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Noatak River, Alaska
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Wild
Colorado
featuring articles on the Wilderness
Act
"Just the Facts,
Ma'am" CMC Public Land Policy Director
Vera Smith makes a plea for a deeper understanding of wilderness
Conservation Update
Myths & Facts about
Wilderness
Volunteers further wilderness
efforts
Colorado Wilderness Bills of
1999 |
Happy anniversary:
the Wilderness Act
turns thirty-five
by Anne O’Brien
Out there, we’ve listened to glacier ice
melting its way down a fourteener. We’ve heard wind hum through pines,
felt it brush our skin, and move on. We’ve watched snow fall in utter
silence on a hunkered-down hare.
In our quest to experience the natural world,
we’ve also inched through national park traffic jams, tensed as the whir
of a helicopter stole the silence from a remote redrock canyon, watched
wildlife run from a snowmobile’s whine. We’ve stopped drinking Rocky
Mountain spring water and witnessed humans inflicting enduring scars on the
land. We know the difference between wilderness and outdoors.
So did lawmakers who designed Public Law 88-577,
known as the Wilderness Act of 1964. More than a generation has passed since
President Lyndon Johnson signed into law this unique legislation, crafted to
“assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement
and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the
United States … leaving no lands … in their natural
condition.”
The law created a National Wilderness Preservation
System to contain those lands already owned by the American people that were
still “untrammeled by man.” They were to be managed “for the use
and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them
unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness.” No roads or
structures were to be built. Mechanized equipment of any kind, including
vehicles, was prohibited. The lands were to stand as pure examples of the
entire range of our original ecosystems. They were to be recreational,
spiritual, and educational retreats from civilization.
Soon 9.1 million acres of land had entered the
system, and a process was created for Congress to set aside more land for
wilderness from within our national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. In
1976, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands were also put on the source list.
By 1978 the system had doubled to 19.3 million acres, and in 1980 the Alaska
Lands Act brought the total to 80.1 million. Today the system consists of over
a hundred million acres, more than half in Alaska. 3.3 million acres lie in
Colorado, mostly at high altitude. In 1994, 7.5 million acres of California
desert were added, but since then only 20,000 acres in Oregon have been
approved, and bills to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and Utah’s redrock canyonlands have been blocked. Even
today, all the land designated as wilderness represents less than five percent
of our national territory.
Despite its careful crafting and stable status, the
Wilderness Act, which was rewritten sixty-six times over nine years before
becoming law, remains controversial. Its primary goal—to assure
“opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of
experience”—continues to stir debate. Usually arguments pit economics
against environmental concerns.
Support and opposition for
the “geography
of hope”
The issues the Wilderness Act raises have inspired a
powerful literature of advocacy that began even before Wallace Stegner
characterized untouched nature as “part of the geography of hope” in
his 1960 Wilderness Letter. “Something will have gone out of us as a people,” he
said, “if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” He was
influenced by Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, who in 1924 got the
preservation ball rolling with the Gila National Wilder ness. Most recently
Testimony, a
collection of impassioned environmental commentary by twenty American writers
of the stature of its editor, Terry Tempest Williams, continued the tradition.
Activist writers sent Testimony to Capitol Hill last year to convince legislators to add
additional acres to the hundred million-plus currently protected by the
Wilderness Act from “the imprint of man’s work.”
These issues have inspired opposition as well. Some
ranchers, mining companies, and oil and gas concerns view the Act’s
limitations on economic activity as a threat to their rights. In testimony
before a congressional subcommittee on resources, geologist Donald Brobst
declared that Congress “must consider the effects of (closure) on our
national ability to maintain a high degree of mineral and fuel independence
that will support firmly our economy, our security, and our comfortable
lifestyle through the coming years.”
Rancher A.C. Ekker expressed his objections more
sardonically in a 1996 newspaper interview: “ (The land) has already
survived all this exploration for oil and gas and coal and uranium,” he
said, “and now we’re going to go back and call it wilderness and
restrict how we can use it?” He, like many others since, also feared that
his water rights might not survive, in spite of a provision to
“grandfather in” existing activities. The Wilderness Act Reform
Coalition (WARC) and other groups who endorse “multiple use
management” of public land tend to view such economic restraints as
potential losses advocated by single-issue special interest
coalitions.
Recreationists and related business voice opinions
all along this continuum. Along with high-tech, service, and information-based
industries, these groups represent a segment of the economy whose profitability
has overtaken that of more traditional grazing and resource extraction
activities in the western United States. Hikers, backpackers, kayakers, and
other low-intensity eco-enthusiasts are satisfied with the definition of
wilderness as land “where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain.”
On the other hand, recreationists who prefer
off-road vehicles, which are prohibited by the Act, are not so approving. When
race car driver Bobby Unser was arrested for riding a snowmobile onto
wilderness land in 1996, he pronounced the Forest Service, which enforces the
Act, to be “worse than the KGB in Russia.” His case, on which a judge
recently ruled against him, gave rise to a proposed “Bobby Unser
Amendment” aimed at modifying the Wilderness Act.
Car-campers who prefer an outdoor experience that
includes showers, toilets, and picnic tables would also like to make changes to
accommodate their partiality to comfort. Finally, some argue that a lack of
amenities discriminates against the elderly and handicapped.
Hunters and fishers, whose activities are permitted
under Wilderness Act provisions, come out in the middle of the spectrum.
“Many hunters who want to have a really primitive experience away from
people and noise prefer areas within the wilderness system,” says Diane
Gansauer, director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation, “but the kinds of
hunting available in non-wilderness places suits others better.” Often
these are people for whom roadlessness means packing out big game. And mountain
bikers and rock climbers can argue interminably about regulations and with each
other, depending on their standards of environmental purity.
A number of organizations make a business of
advocating their constituencies’ position on the Wilderness Act. The
Wilderness Society is the oldest pro-wilderness advocacy organization. Founded
in 1935, its existence has been intimately linked with support for the Act
since its 1956 director drafted the original version of the law. The Society
now operates a support center in Durango to assist the efforts of wilderness
advocates.
More recently, factions opposing the Act have
organized their own advocacy efforts. They include the Wilderness Act Reform
Coalition (“After 35 years, we are finally going to do something about the
Wilderness Act!”); Blue Ribbon Coalition (“Preserving our natural
resources for the public instead of from the public”); People for the USA
(“People for strong communities, vigorous economies, and healthy
environments”); and the American Land Rights Association (“Dedicated
to the wise-use of our resources, access to federal lands and protection of our
private property rights”). These groups tend to question the conflict
between the demands of pure preservation and the need for profitable enterprise
associated with outdoor activity.
Closer to home:
the Colorado Wilderness Act of
1999
Although wilderness sites represent only a small
portion of Colorado’s land area, images of our state’s spectacular
scenery figure prominently in representations of quintessential wilderness
values. Because many activists in the state would like to see more of it
protected, The Wilderness Society has joined the Colorado Environmental
Coalition (CEC), the Colorado Mountain Club, the Sierra Club, the Western
Colorado Congress, and over two hundred other groups comprising the Colorado
Wilderness Network (CWN) in putting their goals before the people and political
bodies who have the power to implement them.
Environmental and eco-tourism activists, as well as
groups ranging from rural county commissioners to the Roman Catholic Diocese of
Pueblo, are actively campaigning to generate support for additional Colorado
sites. Pending legislation, specifically the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1999,
would add mid- and lower-altitude land to high-elevation areas already
preserved in the state. These additions are intended to uphold the Act’s
intent to protect a full range of native biological diversity. Jeff Widen of
the CEC in Durango says, “Preserving a sample of each ecosystem is
critical to effective wilderness planning.”
In addition to the emphasis on adding lower altitude
parcels to Colorado’s wilderness, the Act will employ additional criteria
for determining wilderness status. The land’s “original
character” should not have been modified by logging, grazing, or other
activities that would preclude restoring its wild character. Also, mineral
rights must be able to be eliminated by sale, exchange, or other equitable
means; there must be no above-ground utilities to be maintained by motorized
equipment; parcels must consist of at least five thousand acres and have
special historical, educational, or scientific value; and the land can contain
no commercial operations, permanent roads, structures, or landing strips or
airports. Finally, and most importantly, to be considered for possible
wilderness status, an area must offer opportunities for “solitude or
primitive … recreation.”
The BLM connection
CEC’s Widen points out that Colorado’s
greatest opportunity to increase the diversity of its protected landforms and
ecosystems lies on eligible lands administered by the Bureau of Land
Management. In 1976 the BLM was directed to begin inventorying its land for
addition to the wilderness system. The National Park Service and the U.S.
Forest Service had already completed their required studies in the 1970s, and
by 1993 over three million acres of wilderness lay within their jurisdictions.
In Colorado, the largest was the 488,000-acre Weminuche Wilderness and the
smallest was Mesa Verde, an extraordinary 8100-acre archeological site managed
by the National Park Service.
The BLM completed its survey in 1991 and recommended
that Congress consider 388,000 acres—five percent of its eight million
acres of Colorado land—for wilderness. “It seems reasonable to set
aside such a small portion of public land in its natural state,” says
CEC’s Widen. “It’s really just bits and pieces.”
Questioned about concerns relating to energy
production and other economic issues, he adds, “Economics can’t be an
automatic first priority. For instance, all resource extraction is, in reality,
finite, and must ultimately be replaced with other sustainable sources of
energy.”
Others, such as Jack Edwards, Ph.D., the chief
geologist with Shell Oil before becoming director of the Energy and Minerals
Applied Research Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, support
Widen’s viewpoint. Edwards believes that the majority of U.S. fossil fuel
resources have been identified and that most are already being extracted at a
maximum sustainable rate. “Over half of our oil consumption is already
being imported,” he points out.
Citizen action and reluctant
legislation
Conflicting interests in the 1980s and 1990s largely
stalled additions to Colorado’s wilderness lands. Responding to political
indifference, citizens belonging to several conservation organizations
(including the Colorado Mountain Club), have augmented the BLM inventories,
walking the land and conducting field studies to document features that would
meet the criteria for wilderness designation.
When citizens completed their first survey in 1993,
the list they developed included another million acres, fifteen percent of
Colorado’s BLM land. Most lie in the state’s low-elevation canyon
country. These areas include Bangs Canyon, a recreational haven for bikers and
hikers near Grand Junction; Castle Peak; Pinyon Ridge—20,000 acres along
the White River; South Shale Ridge—32,000 acres that harbor producing oil
wells that would be allowed to continue to operate, although no new exploration
would be permitted; Vermillion Basin; and the Yampa River Valley. The list also
includes certain National Forest lands and some state and private land. From
this inventory the citizen group created the “Brown Book” in 1994
(so-called because of its brown cover), proposing for protection areas that
appear to qualify for review by Congress. It became the “Citizens’
Wilderness Proposal.”
The proposal gathered dust until this year, when
Representative Diana DeGette (D-Denver) sponsored HR 829, a bill that embodies
the coalition’s recommendations to add 1.4 million acres to Colorado
wilderness. The proposed legislation may need a four-wheel drive vehicle to
ride the rough road to approval, since it is opposed by, among others,
Representative Scott McInnis, a Republican who represents the Western Slope of
the Rockies where much of the land lies. McInnis’s office says that the
DeGette’s bill does not represent consensus, but has been “formulated
in D.C. and pushed onto local people.” Josh Penry, speaking on behalf of
McInnis, explains: “These things should be done very carefully. There is a
whole array of concerns that only local people are aware of,” he
cautions.
Notwithstanding his opposition to HR 829, McInnis
recently celebrated the success of another Colorado wilderness bill that he
helped sponsor, which would protect 18,000 acres near the 12- and 13,000-foot
Spanish Peaks. The House passed it unanimously on September 13; McInnis is
optimistic that the Senate will also pass it. He believes that the final draft
is sufficiently sensitive to local concerns. “The communities of La Veta
and Walsenburg constructed a plan,” says Penry. “There was consensus
on the part of people who know what needed to be done.”
That particular piece of legislation tells a tale
typical of the kinds of economic and environmental conflict involved in
wilderness preservation legislation. Since 1986, when efforts began to protect
the area around the Spanish Peaks, many versions of the bill were introduced.
In 1998, one of them finally made it out of the House, only to die in the
Senate for lack of support due to concerns about losing possible methane
reserves in the area. Even now, its passage will depend on companion
legislation. And environmentalists worry that its language may not be specific
enough to prevent setting a troubling precedent by allowing a road to
Bull’s Eye Mine within the designated wilderness area. In addition to
Spanish Peaks, bills relating to James Peak Wilderness, Rocky Mountain National
Park Wilderness, and Black Canyon National Park/Gunnison Gorge National
Conservation Area will require a concerted effort on the part of citizens,
agencies, and legislators to resolve the web of diverse viewpoints without
adversely affecting the spirit of the Wilderness Act.
The complexity of all these issues has given new
meaning to the term “wilderness survival.” Once these words suggested
the ability of human beings to get out of the backcountry alive. Now they are
more likely to imply the land’s ability to endure the onslaught of our
activity. The Wilderness Act of 1964 foresaw this possibility, and from Henry
David Thoreau, who declared that “in wilderness is the preservation of the
world” to Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Act into law, those who inspired
it have understood that the loss of access to natural landscapes would deprive
humanity of an experience essential to its well-being. |
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