What is Wilderness?

Wilderness provides so much more than a place to camp or fish or hunt. Wilderness clears our air and filters our water. Wilderness provides essential habitat for wildlife, including endangered species. And wilderness is a natural retreat from the stress of our everyday lives.

So What Is Wilderness?

When we talk about Wilderness, we're referring to a legal definition laid out in the Wilderness Act of 1964. In short, Wilderness is designated by Congress on federal public lands — National Parks, Forests, and Wildlife Refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands — and is the highest form of protection for federal lands. No roads or permanent structures are allowed in Wilderness, nor activities like logging, mining, or most vehicular traffic.

Since passage of the Wilderness Act, more than 109 million acres of public lands have been designated as Wilderness, less than five percent of the entire United States. But as much as 200 million additional acres of federal public lands may be suitable for Wilderness, and so we and others continue the fight to win Wilderness designation for those lands — because once an area falls victim to roads or other destructive activity, that land is no longer eligible for Wilderness designation.

Additional Resources

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Wilderness Quotes
• Wilderness Act
• Managing Wilderness
• Wilderness Eonomics
• Wilderness Timeline
  

National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS)

The Wilderness Act established the NWPS to include all designated Wilderness. It now totals more than 109 million acres in 662 Wilderness Areas. Read more about the NWPS.

Wilderness Designation

Federal land management agencies — National Park Service, National Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and occasionally others — are required to recommend to Congress lands they believe qualify for wilderness designation on a state-by-state basis. Congress then decides which areas to designate. In many cases, Congress has designated more lands for wilderness than federal land management agencies recommended.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 directed the Forest Service, National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service to survey their roadless lands for possible wilderness designation. The Act requires that wilderness areas be "administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such a manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness."

The Wilderness Act protects Congressionally-designated wilderness areas from roads, dams, or other permanent structures; from timber cutting and the operation of motorized vehicles and equipment; and, since 1984, from new mining claims and mineral leasing.

Two other laws require wilderness reviews on national lands: the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) directed the Bureau of Land Management to inventory its roadless lands for wilderness protection; and the Alaska Lands Act of 1980 also called for wilderness reviews.

Mining operations and livestock grazing are permitted to continue in wilderness areas where such operations existed prior to an area's designation. Hunting and fishing are also allowed in wilderness areas (except in national parks), as are a wide range of other non-mechanized recreation, scientific, and outdoor activities.

The Importance of Wilderness

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed."

- Wallace Stegner, author and former Wilderness Society Governing Council member, excerpt from The Wilderness Letter

Wilderness offers people solitude, inspiration, natural quiet, a place to get away. At the same time, designated wilderness protects biodiversity, the web of life.

Of 261 basic ecosystem types in the U.S., 157 are represented in the wilderness system. Without these large, complex areas of preserved landscape, species protection would be virtually impossible and our understanding of how natural systems work would be reduced to childish speculation.

Designated wilderness protects ecological values vital to all of us:

• Wilderness areas protect watersheds that provide drinking water to many cities and rural communities.
• Wilderness serves as critical habitat for wildlife threatened by extinction.
• Wilderness helps filter and improve the quality of our air.
• Wilderness areas maintain gene pools that help to protect biodiversity — the "web of life," and provide natural laboratories for research.
• Wilderness helps meet the nation's increasing demand for outdoor recreation: hiking, hunting, fishing, bird watching, canoeing, camping, and many other activities.
• Wilderness is a haven from the pressures of our fast-paced, industrialized society, providing places where we can seek relief from the noise, haste, and crowds that too often confine us.

The Future of Wilderness

More than 109 million acres of our national lands now have wilderness protection. That's under five percent of the total U.S. land base — and just two percent of the U.S. land base outside of Alaska. The Wilderness Society believes there are many more acres of federal public lands that should be protected as Wilderness, much of it in Alaska, including the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Other key areas for protection are found in the canyons of southern Utah and southeastern Oregon, ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Southern Appalachian national forests, Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, northern Rocky Mountains in Idaho and Montana, Florida's marine ecosystem, Colorado's Canyon Country, and others.

How Can I Save Wilderness?

1. Sign up for our WildAlerts.
2. Consider becoming active in a local campaign.

photos:
Waterfall in Stephen Mather Wilderness, Washington. Photo by Jeff Fox.
Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Montana. Photo by Jeff Fox.