails in the entire wilderness ............................................. 26 (4%)

All official trails in a portion but not the entire wilderness .................... 5 (1%)

Only a sample of trails representative of all trails ................................ 8 (1%)

Only a sample of a particular type of trail ......................................... 14 (2%)

Only an opportunistic sample of trails ................................................ 4 (1%)

Data collected on social (user-built) trails ........................................... 17 (3%)


Data on impact severity .................................................................... 24 (4%)

Data on spatial extent of impact ........................................................ 22 (4%)

Condition class ratings but not any measures ..................................... 15 (2%)

Photopoints but no quantitative data .................................................. 14 (2%)

Figure 2—Location of wilderness trail studies (Cole and Wright 2003).


The paucity of baseline recreation dataalso indicates the high value that shouldbe attached to whatever baseline data doexist. These data represent all the infor-mation we will ever have regardingrecreational conditions in the NWPS inthe twentieth century. Although some ofthe data have been carefully archived,most are stored on paper files in rangerstations where they are vulnerable to loss.Data collected by professors and gradu-ate students, stored in electronic files andreported in theses and papers, is also be-ing lost. Every effort should be made toensure that these data and whatever docu-mentation is necessary to facilitate theirreplication and interpretation are archivedin such a manner that they will be pre-served in perpetuity. We hope that thissurvey will (1) help managers of wilder-nesses without such data better meet theirmonitoring responsibilities and (2) facili-tate future studies that seek to replicateearly studies in order to gain insight intotrends across the NWPS. Extensive in-formation on available data for eachwilderness in the NWPS can be found inCole and Wright (2003) and in a search-able database located on the Internet (http://leopold.wilderness.net/links.htm).

AcknowledgmentsKeith Vanderwielen, Nicole Miller, andDave Spildie assisted in various aspectsof this study.

REFERENCESCole, D. N. 1989. Wilderness Campsite Moni-

toring Methods: A Sourcebook. GeneralTechnical Report INT-259. Ogden, Utah:USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Re-search Station.

———. 1996. Wilderness Recreation UseTrends, 1965 through 1994. Research Sta-tion, Research Paper INT-RP-488. Ogden,Utah: USDA Forest Service, Intermountain.

Cole, D. N., and V. Wright. 2003. WildernessVisitors and Recreation Impacts: BaselineData Available for Twentieth Century Con-ditions. General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-117. Ogden, Utah: USDA Forest

Service, Rocky MountainResearch Station.

Dale, D. R. 1973. Effects oftrail-use under forests inthe Madison Range, Mon-tana. Master’s thesis, Mon-tana State University,Bozeman, Mont.

Frissell, S. S., Jr. 1963. Rec-reational use of campsitesin the Quetico-SuperiorCanoe Country. Master’sthesis, University of Min-nesota, St. Paul.

Helgath, S. F. 1974. Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness traildeterioration study. Master’sthesis, Washington StateUniversity, Pullman.

Leung, Y., and J. L. Marion. 2000. Recreationimpact and management in wilderness: Astate-of-knowledge review. In D. N. Cole,S. F. McCool, W. T. Borrie, and J. O’Loughlin,comps. Wilderness Science in a Time ofChange Conference, Vol. 5: Wilderness Eco-systems, Threats and Management (23–48).Ogden, Utah: USDA Forest Service, RockyMountain Research Station, ProceedingsRMRS-P-15-VOL-5.

Taves, M., W. Hathaway, and G. Bultena. 1960.Canoe Country Vacationers. MiscellaneousReport 39. St. Paul: University of Minnesota,Agricultural Experiment Station.

Thornburgh, D. A. 1962. An ecological study ofthe effect of man’s recreational use at two sub-alpine sites in western Washington. Master’sthesis, University of California, Berkeley.

Wildland Research Center, University of Califor-

Table 4—Number (%) of Wildernesses with Baseline Visitor

Characteristic Data of Various Types.

Sample Type

Visitors to the entire wilderness ...................................................... 107 (17%)

Visitors to a portion but not the entire wilderness .............................. 18 (3%)

Only an opportunistic sample of visitors .......................................... 23 (4%)


Main season visitors included ........................................................ 139 (22%)

Off-season visitors included ............................................................ 47 (7%)

Hikers included ............................................................................. 135 (21%)

Stock users included ....................................................................... 95 (15%)

Water-based users included ........................................................... 14 (2%)

Day visitors included ..................................................................... 125 (20%)

Overnight visitors included ............................................................ 130 (21%)

Figure 3—Location of wilderness visitor studies (Cole and Wright 2003).

nia. 1962. Wilderness and Recreation—AReport on Resources, Values and Problems.Review Commission Study Report 3. Wash-ington, D.C.: Outdoor Recreation Resources.

Worf, B. 2001. The new Forest Service wilder-ness recreation strategy spells doom for theNational Wilderness Preservation System.IJW, 7 (1): 15–17.

DAVID N. COLE is a research biologist withthe Aldo Leopold Wilderness ResearchInstitute, Rocky Mountain Research Station,Forest Service, P.O. Box 8089, Missoula, MT59807, USA. Telephone: 406-542-4199.E-mail: [email protected] WRIGHT is research applicationprogram leader with the Leopold Institute.Telephone: 406-542-4194. E-mail:[email protected].


P E R S P E C T I V E S F R O M T H EA L D O L E O P O L D W I L D E R N E S S R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E


Mapping the United StatesNational WildernessPreservation System

BY DAVE SPILDIE

A new map of the National Wilderness PreservationSystem (NWPS) will be published in 2004 to com-memorate the 40th anniversary of the 1964 U.S.

Wilderness Act. This map will be an excellent source ofwilderness information for the public as well as wildernessmanagement agencies. This article briefly explains the historyof U.S. wilderness maps and the collaborative partnershipsinstrumental in developing and publishing them.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published the firststandardized map of the NWPS in 1987. This map showedNWPS areas in the coterminous United States on the front,with Alaska and Hawaii on the back. The back of the mapalso included general information on each congressionallydesignated wilderness area. The color of the wildernessshowed which of the four federal agencies administeredthe wilderness. In 1989, The Wilderness Society publisheda NWPS map commemorating the 25th anniversary of TheWilderness Act. This map showed wildernesses by agency,with Alaska and Hawaii inset below the coterminous UnitedStates. The reverse side listed acreage, year of proclama-tion, and administrative information for each wilderness.To commemorate the 35th anniversary of The WildernessAct, The Wilderness Society, Trails Illustrated of NationalGeographic maps, and the USDA Forest Service—the AldoLeopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI) and theArthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center(ACNWTC)—collaborated to update the Wilderness Soci-ety map. This new map retained the appearance and size ofthe previous map but included general information on wil-derness within the map border.

September 2004 marks the 40th Anniversary of The Wil-derness Act, and various summits and celebrations areplanned to herald this landmark for wilderness. The NWPSmap is again being revised and will be available to the publicfor this occasion. A collaborative agreement has been reachedwith the USGS National Atlas of the United States programto publish this map of wilderness areas. For the first time,the new wilderness map will show Alaska and Hawaii at thesame projection as the coterminous United States on the frontside of the publication. This is an important change since 54percent of the NWPS is in Alaska. Insets will describe thehistory and development of the wilderness system, and theback of the map will include a table showing acreage, year ofproclamation, and administrative unit for each wilderness.A collage of images, text, and graphs will provide additionalinformation. The large format (42 inches by 46 inches) willallow the map to be published at 1 : 5,000,000 scale, giving

Continued on page 36


Wilderness-Related Courses inNatural Resource Programs atU.S. Colleges and Universities

BY CHAD P. DAWSON and JOHN C. HENDEE

EDUCATION and COMMUNICATION

IntroductionThe National Wilderness Presentation System (NWPS) hasgrown to 106 million acres since passage of The Wilder-ness Act in 1964 (P.L. 88-577). Wilderness now covers over4.5 percent of the U.S. land area and is managed by fourfederal agencies—Forest Service, National Park Service,Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and WildlifeService. Their agency professionals are challenged to pro-vide good wilderness stewardship, including managementfor a wide array of public benefits and values. The chal-lenge is difficult as increasing numbers of recreation visitorsand other wilderness users may be competing with eachother for access or creating conflicts between their differ-ent activities and experiences.

The increased size and use of the NWPS, and itsimportance in providing public benefits and values,challenges institutions of higher learning to provide training,information, skills, and leadership pertinent to wilderness-related management and use. Also, it challenges them tocreate a broader appreciation and understanding of the valueof such protected areas in response to growing societalinterest in the environment and protecting functioningecosystems. But the declining number of forestry and naturalresources management programs and enrollmentnationwide raises questions about whether there has beena similar decline in the number of wilderness-related coursesand enrollment in these courses. Thus, we addressed thesequestions with a nationwide survey of wilderness-relatedcourses for comparison with a similar survey conductednearly two decades earlier.

A prior survey of wilderness-related courses for naturalresource professionals done in 1983–1984 revealed the

number of courses being taught at colleges and universitiesacross the United States. (Hendee and Roggenbuck 1984).This survey covered colleges and universities with forestryprograms, but it also sought out wilderness-related coursesin such departments as biology, recreation, and liberal artsprograms. We conducted a follow-up survey of forestry andnatural resources management programs at U.S. collegesand universities in 2002 to see if there had been changes inthe number of courses and enrollment since 1983–1984and to assess what publications and materials were beingused to support these courses.

MethodsThe intent of this study was primarily to contact those U.S.colleges and universities that had programs in forestry and natural

Figure 1—Students start backpacking on a three-day class field trip in an Adirondack StateWilderness Area, New York. Photo by Chad Dawson.


resources. We identified programs tosurvey using two approaches.

First, we obtained a list of allinstitutions in the National Associationof Professional Forestry Schools andColleges and then supplemented thatlist with an Internet search of collegesand universities that listed relatedprograms (i.e., searches on key wordslike forestry, natural resources, and soforth). This combined searchidentified a total of 178 colleges anduniversity programs to survey afterduplicates were removed. Leaders ineach relevant program identified ateach college or university were thensent a letter explaining the purpose ofthe study along with a questionnaireto be filled out by faculty in thatprogram who taught wilderness-related courses. A stamped, self-addressed envelope was included withthe questionnaire.

In a second approach to confirm thecompleteness of the population of pro-grams to be surveyed, we obtained lists

of all members of the Society of Ameri-can Foresters Wilderness WorkingGroup (SAF) and all U.S. subscribersto the IJW. Subscribers from govern-ment agencies were removed, as werenames that appeared in both the SAFand IJW lists. This process resulted in alist of 136 individuals, each of whomwas sent a letter of explanation and aquestionnaire with a stamped, self-ad-dressed envelope. Recipients wereinstructed to complete the questionaireif it applied to them as teacher of a wil-derness-related course and if they hadnot received one previously, or to re-turn it with a note that they had alreadyreceived the survey from their college/university program leader.

Up to two reminder letters weresent to increase response by everyoneidentified to receive a questionaire byeither approach, and all returned sur-veys were compared to ensure therewere no duplicate responses.

Results and DiscussionA combined total of 77 completedquestionnaires were returned frompersons saying they or someone intheir program taught a wilderness-re-lated course. There were no surveyrespondents from any college or uni-versity program not included amongthe original 178 programs first identi-fied. The 77 respondents represented58 programs, and, thus, we concludedthat our response rate was 33 percentof those 178 programs. This meansthat one-third of the programs sur-veyed (probably one-third of allforestry or natural resource programsin the nation) taught at least one wil-derness-related course in 2001–2002.

Thirty-nine respondents (representing28 programs) reported that their institu-tion taught a wilderness managementcourse, and 57 respondents (representing46 programs) reported that a course inother wilderness topics (e.g., wilderness

recreation, policy, planning) was taught.Respondents representing 41 pro-grams reported that their institution’sprimary wilderness-related course (ei-ther wilderness management oranother course) was taught once ayear; respondents representing twoprograms reported that such a coursewas taught twice a year. Respondentsrepresenting eight programs reportedan alternate-year teaching schedule fora wilderness course. Respondents re-ported that 42 courses spent one ormore days on a field trip in a state orfederally designated wilderness andthat 27 courses took field trips of threeor more days. Respondents reportedthat 36 programs were teaching a wil-derness-related course that wasrequired in their curriculum.

The 2002 study respondents re-ported about 30 percent lessenrollment in the 2001–2002 primarywilderness-related courses than didrespondents in 1982–1983 (see Table1), but they more often reported ahigher percentage of stable or increas-ing enrollment trends than did therespondents in the 1982–1983 survey(see Table 2).

The course objectives that wereranked first and second for the pri-mary wilderness-related course in2002 most often were (1) wildernessuse, appreciation, enjoyment, andskills; (2) wilderness legislation, policy,designation, and economics; and (3)

Figure 2—College class field trips can be experienced by allmeans of travel, such as by canoe on a wilderness lake innorthern New York. Photo by Chad Dawson.

Table 1—Total ReportedEnrollment in Primary

Wilderness Courses in the1984 and 2002 Studies.

Year Number of Students

1981–1982 2,561

1982–1983 2,240

2000–2001 1,667

2001–2002 1,547


wilderness protection and manage-ment (see Table 3). These were thesame three top-rated objectives in theearlier survey but with the second andthird categories in reverse order. Thus,wilderness course objectives appear tohave become more balanced between ap-preciation and use and legislation/protection and management since 1984.

The most useful educational resourcesin teaching wilderness-related courseswere reported by respondents as journals(60 percent); books and publications (45percent); case studies, handouts, andreaders (43 percent); websites (40 per-cent); films (35 percent); field trips (13percent); and slide sets (10 percent). Thetextbook used most often in wilderness-related courses were Hendee, Stankey,and Lucas (1990) (42 percent); Nash(1982) (25 percent); Hammitt and Cole(1998) (13 percent); and other books (65percent), including 31 different bookseach used by only a few instructors. Newresources identified by respondents asneeded to supplement or update exist-ing resources were new books and

printed publications on wilderness top-ics (37 percent); case studies aboutwilderness management (12 percent);maps and spatial information (5 percent);films and videotapes (3 percent); journals(3 percent); and books of readings on wil-derness issues (3 percent).

ConclusionsWilderness-related courses appear tohave a solid and continuing place in for-estry and natural resource highereducation programs. Fromcomparison with theHendee and Roggenbuck(1984) survey, it appearsthat the number of wilder-ness-related courses offered(46 in 2002 and 64 in1983) and their enrollment(1,547 in 2002 and 2,240in 1983) has declinedabout 30 percent since the1984 study, although cur-rent enrollments weremore often reported asstable or increasing. Total

forestry/natural resource college programenrollments in the United States havebeen declining since the mid-1990s, andit appears from the limited informationavailable that wilderness course enrollmentsare not declining at a greater rate than over-all forestry/natural resource programenrollments.

Furthermore, numerous respondentletters and comments in the 2002 sur-vey noted that some academicprograms had dropped separate wilder-ness-related courses and addedwilderness topics and issues into otherforestry, natural resources, and recre-ation management courses. Thissuggests that, in those programs,wilderness education has been inte-grated into the broader forestry/naturalresources curricula.

Finally, survey findings and addi-tional comments suggest thatadditional wilderness-related publica-tions and updates are needed on suchsubjects as the ecological impacts ofrecreation use, diversity of visitor usetypes and interests, human values andbenefits, ecosystems management, andwilderness visitor education and in-formation programs and techniques.Some respondents suggested thatcourse “readers” compiled from pub-lished journal articles, governmentdocuments, and textbook chapters

Table 2—Five-Year Trends in Course Enrollment Estimated byInstructors in the 1984 and 2002 Studies.

Trend 1984 Study (%) 2002 Study (%)

Increasing ............................................................ 8 ......................... 19

Stable ................................................................ 44 ......................... 69

Decreasing ........................................................ 48 ......................... 12

Table 3—First and Second Course Objective for PrimaryWilderness Course in 2002.

Objective First (%) Second (%)

Use and appreciation ....................................... 29 .......................... 22

Legislation and policy ....................................... 23 .......................... 30

Protection and management .............................. 18 .......................... 17

History ............................................................ 16 .......................... 17

Natural ecosystems ............................................. 7 ............................ 7

Environmental education ..................................... 5 ............................ 2

Other (e.g., recreation, wildlife, leadership) ......... 5 ............................ 5

Figure 3—Students often develop a lifelong interest in wilderness issues. Here, visitorsare taking time to experience the wilderness setting over Goose Lake in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Montana. Photo by Lisa Eidson, U.S. Forest Service.


would be valuable, and instructormanuals for existing textbooks (e.g.,Hendee and Dawson 2002) with read-ing supplements from the IJW wouldbe useful. Case studies of planning andmanagement successes were suggestedfor subjects such as wilderness plan-ning for increasing visitor demand,conflicts between visitor use types andspecial interest groups, fire ecologyand management, and stewardship ofwilderness conditions and resources.

Given the growing number of col-lege outdoor clubs, plus hundreds ofwilderness experience programs suchas Outward Bound and others aimedat outdoor experiential education, andthe well-documented link betweenwilderness visitation, higher educa-tion, and environmental groupmembership, we expect that wildernesscourse enrollments will remain strong andprovide important educational support

for many people headed for lifelong in-volvement and interest in wildernessissues. The findings of this survey, andits comparison with the survey byHendee and Roggenbuck (1984) almost20 years earlier, suggest fewer wilder-ness-related courses and students now,but wilderness-related courses con-tinue to be taught in one-third of U.S.college and university forestry ornatural resource programs, and in-corporation of wilderness topics intoother courses may be accompanyingthe downsizing of natural resourcecurriculum in response to decreasedenrollment and budgets.

REFERENCESHammitt, William E. and David N. Cole. 1998.

Wildland recreation: Ecology and manage-ment (2nd ed.). New York, NY, John Wileyand Sons. 361 p.

Hendee, John C., and Joseph W. Roggenbuck.1984. Wilderness-related education as a

factor increasing demand for wilderness. InForest Resources Management—The Influ-ence of Policy and Law, (273–78), contri-butions at the International Forest Congress,August 5, 1984, Quebec City, Canada.

Hendee, John C., and Chad Dawson. 2002.Wilderness Management: Stewardship andProtection of Resources and Values, 3rd ed.Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing.

Hendee, John C., George Stankey, and RobertLucas. 1990. Wilderness Management, 2nded. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing.

Nash, Roderick. 1982. Wilderness and theAmerican Mind, 3rd ed. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press.

CHAD P. DAWSON is professor and chair,Faculty of Forest and Natural ResourceManagement, SUNY College of Environ-mental Science and Forestry, 320 BrayHall, One Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY13210, USA, and managing editor of IJW.E-mail: [email protected] C. HENDEE is professor emeritusand former dean, College of NaturalResources, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID,USA, and editor-in-chief of IJW. E-mail:[email protected].

a clearer picture of the spatial extentand boundaries of each wilderness.

Along with development of the hard-copy map, a collaborative agreementhas allowed posting the boundaries ofeach wilderness digitally on the USGSNational Atlas website. The boundariesare available for download as a sepa-rate layer through the Map Layers DataWarehouse in two digital formats withsupporting metadata (http://www.nationalatlas.gov/wildrnm.html). Thislayer provides wilderness boundarydata for Geographic Information Sys-tem (GIS) analysis and display.

The efforts of numerous partnershave made publication of this newmap possible. The USGS National At-las is responsible for the cartographyand printing, and a committee of wil-derness experts from the National Park

From ALDO LEOPOLD WILDERNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE on page 32

Service, The Wilderness Society, andthe Campaign for America’s Wilder-ness are crafting the text. A graphicartist from the USGS Geology Divisionis designing the wilderness collage.Staff from ALWRI and ACNWTC arecompiling photos and images of wil-derness areas. The director ofACNWTC is responsible for securingfunding, and the GIS coordinator fromALWRI has developed the wildernessboundaries and is the project super-visor. Integration of these disciplinesensures a compelling vision for the40th Anniversary of the 1964 Wilder-ness Act.

DAVE SPILDIE is a biologist and GIScoordinator at the Aldo Leopold Wilder-ness Research Institute, P.O.. Box 8089,Missoula, MT 59807, USA. E-mail:[email protected].

From BOOK REVIEWS on page 48

Wilderness, although global in scale,tends to focus on tropical biomes, reflect-ing Conservation International’s andAgrupación Sierra Madre’s interest in tropi-cal biodiversity. However, one of the joysof reading through this book is the oppor-tunity to discover “new” wilderness areasaround the world—for example, I was un-familiar with the Pantanal region, theworld’s largest contiguous wetland (at220,000 km2 or 84,942 sq miles) alongthe border of Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia.

Although this is an extremely impres-sive book, I had a few minor concerns. Theaforementioned imbalance in terms of tex-tual information on many of the nontropicalwilderness areas was slightly off-putting. Thefocus on species-level as opposed to eco-logical process-based indicators was also



EDUCATION and COMMUNICATION

Naropa UniversityLaunches Wilderness Therapy

Symposium SeriesBY SUZANNE CASWELL and ROB MELTZER

September 26–28, 2003, Naropa University in Boul-der, Colorado, hosted its first annual WildernessTherapy Symposium. This interactive conference

brought audience and presenters together in dialogue aboutwilderness therapy’s varied methodologies, practices, mis-sions, and outcomes.

The use of wilderness for therapeutic purposes is grow-ing. Although research demonstrates the efficacy ofwilderness therapy, the field continues to remain on thefringes of traditional health care. Dialogue and discussionare needed on issues ranging from the definition of wilder-ness and its sustainability for therapeutic uses, to expectedlevels of staff training and expertise, to issues of safety andethics—to name just a few.

Naropa’s Wilderness Therapy Symposium sought to ad-vance the field with presentations, discussion,self-examination, and networking. The symposium drewparticipants from the fields of wilderness and adventuretherapy, eco-psychology, clinical psychology, and contem-plative practice. It was the first public event sponsored bythe faculty and students of Naropa University’s WildernessTherapy program, which offers training in outdoor skillsand therapeutic practice toward a master’s degree intranspersonal psychology.

Symposium EventsSymposium organizer Rob Meltzer opened the event Fri-day evening by inviting participants to consider their rolesand opportunities in the growing field of wilderness therapy.

The keynote address by writer and wilderness advocateGary Ferguson, author of Shouting at the Sky (1999), drewon images from mythology, history, and narrative psychol-ogy, emphasizing that the human-nature relationship is the

most definitive factor in our culture’s identity. Institutionsrather than myth and tradition, he suggested, define ourcurrent identity. He offered two antidotes to this dilemma:the use of story and myth as tools to help individuals findtheir voices, and the use of ritual to “ground” the individual’svoice in a cultural and historical context.

Saturday’s sessions included interactive dialogue. L. JayMitchell and Mike Beswick of Alldredge Academy led HiddenPresuppositions: Demonstrations of an Integrated Model toHeal Trauma in which they asked clinicians to identify theirtheoretical model and uncover underlying assumptions of theirbeliefs about therapy and its relationship to human lives.Whereas many programs define their therapeutic approach as“eclectic,” Mitchell and Beswick urged more specificapproaches. “To believe in everything is to believe in noth-ing,” and it is clarity of purpose, Mitchell and Beswicksuggested, that leads to clear and effective outcomes in therapy.

Lavoy Talbot of Aspen Achievement Academy led a ses-sion entitled Jumping Mouse and the Sacred Mountain,guiding participants through an interactive study of thisPlains Indians story, identifying its cross-cultural applica-tion to daily life.

Article co-authors Suzanne Caswell and Rob Meltzer.


Laura Tyson of the Women’s Wilder-ness Institute presented a modelgrounded in women’s psychology anddevelopment that challenged traditionalapproaches to outdoor education.

Matt Hoag of Second Nature Wil-derness Program offered practicaladvice in his workshop entitled A Dayin the Life of a Wilderness Therapist:Developing a Sustainable Career.

Deb Piranian, director of the Wil-derness Therapy program at Naropa,presented the benefits of contemplativepractice in the backcountry, includingits use as a self-care technique for thera-pists as well as an aid to clients’ healing.

Keith Russell of the University ofIdaho Wilderness Research Center(now at University of New Hamp-shire), a recognized author-researcheron wilderness therapy outcomes, pre-sented results from a two-yearfollow-up study of graduates fromwilderness therapy programs.

Additional workshops on rites of pas-sage, risk management, eco-therapy,multicultural issues, addictions, trauma,art and music therapy, family therapy, andmythology rounded out the afternoon.

Saturday evening’s speakers includedBill Plotkin of Animas Valley Institute,whose presentation of poetry, myth, andselections from his newest book, Soulcraft:Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature andPsyche (2003), called on the audience tolive their lives in the spirit of the mytho-

logical hero’s journey. “Tosave your own life,” he em-phasized, “is the greatest giftyou can give to others.”Deborah Bowman, directorof Naropa’s Department ofTranspersonal CounselingPsychology, invited the au-dience to consider theirown journeys to healththrough experience of mu-sic and selections from theTao Te Ching.

Sunday featured several experientialworkshops in natural areas surroundingthe city of Boulder including, but not lim-ited to, the following: Rick Medrickoffered a workshop on “centered climb-ing,” which he called a “Taoist approachto rock climbing.” Dennis Thompson andLavoy Talbot offered practice in the thera-peutic use of primitive skills, includingthe construction of a bow drill set for firestarting. Duey Freeman and DaveVentigmilia of the Gestalt Institute of theRockies demonstrated the importance ofattachment with the natural world in thetherapeutic process.

Joanna Bettmann, Norman Elizondo,and Aaron Fernandes of Aspen Achieve-ment Academy provided experience ina rites of passage model and techniquesfor including such a model in varioustreatment settings.

Roger Strachan of Wilderness Encoun-ters, in a workshop on therapeuticinterventions in the natural world, guidedsimulations of real interventions he has fa-cilitated in backcountry settings (see Figure1). Deborah Bowman led a contemplativehike, offering practical ideas in meditativeawareness in therapeutic work.

ConclusionIn the end, participants left with moreappreciation for the importance of shar-ing and collaboration in the diverseexpertise of wilderness therapy. Thisgrowing use of wilderness offers another

critical reason to preserve wild places.The symposium and Naropa’s intentionto make it an annual event are steps toenhance the sharing of expertise and aspirit of collaboration among healingpractitioners and guides using the natu-ral world in their work.

ROB MELTZER, MA, one of the founders ofthe Wilderness Therapy program atNaropa University, is an educationalconsultant in private practice specializingin wilderness therapy interventions.E-mail: [email protected] CASWELL, MA, is a graduatestudent in wilderness therapy at NaropaUniversity, she was formerly associatedirector of Cascade School in Whitmore,California. E-mail: [email protected].

Figure 1—Roger Strachan leads an experiential gestalt therapy session with thesymposium participants. Photo courtesy of Naropa University.

unfortunate. It was also somewhat surpris-ing that the temperate rain forests of NewZealand were omitted—the TeWahipounamu World Heritage Site aloneseems to meet all the criteria requirements.The occasional cited source was not in thereference list, and not all maps were com-pletely correct (e.g., on page 183, KrugerNational Park has moved from South Af-rica to Mozambique). However, these minorproblems don’t take away from the vastscope and valuable contribution this bookmakes to wilderness conservation. Indeed,given the size of this book it is a “weighty”tome in more ways than one!

The organizations responsible for this bookhave provided an incredibly valuable service towilderness supporters throughout the world.This book ably provides a snapshot of the char-acteristics and threats faced by the Earth’sremaining wilderness areas, documents andillustrates the incredible beauty and fragility ofthese areas, and provides a powerful clarioncall for their preservation. This book is anessential for all global wilderness enthusiasts.

Review by JOHN SHULTIS




INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Initiated by The WILD Foundation in 1977, the WorldWilderness Congress (WWC) is now the longest-run-ning, public, international environmental forum. With

over 25 years of conservation achievement, the WWC hasbecome a high-profile platform for debating and acting oncomplex wilderness and wildlands issues (www.worldwilderness.org).

From business to politics, and science to culture, WWCsinclude concerned citizens and senior-level representation fromgovernments, the private sector, native peoples, non-profitorganizations, and academia, and are carefully designed to bringtogether the full spectrum of wilderness-related views. Thisbroad participation, combined with open and balanced de-bate, generates practical conservation outcomes, enhancespublic understanding, and honors the spirit of wild nature.

The WWC convenes every three to four years aroundthe world, and is always focused on wilderness and people.Previous Congresses have met in South Africa, Australia,Scotland, the USA, Norway and India. The 8th WWC willbe held in Anchorage, Alaska, 30 September—6 October2005, with associated events in Kamchatka and the Rus-sian Far East. Approximately 1,000 delegates from over 40nations will attend.

ThemeThe theme of the 8th WWC is Wilderness, Wildlands andPeople—A Partnership for the Planet. This Congress will gen-erate up-to-date and accurate information on the benefitsof wilderness and wildlands to contemporary and tradi-tional societies, and will review the best models for balancingwildlands conservation with human needs.

The 8th WWC will include delegates from around theworld, and the models, projects, data and analyses presented

will be global in scope. This Congress will also have aspecial focus on the wilderness, wildlands, and marineresources of Alaska, Siberia, Canada, and the North Pacific,and will mark the first time that WWC events are heldin Russia.

ProgramThe 8th WWC’s Executive Committee is conducting anextensive consultation process to identify realistic and mea-surable objectives for this Congress. The Congress will befocused on, and carefully structured to achieve these out-comes. At the same time, the 8th WWC is designed to be amemorable and enjoyable event with a superb culturalprogram, tours, and other associated events. Autumn is anideal time to be in South-central Alaska, with warm days,cool nights and dazzling fall colors. We look forward to aproductive week of working for wilderness, wildlands andpeople in this spectacular setting.

Preliminary Announcement

BY VANCE G. MARTIN

Figure 1—Transportation in Alaska was historically dependent on dog sledding, and it is still practicedtoday. Photo by Vance Martin.


• The Wild Planet Project—Thestate-of-the-art social, economic,biological, and policy informationon wilderness values and benefits.

Structure• Plenary Sessions, Scientific Sym-

posia, Technical Meetings, PublicWorkshops.

• Capacity Building Workshops—Specialized training for conserva-tion professionals and NGOs.

• A Cultural Panorama—WildNature in Traditional & Contem-porary Society—Stories, music,dance, art, photography, naturewriting, and films.

• Wild Expo—A public expositionpresenting all aspects of using andexperiencing wilderness andwildlands.

• Pre and post tours of Alaska.

The technical symposia and work-ing sessions will be organizedcollaboratively with the Wild PlanetProject (WPP), an ongoing projectrecently launched by The WILD Foun-dation through the Wilderness TaskForce of the IUCN. The mission of theWPP is to coordinate, present, and keepupdated the best information for wil-derness and wildlands protection andsustainability, and the related benefitsto human communities.

More informationFor more information and to registervisit www.8wwc.org; for the technicalprogram contact Alan Watson([email protected]); for the WildPlanet Project, contact [email protected];for general information contact the 8thWWC Secretariat at The WILD Foun-dation, [email protected].

VANCE MARTIN, president, the WILDFoundation, [email protected].

Figure 2—Sea otters are available for viewing along the wildshoreline of Alaska. Photo by Vance Martin.


Making Parks Work: Strategiesfor Preserving Tropical NatureEdited by John Terborgh, Carel vanSchaik, Lisa Davenport, and Madhu Rao.2002. Island Press, Covelo, Calif. 512pp., $32.50 (paper).

The difficulties of protecting wildernessthrough the establishment of protectedareas in developing nations are wellknown. Originally, the exclusionarymodel of protected areas—where humanresidence was disallowed and localpeoples were often displaced by force—was utilized, but it soon became clear thatthis Western model was inappropriate innon-Western nations.

By the 1990s, the pendulum hadshifted to a more inclusionary model, andthe principle that local support was criti-cal to the continued existence of protectedareas became the dominant park creationand management directive. More specifi-cally, the idea that protected areas mustprovide tangible (i.e., economic) benefitsbeyond boundaries to surrounding com-munities was championed by internationalresearch and funding agencies (e.g., IUCN,World Wildlife Fund). Combining withthe existing concept of sustainable devel-opment, the creation of protected areasbecame closely linked with sustainablepark use; local communities would be al-lowed to extract resources from and eveninhabit protected areas while maintainingbiodiversity objectives.

In the last 10 years, these community-based conservation (CBC) or integratedconservation and development projects(ICDP) have become the new model forinternational conservation efforts. However,it remains unclear whether this new modeltruly achieves the biodiversity and ecologi-cal objectives traditionally associated withprotected areas. Terborgh and his colleagues


Technical Working Sessions• Global Review of Wilderness—

Identifying Areas and Gaps,Policies and Services.

• Mega Wilderness—The LargestRemaining Wilderness Areas.

• Wildlands Connectivity, Restorationand Sustainability.

• Powering the Future—EnergyPolicy and Wildlands Conservation.

• Wild Salmon—From Watershedsto the High Seas.

• Native Peoples and Wilderness—Traditional and ContemporaryPhilosophy, Practice and Models.

• Climate Change—How so, what if,and where to.

• New Private Sector Wilderness Ini-tiatives—Corporate, Foundation,and Individual.

• A Future for the Forests—Boreal,Tropical, and Temperate.

Figure 3—The 8th WWC will convene in Alaska, and as alwayswill present issues of global concern, plus matters pertinent toAlaska, Canada, Russia and the North Pacific. Photo by C.Mittermeier.


trek through bandit territory.The rough and watery terrainmakes road building an engi-neering challenging, but thegovernment of Panama is stillconsidering completing thehighway and closing the gap.

There was a time when aroad through the Darien wasthe last thing the governmentof Panama wanted. Thirtyyears ago, hoof-and-mouthdisease was a serious problemin Colombia and Panamanianofficials feared it would spreadinto their country. In 1980,the Parque Nacional Darienwas created, functioning as anatural barrier to transmissionof the disease. Colombia followed suit by extending theboundaries of adjacent Parque Nacional Los Katios, result-ing in a transboundary wilderness between the two countries.Interestingly, Panama also has a transboundary wildernesson its western border with Costa Rica—the ParqueInternacional La Amistad, a 1,005,290 acre (407,000 ha)park, with territory in both Panama and Costa Rica.

By 1991, hoof-and-mouth disease had been declared eradi-cated and efforts were revived to get funding to complete thehighway. A completed Pan-American Highway would stimu-late commerce and travel between Panama and Colombia, bringinfrastructure and services to impoverished Indian villages inthe Darien, open up the rain forest to forest utilization and ranch-ing, and encourage settlement. Even some of the region’sindigenous Indians believe the highway would bring economicopportunity and make travel less costly. In 1999, the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank (IDB) gave Panama an $88 million loan for

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

The End of the RoadThe Darien Jungle

BY HAVEN COOK

The Darien JungleIn a remote corner of the world, a wild place is still intactbecause of war. In this global village called Earth, there’s onepart of town that has everything you could want. The tinycountry of Panama has tropical beaches, rain-forest jungles,coffee-growing mountains, and, of course, one humdingerof a canal. It also has one of the world’s most natural, remote,and dangerous wild areas—the Darien jungle.

Panama itself is a bridge between the continents of Northand South America, leading Smithsonian scientists to rate it asone of the top 10 areas in the world for abundance of flora andfauna. Biologically, the country acts as a funnel for migratoryspecies traveling between the continents, resulting in over 900bird species being identified in Panama (PANAM 2003). On theeastern end of the country, bordering Colombia, is the wild6,435 square mile (16,671 sq km) Darien jungle (see Figure 1).

The Darien jungle is a dense, triple-canopy rain forest alongfour mountain ranges that grade into palm forest swamps,then into mangroves, marshes, rocky coasts, and beaches. It ishome to the harpy eagle, howler monkeys, jaguars, caimans,giant anteaters, tapirs and peccaries, coatimundis, and thedeadly fer-de-lance, as well as about 60 bird species foundonly in that area.

The Darien jungle may also be the only thing standing inthe way of the fragmentation, deforestation, and developmentthat a paved highway can bring. The Pan-American Highwaystretches 19,000 miles (30,600 km) from Alaska to Chile, ex-cept for about 93 miles (150 km) of the Darien jungle. Knownas the Darien Gap, it’s the only thing that prevents the twocontinents from having a land-based transportation corridor.

In a sense, the highway did once go through the Darien Gap.In 1960, a successful attempt was made to cut a path throughthe jungle for two 4-wheel drive vehicles. The journey, chronicledby National Geographic magazine, took almost 5 months to travelwhat was then a 184-mile (297-km) gap, making 180 rivercrossings in the process. Today, it is an arduous, risky hiking

Article author Haven Cook at Jardin Ecologique inPanama.


tation brought on by putting a highwayinto the heart of the Amazon rain forest.

National Park Status Is NoGuaranteeThe fact that 1,422,720 acres (576,000ha) of the jungle are in the ParqueNacional Darien may not prevent the ef-fort to pave paradise. The government ofPanama is currently constructing a roadthrough the Parque Internacional LaAmistad so that 4-wheel drive tours canreach the top of Cerro Punta more easilyand has proposed plans to cut a traffic-relieving connector highway through theParque Natural Metropolitano, a 654-acre(265-ha) snippet of wildness within thelimits of Panama City. The Parque Natu-ral Metropolitano, already carved up bythe Avenida Juan Pablo II and theCorredor Norte, would only suffer morefragmentation if a new highway cutsthrough it. Fledgling environmental or-ganizations and conservation groups inPanama have had only moderate successin influencing Panamanian politics. Un-fortunately, national park status is noguarantee of protection. Many environ-mentalists fear that as soon as thegovernment can secure funding, mainly

from international aid organizations, pav-ing will begin in the Parque NaturalMetropolitano as well as in the Darien.

Others like Helena Lombardo, theadvisor for external affairs at the Smith-sonian’s Tropical Research Institute(STRI), say completing the highway isn’teven in the foreseeable future. “Of great-est concern right now,” she says, “is thevery real threat of Colombian guerrillas”(pers. comm. 2003). While hoof-and-mouth disease and screwworm havepotentially disastrous economic conse-quences, they can’t compare with thethreat to human life that Colombia’s civilwar has meant for Panama. Dr. StanleyHeckadon-Moreno, a senior STRI sci-entist, says the institute has banned itsscientists from even traveling in the re-gion (pers. comm. 2003). Research anddevelopment projects have trickled toalmost nothing, and today only one non-governmental organization, theFondacion pro ninos de Darien is oper-ating in the region. Asked about the $88million IDB project, Lombardo says itwas targeted for development/sustainability projects for the Darien, andsome of it went to extend the highwayto its present-day terminus at Yaviza.

Rebels fleeing from Colombian armyforces have long crossed the border tohide in the dense jungle, but in recentyears, Colombian forces have been pur-suing the rebels and bringing their warto Panamanian soil (Loza and Jackson1999). Thousands of Colombian refugeeshave fled into Panama over the years,many of them squatting and practicingslash-and-burn agriculture in the rainforest. The government of Panama nowdiscourages tourists from visiting theDarien, although as late as 1995 they werestill trying to market ecotourism in theDarien. But rebels, drug smugglers, para-military forces, and garden-variety banditshold sway over the Darien, and touristsas well as local residents are victims ofkidnappings, shootings, robberies, and

Figure 1—The Darien Jungle in Panama.

Figure 2—Trekking in the Darien. Photo by Fabrice De Clerck.

development projects, including the high-way, in the Darien province.Unfortunately, a paved highway throughthis tropical rain forest may only bringdeforestation and environmental destruc-tion on a scale equal to that in the state ofRondonia, Brazil. One can look at satel-lite images of Rondonia to see theherringbone pattern of massive defores-


rapes. As fate would have it, Colombia’scivil war is helping to preserve the Darien.

The Kuna YalaFortunately, there’s another force in placeto defend the wilderness: the Comarcaof Kuna Yala. Roughly translated as“province” or “territorial limits,” theComarca contains about 911 squaremiles (2,360 sq km). The Kuna Yala In-dians are indigenous to the coral islandsoff the Caribbean coast and a coastal stripof mainland Panama (including part ofthe Darien jungle) and have never al-lowed themselves to be subjected to ruleby others (LaFranchi 1998). In 1938,they were granted legal status, includ-ing control over their tribal lands, by thePanamanian government. They are gov-erned by a Kuna General Congress, withvillage leaders and delegates from Kunacommunities and organizations.

The northern part of the Darien jungleis often referred to as the “Kuna Yala Wil-derness,” an idea strengthened in 1983 bythe formation of the Study Project for theManagement of the Wildlands of KunaYala, Panama (PEMASKY) (Chapin 2000).The project was funded at various timesby the Inter-American Foundation, theWorld Wildlife Fund, the SmithsonianTropical Research Institute, the U.S.Agency for International Development, theMcArthur Foundation, and a Kuna work-ers’ union, and it received technical aidfrom all these as well as the Tropical Agri-culture Center for Research and Teaching,the Tropical Science Center, and manyother nongovernmental organizations.

The original Kuna proposal was forthe establishment of a 148,200-acre(60,000-ha) protected area of rain for-est on the southern border of theComarca. As early as the 1970s, someKuna realized that the proposed Pan-American Highway would enter theirterritory, and their goal was to estab-lish a presence in the territory andprevent encroachment by non-Indians

and the government. The idea of anindigenous, autonomous people pro-posing to set aside virgin rain forest asa nature reserve struck a chord withconservation and development orga-nizations around the world, and theKuna Yala were hailed as independent,forward-thinking conservationists.

Many of the projects and activitiesin the PEMASKY management planwere never completed, but it did resultin biological inventories of the flora,fauna, and ecosystems of the Comarca,environmental education programs forchildren, the initiation of young Kunaprofessionals in the concepts of con-servation biology, and, most important,demarcation and protection of the KunaYala border. The emphasis on sustain-able agricultural production has nottranslated into viable projects.

The pressures of development are evidentin the region, and the Kuna are facing theirown ecological challenges: deforestation onmid- to upper-slopes where spur roads havedeveloped off the Pan-American Highway;encroachment by non-Indian settlers whomove in and burn the logged areas to prac-tice agriculture on the nutrient-poor soil;unmanaged, uncontrolled timber harvesting;soil erosion, sedimentation, and pollution ofrivers; an influx of rebels, smugglers, and ban-dits reducing the ecotourism potential; thepotential for the Panamanian governmentto allow gold mining within the Comarcaborder; and the poverty and mal-nourishment endemic tosubsistence agriculture (Castillo2002). The northern half of theDarien rain forest reflects a grow-ing deforestation problem; somereports indicate roughly 123,500acres (50,000 ha) a year are disap-pearing (World RainforestMovement 2002).

The Kuna people, however,are astute businesspeople as wellas a political force in their coun-try. There are two Kuna Indians

in Panama’s National Congress, and theKuna adamantly maintain their control overtheir homeland. The legacy of PEMASKYmay be the environmental consciousness-raising that spurred the Kuna to developnatural resource management plans(Ventocilla et al. 1996) as well as a StrategicPlan for Eco-Tourism in the region (Eco-Index Project 2001). Implementing anymanagement plan in the face of currentthreats may be impossible for the Kunaalone. If the highway is completed, envi-ronmental change could occur at a rate fasterthan they are able to develop their ability tomanage and mitigate it.

The Road to ProtectionThe Kuna will need to flex their politi-cal muscle if they hope to stop thecompletion of the Pan-American High-way. Building a strong scientific case forthe negative impacts of such an enter-prise may be difficult in a country

Figure 3—Like the Kuna, the Embera people still maintaintradition. Photo courtesy of IPAT.

Figure 4—Hiking trail in the Panamanian jungle. Photo by Haven Cook.


Figure 5—Logging the Darien. Photo by Tom Kursar.

Figure 6—Where road meets jungle. Photo by Marcos Guerra.

where environmental laws are oftenflaunted by the government itself, butthe fact that the Darien is a global hotspot for biodiversity is a starting point.

The Kuna will need to be able to ar-ticulate the reasons why the wildernessshould be left untouched. The develop-ment of wilderness philosophy and itsvalues and benefits is of interest to Pana-manian conservationists. Perhaps Panamawould be an excellent place to host aninternational conference to highlight thethreats to wilderness and its biodiversity.

Also needed is for the environmentaland conservation movement to gatherstrength in Panama. Roberto Bruno, Di-rector of the Standards Lab of theUniversidad Technologica de Panamaand an environmental activist, sees theneed to raise Panamanians’ environmen-tal awareness and reach a broader segmentof the population. Environmental groupswill need to develop better organizationaland funding resources in order to effec-tively fight environmental battles and find

ways to lobby and influence not only po-litical decision makers in Panama, butmultinational organizations that might bedisposed to lend the government theroughly $200 to $300 million it wouldtake to complete the road (Medina 1992).In the final analysis, it will be the Kunapeople and conservation organizations thatwill lead the battle to protect the wilder-ness of the Darien, not the civil war fromneighboring Colombia.

REFERENCESCastillo, Geodisio. 2002. Bringing the community

around. International Tropical Timber Orga-nization Newsletter, December 13, 2002.

Chapin, M. 2000. Defending Kuna Yala:PEMASKY, the Study Project for the Man-agement of the Wildlands of Kuna Yala,Panama—A Case Study for Shifting thePower: Decentralization and BiodiversityConservation. Washington, D.C.:Biodiversity Support Program.

Eco-Index Project. 2001. Promotion of ecologi-cal and cultural tourism in the region KunaYala. Rainforest Alliance Newsletter. http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/programs/cmc/newsletter/july01-2.html.

LaFranchi, Howard. 1998. Model of self-rulefor Latin American tribes. Christian ScienceMonitor, April 14, 1998.

Loza, W. C. and E. Jackson. 1999. Guerrillaintrusion sparks panic, political flap. ThePanama News, July 27, 1999.

Medina, C. C. 1992. Road through Panama’sDarien? Tropical Conservation Newsbureau,a Rainforest Alliance Project. August 12, 1992.http://forests.org/archive/samerican/panroad.htm.

Pan-American Highway and the Environment(PANAM). 2003. http://www.american.edu/TED/Panama.htm, (Accessed July 5, 2003).

Ventocilla, L., V. Nunez, H. Herrera, F. Herrera,and M. Chapin. 1996. The Kuna Indiansand conservation. In Kent Redford and JaneMansour, eds. Traditional Peoples andBiodiversity Conservation in Large TropicalLandscapes. America Verde Publications, theNature Conservancy.

World Rainforest Movement. 2002. Panama: Eco-tourism alternative developed by the Kunapeople. Bulletin 59, June 2002. http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/59/Panama.html.

HAVEN COOK is a wilderness specialistwith the U.S. Forest Service in Florida and isa doctoral candidate in Urban and RegionalPlanning at Florida State University. She canbe contacted at [email protected].

flatly state that “the philosophical under-pinnings of ICDPs are irreconcilable withthe active protection of parks that compre-hensive conservation requires” (p. xviii).

Making Parks Work reviews a numberof ICDP case studies from around the tropi-cal world and reviews the successes andfailures of the ICDP model itself. WhatTerborgh et al. call “committed muddy-boots field researchers” are the people whowrite the vast majority of chapters in thissection of the book; there is little academicphilosophizing in this volume, althoughall the excruciatingly difficult moral andethical issues inherent in this topic are welldescribed. The following section analyzesthe numerous challenges faced by parksin non-Western nations (e.g., monitoringand enforcing conservation, illegal logging/hunting, political instability and corrup-tion, revenue sharing, overpopulation) andsuggests various solutions based on thesereal-world experiences. The final sectionreviews the considerable lessons learnedfrom the evaluation of all these case stud-ies, noting that that both strict (i.e.,traditional) and ICDP-type protected ar-eas are needed, depending on variousidentifiable social, political, geographic,and ecological factors of each nation andproposed protected area.

The authors have admirably suc-ceeded in creating a book that will be ofconsiderable applied use to organizationsand individuals involved in conservationand conservation-related development innon-Western nations. An excellent refer-ence teeming with case studies fromaround the tropical world, Terborgh andhis associates continue to challenge thesacred cow of ICDP in conservation andprotected area discussions and challengeus to ensure that we create and manageprotected areas that truly protect theEarth’s fragile, fragmented wilderness.

Reviewed by JOHN SHULTIS



40th Anniversary WildernessSummit CanceledThe Wilderness Education and Stew-ardship Summit planned for this fall inDenver, Colorado has been canceled bythe Bush administration until after the2004 elections. Although wildernesslegislation is largely bipartisan, the can-cellation appears connected to anadministration concern about the pub-lic perception of the administration’senvironmental record. For more infor-mation on other Wilderness Act 40thanniversary plans and activities, visitwww.wilderness.net.

Bush Adminstration PavesWay for Logging in TongassOn December 23, the Bush administra-tion opened 300,000 more acres(121,457 ha) of Alaska’s Tongass Na-tional Forest to possible logging or otherdevelopment. The decision allows roadsto be built within 3 percent of the forest’s9.3 million acres (3.8 million ha) putoff-limits to road building by the Clintonadministration. Imposed during Presi-dent Clinton’s final days in office, the rulehad sought to protect 58.5 million acres(23.7 million ha) of remaining roadlessareas located within the national forests.It was struck down in July by a federaldistrict judge in Wyoming and currently

is before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court ofAppeals. A federal judge in Idahoblocked the roadless ban in May 2001,saying it needed to be amended, but thatruling was overturned last year by the9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Widespread opposition to undoingTongass roadless protections was ex-pressed last summer when the public sentmore than a quarter of a million com-ments in opposition to the proposal.These comments followed more than 2million comments supporting theroadless rule in response to prior notices.Forest Service officials said their decision“maintains the balance for roadless areaprotection” while still “providing oppor-tunities for sustainable economicdevelopment” in the 16.8 million-acre(6.8-million ha) Tongass National Forest.“People in 32 communities within theTongass National Forest depend on theforest for subsistence and social and eco-nomic health,” officials said in a statement.“Most communities lack road and utilityconnections to other communities.”

“The Bush administration hasturned its back on the public, good sci-ence, and the law in its effort to clearcutthe Tongass,” said Tom Waldo, attor-ney for Earthjustice. “This is obviouslya Christmas present from the Bush ad-ministration to the timber industrywhich wants the right to clearcut in

Submit announcements and short news articles to STEVE HOLLENHORST, IJW Wilderness Digest editor. E-mail: [email protected].

Announcementsand Wilderness Calendar

COMPILED BY STEVE HOLLENHORST

WILDERNESS DIGEST

America’s greatest temperate rainforest.”The Tongass National Forest already hasover 5,000 miles (8,065 km) of roadscrisscrossing it. “To remove Roadless Ruleprotection for the Tongass is akin to ex-empting Yellowstone from the NationalPark system. It makes no sense,” said Mar-tin Hayden, vice president of policy andlegislation for Earthjustice in Washing-ton, D.C. Source: Environmental NewsNetwork—www.enn.com/index.asp;Earthjustice—www.earthjustice.org/index.html.

Canadian GovernmentChanges the Graham-Laurier Provincial ParkLegislative changes to the Parks and Pro-tected Areas Act (Bill 84) removes an 11km (6.8 mles) corridor of land fromGraham-Laurier Provincial Park for oiland gas development. The corridor re-duces the park by 1,036 hectares (2,559acres) and allows for the constructionof a road or pipeline through the park.“These legislative changes underminethe ecological values that led to theestablishment of the park,” noted EvaRiccius, ecosystem specialist for theCanadian Parks and Wilderness Society(CPAWS). “We are very concerned withthe direction this government is takingon parks and protected areas.”


Graham-Laurier Provincial Park ispart of the Muskwa-Kechika Manage-ment Area, which took seven years,three public Land and Resource Man-agement Processes (LRMP), and twolegislative acts to create. “Dismantlingthe park is disrespectful to the rights ofthe Treaty 8 First Nations whose terri-tory the park lies, and of the KaskaDena Nation who supported the initiallegislation,” said Riccius. “It also under-mines the years of forthright work doneby northerners and others to find a rea-sonable compromise to permitdevelopment while protecting wilder-ness in northern British Columbia.”

CPAWS notes that the changes weredrafted without any consultation withFirst Nations, LRMP participants, orprovincial organizations concerned withparks. Source: Canadian Parks and Wil-derness Society—www.cpawsbc.org;Contact: Eva Riccius, ParkWatch coor-dinator, CPAWS, British ColumbiaChapter, [email protected].

Federal Judge Blocks BushPlan to Expand Snowmo-bile in YellowstoneA federal judge has blocked a Bush ad-ministration plan to expand the use ofsnowmobiles in Yellowstone NationalPark, giving a victory to environmentalgroups in what has been a long and con-tentious debate over motorized recreationat one of the country’s natural wonders.Ruling only hours before the park’s win-ter season for visitors began, U.S. DistrictJudge Emmet G. Sullivan said the moveby Bush officials to overturn a Clintonadministration plan that would havephased out snowmobiles at Yellowstoneappeared to be “completely politicallydriven.” He said it contradicted recentNational Park Service conclusions on theissue. Under the Bush plan, nearly 1,000snowmobiles would have been allowedinto the park per day beginning Wednes-

day, an increase from past winters, butnow park officials must limit the num-ber this winter to less than 500 per dayand restrict their use to small guidedtours. Next winter, snowmobiles will beoutlawed there. The same rules apply toGrand Teton National Park, another hubfor snowmobiling.

Opponents of the Bush plan praisedthe judge’s decision, saying it wouldgreatly reduce noise and air pollutionin the park and protect its wildlife. “Ourduty is to take care of our national parksas fully as possible so that we pass themin good health to our grandchildren,”said Denis P. Galvin, the deputy direc-tor of the Park Service during theClinton administration. “Had we letthat principle slip in Yellowstone tobenefit the snowmobile industry, itwould have set a terrible precedent inall our national parks.”

Advocates of the Bush plan vowedWednesday to challenge the ruling. In-terior Secretary Gale A. Norton said itwould limit or deny many Americansaccess to Yellowstone’s beauty. Nortonsaid that the Bush plan is a balanced re-sponse to the snowmobile debatebecause instead of banning visitors fromusing the popular vehicles, it would forcethem to use new models that are muchcleaner and quieter. She said the rulescreated during the Clinton administra-tion did not take into account new andenvironmentally friendly advances insnowmobile technology. “The Park Ser-vice plan can be adapted to ensure thatwildlife, park personnel, park resourcesand the public are protected,” she said.Source: Washington Post—http://www.washingtonpost.com.

Annual PAN ParksConferenceEurope’s Wilderness Days, held inGabrovo, Bulgaria, October 4 to 9, 2003,reports many positive outcomes for con-servation initiatives in Europe. The

conference was attended by 80 peoplefrom all over Europe as well as from Ja-pan, Mongolia, the United States, andCanada, and was a successful forum fordiscussion and introduction of new ideasfor the PAN Parks Foundation. The high-light of the conference was the official PANParks certification of Central Balkan Na-tional Park, presented by His Excellency,Simeon Saxe Cogurg Gotha, the primeminister of Bulgaria. Attendees took partin three days of presentations and work-shops given by representatives from PANParks Foundation, certified PAN Parks,and interested parties from the businesssector. In addition to participating in theofficial business of the conference, partici-pants took part in a field-trip day whenthey had the chance to hike into the moun-tains of Central Balkan National Park.Outcomes of Europe’s Wilderness Daysinclude the commitment from six Euro-pean countries to nominate parks for PANParks verification by 2005. Also, an agree-ment was reached for next year’s CannonVolunteer Camp to be held in Scandinavia.Finally, the decision was made to developa noncompetitive research program. Thesuccess of Europe’s Wilderness Days indi-cates progress and growth for PAN Parksand for conservation of European Pro-tected Areas. For further information,contact Edit Borza at [email protected] For details on the PAN Parksprogram, visit http://www.panparks.org.

International Parks andProtected Areas SeminarThe fourth annual International Semi-nar on the Management of Parks andProtected Areas will be held from Au-gust 5 to 21, 2004, in the northernRocky Mountains of the western UnitedStates. Designed for mid-career plannersand managers of nationally significantprotected areas worldwide, this inte-grated state-of-the-art course examinesstrategies to conserve the world’s mostspecial places. The program, sponsored


by the USDA Forest Service Interna-tional Programs and the Universities ofMontana, Idaho, and Colorado State,will evaluate policies and institutionalarrangements that sustain both peopleand natural resources. Themes will in-clude (1) Integrated Planning forProtected Areas; (2) Community In-volvement; (3) Tourism, Concessions,and Visitor Management; and (4) Com-munication, Marketing, andEnvironmental Education. The seminaris under the leadership of WayneFreimund, director of the WildernessInstitute of the University of Montanaand Bill McLaughlin of the Universityof Idaho. Noted researchers, planners,and protected area managers fromthroughout the United States will pro-vide program presentations. Key publicagency personnel from the USDA For-est Service, the U.S. Park Service, andthe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service willjoin the program and assist with pro-gram operations. Leaders in protectedarea management from nongovernmen-tal organizations and private enterprisewill also provide their insights and in-struction. The application deadline isMay 1, 2004. The cost is $4,750 for eachparticipant, which will include all in-struction, lodging, and food throughoutthe program. Travel that occurs withinthe United States during the operationof the program will also be covered bythe tuition fee. Air travel expenses to andfrom the seminar are the responsibilityof participants. For an online applica-tion, visit http://www.fs.fed.us/global/is/ispam/welcome.htm.

Indigenous ProtectedAreas of AustraliaAustralia harbors a growing body of for-mal experiences in comanagement ofprotected areas and indigenous pro-tected areas as well as a growingrecognition of histories of customary ab-original land management regimes.

Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA), a spe-cific protected area category created inthe country to accommodate conserva-tion efforts of aboriginal communities,have been a particularly exciting devel-opment both at policy and field levelsin bridging the gap between protectedarea systems and the aboriginal conser-vation values and practices. TheAustralian government defines IPAs as“areas of land in relation to which Tra-ditional Aboriginal Owners have enteredinto a voluntary agreement for the pur-poses of promoting biodiversity andcultural resource conservation.” Theconcept of IPAs evolved through longconsultations at regional, national, andinternational levels. From an interna-tional conservation perspective, theIUCN Protected Area category systemand guidelines were examined closelyand found sufficient to describe indig-enous land use and associated culturalconcerns. Indeed, this provided a win-dow of opportunity for IPAs to becomereality. Source: http://www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/wpc2003/pdfs/postwpc/news/ippasaustralia_021003.pdf.

Wild Foundation LaunchesWild Planet ProjectDespite increasing evidence of the criti-cal biological and economic importanceof wilderness and innovative projectsshowing that wilderness conservation canbe achieved in a socially beneficial man-ner, we continue to lose wilderness at analarming rate, and the wilderness con-servation debate seems to be becomingever more contentious and polarized.There are perceptions of the wildernessmovement that it is too recreation-focusedat the expense of local communities andindigenous groups, and that wildernessis separate from and less of a priority thansustainable development. In response, theWild Foundation has launched the WildPlanet Project. The project has four ob-jectives:

1. to assemble the case for wildernessprotection, and to make those find-ings widely available;

2. to act as an “incubator” for newfield conservation initiatives;

3. to generate new wilderness legis-lation around the world; and

4. to produce a stronger consensuswithin the environmental commu-nity on the importance ofwilderness and on wildernessconservation strategies.

The initiative will involve six work-ing groups: ecosystem functions,economics, social, biodiversity, fresh-water and marine, and law and policy.Each working group will be tasked withassessing the state of knowledge in theirarea, identifying gaps in the knowledge,and working to fill those gaps. Work-ing groups also will be tasked withdeveloping field projects to apply theirwork. Results will be presented at the8th World Wilderness Congress(WWC) in Alaska in 2005. Because ofthis WWC location, the Wild PlanetProject will emphasize Pacific North-west issues and examples.

The WILD Foundation will coordinatethe Wild Planet Project, with the IUCN-WCPA Wilderness Task Force serving asa steering committee, and will take the leadon two of the working groups—Social andlaw and policy. WILD will look to part-ners to take on the leadership of the otherWorking Groups. The Wild Planet Projectwill provide a flexible and participatoryframework to integrate and build on cur-rent work while avoiding duplication. Thiswork is not intended to compete with ex-isting efforts, but rather to help leveragethis work through better cooperation andcommunication. Source: www.wild.org/international/wpp_more.html.

Wilderness Expert WesleyHenry DiesWesley Raymond Henry Jr., 55, a wil-derness specialist with the National Park


Service, died of cancer on December16 at Thomas Jefferson University Hos-pital in Philadelphia. Mr. Henry studiedthe effects of aircraft noise in parks andwilderness areas and worked to pro-tect wilderness in the United States andKenya. He received a special achieve-ment award this month for promotingwilderness protection and naturalsoundscapes in the national park sys-tem from the George Wright Society, aprofessional association of those whowork on behalf of the scientific andheritage values of protected areas. Mr.Henry was born in Carlisle, Pennsyl-vania, and received a bachelor’s degreefrom Principia College, a master’s de-gree from the University of Michigan,and a doctorate in resource and recre-ation planning from Colorado State

University. He was a research associateat the Institute for Development Stud-ies at the University of Nairobi from1973 to 1977 and taught at the EastAfrican Outward Bound MountainSchool on Kilimanjaro. He then workedfor the United Nations EnvironmentalProgram in Kenya for a year before join-ing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’srecreation, cultural, and wilderness divi-sion, where he was the principal staffofficer. In 1985, he joined the NationalPark Service and worked as a budgetanalyst and natural resources specialist.He was certified as a mountaineeringinstructor by the National OutdoorLeadership School in Lander, Wyoming,where he also taught mountaineeringand low-impact camping. Source:www.washingtonpost.com.

International WildernessGuides ConferenceThe 2nd International Wilderness GuidesConference is scheduled for October 11 to16, 2004, in Stellenbosch, South Africa.Hosted by the Renaissance Foundation ofSouth Africa and the Wilderness GuidesCouncil, the theme of the conference is In-tegrating Nature and Humanity, with a focuson topics such as Personal Transformation,Life Passages, Youth Development, and HIV/AIDS. The conference is aimed at eco-thera-pists, deep ecologists, and wilderness guideswho “conduct rites of passage in the wil-derness, who midwife the birth of youthinto adulthood in wilderness places, whoconsider Mother Nature to be the bestteacher.” For more information, visit http://www.wildernessguidescouncil.org/wgc/home.html.

Book ReviewsWilderness: Earth’s Last WildPlacesBy Russell A. Mittermeier et al., 2002.CEMEX, New York, NY. 573 pp.,$75.00 (hardcover).

This book is the third in a series pro-duced by Conservation Internationaland Agrupación Sierra Madre, withsponsorship by CEMEX (a conserva-tion-minded, multi-national cementcompany based in Mexico). Whereasthe first two books documented theglobal state of biodiversity and biologi-cal hot-spots, this book focuses onidentifying and describing the Earth’sremaining wilderness areas.

Four criteria were used to define wil-derness: size, intactness, humanpopulation density, and biodiversity. Toqualify as wilderness, the areas had tocover at least 10,000 square kilometersor 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres,approximately the size of Connecticut);have 70 percent or more of their origi-

nal vegetation and a “maintained faunalassemblages of large mammals andbirds;” have five inhabitants/kilometers(0.326 sq mi) or less; and either 0.5 per-cent of global plant diversity or 1,500endemic plants in the wilderness area.However, these criteria were seeminglyrather flexible, as some wilderness ar-eas, especially those in the high latitudes(e.g., Arctic tundra and Antarctica), didnot seem to meet all the minimumbiodiversity requirements. Notwith-standing, the authors conclude that the37 wilderness areas identified contain54.2 percent (81 million km2: 31.3 mil-lion sq miles) of the Earth’s surface butonly 5.2 percent of the world’s popula-tion. Protected areas currently cover only7.4 percent of the remaining wildernessareas identified.

The introductory chapter (with an im-pressive list of co-authors including IJW’sInternational Editor, Vance Martin and CyrilKormos, The WILD Foundation’s Vice

President for Policy) provides a basic his-tory of social attitudes toward the conceptof wilderness, identifies the problems withdefining wilderness, and reviews the resultsof the analysis undertaken for this researchproject. The remaining text—and stunningpictures—is divided into six sections, whicheach cover one major biome: tropical rainforests; tropical woodlands, savannas, andgrasslands; wetlands; deserts; temperateforests; and high latitude wilderness areas.Each of the biomes contain from three(tropical rain forests) to 11 (deserts) dis-tinct wilderness areas. A separate chapterdocuments each of the 37 wilderness area’sa) size and extent, b) existing biodiversity,c) flagship species, d) human cultures(e.g., population levels, characteristics ofinhabitants), e) threats (e.g., civil unrest,poverty), and f) existing conservation mea-sures (e.g., current protected areas andconservation partnerships).


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