Anne A. Riddle and Katie Hoover (with the help of Kristina Alexander and Ross Gorte) assembled this CRS report (updated 29 July 2022): 'Wilderness - Overview, Management, and Statistics'.
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Summary
Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964. This act created the National Wilderness Preservation System, reserved to Congress the authority to designate wilderness areas, and directed the Secretaries of Agriculture and of the Interior to review certain lands’ potential wilderness designation. The act also designated 54 wilderness areas with 9 million acres of federal land. Congress began expanding the Wilderness System in 1968. As of July 6, 2022, there are 803 wilderness areas, totaling approximately 112 million acres, in 44 states and Puerto Rico. Numerous bills to designate additional wilderness areas and to expand existing ones have been introduced and considered in every Congress since the act’s passage.The Wilderness Act defined wilderness as an area of undeveloped federal land, among other criteria, but due to differing perceptions of wilderness and its purpose, it did not establish criteria or standards to determine whether an area should be so designated. In general, wilderness areas are undeveloped; commercial activities, motorized access, and roads, structures, and facilities are prohibited in wilderness areas. In response to conflicting demands, however, Congress has granted both general exemptions and specific exceptions to the general standards and prohibitions. Questions persist over the frequency and extent to which federal agencies must review the wilderness potential of their lands, and how those lands should be managed.
The federal government owns about 28% of the land in the United States, although the proportion in each state varies widely. Four federal agencies—the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior; and the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture—manage most of the approximately 112 million acres of designated wilderness, as well as many other lands. They also protect certain other lands as possible additions to the Wilderness System, and review the wilderness potential of lands.
In total, approximately 18% of federal land administered by the four major federal land management agencies is wilderness. A few states dominate wilderness statistics, however: approximately 52% of the total designated wilderness is in Alaska (57.8 million acres), and the state with the next-highest portion, California, has 14% (15.3 million acres). Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Rhode Island do not contain any designated wilderness.
In 1964, the Wilderness Act established a national system of congressionally designated areas to be preserved in a wilderness condition: “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) was originally created with approximately 9.1 million acres designated in national forest system lands managed by the Forest Service. Congress has since added more than 100 million acres to the NWPS (see Table 1). Wilderness areas have been designated on land managed by each of the four federal land management agencies—the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture, and the National Park Service (NPS), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Department of the Interior. Federal agencies, Members of Congress, and interest groups have recommended additional lands for inclusion in the NWPS. Furthermore, at the direction of Congress, agencies have studied, or are studying, the potential of their lands for wilderness designation. This report provides a brief history of wilderness, describes what wilderness is, identifies permitted and prohibited uses in wilderness areas, and provides data on the 111.7 million acres of designated wilderness areas as of July 6, 2022. For information on wilderness legislation, see CRS Report R41610, Wilderness: Issues and Legislation.
History of Wilderness
As the United States was formed, the federal government acquired 1.8 billion acres of land through purchases, treaties, and other agreements. Initial federal policy was generally to transfer land to states and private ownership, but Congress also provided for reserving certain lands for federal purposes. Over time, Congress has reserved or withdrawn increasing acreage for national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, etc. The general policy of land disposal was formally changed to a policy of retaining the remaining lands in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA).The early national forests were envisioned as working forests managed for multiple purposes.4 In time, some FS leaders recognized the need to preserve some areas in a natural state. Acting at its own discretion, and at the behest of conservationist and then-employee Aldo Leopold, the FS administratively designated the first wilderness area in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico in 1924. In the succeeding decades, the agency’s system of administratively designated wilderness, wild, and primitive areas grew to 14.6 million acres. However, in the 1950s, increasing timber harvests and recreational use of the national forests led to public concerns about the permanence of this system, as there was no law to prevent a future change to those administrative designations.
In response, the 88th Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964. The act described the attributes and characteristics of wilderness, and it prohibited or restricted certain activities in wilderness areas to preserve and protect the designated areas, while permitting other activities to occur. The act reserves to Congress the authority to designate areas as part of the NWPS.
The NWPS began with the approximately 9.1 million acres of national forest lands that had been identified administratively as wilderness or wild areas. The Wilderness Act directed the Secretaryof Agriculture to review the agency’s nearly 5.5 million acres of primitive areas, and the Secretary of the Interior to evaluate the wilderness potential of National Park System and National Wildlife Refuge System lands. The Secretaries were to report their recommendations to the President and to Congress within 10 years (i.e., by 1974). Separate recommendations were made for each studied area, and many areas recommended for wilderness were later designated, although some of the recommendations are still pending. In 1976, FLPMA directed the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a similar review of the public lands administered by BLM within 15 years (i.e., by 1991). BLM submitted its recommendations to the President, and presidential recommendations were submitted to Congress (see “BLM Wilderness Review and Wilderness Study Areas”).
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Data on Wilderness Designations
The wilderness data presented in Table 2 are acreage estimates for wilderness areas that have been designated by Congress as compiled by the agencies as of July 6, 2022. Acreages are estimates, since few (if any) of the areas have been precisely surveyed. In addition, the agencies have recommended areas for addition to the NWPS, and continue to review the wilderness potential of other lands under their jurisdiction, both of congressionally designated WSAs and under congressionally directed land management planning efforts. However, statistics on acreage in pending recommendations and on those being studied, particularly in the planning efforts, are unavailable.
As of July 6, 2022, Congress has designated 111.7 million acres of federal land in units of the NWPS, as shown in Table 2 and Figure 1. Wilderness areas have been designated in 44 states plus Puerto Rico; Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Rhode Island do not contain any designated wilderness areas. Just over half (52%) of this land—57.8 million acres—is in Alaska, and includes most of the wilderness areas managed by NPS (74%) and FWS (90%).50 California has the next-largest wilderness acreage, with 15.3 million acres designated in the state. However, Washington has the largest percentage of federal land designated wilderness, with the 4.5 million acres of wilderness accounting for 38% of the federal land within the state. NPS manages the most wilderness acreage (44.3 million acres, 40% of the Wilderness System), followed by the Forest Service, which manages 36.7 million acres (33%). FWS manages 20.7 million acres (19%), and BLM manages the least wilderness acreage, 10.0
The 90th Congress began expanding the Wilderness System in 1968, as shown in Table 1. Five laws were enacted, creating five new wilderness areas encompassing 792,750 acres in total. Wilderness designations generally increased in each succeeding Congress, rising to a peak of about 60.8 million acres designated during the 96th Congress (1979-1980), the largest amount designated by any Congress. This figure included the largest single designation of 56.4 million acres of wilderness through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.5 The 98th Congress enacted more wilderness laws (21) and designated more acres (8.5 million acres in 21 states) outside of Alaska than any Congress since the NWPS was created.
Including the Wilderness Act, Congress has enacted more than 120 laws designating new wilderness areas or adding to existing ones, as shown in Table 1. The NWPS now contains 803 wilderness areas managed by the four federal land management agencies, with approximately 111 million acres in 44 states and Puerto Rico, as shown in Table 2. The agencies have recommended that additional lands be added to the Wilderness System; these lands are generally managed to protect their wilderness character while Congress considers adding them to the Wilderness System (see “Wilderness Review, Study, and Release”). The agencies are studying additional lands to determine if these lands should be added to the NWPS. However, comprehensive data on the lands recommended and under review for wilderness potential are not publicly available.
"Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way." - Jane Austen
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