Wilderness Designations

The 1964 Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Act gave Congress the ability to designate areas as wilderness and, to date, they have created over 600 wilderness areas encompassing over 106,000,000 acres. A wilderness designation effectively locks up land from any type of multiple use activities including: road construction, forestry, water storage and conveyance, energy development and recreational activities that require a motorized vehicle.

There is little argument that some areas in the United States warrant this most restrictive type of protection, but recently some members of Congress have begun trying to include lands that do not fit the definition of a wilderness area under the law. It has become all too typical for members from large metropolitan areas and Eastern states to attempt to win political points by proposing large swaths of wilderness in the West. These proposals rarely have the input or support of the impacted state or local communities. With nearly five percent of the nation's land already protected by wilderness designation, any new designation should be carefully reviewed, include local input and should have full support of the state where the land is located.

When an area is designated as wilderness, the ability to use the land for multiple purposes is lost forever. This is a decision that should not be taken lightly and the designation process should have the support of the local communities and the impacted state's Congressional delegation.

Wilderness “Statement of Principles”

The 1964 Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System.  Wilderness designation provides the most restrictive land management level for federal lands.  Like any federal land designation, wilderness designation requires tradeoffs between competing interests.  For example, wilderness designation promotes a narrow recreation demand which make some public areas permanently inaccessible to many Americans.

To date, Congress has designated 756 wilderness areas encompassing nearly 110 million acres, roughly five percent of the nation's land or the equivalent of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.  According to the Census Bureau, there are 108 million acres of developed land in the United States.  Congress has now designated more land as federal wilderness than the total acreage of developed land in this country.

There is general consensus that certain areas in the United States warrant this highest and most restrictive type of protection.  However, Members of Congress from large metropolitan areas and Eastern states have begun proposing legislation to designate large swaths of wilderness in other Members’ Districts in the West.  This is done largely to win political points.  These large wilderness proposals rarely have the input or support of the impacted state or respective local communities.  These large proposals also ignore the fact that the vast majority of wilderness bills that actually became law over the last few decades were limited in scope, and followed a ground-up, collaborative process.  


Members of the Western Caucus feel the following four criteria must be met before an area should be considered for federal wilderness designation:  

• Wilderness legislation should meet the definition of wilderness as laid out in the 1964 Wilderness Act.
• Wilderness legislation should have the support of all the Members of Congress who represent the area where the wilderness is designated.
• Wilderness legislation should include adequate protections for private property and pre-existing uses.
• Wilderness legislation should have broad community support, including from locally elected officials, as well as state and local groups representing a wide array of interests.

In order to meet both the spirit and the intent of the original Wilderness Act as well as these aforementioned principles, we offer the following guidelines to help Members of the Western Caucus evaluate wilderness legislation:  

• Wilderness legislation should include a detailed map as part of the legislation that clearly and accurately describes the area covered by the proposed wilderness designation.
• Wilderness legislation should not implicitly or explicitly allow for buffer zones to be created around wilderness areas which would preclude economic activity normally allowed by law.
• Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, a full analysis of potential impacts on pre-existing uses in the described areas, access to adjacent public lands, and the ability of federal land managers to conduct fire prevention and suppression efforts and manage for overall forest and rangeland health.
• Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an inventory of all energy resources within or adjacent to the designation, to which access could be impacted by the designation.  This should include the potential for development of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, wave, tidal, coal, oil, natural gas, oil shale, and coal-bed methane resources. 
• Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an inventory of all known or suspected mineral deposits, hardrock or otherwise, within or adjacent to the proposed wilderness area, to which access could be impacted by the designation.
• Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, a thorough assessment of the economic consequences the designation will incur on surrounding communities including a social and economic impact analysis regarding the loss of recreation opportunities.
• Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an assessment of catastrophic wildfire potential and ability to manage for fish, wildlife, air and water resources that could be at risk in the proposed area.
• Wilderness legislation should release to multiple use management any Wilderness Study Areas not proposed for wilderness designation.
• No wilderness designation should claim or create new federal reserved water rights or undermine the historic rights of Western states in allocating and adjudicating water rights within their borders.