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Wilderness and the Common Good

A New Ethic of Citizenship

Fulcrum Publishing

The Wilderness Act and Its Legacy

"In all the category of outdoor vocations and outdoor sports there is not one, save only the tilling of the soil, that bends and molds the human character like wilderness travel."

– Aldo Leopold

"The Last Stand of Wilderness"

Being a steward of the land is an act of citizenship. A devoted citizen works to foster and protect the collective common good, which includes safeguarding our wilderness. There are hundreds of books and articles that seek to define and delineate wilderness, and in this book I refer often to the political definition. But it is important to understand that wilderness is many things to many people. It is a place humans visit but rarely dwell. It is a place to be admired, sometimes feared, often held sacred. Wilderness has many important roles in our lives, from serving as a reservoir for clean air and water to fueling renewal of the human spirit.

The political definition of wilderness can be found in the Wilderness Act of 1964:

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. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

Passing the Wilderness Act took a great deal of political will. The decision to designate an area as wilderness is made not by those who work alongside wild areas in our national parks and forests, but by elected officials in Washington, DC. According to the law, only Congress can designate a wilderness area, and only Congress can remove the designation or adjust its boundaries. This ensures that these national treasures are true public goods protected by representatives of the people.

In the last decade alone, Congress has designated 80 new wilderness areas by way of 13 new public laws. In the United States today there are 757 wilderness areas covering 109,511,966 acres of land. Approximately 44 percent of that land is managed by the National Park Service (NPS), 33 percent by the United States Forest Service (USFS), 19 percent by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and 8 percent by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

An Act of Congress

The authors of the Wilderness Act wanted to ensure that these designated areas were truly protected and thus required an act of Congress to designate an area as wilderness. If designation was left in the hands of park and forest administrators, they feared, it would be far too easy for special interests to influence the shifting of an area's boundaries or the removal of the designation altogether. The act took eight years to pass, in part because both Forest Service and National Parks administrators opposed the bill, fearing that it would obstruct their own discretion within national forest and park boundaries. The key compromise made to get the bill passed was the power given to Congress to remove the wilderness designation. While this provision was initially included to support those who opposed the act, in practice it has helped protect wilderness areas.

What made the act especially controversial was the proposed limitation of human activities after an area is designated wilderness. Only those activities that have a truly minimal impact, such as hiking or fly-fishing, were allowed. The act reads:

For this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as "wilderness areas," and these shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness. ... (Sec 2(a))

Except as specifically provided for in this Act, and subject to existing private rights, there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act and, except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this Act (including measures required in emergencies involving the health and safety of persons within the area), there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area. (Sec 4(c))

Opposition

Opponents of the Wilderness Act included those hoping to transform wild goods into something more valuable for human use. People who preferred a multitude of sustainable activities in wildlands also spoke out against the law. Many lawmakers argued that the value of wilderness is related to what citizens can make out of it. After all, even Aldo Leopold once noted that wilderness provided the raw materials out of which humans made civilization. Most frequently these objectors were mining and logging interests and representatives from states dependent on these industries. But there were other opponents as well, including many who wanted to maintain access to the wilderness for recreation. In response to revisions to the act in 1984, even some mountain biking organizations came out against the wilderness designation since limits on "mechanical transport" could be read as a provision against bicycles. Some opponents of the wilderness designation argued that the definition itself was confusing, while others contended that what counts as "substantially unnoticeable" work by humans is unclear. Other criticisms included that this conception of wilderness was too idealized, too ethnocentric, and devoid of the notion that wilderness naturally changes over time.

Wilderness as an Overlay

The designation of wilderness is what's known as an overlay concept. Most of the lands currently designated as wilderness were already part of national parks or national forests when they were designated by Congress. As the act explains,

The inclusion of an area in the National Wilderness Preservation System notwithstanding, the area shall continue to be managed by the Department and agency having jurisdiction thereover immediately before its inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System unless otherwise provided by Act of Congress. No appropriation shall be available for the payment of expenses or salaries for the administration of the National Wilderness Preservation System as a separate unit nor shall any appropriations be available for additional personnel stated as being required solely for the purpose of managing or administering areas solely because they are included within the National Wilderness Preservation System.

In fact, today 77 percent of all designated wilderness areas are managed by the National Park Service or the US Forest Service. When the overlay of wilderness is applied to an existing park, forest, or other plot of land, it applies only to the wild areas within those designated boundaries. In other words, even though parts of Yellowstone National Park contain designated wilderness areas, not all of Yellowstone is a wilderness area. It would be impossible for the whole park to be designated wilderness, since like most national parks today, Yellowstone has roads, lodges, concessions, and other developments not allowed under the Wilderness Act. The wilderness areas within national parks are often referred to as backcountry, and visitors are required to obtain a permit to travel within wilderness boundaries. About half of all US national park land is designated wilderness.

Public Opinion Today

To mark the fortieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act, wilderness advocates publicly celebrated the sustained and growing public support of wilderness protection. A decade later, I have sought to capture the effects of that momentum by looking at public opinion polls over the past ten years. Unfortunately, few recent public opinion polls have included questions about wilderness. The iPOLL databank maintained by the Roper Center Public Opinion Archives (which tracks every major United States survey firm and more than 150 organizations) lists only seven questions in which wilderness was a key word since 2004. Perhaps not surprisingly, six out of those seven questions were asked in 2008 and focused on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) or on drilling in wilderness areas in general. Drilling for oil in the ANWR was a hotly contested issue during the 2008 presidential election campaign, complete with chants of "Drill, baby, drill!" at the Republican National Convention. The results of the polls, however, are a mixed bag. When interpreting the results below, be certain to note the source of each poll.

Gallup Poll, May 2008

(Please say whether you would favor or oppose taking each of the following steps to attempt to reduce the price of gasoline.) How about ... allowing oil drilling in US (United States) coastal and wilderness areas now off-limits to oil exploration?

Favor 57%
Oppose 41%
No opinion 2%

Democracy Corps Poll, June 2008

Given the high price of gas, would you favor or oppose allowing oil drilling in US (United States) coastal areas and wilderness areas that are currently protected by the federal government? (If Favor/Oppose, ask: Is that strongly or somewhat favor/oppose?)

Strongly Favor 38%
Somewhat Favor 17%
Somewhat Oppose 13%
Strongly Oppose 25%
Don't Know/Refuse 6%

Unified Arctic Campaign Survey, June 2008

(2 questions)

We should not allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because this is one of the most valuable wilderness areas left in the US (United States) and it would be permanently damaged by drilling ... Agree, disagree.

Agree 56%
Disagree 38%
Don't Know/Refuse 6%

The oil companies already have obtained the right to drill for oil and gas in 32 million acres of oil-rich federal land that they are not using. As long as they have not drilled in the acres already available to them, there is no reason to open up more Alaskan wilderness to drilling ... Agree, disagree.

Agree 68%
Disagree 24%

Don't Know/Refuse 8%

ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford Poll, July 2008

Do you think the federal government should or should not allow drilling for oil in US (United States) wilderness areas where it's currently not allowed?

Should 55%
Should not 43%

No opinion 2%

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, July 2008

(Please tell me whether you think each of the following is a major cause of the recent increase in gasoline prices, a minor cause, or not a cause at all?) ... Federal laws that prohibit increased drilling for oil offshore or in wilderness areas:

Major 51%
Minor 32%
Not a cause 17%

The only recent poll question in the iPOLL database related to wilderness but not related to drilling was part of a March 2009 poll by the Climate Change and Global Poverty Survey: "What do you think is the most important environmental problem that the current (Obama) administration should focus on: climate change, air and water pollution, shrinking of wilderness areas or endangered species?" Clearly the authors of the question were not speaking solely about designated wilderness area but rather about wildlands in general. The results:

Climate change 23%
Air and water pollution 40%
Shrinking of wilderness areas 9%
Endangered species 4%
All of these 16%
Don't Know/Refused 8%

This last question may suffer from respondents having received a fixed set of answers to choose from. Nevertheless, wilderness protection was evidently not a priority among these participants. Taken together, what these poll questions (excluding the Unified Arctic Campaign Survey) demonstrate is that respondents in 2008 were more concerned about energy than they were about protecting wilderness.

The Relationship between Wilderness and Mining

Americans are enormous consumers of energy. Setting aside the current green energy movement, energy production in this country has traditionally required some sort of resource extraction. In other words, the debate between energy production and wilderness protection is not new. And it is certainly not over. In June 2013 Republican governor Sean Parnell of Alaska publicly called for reopening the debate about drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge while addressing a national audience during a Sunday morning talk show. An astute reader might question why drilling is even open to debate in the ANWR and other wilderness areas. Surely mining would disturb wilderness areas more than mountain biking, for example. It is important to remember that passing the act required compromise, and one of the compromises made was for mineral rights. The act states:

Notwithstanding any other provisions of this Act, until midnight December 31, 1983, the United States mining laws and all laws pertaining to mineral leasing shall, to the extent as applicable prior to September 3, 1964, extend to those national forest lands designated by this Act as "wilderness areas"; subject, however, to such reasonable regulations governing ingress and egress as may be prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture consistent with the use of the land for mineral location and development and exploration, drilling, and production, and use of land for transmission lines, waterlines, telephone lines, or facilities necessary in exploring, drilling, producing, mining, and processing operations, including where essential the use of mechanized ground or air equipment and restoration as near as practicable of the surface of the land disturbed in performing prospecting, location, and, in oil and gas leasing, discovery work, exploration, drilling, and production, as soon as they have served their purpose.

Given the concessions underlying the Wilderness Act, debates about drilling in wilderness areas are likely to continue in public and in the halls of Congress. When Congress enacted the law it did not prohibit these activities from occurring, especially in areas where oil, gas, and mineral deposits were identified before wilderness designation.

Lessons

There are lessons to be gleaned from the public opinion polls, in particular having to do with the shared ownership of these public lands. With shared ownership, of course, comes a variety of interests among the owners. When decisions made in Congress do not have a direct impact on an individual constituent, it is difficult to rally support from that individual. Moreover, the current size of our designated wilderness areas — over 100 million acres — is a concept almost incomprehensible to most people. When the public is told that a certain mining operation will alter only a few hundred acres, the land affected can easily be perceived as only a small fraction of designated wilderness and thus inconsequential. Finding common ground requires compromise, and a majority of Americans may view drilling as an acceptable compromise in order to meet our energy needs.

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Excerpted from Wilderness and the Common Good by Jo Arney. Copyright © 2015 Jo Arney. Excerpted by permission of Fulcrum Publishing.
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