I think I can safely say that most of us, if not all, believe that we can correctly figure out fact from fiction, good from bad, and many other distinctions that we make every day. But sometimes our perceptions—our outlook on things, our actions—are forged by subtle, if inadvertent, messages we receive. And before long the collective perspective becomes our culture; an almost unobservable change in what is believed to be right or good or necessary. This shift from original intent to accepted practices applies to our best protected lands; a shift that threatens not only designated Wilderness, but the Wilderness Act itself.
I recently received information on an upcoming Wilderness Festival, and the first thing that caught my attention was the phrase: “management is a necessary part of our interaction with this resource (meaning Wilderness).” I count this as one of those subtle messages that tend to shift behavior. To manage something is a dynamic, manipulative action. The definition from the Oxford dictionary: The process of dealing with or controlling things or people. The responsibility of the four federal agencies that oversee Wilderness is to administer these lands—not manage them. There are almost 110 million acres in the National Wilderness Preservation System, with about 5% of the lands in Wyoming included. They have been set aside for nature to manage, to let natural processes play out without the interference of man.
Many of you have heard or read the definition in the Wilderness Act:
“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Howard Zahniser explained the intended meaning of his chosen adjective in a 1957 speech:
“We describe an area as wilderness because of a character it has—not because of a particular use it serves. A wilderness is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man. (Untrammeled—not untrampled—untrammeled, meaning free, unbound, unhampered, unchecked, having the freedom of the wilderness.)”
And a few paragraphs above the definition, the first sentence in the Act, states the purpose of Wilderness:
“In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.”
Stewart Brandborg worked closely with Zahniser on the Wilderness Act of 1964, and then served as executive director of The Wilderness Society for 12 years; the two roles bringing millions of acres of wilderness into existence. Bill Worf, as a Forest Service supervisor and because of his strong advocacy for wilderness, was part of a small group tasked with writing the Forest Service regulations for the new Wilderness Act. For years they were the backbone of Wilderness Watch, the only national organization dealing exclusively with assuring that wilderness is administered according to law. Neither of these men would stray from their conviction that the Act does not allow for compromise or should it be subject to individual interpretation. After all, The Wilderness Act was passed only after 66 drafts, 18 public hearings, and 8 years of debate. And the votes reveal its bipartisan support: first approved by the Senate 73-12, and then by the house 373-1. Collaboration, compromise and inclusiveness were an integral part of building the Wilderness Act and gave us a law that clearly establishes what it is for and why.
I can’t tell you when the shift from the original intent for stewardship of these lands began, but it has been moving a lot. For some of us the meaning of stewardship of our wilderness lands is pretty clear. It is directly tied to what is allowed or prohibited in the Wilderness Act and begins with Section 4(b) that states that agencies administering a designated wilderness area shall maintain its wilderness character even as it administers for other purposes. And, a sentence that seems to get overlooked: “…. wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreation, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use.” Stewardship does not eliminate human presence, just acknowledges that people are tasked equally with the agencies in preserving the wilderness character of an area.
Section 4(c) identifies the prohibited activities: no commercial enterprise, no permanent roads except as necessary to meet minimum requirements to administer the Act, no temporary roads, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structures or installations.
There are allowances for specific activities that follow in (d), Special Provisions. Here activities that were already established at the time of designation are covered, such as mining, commercial businesses like outfitting that bring the people into wilderness, cattle grazing, and limited administrative actions to combat disease or fire.
The other night at dinner Stewart Brandborg said that the next presentation regarding Wilderness should be titled: “Its all Screwed Up.” Here are a few examples of what is happening in our wilderness areas:
- Fred Burr High Lake Dam Repairs-use of a helicopter to haul materials to repair the dam.
- The Izembek Road would cut right through a wilderness area.
- In Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness commercial towboats have increased traffic significantly instead of maintaining levels existing at the time of designation.
- Fish Lake Airstrip, Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness-considerable expansion and extension of a runway to allow larger planes.
- In Emigrant Wilderness Building Reconstruction and the Commercial Packstations there exceed historical numbers.
- Commercial shellfishing in Monomoy Wilderness.
- Tonto and Coronado NF Wilderness – 450 Helicopter trips for Bighorn Management.
- Motor vehicle use for herding cattle in the Owyhees.
- Juniper control to promote Sage Grouse Habitat.
- And in Olympic National Park-rebuilding and restoring old and unnecessary structures.
All of these illegal actions were probably considered acceptable by the agency, not on their own merits, but because the proposed project wasn’t that much different than some earlier action. Or it would help with an issue unrelated to Wilderness. Or as my friend Howie says, “They have landscape amnesia.”
Think of landscape amnesia as similar to young people today who have never known a world with out computers and then shift to those within that crowd that have never known a world without smartphones. Incremental changes that are only obvious over longer periods of time and that shift a community’s ideas of best or great or wild further and further away from earlier ideas of those same traits.
How did we get to this place? Who is responsible? As you might have noticed, the examples I listed of violations in Wilderness were by the agencies. Many notifications to Wilderness Watch that these kinds of violations are occurring come from employees of those agencies. And many violations never get known and provide the jumping-off step for the next, greater illegal action. The most abused part of the Wilderness Act is the administrative exception in section 4(c): the minimal necessary to administer the Act. It was intended to apply to those exceedingly rare instances where the use of motorized equipment, motor vehicles, aircraft, structures or installations was truly necessary and the minimum required to PRESERVE WILDERNESS. Instead, the agencies invoke the exception for convenience or to promote recreation or one of the other uses of Wilderness. Helicopter use is probably the biggest, and growing, example of this abuse. Unfortunately, there are not enough people or organizations keeping track of things like this; usually it is a small, local group of people that are well acquainted with the area, are aware of the illegality of a proposed activity, and try to do something about it. Sometimes they are successful in getting things turned around, sometimes not.
None of the agencies supported the Act as it was being developed and continued to resist after it was passed. Maybe because previous bills produced a directive toward a goal and the agencies determined how to get there; this time the agencies were told what to do and how to do it. Over the years, and at least as recently as 2002, problems have been identified regarding lack of attention to stewardship, but no actions were taken to improve these problems.
But it is not just the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that have dropped the ball. Congress has not provided the oversight of the agencies or reviewed the system they put into place, a system they had intentionally put within their sphere. And when there have been attempts to do so?
- The House Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands commissioned the Government Accounting Office in 1989, to review the Forest Service wilderness stewardship practices. It found that the Forest Service was “devoting only minimal attention to wilderness.” Recommendations were made to establish whether wilderness lands were being further degraded. Even though Congress requested the review, they did not follow up on the report.
- In 1995, Congress passed the Paperwork Reduction Act, which rescinded a provision of the Wilderness Act that required agencies to submit substantive annual reports on the “status of the wilderness system.” Congress no longer receives these reports and is constrained by this lack of knowledge in fulfilling oversight.
- The four agencies requested the Pinchot Institute for Conservation undertake an extensive assessment of the National Wilderness Preservation system. Ultimately, you would think that Congress would respond to the findings. The panel of experts in their fields took almost two years listening to a broad range of stakeholders. Completed in 2001, the most striking recommendation they made, the first of six, and the primary one, said:
“The four wilderness agencies and their leaders must make a strong commitment to wilderness stewardship before the Wilderness System is lost.”
Yet no meaningful actions, by the agencies or congress, have addressed the recommendations of this in-depth, comprehensive report. It is now largely forgotten.
Current stewardship oversight, or lack thereof, is only part of the degradation of wilderness and the Wilderness Act that lies in the lap of Congress. Bills that Congress is proposing are as damaging to wilderness as the violations of the agencies—maybe more so. Bills designating wilderness in the past were clear and simple and adhered to the Act. Increasingly these bills include exceptions that aren’t in the Act, or add non-conformities to wilderness areas both existing and proposed. Of the bills that have been introduced into the current congress that focus on wilderness, fifty-one of them are not “clean”; have language that undercuts the Act, provide exceptions that when passed will be available for other new proposals, or even to modify existing wilderness areas, diminishing Wilderness character. Many of the proposed bills include work by several of the larger conservation organizations who, because of their size, proximity to DC, their budgets, have usurped negotiations from some of the local organizations that are working for new designated lands. These larger organizations say that compromise is necessary to gain more public support. The fact that they and Congress are even considering these bills is making the Wilderness Act into something other than what was envisioned during it’s long and inclusive passage into law.
At the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act last October, beyond the celebrations, there was a thread of concern in some presentations and conversations. Some people within the agencies and organizations are fearful for the future of wilderness. Stewardship is growing ever more lax and permissive and new bills are exacerbating the deterioration of what Wilderness is and paving the way for even broader erosion of stewardship in lands already designated wilderness.
I asked earlier “Whose responsibility is this?” Responsibility for ensuring that Wilderness retains the character that makes it wilderness, that we and future generations will be able to experience the wild, and that accountability for Wilderness is acknowledged and accepted, belongs to Congress, the four administering agencies and finally to us: the “public”, the folks that know the Wilderness lands around them and cherish their unique and special qualities—and are grateful for what Wildernesses don’t have: those activities that would make a Wilderness just the same as any other place.