Though 44 million acres of the National Park System are protected as official wilderness, another 26 million, including 900,000 acres in Glacier National Park (above), could someday be added to that total/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

Paddle or hike deep into the South or Southeast arms of Yellowstone National Park, and it's almost like traveling back into the 19th century. Grizzly and wolf tracks cruise the shoreline, you wake to a chorous of birdlife and, in fall, bull elk summon their harems with whistling bugles. Here you find yourself in "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Across the roughly 85-million-acre National Park System there are, in theory at least, some 70 million acres envisioned as wilderness. Forty-four million acres have received official congressional blessing as such, while another 26 million acres are in something akin to administrative limbo. Some of those 26 million acres -- including 2 million in Yellowstone -- have been recommended for official wilderness designation...and seen that recommendation languish. 

Other acres are viewed as "eligible," "proposed," and "potential" wilderness. But while the National Park Service manages all these acres to preserve their wilderness character, there are threats. Before Ryan Zinke resigned as Interior secretary last year, his staff put together a "National Park Service Wilderness Policy Review" that, among other things, was to:

* Examine the statutory requirements of The Wilderness Act;

* Identify "revisions to NPS wilderness management policy that would increase public recreational access to lands managed as eligible, proposed and recommended wilderness," and 

* Identify significant issues and concerns related to potential wilderness policy changes.

That work, the document laid out, would lead to "new guidance on wilderness" in the park system. What changes might be proposed have yet to be publicly disclosed.

Another potentially concerning document surfaced last month in the administration's Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals. The focus is to identify "critical minerals" such as cobalt, chromium, and lithium on public lands. Whether the review would impact national parks was not entirely clear. The document notes that national parks effectively "prevent or limit mining of mineral-rich lands." At the same time, it calls for the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, USGS and other stakeholders to "evaluate withdrawn or restricted areas for the presence of minerals."

For decades official wilderness designation for almost all of Yellowstone National Park has languished in Congress/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

Roger Semler, the Park Service's chief of wilderness stewardship, currently harbors no concerns that those 70 million acres of official and possible wilderness in the park system will be adversely affected in the near future.

"Congress can pass a law to do anything, of course. But there’s not really any good examples of that," he said as we talked about the current state of official wilderness and possible wilderness in the park system. "Congress could take a wilderness recommendation and actually have hearings on it, and they could actually formally say, 'We no longer want these areas to be considered any more, they’re no longer recommended.'

"Now, that hasn’t happened with Glacier or Yellowstone, and I guess something like that could happen," Semler said. "But the policies that we have are in place to basically preserve wilderness character."

It was in 1972 that the Interior Department first recommended that Congress designate 2 million of Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres as official wilderness. More than 900,000 of Glacier National Park's 1 million acres were recommended for that designation two years later. The list of parks with recommended wilderness goes on. 

But what constitutes "wilderness." It can be subjective. But the Park Service also is guided by five qualities when evaluating landscapes for wilderness qualities:

Wilderness character is a holistic concept based on the interaction of biophysical environments, personal experiences, and symbolic meanings. This includes intangible qualities like a sense of adventure and challenge or refuge and inspiration. Wilderness character also includes five tangible qualities associated with the biophysical environment:

Natural - Wilderness ecological systems are substantially free from the effects of modern civilization

Untrammeled - Wilderness is essentially free from the intentional actions of modern human control and manipulation

Undeveloped - Wilderness retains its primeval character and influence, and is essentially without permanent improvement or modern human occupation

Solitude or Primitive and Unconfined Recreation - Wilderness provides outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation

Other Features of Value - Wilderness preserves other features that are of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value

These qualities are interrelated and wilderness character preservation often requires thoughtful tradeoffs between qualities.

Frank Buono, a Park Service retiree, has a list of 17 parks with presidential recommendations for wilderness designations. Arches, Big Bend, Canyonlands, Crater Lake, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are on it.

At least six other parks -- Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Canyon National Park, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and Voyageurs National Park -- have prepared wilderness proposals that have yet to be considered for congressional recommendation, according to Buono.

Look north to Alaska and as much as 17 million acres should be considered for wilderness designation, he adds. 

"In the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, Congress designated 32.9 million acres of wilderness in the national parks, preserves and monuments in Alaska," points out Buono, adding that,"(T)he act also required that the Secretary study an addition 21.8 million acres of park land for wilderness designation..."

Canyonlands National Park, with its fantastic geology, lacks officially designated wilderness/Kurt Repanshek file

Who controls the administration in Washington can impact candidates for wilderness designation. According to Buono, while the initial Park Service environmental impact statement that examined potential wilderness in the park units in Alaska found 16.9 million acres that qualified for such designation, "William Horn, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks directed that the preferred alternative in the DEIS show 7 million acres. In December 1988, acting Assistant Secretary Susan Reece reduced the preferred alternative acres to 4.6 million. The EIS is now outdated and of limited value or relevance."

A number of parks have never conducted wilderness surveys, according to Buono's data. They include Acadia National Park in Maine, Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California, and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. 

The problem for these oversights, Semler notes, is likely due to the lack of local political support for wilderness designation.

"Wilderness designation is something that requires Congressional action, of course, and to see a new wilderness area come forth, say in a national park, it would require, at least typically would require, support from that area’s or state’s congressional delegation," he said. “That is perhaps why places like Glacier and Yellowstone have never gone through that final Congressional act to make it wilderness."

Congress did act earlier this year, and President Trump signed off on it, to designate some 88,000 acres in Death Valley National Park as wilderness.

Something Semler is watching are efforts by the Interior Department to increase access to public lands and come up with a way to reduce fuels in federal forests.

"What we do know is our Department of Interior has some initiatives. One was to enhance recreational access on all public land, and that potentially could include something like mountain bikes, all types of recreation," he said. "And there's another initiative on enhanching our ability to engage in active management. By that we mean in the department being things like hazard fuels reduction, vegetation management, things that relate to the fire situation, really. And that could lead to all kinds of possibilities, but those are two major secretarial priorities, and we are looking at our policies right now through that lens.”

Though Big Bend has lots of proposed wilderness within its 801,163 acres, none has been officially designated as such/Rebecca Latson file

Congress also has the power to redefine how official wilderness can be enjoyed. Earlier this year U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced legislation that could open wilderness areas to mountain bikes. If enacted, the bill would insert language to the Wilderness Act to ensure that the rules restricting “mechanical transport” do not include forms of nonmotorized travel in which the sole propulsive power is one or more persons. 

Semler is aware of the bill.

“There’s been several bills introduced (over the years) that were related to mechanical transport, with an emphathis on mountain bikes, not just mountain bikes, but certainly an emphasis. They have not, thus far, garnered strong legs under them. But it continues to come up," he said. “It’s been interesting to note that even the IMBA (International Mountain Bicycling Association) organization, which some people would argue is our most prominent mountain biking organization in the U.S., they have taken a position against (opening wilderness to mountain bikes).”

The National Park Service long ago decided mountain bikes were inappropriate in wilderness because of the mechanics involved in propelling the bikes. However, specifically excluded by the Park Service from the Wilderness Act's ban against "mechanical transport" when it developed its policies around the act are sea kayaks with rudders or skegs and rafts with rowing systems.

"If I were to summarize what really is a mechanical transport, once again the Wilderness Act doesn’t do that for us. We had to do that definition," said the wilderness chief. “I would say it’s a device that has wheels and axles. But our definition is a little more explicit. We exclude things like rafts with rowing frames, even though a rowing frame has a fulcrum. We do not consider a rowing frame in a raft, for instance, to be a form of mechanical transport.

“We would not consider a kayak that’s paddled with a kayak paddle to be mechanical transport. We would consider a canoe dolly that has little wheels on it, which is used often in the Western states, even more so up in the North Woods Lake country, to wheel your canoe into a lake. That would be a considered a mechanical transport," explained Semler.

While Grand Canyon has incredible vistas, rugged landscapes, and a world-famous river, it has no official wilderness/Rebecca Latson

"We will have to wait and see what comes of (Lee's bill)," he said. "But it’s such a fundamental change, or proposed change, amendment, that I know that there will be certain organizations and constituents that would certainly oppose it.”

Politics and policies aside, Semler is proud of the wilderness experiences to be had in the National Park System.

“The wilderness lands really are the best of the best. We have some incredible landscapes. I think we still have some very outstanding opportunities for solitude, which is one of the qualities of wilderness character, and certainly you’ll find that in Alaska, but even in the lower 48. Glacier is a good example," he said. "The off-trail areas of Glacier are about as wild as you can get. They are incredibly precipitous or rugged or dense vegetation, hard to travel through. Quite an endeavor typically.

"And you can find extreme levels of solitude, and you can even get undesignated camping permits. It’s that kind of recreational opportunity spectrum that’s available. So I feel pretty good. Yeah, we do have some trails where day use is just completely extreme. And that’s where hopefuly through planning efforts we can apply sound visitor use management practices and threshholds for this. But I still feel pretty good about wilderness has to offer, even in the Lower 48 national parks.”