Has The Wilderness Act benefited the national parks as much as it could have?
It's been 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed The Wilderness Act into law in 1964, but the question remains: Why has so much land within the National Park System not been designated as wilderness?
Since 1974, U.S. presidents have asked Congress to designate at least 5.7 million acres within the system as official wilderness. While Congress earlier this year did designate more than 32,500 acres in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan as wilderness, millions more acres in such notable parks as Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Teton, Big Bend, Great Smoky Mountains, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore have not received this designation, even though the National Park Service has deemed the acres worthy.
While Congress ultimately is the only political body capable of designating wilderness, the National Park Service has a reputation for not promoting critical lands for protection under the Act. Part of this criticism stems from the agency's Mission 66, an initiative envisioned by then-Park Service Director Conrad Wirth that aimed to make the parks more user friendly between 1956 and 1966 with new facilities and improved access.
Olaus Murie, a founder of The Wilderness Society, voiced strong opposition to Mission 66, which aimed to foster "accessible wilderness." One aspect of Mission 66 that Murie criticized was the road-building program that accompanied it.
Historian Richard West Sellars, in Preserving Nature in the National Parks, a History, noted the National Park Service's opposition to The Wilderness Act. "In the quest to leave certain public lands essentially unimpaired, the wilderness bill represented the antithesis of developmental programs such as Mission 66 -- and it got a cool reception from Park Service leadership."
The agency, wrote Sellars, saw the Act as "redundant" since the park lands were considered to be protected from development under the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916.
Sierra Club founder David Brower believed that the Park Service's 1957 wilderness brochure, created in connection with Mission 66, was the agency's effort to "confuse real wilderness with roadside wilderness" and "helped create a lack of clarity which suggested that additional legislative protection of truly wild areas was unnecessary."
While Sellars was recounting sentiments from more than half-a-century ago, the concern remains that the Park Service is not doing enough to promote wilderness designation.
'Historically, the National Park Service had been reluctant to accept Wilderness Act mandates. The result has been an institutional indifference to expanding wilderness status to roadless lands,' says Frank Buono, a former Park Service manager who now chairs the board of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. 'It should be noted that in recent years there has been significant progress on wilderness programs in individual parks, but it is not matched by any system-wide leadership, emphasis or agenda.'
Jeff Ruch, PEER's executive director, issued a release last week to belittle the Park Service's approach to marking The Wilderness Act's 50th birthday, saying the agency spent $120,000 to produce 15 videos promoting wilderness in the park system.
'These videos are awfully pretty but amount to little more than institutional selfies with little substantive value,' said Ruch.
For its part, PEER has created an 'Orphaned Park Wilderness' web center that "details every stalled wilderness recommendation and assessment while prescribing specific steps to advance the wilderness footprint of each eligible park."
'We are celebrating the Wilderness Act's half-century by highlighting its still significantly unmet potential," said Ruch.
Part of PEER's Orphaned Park Wilderness site notes that down through the years Park Service managers have developed proposals that recognized more than 19 million acres as worthy of wilderness designation, but never forwarded those proposals to either the Interior secretary, the president, or Congress. Those proposals include consideration of 1.1 million acres in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, 125,000 acres at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, and nearly 3,000 acres at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina.
PEER also created a park-by-park listing of "all legislative and administrative actions regarding wilderness," a voluminous document that notes, for instance, that while a key vision for Cape Hatteras National Seashore was creation of a "primitive wilderness" setting, the Park Service has never formally studied wilderness quality lands in the seashore, which was authorized in 1937.
Part of the problem at Cape Hatteras, the Park Service acknowledged in 2008 in a history of the seashore, was nature. Another was human access and recreation.
Well before the end of Mission 66, NPS officials understood that the beach management situation they faced was dire. As park naturalist Verde Watson titled the beach erosion control photo section of the 1957-58 annual reports, it was "Man against the Sea." The Park Service was waging a fight against a fundamental force of nature, but what was not quite as crisply understand was the futile nature of that struggle and how a commitment to preserve a "primitive wilderness" had been transformed into a commitment to protect human-made structures using techniques that actually undermined the preservation of natural beaches.
To mark the Act's anniversary, the National Park Service is:
* Participating in a panel discussion during D.C. Wilderness Week (September 13-18) about the future of wilderness for the National Wilderness Preservation System during a day with stakeholders and partner organizations at the Pew Charitable Trusts Office.
* Attending a reception at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum today where attendees will celebrate the winners of the public wilderness photography contest on the opening day of the exhibit.
* The agency's Denver regional office is hosting an interagency panel today about the importance of wilderness and the role of partnership in fostering wilderness stewardship. Interactive activities, exhibit displays, and presentations from partner organizations will also be offered for attendees.
* Next month, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis will participate in the National Wilderness Conference in Albuquerque, the culminating and single largest national event for the 50th anniversary.
Around the park system, the following activities are planned:
* Canyonlands National Park, Utah: 'Walking with Thoreau' Project. A kick-off event in Moab will feature a public lecture about Thoreau and his writings. Over the course of four weekends, the park is offering free transportation from town to the park for guided walks, inspired by Thoreau, into the park's recommended wilderness areas. Participants will write, as Thoreau did, about their wilderness experience. Reflections will be published electronically and shared through social media.
* Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: Wilderness 50th Speaking Event. The park is hosting two speakers to discuss the importance of wilderness to audiences at the Grand Canyon School (where park-based students attend) and during an evening program for the public.
* Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida/Mississippi: 'Wilderness and You' Project. The park is providing transportation from town to park and supplying participants with camping gear to partake in a facilitated 3-day wilderness experience on Horn Island. This will likely be a first-time wilderness experience for most participants.
* Isle Royale National Park, Michigan" 'Wild Stewards ' Connecting Youth to a Wilderness Archipelago Project.' The park is implementing a program, modeled after the Junior Ranger Program, to equip wilderness youth visitors (ages 13-17) with activity booklets that engender thought and discussion about wilderness throughout the visit. Historically, wilderness users receive little to no formal contact with the park about wilderness due to the remote nature of the wilderness area relative to visitor infrastructure locations.
* Joshua Tree National Park, California: Interactive Interpretive Exhibit on Display. The park has developed an interactive exhibit that asks the question, 'What does wilderness mean to you?' The exhibit invites visitors to share their personal connections to wilderness via mounted notebook or iPad and can be shared, reviewed, and commented on by other visitors. Responses will be used as content for an upcoming video podcast, which will be available on the park website.
For a full list of additional celebration activities, see this site.
Comments
Ok, folks, back off the personal attacks and gratuitous comments. We've deleted one such comment that went over the top, and won't hesitate to hit the delete key again if necessary. There's no need for such vitriol and serves no purpose other than to divert my efforts from other Traveler needs.
First, the Smokies is NOT DESIGNATED WILDERNESS, its managed as wilderness. If you manage to READ this actual article, you can find a link to documents stating how the Smokies is managed in regards to the wilderness act. Since it's not designated wilderness that allows the park to utilize ATV's and vehicles in the backcountry for S&R and maintence. If it was designated wilderness, neither of those things would be permitted.
The rest of the accusations were debunked in another thread, and others that were there during the supposed observation came out and said that it was during an S&R.
Smokies, I certainly have not , now or ever, had "no problem" with a private resort using ATVs in a wilderness or national park.
Like many others here, I know nothing about the Smokies situation beyond what I've read here. But I fully agree that if what you say is true, it was wrong and must be stopped. Making a blanket accusation of hypocrisy is usually wrong and does little to help anyone's cause because it makes them look like a zealot whose ideology trumps good sense. If you really want to advance your cause -- and it sounds like it's one that should be pursued -- perhaps you should consider backing off the hyperbole and personal accusations.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of that on both sides of the Smokies issues in Traveler's comments forum. (And Cape Hatteras, too.) As a result, I (and I'm sure other readers as well) can see nothing more than a confusing cloud of rancor that leaves me wondering what the truth might really be.
If there are indeed problems, we need to work together to solve them. Calling one another names usually kills any cooperation dead cold.
What irks me about the situation is that Smokiesbackpacker (John Quillen) constantly goats people into his accusations to push his agenda, and Kurt allows this to go on AND ON AND ON with no reprimand to him, only to the people that call him out on it.. There is no DOCUMENTED proof that 4 wheelers from ANY outside group are using the Smokies. There is only one account in which John Quillen was at a campsite when a 4 wheeler came through while on a search and rescue. John Quillen is the same guy with an agenda and a lawsuit against the park. How come no one else is pushing this story if it were true? How come the local media hasn't come out with stories, and proof of these claims (one would think this would be a somewhat big local news story if true)? Because they are unfounded and not true. That's why. He even knows this, but now "there's a coverup" because he can't prove his claims other than this one incident. The local media already knows that these guys just promote unfounded rumors to drum up propaganda and harass people. They've been banned from numerous local sites because that IS THEIR GIG.
Cane Creek is an old road that was used by residents before the area became a park. The park is allowed to drive vehicles on it for S&R and maintenance if they are authorized. This ATV incident was reported online on numerous sites and other witnesses stated that this was for a S&R. The links to these reports was already posted in that "Accusation of illegal trails thread", and i'm not going to get back into this because this thread has NOTHING to do with blackberry farms. It's about DESIGNATED WILDERNESS and getting the park service to designate MORE areas that could be turned into wilderness.. The Smokies is technically not wilderness, and PEER does state in this article that it needs to be on the table and the job needs finished. John even mistakenly tries to state that it's designated wilderness in his post above, when it clearly is not if he read this article. Instead of just reading the comments looking at any opportunity to try and goat me into a fight, he should read the article first. So, he doesn't even get the basics on the wilderness act, or how the Smokies is managed. Unfortunately just about EVERY thread on the traveler in which the GSMNP is mentioned, always devolves into this blackberry farms issue. It's not called hypocrisy, when you don't buy into these conspiracies or his constant bullying tactics. And it's definitely not hypocrisy because until the Smokies is designated wilderness, the management is permitted from utilizing ATV's on S&Rs in non designated wilderness. I've seen the park use ATV's when doing trail maintence on old road beds that are technically trails like Hazel Creek, and Bradley Fork. They are allowed to do that, because it's not wilderness. If it was wilderness, they would have to leave the ATV's at home, like the rest of us.
Interesting thoughts.
Idiotic restrictions on Wilderness: trails are barely maintained because the various agencies can't/won't use chainsaws to cut trees. Instead, we have to either heli drop or send on horses folks who will cut trees by hand. It's hugely inefficient, expensive, and basically doesn't get much done. If instead, we'd let the local ranger use a quad and a chainsaw a week or two a year, we'd have trails better maintained without really impacting the wild character of the place. Instead, we cling to a belief that somehow we must use late 19th century tools to be more pure. Under what pretense? The whole thing is nonsensical. Unless, of course, we want to close Wilderness to all users. That may be even purer. Why even bother with humans in the sanctity of mother nature's cathedral?
As for the various chicken little arguments that it's either Wilderness or EPA superfund, it's just silly.
Wilderness is really pushed by folks who want everyone else to enjoy the great outdoors only according to what the wildernuts think it pure enough. A great show of tolerance... (that's sarcasm right there, for clarity).
Again, if any of you wonder why so little new Wilderness has emerged, it might be because it's so dang restrictive and therefore attracts so much resistance every time a new one gets created. Nature can be protected and enjoyed by many without resorting to Wilderness designation. But then, you would have to share it with other recreationists...
Happy 50th. Can't wait for it to be amended. May not happen in Roger's lifetime, but it may happen in mine.
I hike in many wilderness areas in a year. I just got back hiking the Sawtooth wilderness, spent 4 days in the Painted Desert/Rainbow Forest, and spent two days in the Congaree wilderness this year. In all places, the trails are being maintained, and were fine. And seriously, Zeb, you must not actually get deep into the wilderness, because in many of these areas it's impossible for an ATV to get back there. Good luck trying to get an ATV over many of the passes in the Rockies, Sierras, or even in major areas of the Appalachian range, or in the badlands of the painted desert. Unless it's a magic flying ATV.
Also, if you haven't paid attention to the primary elections this year, the teaparty is getting flushed in many of the races. They are done, and the next congress will not be like the current one.
I'm with Zeb. I would rather see more "Wilderness" with less restrictions than less Wilderness with more restrictions. Tell us Gary, what is the logic of not allowing a chainsaw in the Wilderness to clear a trail?
Simple. NOISE POLLUTION dillutes the wilderness experience for others, and harasses wildlife.