You could say they’re not making any more wilderness across the National Park System...but that’s not to say we can’t ensure that park lands that have wilderness qualities – untrammeled forests, mountains, prairies, rain forests, places that retain their primeval character and influence, and are essentially without permanent improvement or modern human occupation – can’t be officially protected as wilderness.

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

We’re going to explore an effort to turn roughly two-thirds of Big Bend National Park into Congressionally approved wilderness. To discuss that effort, we’re joined by Big Bend Superintendent Bob Krumenaker; Raymond Skiles, who served as the national park’s Wildlife & Wilderness Coordinator before retiring; and Ben English, an eighth-generation Texan who grew up in the Big Bend area and is working to move the congressional designation forward.