The Enduring Wilderness

A look at protecting America's wilderness and an explanation of the Wilderness Act.

In the fifty years under the Wilderness Act, Congress has enacted laws protecting more than 112 million acres of land in the United States.

Wilderness laws have been the good woks of deep-dyed conservative Republicans and Teddy Roosevelt progressive Republicans, of “Blue Dog” Democrats and liberal Democrats, and of Independents.

According to former senators Dale Bumpers and Dan Evans, “protecting wilderness areas is … the most ‘small-d’ democratic land allocation process we’ve invented. Potential wilderness areas are identified by on-the-ground agency staff and local people who know the land best.”

We have transformed so much of nature that it is increasingly important to save a decent sampling of the original American earth, without succumbing to our own short-term manipulative ambitions.

Doug Scott, winner of the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award, worked for more than a decade as a policy and research expert on the U.S. public lands conservation team for both The Pew Charitable Trusts and Campaign for America’s Wilderness. Scott has been a strategist and advocate at the forefront of many important wilderness preservation campaigns over the past 45 years. Now retired, he is also the author ofOur Wilderness: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of America’s Wilderness Act.