Stretched across southern Florida, just about 90 minutes from the Miami metropolis, are 729,000 acres of unique American landscape, a blending of soil-thin marl prairie studded with cypress domes, hardwood hammocks, and pinelands where panthers and black bears make their dens and dozens of colorful orchid species festoon the bald trees.

No formal roads, no cabins, no dams interrupt this bucolic panorama through which the “river of grass” flows. It’s protected within Big Cypress National Preserve. But the protection has its limits.

Despite advocacy and recognition by the National Park Service that a quarter of the preserve — ~190,000 acres — qualifies to be designated as “wilderness,” the highest level of government protection, the agency rejected that step late last year. In a decision with no precedent in the National Park System, the Park Service announced that while the 190,000 acres do hold true wilderness characteristics, it was not going to propose that they receive official Wilderness, with a big W, designation. The agency did, however, increase motorized access in Big Cypress.

Both tribes and preserve staff opposed the designation; Seminole and Miccosukee members were concerned it would prevent them from reaching ceremonial grounds and sacred sites, while preserve staff said they needed motorized access, which normally is banned in wilderness, to manage the landscape. 

Extremely rare cigar orchids are hidden within Big Cypress National Preserve/Dr. Hong Liu

The decision placed Big Cypress among uncounted American expanses that could qualify for wilderness recognition, which affords an “untrammeled” status free of development and motorized and mechanical intrusions, but don’t receive that designation.

“Big Cypress National Preserve is sandwiched halfway between the rapidly growing Miami and Naples metropolitan areas,” points out Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association. “This was a lost opportunity to preserve a magnificent, intact wetlands ecosystem for the preservation of biodiversity and for future generations to enjoy.”

The government’s approach to the preserve underscores more broadly what’s become a shrinking potential to increase the amount of official wilderness in the country. The possibilities are waning because of federal agency decisions and congressional opposition or indifference.

Given President Trump’s first-day pronouncements, the likelihood of new wilderness designations appears to be fading even more. Where opportunities were once ample in Alaska, for example, Trump sent a message in a Day 1 Executive Order that was the opposite of prioritizing land for protection from development. That means a nation that once swore to take heed of the ideals of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold — to protect its wildest places to ensure future generations have “a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it,” as President Johnson said when he signed The Wilderness Act into law in 1964 — no longer sees value in unbridled nature. 

What is Wilderness?

Among the assorted levels of protection for the nation’s natural resources and treasured places, the American “wilderness” designation carries a specific meaning that affords the government’s highest level of protection, distinct from but often added to, less restrictive rules governing national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, and sanctuaries.

Wilderness designation carries "some of the most stringent protections found anywhere," John Leshy, the Interior Department’s top lawyer under President Clinton during the 1990s, wrote in his book, Our Common Ground: A History of America's Public Lands. 

"Building roads, harvesting timber, and mining are generally forbidden, as are, with narrowly drawn exceptions, most other forms of 'commercial enterprise,' as well as 'motorized equipment' and 'mechanical transport,'” he went on. “At the time the [Wilderness] act was adopted, there were relatively few off-road or all-terrain vehicles, such as war-surplus Jeeps, that could penetrate the backcountry without any need for roads.”

By contrast, recreational development and commerce is permitted, albeit highly controlled, in national parks, although parks also may have wilderness sections within their boundaries.

Across the more than 85 million acres of the National Park System exist 44.3 million acres of officially designated wilderness. Most of that (33,301,876 acres in eight parks) is found in Alaska, while another 2.1 million acres has been proposed by the National Park Service for official wilderness designation. Across the entire federal kingdom — lands managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management — there are more than 111.7 million acres of wilderness contained within 803 areas, according to The Wilderness Society.

As impressive as that number might seem, it's not when you consider the size of the country.

"That equals less than 2 percent of the lower 48 states," the Society notes. 

Despite its wondrous landscape and iconic nature, Yellowstone National Park has no officially designated wilderness/NPS file, Diane Renkin

Wilderness proposals long have languished due to opposition from state congressional delegations. Yellowstone National Park lacks official wilderness, as do Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Arches National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Big Bend National Park, and Canyonlands National Park. And that's not the end of the list. One other example: Legislation to establish America's "Red Rock Wilderness" across more than 8 million acres of BLM's lands in Utah has languished in Congress since 1989. 

The Park Service must take a series of steps before Congress considers designating a new wilderness area. A "wilderness eligibility assessment" must determine whether a park holds any lands that meet the qualities outlined in The Wilderness Act. If the lands have signs of human activity, they can still qualify if restoration is possible and “the imprint of man's work [would be] substantially unnoticeable,” according to The Wilderness Act.

Once those acres are identified, another Park Service review takes a closer look prior to a recommendation in favor of designation from the Interior Department secretary to the president. Then the president can forward the recommendation to Congress; the Congress can either reject it or officially make the designation.

Or, as has often happened, Congress can do nothing.

They range geographically from Arches National Park, where a 1978 recommendation urged designation of 8,000 acres, and Dinosaur National Monument, where the Park Service in 1978 sought designation for more than 5,000 acres, to landscapes in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and Assateague Island National Seashore. Also on the list are Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Crater Lake, and Great Smoky Mountains national parks.

Park Service policies require that lands eligible to be designated must be managed so as not to degrade their wilderness character, but the agency’s on-the-ground practices involving both official wilderness and eligible wilderness sometimes have met criticism.

In 2014, the year of The Wilderness Act’s 50^th anniversary, Jim Walters, whose four decades with the Park Service included time as a regional wilderness program coordinator, argued that the agency has done a poor job of managing wilderness-quality lands. He cited instances of helicopters being used to fly archeologists and trail crews into official wilderness,  and failure to conduct wilderness inventories or craft wilderness management plans.

“After 50 years, the NPS wilderness program today consists of whatever minimum attention it could pay to wilderness and the continuation of its historic belief that it was 'already protecting wilderness,’” Walters wrote in an essay for the Traveler.

Florida's Wild Lands

Big Cypress's history with wilderness issues underscores Sellar's assessment, though park staff maintain they had good reason not to propose any acreage for official designation.

"The tribes' largest concern was that a wilderness proposal would risk the exclusion of tribal members from accessing ceremonial grounds and sacred sites on wilderness lands by motorized means," said Big Cypress spokesperson Scott Pardue.

The decision was a head-scratcher to Frank Buono, a Park Service retiree who closely tracks wilderness issues, among others in the National Park System.

"Congress charged the NPS with preservation of the integrity of the preserve, consistent with the authorized uses but not subordinate to them," says Buono. "Congress did not place any one allowable use above that fundamental goal. … Big Cypress contains some of the largest and most pristine roadless areas in the eastern United States."

Read About The Hunt For Rare Cigar Orchids In Big Cypress National Preserve

Passing on wilderness designation while reopening of 15 miles of primary off-road-vehicle trails and of 39 miles of airboat trails, bringing to 331 miles the combined total mileage of primary ORV and airboat trails in Big Cypress, opens more areas to hunting and trapping, he adds.

Official wilderness at Big Cypress would provide important protection of imperiled wildlife, such as the highly endangered Florida panther, says Melissa Abdo, the Sun Coast regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

"We do believe that the situation in Big Cypress is dire, and that designating parts of the preserve as wilderness remains one of the pathways that could better protect the preserve's imperiled habitats and wildlife," she says. "At the same time … NPCA does not and would not support any potential wilderness designation that violates the Miccosukee tribe of Indians or the Seminole tribe's rights to access and live in the preserve." 

Fred J. Fagergren, the first superintendent of Big Cypress after it was established in October 1974, says the preserve's current managers are overreaching in subordinating the Park Service mission at Big Cypress to tribal interests.

"There is nothing within Big Cypress's legislation or legislative history that states or suggests that '[the tribes] are entitled to co-management consideration," he says. While the enabling legislation acknowledges they are entitled to hunting, fishing, and trapping "on a subsistence basis" and permitted to conduct traditional ceremonies, Fagergren notes that all those activities "shall be subject to reasonable regulations established by the [Interior] Secretary."

More so, he says, the expansion of ORV and airboat trails suggests "the preserve is to be managed for 'multiple use.' The use of this term is completely inappropriate in any reference to management of Big Cypress National Preserve." 

The preserve's approved backcountry management plan calls for more ORV trails, which have a large footprint on the landscape/NPS file

Buono believes that given the wide prevalence of tribal ceremonial areas elsewhere in the country, applying the same standard of tribal access "would have negated the creation of nearly all wilderness lands."

"It is almost certain that this yardstick will now be applied in the future by the NPS and other agencies in wilderness review," he says, despite past Park Service acknowledgment that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 governing the rights of Native Americans to access ceremonial sites "does not create additional rights or change existing authorities.” Rather, it gives superintendents discretion to accommodate tribal requests for such access.

Politicial Disinterest?

The nation's big rush for wilderness designations seems to have gone by. Leshy believes the high-water mark was from the 1970s to 1995. When The Wilderness Act in 1964 came up for passage in the House of Representatives it sailed through on a 373-1 vote, and in the Senate it was approved 73-12.

The last big push for wilderness designation from a president came in 1978, under President Jimmy Carter, notes Buono, adding that after "May 11, 1978, wilderness recommendations to Congress from the president for the National Park System largely ceased."

During the Reagan administration Congress fought off efforts by then-Interior Secretary James Watt to use a loophole in The Wilderness Act that allowed mineral leasing in designated wilderness and areas under consideration for wilderness designation to occur through the end of 1983, Leshy notes. 

"Congress closed the leasing window before Watt could act," he points out in his book. "Although the Senate was then in Republican control, even Western senators such as Alan Simpson and Malcom Wallop, both Wyoming Republicans, thought Watt had gone too far."

With President Donald Trump, whose actions during his first term reflected disinterest in lands that can't be developed or mined, back in office, the odds for a wilderness bill passing the GOP-controlled Congress would seem to be greatly diminished. However, the John Dingell, Jr., Conservation, Management and Recreation Act that Congress passed in bipartisan fashion and Trump signed into law in March 2019 designated nearly 90,000 acres of additional Wilderness in Death Valley National Park, and 1.3 million acres overall with parcels in Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, and California.

There is an effort to see more than 700,000 acres of Big Bend National Park preserved as official wilderness. Known as the Fins of Fire, these intrusive volcanic dikes are what remain after the surrounding rock has eroded away, forming walls across the landscape/Rebecca Latson file

Today's partisan divides raise huge barriers to future wilderness designations, believes Rob Wallace, who was assistant Interior secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks during the first Trump administration.

"Public lands issues that were in good standing with the public 40 years ago have become hyper-partisan. In particular, think Bears Ears, the Rock Springs (Wyoming) Resource Management, sage-grouse management, and the Endangered Species Act, especially grizzly bears and wolves," Wallace wrote in an email to the Traveler. "Even current efforts to resolve the long-standing [Bureau of Land Management] Wilderness Study Areas have been marred by mistrust."

Nevertheless, Leshy still sees a window for additional large (greater than 50,000 acres) wilderness areas to be created.

"Alaska has tens of millions of acres of potential wilderness, such as in national forest lands in the southeast, and elsewhere across the state," he said in an email in December. "While the potential for large additions in the lower 48 is more limited, it does exist. One factor slowing the pace of new designations is the availability of alternative designations that are nearly as protective as wilderness, like national monuments, roadless areas, etc. But I think we’ll continue to see Congress at least occasionally putting more large tracts in the system. The growing influence of Native Americans on public lands generally is obviously a relevant factor, and it might cut both ways."

Champions Needed

Though it's not assured of success, there's an effort under way to see nearly 720,000 acres in Big Bend National Park in Texas designated as wilderness. While the park was established more than 80 years ago, in 1944, much of it remains a raw landscape of geologic faults and volcanic underpinnings rich in palentological resources and boasting a cultural history that stretches back roughly 10,000 years to when Paleo-Indians made their life there. There are untrammeled forests and mountains, places that retain their primeval character and influence and which are essentially without permanent improvement or modern human occupation.

Working to see a wilderness designation bestowed on this land is Keep Big Bend Wild, which has worked since 2021 to revive a wilderness recommendation the National Park Service made in 1978. Keep Big Bend Wild is a charter member of the newly formed National Wilderness Coalition, a group working to advance the cause of wilderness preservation in Congress.

"Congress does not, at least these days, have any real strong wilderness champions in it, which is one of the reasons this new national wilderness coalition is starting up trying to change that," says Bob Krumenaker, who served as Big Bend's superintendent until retiring in 2023. [Krumenaker sits on National Parks Traveler’s board of directors.]

"I do think it requires the [Park Service] to remind Congress of what it wants and has put on record,” he adds. “And it requires doing what we've tried to do at Big Bend, which is raise awareness of why wilderness is important with the public and build wide coalition support. Actually, it requires both things to happen if we’re going to succeed.

The Park Service in 2023 noted that Keep Big Bend Wild’s strategy was unusual, saying the organization's "comprehensive knowledge of wilderness, and their skills at community outreach have enabled them to find common ground amongst a diverse and inclusive coalition of supporters. This has made them effective advocates, if not role models, for wilderness advocacy at [Big Bend] and beyond.”

Krumenaker says one problem is that most superintendents don't advocate for wilderness.

"To my knowledge, there is no conversation within the NPS leadership circles. There are no marching orders to superintendents to keep your eye on what's possible regarding those long-dormant wilderness recommendations and move towards this if the opening exists," he says.

He notes, however, that at Big Cypress, both Fagergren and a successor, John Donahue, supported wilderness there.

But as the Traveler reported in 2007, Karen Gustin, a subsequent superintendent, supported expansion of off-road vehicle trails. A federal judge later overruled Gustin, finding that she failed to adhere to the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act, violated past Executive Orders pertaining to off-road vehicles, the Big Cypress Establishment Act, the National Park Service Organic Act, and the Preserve's 2000 ORV Management Plan.

Pedro Ramos, who succeeded Gustin, also worked to expand ORV access to the preserve. In 2010, while overseeing a wilderness eligibility study of the Addition Lands, the superintendent discarded a finding in his 2009 Draft General Management Plan for the Addition that approximately 109,000 acres were “wilderness eligible." Instead, a “re-assessment” conducted outside of public view concluded that only 71,000 acres were eligible. Of that, Ramos recommended just 47,000 acres be proposed to Congress as future wilderness. 

It was a decision that, while it stood, was questioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"EPA is concerned about the impacts of motorized traffic that is growing rapidly on the public lands. Large segments of the hunting and fishing community, for example, believe that off-road vehicles are taking a toll on the land and its wildlife and are detracting from the experience of non-motorized visitors. Evidence is mounting that ORVs pose a serious threat to wildlife, water, soil, plants, and the rest of the natural world," the agency said during the public comment period on the Addition Lands plan.

Ramos was promoted to be superintendent of Everglades National Park in 2015, where he also oversees the current superintendent of Big Cypress, Tom Forsythe. 

At Big Bend, Krumenaker also sees a threat of park development on the as-yet undesignated wilderness there. 

"Visitation keeps going up," he adds. "There's not enough lodging in the park. The demand keeps rising. And if you have a very pro-development administration and you don't have the current policy, which requires the NPS to preserve the wilderness values on those lands, I think all bets are off. Predicting the worst is probably not wise, but encroachment of NPS development on currently roadless areas is definitely not out of the realm of possibilities."

Leshy contends that risk Is overstated.

"Significant developments in park system backcountry would attract a lot of opposition," he says. "I would be very surprised, for example, if the Trump administration wanted to propose significant development in potential wilderness in the park system. That is a bit of a third rail politically."

Krumenaker doesn’t disagree that “significant” developments are unlikely, but he worries about erosion around the edges if the lines limiting development on the ground are not firmly established by Congress. 

Leshy holds an opinion that the Park Service sometimes doesn't advocate for wilderness designation because of the "headaches" it can create by restricting certain uses that end up "requiring some effort to navigate" and limiting the agency's management flexibility. 

At Big Cypress, Leshy says, tribal access to traditional lands could have been achieved by granting an exception for their motorized travel in the preserve, but at the same time, "NPS could well regard such an exception as a politically problematic kind of slippery slope, because the non-Native ORV community might well want the same or similar treatment."

Back at NPCA, Abdo expressed hopes that the preserve can be better protected.

Wilderness, she said, "is not a one size fits all solution. Yet there are conservation areas across the country that have benefited tremendously from wilderness designation. And the National Park Service can and should continue its work with the tribe through the government to government consultation to honor tribal interests. I think that any potential wilderness designation, it must protect Big Cypress and it needs to simultaneously protect tribal rights and access to the land."