President Lyndon Johnson signs the Wilderness Act of 1964 in the White House Rose Garden. Also pictured are Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Senator Frank Church, Mardy Murie, Alice Zahniser, and Representative Wayne Aspinall, among others.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-577) was written by Howard Zahniser of The Wilderness Society. It created the legal definition of wilderness in the United States, and protected some 9 million acres (36,000 km²) of federal land. The result of a long effort to protect federal wilderness, the Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964.

The Wilderness Act is well known for its succinct and poetic definition of wilderness:

...an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.

When Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964, it created the National Wilderness Preservation System. The initial statutory wilderness areas, designated in the Act, comprised 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²) of national forest wilderness areas in the United States of America previously protected by administrative orders.

Statistics

Today, the Wilderness System comprises over 106 million acres (429,000 km²) involving federal lands administered by four agencies:

Legal framework

The most important thing about the Wilderness Act is that when Congress designates each wilderness area, it includes a very specific boundary line—in statutory law. Once a wilderness area has been added to the System, its protection and boundary can only be altered by another act of Congress. That places a heavy burden on anyone who, all through the future, may propose some change.

The basics of the program set out in the Wilderness Act are straightforward:

• The lands protected as wilderness are areas of our public lands.
• Wilderness designation is a protective overlay Congress applies to selected portions of national forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands.
• Within wilderness areas, we strive to restrain human influences so that ecosystems [the Wilderness Act, however, makes no specific mention of ecosystems] can change over time in their own way, free, as much as possible, from human manipulation. In these areas, as the Wilderness Act puts it, “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man”—untrammeled meaning the forces of nature operate unrestrained and unaltered.
• Wilderness areas serve multiple uses. But the law limits uses to those consistent with the Wilderness Act mandate that each wilderness area be administered to preserve the “wilderness character of the area.” For example, these areas protect watersheds and clean-water supplies vital to downstream municipalities and agriculture, as well as habitats supporting diverse wildlife, including endangered species, while logging and oil and gas drilling are prohibited.
• Along with many other uses and values for the American people, wilderness areas are popular for diverse kinds of outdoor recreation—but without motorized or mechanical vehicles or equipment. Wilderness is the haven of quiet beyond the end of the road, the wild sanctuary we meet on its own terms by leaving the machinery of twenty-first-century life behind. The wild popularity of wilderness recreation shows how hungry Americans are for just such sanctuaries.
• The Wilderness Act was reinterpreted by the Administration in 1986 to ban bicycles from Wilderness areas, which led to the current vocal opposition from mountain bikers to the opening of new Wilderness areas.

Future legislation

Congress considers additional proposals every year, some recommended by federal agencies and many proposed by grassroots conservation and sportsmen’s organizations.

Congressional bills are pending to designate new wilderness areas in Colorado, Washington State, California, Virginia, Idaho, West Virginia and New Hampshire. Grassroots coalitions are working with local congressional delegations on legislative proposals for additional wilderness areas, including Vermont, southern Arizona, national grasslands in South Dakota, Rocky Mountain peaks of Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. The U.S. Forest Service has recommended new wilderness designations, which citizen groups may propose to expand.

References

• This article is adapted from Doug Scott (August 15, 2004). The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act. Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 1555915272. 

1. ^ Table from The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act (Fulcrum Publishing, 2004). Wilderness area by agency from www.wilderness.net. For consistency, all data used for percentage calculation are from Federal Land Management Agencies: Background on Land and Resource Management (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, RL30867, February 2001)

See also

• U.S. Wilderness Area
• List of U.S. Wilderness Areas
• Natural heritage

External links

• Full text of the Wilderness Act
• Campaign for America's Wilderness (political advocacy)
• Protect California's Remaining Wilderness (political advocacy)