Trail & Timberline features
Ultimate Peru
Noatak River, Alaska
The Tumpline
Guargualla, Ecuador
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
Volunteers further wilderness
efforts
Colorado Wilderness Bills of
1999
Happy Anniversary,
Baby. The Wilderness act turns 35. Is
it grown up yet? |
Myths and facts
about wilderness
- Myth: Wilderness
locks up the land, prohibiting people from entering or using public
lands.
- Fact: Wilderness
provides for a multitude of human uses including fishing, hunting, grazing,
canoeing, rafting, kayaking, horseback riding, backcountry skiing, hiking,
camping, rock climbing, and mountaineering.
- Myth: Wilderness
makes large chunks of the National Forest inaccessible. In particular,
wilderness excludes the elderly and the handicapped.
- Fact: Only
thirteen percent of National Forest lands in Colorado are designated as
wilderness, leaving eighty-seven percent with motorized access for the
handicapped and elderly. About ninety percent of the currently designated
wilderness areas are “rock and ice” wildernesses, areas to which
access for all but the most nimble is restricted because of their rugged
nature. In addition, all national forest lands, including wilderness lands, can
be experienced by horseback. A report by the National Council on Disability
found that “[a] significant majority of persons with disabilities surveyed
very much enjoy the [National Wilderness Preservation System] and 76% do not
believe that the restrictions on mechanized use stated in the Wilderness Act
diminish their ability to enjoy wilderness.”
- Myth: Because
Colorado has many areas that are remote, there is no need to designate
wilderness officially.
- Fact: The
farthest distance that anyone can be from a road in the Southern Rockies is six
miles. Ninety-four percent of the landscape lies within two miles of a road and
only one percent of the landscape is more than four miles from a
road.1
- Myth: Wilderness
is a drain on Colorado’s economy because it prevents timbering and mining
activities, the economic backbone of rural western towns.
- Fact:
Colorado’s economy is no longer based on natural resource extraction.
Approximately one percent of Colorado jobs are in the mining, oil and gas, or
timber industries. About half of these jobs are located in Denver. Wilderness
may actually improve local economies. A recent study showed that fifty-three
percent of people who live in counties containing wilderness cite wilderness as
an important factor why they moved there, and forty-three percent cite it as
the reason why they stay.2
- Myth: Wilderness
designation takes away private property rights.
- Fact: Both the
Wilderness Act of 1964 and the proposed Colorado Wilderness Act of 1999
specifically protect the exercise of “valid existing rights,”
including oil and gas leases.
- Myth: Wilderness
is not multiple-use oriented.
- Fact: Wilderness
insures that wildness and solitude are two of the many multiple uses provided
for on public lands. These multiple uses are just as valid as cutting timber,
grazing livestock, riding ATVs, or mountain biking. In addition, within
wilderness, people can hunt, fish, graze livestock, and recreate using
non-mechanized means.
1 Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project. 1999. The State of the Southern Rockies
Ecoregion. A Report by the Southern
Rockies Ecosystem Project. In print.
2 These figures are from Gundars Rudzitis and Harley E. Johansen
“How Important is Wilderness? Results from a United States Survey”
from Environmental
Management, vol. 15, No. 2, Pp.
227-233, 1991 and from Wilderness and
the Changing American West, Gundars
Rudzitis, 1996, John Wiley and Sons, New York. |
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