Historical Development of the Wilderness Concept

The term wilderness historically was used to describe places that were untamed and not under control of humans, whereas civilization was the place of human control.^5,12 Areas of civilization that were cultivated and heavily influenced by human activities often bordered or were surrounded by areas that had little human influence. As the population of the world has grown and more land area has come under human influence, wilderness has been lost to the point that it is now scarce in many areas of the world.

There are few places that are not now, or have not been at one time, under human control, habitation, cultivation, or influence. A gradient of human influence and impact exists from urban centers and rural areas to some wild country (e.g., wilderness) that has little or no human influence (Figure 112-2). The so-called human footprint on the world is large and extending rapidly with population growth, road building, food production, power generation, industrialization, and human habitation.¹⁴ Some identifiable “last of the wild places” exists on each continent and might continue to do so with careful conservation of resources and protection worldwide of some remaining representative or remnant areas of each ecologic community type.¹⁴

FIGURE 112-2 Wildlife is both an attraction and a danger to visitors in the Okefenokee Wilderness, a 353,981-acre wildlife refuge swamp and wilderness area managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in southern Georgia.

(Courtesy Chad P. Dawson and Brian Dawson.)

In the United States, there are few older adults who have not commented on the change in the landscape and extent of development in the country during their lifetimes. The early history of the United States during European immigration was one of cultivating and taming the wild places and taking dominion over the land for human habitation. Wilderness was seen as a place for exploration and primitive travel, and was often feared and avoided by most of the population. As the amount of land with wild conditions began to diminish, it was more appreciated as a change from cities and civilization. The public’s interest in wild places evolved as they became scarce. Special places were first set aside as National Parks, such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Tetons. These areas were at first seen as park destinations for the development of recreation and tourism, rather than as preserves.

The early interest in wilderness began with employees in the federal land managing agencies, such as the Forest Service and National Park Service. After World War II, a greater public interest began to emerge to save areas for wilderness character. Some of the emerging concern to save certain places by designating them for protection as wilderness was due to interest in recreation experiences coupled with a growing concern about rapid industrialization and population growth transforming the landscape through human activities. The human population in the United States stood at more than 300 million by 2010. Some would argue that there are few places in the world that are wilderness in the strictest sense of the word. Thus, the more common use of the term wilderness is in relation to our perception of areas that are little known or predominantly under the influence of natural processes and forces. Although the term had been commonly applied to any large, remote area with natural characteristics, conditions, and processes, by 1964 it gained a new legal definition that was applied to federally owned land areas designated as wilderness by congressional action in the United States.

Wilderness Legislation and Policy in the United States

The Forest Service and National Park Service did not begin to set agency policies to protect primitive and roadless areas from development until the 1920s. During the following decades, roadless area inventories and administrative designations of wilderness occurred with increasing public interest. As recreational use and interest in these lands increased, concerns were raised by professionals in the agencies and the public that the administrative regulation (1) allowed too many development activities, such as mining, grazing, motorized access, and water resource development; (2) shifted boundaries or removed designation to permit resource development; (3) promulgated different regulations and management in different areas; and (4) had neither a distinct policy for wilderness preservation nor a national system with coordinated management.

The concept gradually evolved that legislative protection was needed to create a more permanent and coordinated national system for wilderness preservation and management. From 1956 to 1964, more than 50 versions of a wilderness bill were introduced in Congress, heavily debated, supported, and challenged by different interest groups. Political compromises were deemed necessary to finally get a wilderness bill passed into legislation, and so certain human activities were permitted in some areas, even though they would be nonconforming with the intent of the wilderness legislation.^5,15 These included activities such as mining, grazing, aircraft landings, and water resources development.

In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed The Wilderness Act (U.S. Public Law 88-577).¹⁸ This legislation created the NWPS and was heralded by the environmental community and the general public as one of the most important pieces of conservation legislation in U.S. history.¹⁵ Scott comments¹⁶ that “before there was a Wilderness Act, wilderness was, at best, an afterthought. Only the U.S. Forest Service had actually delineated wilderness areas, propelled by visionaries within its own ranks.”

The Wilderness Act¹⁸ defines a broad statement of policy for designating wilderness under the Act and recognizes the need to set aside significant natural areas for present and future generations because of the rapid loss of such resources:

This paragraph is referred to by land management agencies as the “guiding management intent” because it specifically refers to human “use and enjoyment,” provided the areas were “unimpaired” and that management would ensure “preservation of their wilderness character.”

Section 2c of The Wilderness Act¹⁸ includes an important and often-quoted definition of wilderness that has led to much controversy and debate because although it is poetic in form, it has left room for interpretation, especially during legal hearings and court cases in the 40 years since its passage:

The definition emphasizes that wilderness is in contrast to civilization, human influences, and habitation. The definition is an ideal that is tempered by four conditions to make it practical and applicable in a world that has historic human activities and impacts that may no longer be noticeable to visitors.

One of the conditions refers to “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation”; that phrase is often referred to as the guiding principle for recreation and visitor management. A careful reading of the definition of wilderness makes it clear that preservation is the overall principle and reason for designating an area “wilderness.” Certain types and amounts of recreation are permitted, provided the area is “protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.” This is an important principle to keep in mind when discussing recreation use and management (Figure 112-3), especially when it relates to primitive facilities and trails, backcountry travel, recreational equipment (e.g., removable climbing gear, backpacking stoves), and management interventions.

FIGURE 112-3 Tourists often test their snow-climbing skills on the easily accessible snowfields above Paradise in the Mt Rainier Wilderness (4393 m [14,410 feet]), a 228,480-acre wilderness area managed by the National Park Service in western Washington.

(Courtesy Chad P. Dawson.)

The use of helicopters and other motorized equipment during search and rescue operations is often thought of as a necessary exception to the natural preservation principle of wilderness, with the humanistic and legal rationale being that human health and safety should take precedence. However, the extent and frequency of search and rescue operations have led to such an intrusion in high-use mountain areas that “outstanding opportunities for solitude” are being diminished. Balancing human interest in risk-taking activities, such as helicopter drop-offs for high-altitude skiing or multiday high-wall rock climbing, with human self-preservation instincts in the cases of those injured or needing rescue will remain a controversial subject in wilderness management.

Creation of the NWPS with the Wilderness Act in 1964 was just the beginning of legislative designations. By 2009, there were more than 170 different laws passed by the U.S. Congress designating new areas or adding acreage to existing areas.⁵ As Hendee and Dawson⁹ note, in addition to the Wilderness Act, 40 years of subsequent legislation have clarified congressional intent to protect and manage our nation’s wildest remaining lands as wilderness and has expanded the NWPS…. It is hard to identify any natural resource issue—or any issue—for which Congress has so consistently and so often confirmed their intent as they have with wilderness.

The initial designation of 9.1 million acres of wilderness was followed by congressional designations in 32 of the 45 years between 1964 and 2009 to add additional acres and units to the NWPS (Table 112-1). The largest single increase was the addition of approximately 56 million acres in Alaska under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (Public Law 96-487).

TABLE 112-1 The Acreage of Wilderness Designated in 1964 at the Creation of the National Wilderness Preservation System and in 5-Year Intervals through 2010

From http://www.wilderness.net.

Many proposals for additional units and acreage are still being brought before Congress and its committees. Several authors and organizations have predicted that more acreage will be added to the NWPS in coming decades, but the estimated amount of those additions varies widely.^5,15 Scott,¹⁶ a historian of wilderness policy and legislation, offers the observation that “however much wilderness Americans may choose to designate through their elected representatives, future generations are likely to judge that we preserved too little, rather than too much.”

Wilderness Stewardship Philosophy

Some management of wilderness resources and experiences is necessary as visitor use increases and surrounding land management and use affect the wilderness area. The idea that we need management in an area that was intended to be free of the influences of modern human activities may appear paradoxic. However, wilderness stewardship is the management of human uses of wilderness and internal and external influences on wilderness to protect and preserve an area’s solitude and naturalness, including natural processes and conditions. Hendee and Dawson⁹ highlight the wilderness stewardship philosophy for managers:

This stewardship philosophy is based on the wilderness legislation and is balanced between two often-debated ends of a continuum. At one end of the continuum is wilderness for its own sake with protection of the naturalness foremost, and at the other end of the continuum is wilderness primarily for human use and enjoyment. The stewardship philosophy favors the natural integrity of the wilderness ecosystems, with some accommodation for primitive styles of recreation and the opportunity for solitude. The long-term results are that the natural forces and processes that shaped and formed the American wilderness will be evident in the wilderness that we leave for future generations.

Potential Threats to Wilderness

Designating an area as wilderness is just the first step and must be followed by stewardship to maintain those areas that represent all that is left of many ecosystems, as well as natural landscapes that have not been cultivated, mined, developed, urbanized, or otherwise heavily altered by human activities. Numerous types of internal and external conditions, influences, and changes threaten wilderness resources and values, now and in the future.⁹ Three examples of categories of threats are summarized here to highlight the concern about the future sustainability of wilderness conditions and processes.

Wilderness areas in many states are increasingly isolated fragments or remnants of historic ecosystems. As the surrounding landscape becomes more developed and inhabited, wilderness areas become ecologic islands that can continue with various processes, provided they are large enough or are not disconnected from other natural areas. This concern is most pronounced in the eastern United States, with its smaller wilderness areas, but the threat is felt throughout the country as the natural landscape is replaced by human influences, habitation, and manipulation.

Exotic and non-native species of plants and animals are invading wilderness and are a direct threat to naturalness and wildness. Efforts to control and manipulate these invasive species can have additional impacts on wilderness conditions that are also undesirable. Invasive plant species, like knapweed, cheat grass, and purple loosestrife, can rapidly change an ecosystem and fundamentally alter its historic patterns and conditions for native plant and animal species.

Increasing commercial and public recreation use of wilderness and efforts to control its impacts are serious threats to wilderness resources and values. High visitor use has obvious impacts that can be identified, but what may not be as easily observed are changes to opportunities for solitude and the impacts of regulations and enforcement on social conditions. Regulation takes away some of the freedom of choice and spontaneity to explore that many visitors associate with wilderness experiences.

Dawson and Hendee⁵ identified 19 categories of internal and external threats as the change agents that affect wilderness conditions and values:

The concern is that few of these threats will diminish, and most are projected to increase in the coming decades. Land managers will need to monitor these potential threats to prepare management plans and activities to steward designated wilderness areas and minimize, mitigate, or remove the threats. The responsibilities at the national level for these wilderness planning and management activities are primarily under the jurisdiction of four federal agencies.

Wilderness Management Agencies in the United States

The NWPS included more than 790 units managed by four federal agencies and totaled more than 109 million acres of publicly owned lands by 2010 (Table 112-2). The four federal agencies administering the NWPS are the National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Department of Interior, and the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture. The NPS has the greatest total area of wilderness at 43.8 million acres and the fewest units for a federal agency; the largest area in the NWPS, Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness (>9 million acres) in Alaska, is under NPS management. The FS has the largest number of wilderness units to manage and approximately one-third of the total NWPS acreage. The FWS manages 19% of the NWPS area, including the smallest unit in the system, 5-acre Pelican Island Wilderness in Florida. The BLM has significant acreage in some of the desert ecosystems of the west and manages many smaller units in its 8% of the NWPS.

The four federal land managing agencies have promulgated regulations based on the wilderness legislation and have developed policy and management documents to steward the lands under their jurisdiction. In addition, the process of evaluating additional lands and managing them for potential inclusion in the NWPS continues for all four agencies. Although the NWPS is a national system operating under the same legislation, each agency has developed its own procedures and organizational approach to accomplishing the task of protecting the “enduring resource of wilderness,” based on each agency’s administrative mission and structure. Some of the different approaches to visitor and resource management can be confusing to visitors who do not have an appreciation or understanding that the overall mission of each agency is different. For example, the FWS has a wildlife management mission that incorporates a national wildlife refuge system.

Distribution of Wilderness in the United States

The 109-million-acre NWPS represents just over 4.5% of the U.S. land area, in contrast to the more than 6% of total acreage in urban and suburban land area or more than 20% of the total in agricultural cropland.⁹ The NWPS is an attempt to designate wilderness areas that would represent the different geographic regions and ecosystems of the United States. The representation of ecosystems is not complete (<50% of types are represented), and it is more effective for some arid lands and mountain ecosystems of the west than for coastal lowlands, grasslands, and eastern hardwood forests.⁹

Forty-four of the states have federally designated wilderness, ranging from a 77-acre island wilderness area in Ohio to more than 57 million acres in the state of Alaska. The six states without federally designated wilderness are in the midwestern or northeastern United States. When the number of acres of designated wilderness in each state or region is compared with the total land area and total population, the pattern is an uneven distribution favoring the western United States.⁵ Less than 5% of the NWPS is located in the eastern United States, where more than one-half of the population resides on over 40% of the U.S. land area. The Pacific and mountain regions of the western United States have approximately 22% of the population and more than 95% of the NWPS. The greatest disparity is that Alaska has more than one-half of the land area of the NWPS and less than 1% of the U.S. population.

Whereas the NWPS is based on the Wilderness Act of 1964 and federal land ownership, there are also 12 states that have designated state wilderness programs or areas on state-owned lands since the 1970s.¹³ Most notable are 22 New York State wilderness areas (1.2 million acres in the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves) and five Alaska state wilderness areas (1.1 million acres). The twelve states with wilderness programs or areas protect more than 3.2 million acres.¹³ These are managed by the state land managing agencies and are not parts of the NWPS. Many states have legislation and management programs modeled after the federal Wilderness Act.

The NWPS is extensive and complex geographically and is often difficult for visitors to locate because it is generally shown on agency maps only as part of overall public land holdings. For example, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota is part of the Superior National Forest. A very helpful source to see the geographic distribution and location of the units in the NWPS is available at http://www.wilderness.net and is provided by the Wilderness Institute at The University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. This website also links to the managing federal agency, the wilderness area’s legislative history, and visitor information sources.

Wilderness Values and Public Perceptions

The American public is strongly supportive of wilderness designation and the NWPS.^1,3,4 Scott¹⁶ reported a summary of seven different surveys in the United States from 1999 through 2002 that showed 48% to 81% of respondents supported designating more wilderness land in the United States into the NWPS.

Observations on the relationship between public visitors to wilderness areas and the values they hold for its protection indicate that the striking trend over time is for a broad base of support across American society and an intense commitment from a subset to fight for wilderness protection:

National surveys in 1994 and 2000 reported⁴ that more than 50% of the public indicated that 12 of 13 wilderness values were very or extremely important to them (Table 112-3). The 1994 to 2000 surveys showed a trend to increase the percentage for all 13 values, indicating a higher level of value.^3,4 The nonuse values tended to dominate the higher average value scores (scale ranged from “not important” to “extremely important”), with the highest value for protecting water quality and air quality. Strong support for the value of income for tourism industry use on wilderness lands tended to be reported by less than 30% of the respondents.

TABLE 112-3 Percentage of Americans (>16 Years of Age) Indicating a Response of Very or Extremely Important for 13 Wilderness Values

From Cordell HK, Tarrant MA, Green GT: Is the public viewpoint of wilderness shifting? Int J Wilderness 9:27, 2003, with permission.

Western U.S. residents were somewhat more often aware of the NWPS than were easterners (60% versus 56%); conversely, eastern residents more often reported there was not enough land in the NWPS than did westerners (53% versus 48%).⁴ Metropolitan and urban residents more often reported there was not enough land in the NWPS than did rural residents (54% versus 44%).⁴

Wilderness Visitors

The diversity of wilderness visitors ranges from those who take short walks and view scenery and wildlife in an hour to multiple-day backpackers, week-long backcountry hunting trips with pack animals, and mountain climbing expeditions. Growth in the amount of recreation demand and the increasing popularity of many forms of recreation in wilderness are due to U.S. population growth and a general upward trend in participation in many activities, on all types of sites, in the United States¹ on public or private lands. Although backcountry and wilderness use is distributed across the full geographic and sociodemographic spectrum, there is an identifiable 8.6% of the U.S. population that has been labeled as “backcountry actives” by one researcher because of their 2.5 times or greater above-average participation in such activities as backpacking, wilderness visits, cross-country skiing, and day hiking.¹

Studies at high-use federal agency sites of visitor use of wilderness in the mid-1990s estimated that more than 14 million visitors went to the wilderness per year.² Public surveys of the general population in recent years estimated that visitation was closer to 40 million per year.² Most estimates of future growth suggest that wilderness use will continue to increase (2% to 4% per year) and that participation will continue across a wide range of activities.^1,2

Recreation enthusiasts spending seven or more days in wilderness or primitive areas per year are a growing market segment that includes participation in strenuous physical activities on a regular basis.¹ Improvements in and availability of high-technology gear permit travel in all types of weather conditions and terrain, so that regular use across the entire landscape makes it more difficult to manage use in general, as well as more challenging to conduct search and rescue operations. Risk-taking, exploring, and adventure activities are increasingly prevalent because of media exposure, easier access to sites, more available high-technology gear, more opportunities for initiation into activities, and more training and skill-building opportunities. There is some concern that communication equipment, like satellite cell phones, and navigational equipment, like handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) units, may contribute to the impression that a person could call for help more readily and therefore take greater risks than their skills otherwise would warrant.

One of the ways that people are initiated into wilderness use and gain training in primitive travel and living is through participation in Wilderness Experience Programs (WEPs). The number of WEP organizations and their clientele have grown rapidly in the United States in the past two decades.⁷ Wilderness land managers recognize WEPs as a significant user group with a focus on programs in wilderness and primitive areas as one of their defining characteristics.⁶

The most prevalent three types of WEPs are (1) educational programs where the wilderness ecosystem is the focus of the instruction, research, and field trips; (2) personal growth and development, where wilderness is the setting and metaphor for everyday life, with insights achieved from challenging activities and reflection; and (3) therapy and healing, where wilderness is the setting to seek restored normal functioning and a healthy balance through primitive living and traveling.^6,7 Although the healing aspects of a natural environment⁸ and wilderness areas are well documented, the inherent risks of traveling in remote areas must be recognized through risk management assessment and contingency planning,¹⁷ especially for human health and safety.

Distribution of Wilderness Visitor Use

Visitor use is very unevenly distributed in geographic space and across time. Each wilderness has popular access points because of easy highway access from urban centers, information in guidebooks, word-of-mouth information dissemination, and many other factors. There is often congestion in visitor use at these access sites and crowding along popular trails and at campsites and destinations (e.g., lakes and ponds, scenic overlooks, historic sites). Many wilderness areas have these types of heavy-use access sites; conversely, each area also has places with very low use or no use for a variety of reasons. This variation in visitation means that not every acre of wilderness or the associated experience has the potential to be experientially unique. Hence, there is a continuum of solitude and naturalness across wilderness.

Some of the greatest variations in visitation are due to seasonality and opportunity for use. Each area has a favored season for a given type of activity. Even though most hiking and camping activities occur during late spring through early fall, some areas have other peak use times because of weather and opportunities present. For example, spring fishing and whitewater boating may occur in the same area, whereas fall hunting and backpacking during fall foliage may be followed by cross-country skiing and winter camping. Cooler weather in desert areas may bring visitors in nonsummer months (Figure 112-4). Warmer months in alpine areas may bring large numbers of visitors. Weekend and weekday variations are normal fluctuations due to work week schedules.

FIGURE 112-4 The lower Sonoran Desert in the North Maricopa Mountain Wilderness is a scenic and difficult place to access. Visitors may not understand the dangers of heat and dehydration in this 63,020-acre wilderness area managed by the Bureau of Land Management in southern Arizona, where temperatures commonly exceed 100° F.

(Courtesy Chad P. Dawson.)

Some of the variation patterns in visitation are due to geographic location in the United States and proximity to urban population centers. The majority of use in each wilderness area comes from the surrounding region and states, regardless of whether one considers the urban-proximate White Mountain National Forest wilderness in New Hampshire or the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. However, there are considerable long-distance travel and higher visitation to some of the larger and more popular wilderness areas that have unique opportunities and features. Every wilderness area has a great variation in the number of people at one time and in any given place. Although such variation in visitation is natural, the impacts may be difficult to manage, leading managers to use more direct and heavier-handed management techniques to reduce the negative consequences to resources and other users.

Wilderness Management Principles

The guiding principles for managing wilderness areas⁵ revolve around the idea that wilderness needs to be managed as a pristine extreme in the landscape (>4% of U.S. land area) to maintain the distinctive qualities that define and separate wilderness from other land uses (>95% of U.S. land area). Wilderness is managed from the biologically centered perspective. Environmental integrity and primeval conditions of wilderness are the basis for any human enjoyment, values, and benefits.

Managing wilderness as an ecosystem and not as a separate set of resource types (e.g., water, forests, wildlife) focuses managers on a more comprehensive perspective on the protected area. Most wilderness areas represent the remnants of ecosystems or entire ecosystems and, as such, need to be protected for present and future generations if they are to be available to experience and enjoy. In addition, it is imperative that human uses and influences be managed to preserve wilderness conditions and characteristics, because without such stewardship these remaining areas would lose their unique value in the U.S. landscape.

If wilderness is to be managed to maintain or improve wilderness conditions and not allow degradation on sites or across the area, then an understanding of the carrying capacity of the area to sustain recreational use is essential. One of the major components in managing wilderness recreational use is to manage use in favor of recreation and human activities that depend on wilderness conditions to achieve their goals, while not degrading the wilderness conditions. In other words, there are other places to have various recreational experiences that do not require wilderness conditions. Thus, only those activities that require such conditions should be allowed in wilderness, and only as much as the area can sustain while maintaining its wilderness conditions and processes.

One of the implications of such a management philosophy is that wilderness is not primarily a place for recreational use, although it is permitted as long as it does not impinge on the capacity of the area to maintain its wilderness conditions and processes. All management activities, including search and rescue operations, should have as light an impact on the wilderness and user experience as possible. This is sometimes referred to as the “minimum tool or regulation” that achieves the management objectives for the area and maintains the highest levels of naturalness and solitude. Examples are using hand tools instead of gas-powered tools in wilderness maintenance activities, using educational materials in place of direct trip management, or using minimal directional trail signs and not mileage markers.

Section 4c of The Wilderness Act provides for the administrative use of vehicles, such as aircraft and motorized equipment, when it is considered the minimum necessary for certain operations like search and rescue. In the case of emergency situations, the use of aircraft, helicopters, and other motorized transport during search and rescue operations is often thought of as necessary for human health and safety. However, the extent and frequency of search and rescue operations have, in some places, become an intrusion affecting both the environment (e.g., wildlife behavior) and the human experience of solitude. Balancing the need for effective and rapid search and rescue operations with impacts on the wilderness resources and experiences will be an increasingly controversial subject in wilderness management. Determining the level of search and rescue operations and activities that is effective with a minimal impact on wilderness resources and experiences is an ideal goal that needs further attention and study. For example, in nonemergency search and rescue operations, the minimum may be determined to be nonmotorized access using humans on foot to search or to carry a minor accident victim out in a Stokes basket.

Wilderness Preservation as a National and International Movement

The number of and membership in organizations involved in promoting wilderness designations, stewardship, information, and education have grown dramatically over the last 40 years. Organizations can be found at international, national, state, and local levels.

The U.S. legislative model has influenced some forms of international wilderness protection,¹¹ although the variation in level and type of protection is complex and based on the cultural and legislative history in each country. The concept of wilderness is universal, but the national legislative approach used in the United States has been widely adopted by other countries, such as Canada, Australia, Finland, Russia, and South Africa.¹¹ There are dozens of international organizations that one can join to help protect wilderness. Some examples include the WILD Foundation (http://www.wild.org), Conservation International (http://www.conservation.org), and IUCN—The World Conservation Union (http://www.iucn.org). Many non-U.S. countries have strong public support for wilderness and related organizations that support wilderness designation and stewardship.

Wilderness protection and management of federal lands in the United States is under the jurisdiction of four federal agencies: the NPS, BLM, FS, and WFS. Each of these agencies has policy and operational information that is important for visitors to understand. This information is available at agency websites, but is easy to obtain through websites such as http://www.wilderness.net that allow access from a geographic map that, in turn, brings the viewer to useful information from the designating legislation to the managing agency and local-level contact offices for that wilderness unit. Obtaining local contact information and some general visitor management information makes wilderness visitation more enjoyable and improves the pretrip planning process, including compliance with local regulations.

Wilderness stewardship organizations in the United States include many that have been involved in wilderness issues for decades. Only a few examples are listed here: The Wilderness Society (http://www.wilderness.org), Sierra Club (http://www.sierraclub.org), American Wilderness Coalition (http://www.americanwilderness.org), Campaign for America’s Wilderness (http://www.leaveitwild.org), Wilderness Watch (http://www.wildernesswatch.org), National Wildlife Federation (http://www.nwf.org), National Audubon Society (http://www.audubon.org), and the Izaak Walton League (http://www.iwla.org).

Wilderness preservation is a national and international movement comprising grass roots and membership organizations interested in protection and stewardship of our dwindling wild areas. Although the concept and values of wilderness are supported by the general population of the United States and many other countries, it is the continued support and work of many people and organizations that stimulate the legislative and administrative branches of our government to continue their efforts to maintain parts of our country wild for present and future generations. The reader is encouraged to become part of that wilderness preservation movement. For a comprehensive resource, the reader is referred to Dawson and Hendee.⁵