Mike Dombeck, Gila Wilderness, New Mexico
May, 1999
It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. 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.
With those words, 35 years ago, Congress created the Wilderness Preservation System. It was the vision of Howard Zahniser, the principal author of the Wilderness bill, that ``we have a profound and fundamental need for areas of the earth where we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment.''
Of all of the natural resource management laws, the Wilderness Act remains my personal favorite. It has a soul, an essence of hope, a simplicity and sense of connection. Unlike the jargon filled tomes of most laws, in a very few words, the Wilderness Act says that what we have today is worth preserving for future generations. That in a world of compromises, insincere gestures, and half measures, there are lands and waters where we will not allow expediency to override conviction.
Wilderness heritage in the Forest Service runs deep. Passage of the Act was the result of a lifetime of work by such Forest Service employees such as Arthur Carhart and Bob Marshall. But it all began here when a young assistant district forester in the Albuquerque office pushed in New Mexico and Washington for the creation of the Gila
Wilderness Area - finally succeeding in 1924.
Who would know that 25 years later an older Aldo Leopold would publish A Sand Country Almanac, condensing a lifetime of accumulated experience into a work that today rivals Silent Spring as one of the most influential books about the relationship of people to their lands and waters.
The National Wilderness Preservation System has grown from 9 to 104 million acres since 1964. National Forest Wilderness represents just over 1% of the land area in the United States. Nonetheless, it provides clean water and air, naturalness, habitats for endangered and non-endangered plants and animals, solitude, scenic beauty, economic benefits to communities through tourism and recreation. Wilderness can serve as a benchmark for determining our nation's environmental health. one-third of the System. At approximately 18 percent of the National Forest System, wilderness provides clean water and air, naturalness, habitats for endangered and non-endangered plants and animals, solitude, scenic beauty, economic benefits to communities through tourism and recreation. Wilderness can serve as a benchmark for determining our nation's environmental health.
I want to share with you our thoughts on the Forest Service's wilderness strategic agenda. But first, one last Leopold quote that speaks to our challenge as wilderness managers. Leopold used to personify the mountain as the sentinel of wild lands, suggesting, "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf." He criticized short-sighted people that have "not learned to think like a mountain." As wilderness managers, we must learn mountain-like thinking.
Curt Meine, whose wonderful biography of Leopold was published in 1988, says that Leopold and Arthur Carhard and others based their argument for wilderness preservation on a very basic desire - they wished to keep intact a place where it was possible to hunt, fish, and travel in frontier like conditions. According to Meine, that desire was premised on something "more enduring and universal."
By their efforts, they hoped to ensure that wilderness could continue to feed a culture's idea of freedom. In an earlier day it was the newness and abundance of the land that nurtured that idea. Now it would become the test of America's maturity whether it would have wisdom and conviction enough to preserve, to at least some extent, the fountain of its own inspiration, and by so doing continue to replenish itself.
In recent years, many others, and I have become concerned that our national commitment to the Wilderness Act has diminished and the resources to protect and manage the wilderness have not kept pace with our needs. Five years ago, my predecessor Jack Ward Thomas asked the question, ``when I think of wilderness, I wonder who will be the next ones to step up, lead, and sacrifice for this precious resource? Who will see that the Wilderness doesn't get inched away from us, one compromise at a time?''
It was with Jack's words in mind that I commissioned the development of this wilderness strategy. It is a ``work in progress'' - not unlike our wilderness system. In other words, it is by no means complete. I expect it will have broad public and interagency review and involvement.
The agenda builds off of the Interagency Wilderness Strategic Plan (1995). Considerable progress has been made in implementing this plan, but significant challenges still face us. The agenda is an expression of the Forest Service's continued commitment and specific actions to meet the broad goals of that interagency plan.
Let's get the hard questions out of the way first. Should there be more wilderness? Ultimately, that's a decision for Congress and the American people to decide. The responsibility of the Forest Service is to identify those areas that are suitable for wilderness designation. We must take this responsibility seriously. For those forests undergoing forest plan revisions, I'll say this - our wilderness portfolio must embody a broader array of lands - from prairie to old growth. As world leaders in wilderness management, we should look to better manage existing, and identify potential new, wilderness and other wild lands.
The National Wilderness Preservation System can, and should, play a larger role in our efforts to address concerns of forest health and sustainability. Future additions to the Wilderness System may be targeted to enhance this role. We should pay special attention to potential wilderness areas that may fill critical habitat type gaps in the Wilderness System.
Second, management of existing wilderness should be coordinated by different wilderness area managers - eve, or perhaps, especially those in different agencies. I pledge within a year to bring together government and non-government interests to build trust among players and identify actions that can be successfully addressed through collaborative efforts. Wilderness requires collaboration; no one agency or entity controls the whole system.
Third, I have formed a Wilderness Advisory Group of employees from every level of the organization and every region of the country, to highlight and advise me of wilderness needs. It's a long way from the backcountry to the beltway or from the woods to Washington. Wilderness will now enjoy a higher profile in national office issues.
Fourth, the agenda places a renewed emphasis on wilderness monitoring. Such monitoring takes place through long-term Forest Inventory and Analysis and Forest Health Monitoring programs, and with the help of other agencies such as EPA and the USGS Biological Resources Division.
The Forest Service Research Organization and the interagency Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute will lead this approach, enabling us to better use wilderness as a baseline of comparison for determining our nation's environmental health. And along with acquiring better information about the condition of, and trends in, wilderness, we are also putting an emphasis on learning what society understands and values about this resource. Wilderness will be a major component in the upcoming National Survey on Recreation and the Environment.
Fifth, we are placing an added emphasis on the wilderness and recreation interface. The American people are welcome in their wilderness - however, as with all uses, use must occur within the limits of the land and the preservation of an area's wilderness values. We will provide a range of recreational opportunities in wilderness, from solitude to more social experiences, yet this will occur within the context of protecting resource conditions.
We are piloting this approach on the revision of the Mt. Hood National Forest plan, working with wilderness users and the public to address concerns about access to their wilderness. We are also partnering with other agencies, States, and private recreation providers to ensure the availability of quality backcountry recreation opportunities outside wilderness.
Sixth, I want every Forest Service employee to understand our wilderness stewardship responsibility and what it means to their jobs. I fully expect Forest Service employees with decision-making responsibilities for wilderness areas to demonstrate wilderness expertise. The interagency Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center is directed to focus its offerings to meet the needs of our multi-disciplinary, diverse workforce.
Finally, this is my favorite part of my job! Wilderness management work occurs at all levels of the organization, with some of the most important tasks taking place on the ground, the wilderness itself. Dedicated employees, cooperators, and volunteers are the lifeblood of wilderness stewardship, so without further delay, I'd like to acknowledge the winners of the 1997-98 National Wilderness awards, which were presented earlier today.
· Laura Burns, Ketchikan Alaska - representing the Misty Fiords National Monument Wilderness Ecosystem Inventory/Monitoring Crew
· John Allen, District Ranger, McKenzie Ranger District, Willamette National Forest
· Alice Cohen, Forest Education Specialist, Gila National Forest
· Eric Swett, Saco Ranger District, White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire - representing the White Mountain National Forest 1998 Trail Crew
· Jim Folsom, Wilderness Education Association, Sandish Maine - for his work with the White Mountain National Forest providing information for wilderness visitors form the Brickett Place Wilderness Information Center.
These people bring honor to themselves, to the Forest Service and to the National Wilderness Preservation System, and it gives me great pleasure to recognize them today.
In closing, I would like to pay one last tribute to Aldo Leopold, the man whose vision and passion, we celebrate today. Leopold said, ``there are two things that interest me: the relationship of people to their land and the relationship of people to each other.'' I believe that the respect we accord one another is reflected in the way we treat the lands and waters that sustain us.
Leopold understood that the same qualities that define a good land manager - patience, humility, study, and learning to listen rather than always talking - were more than a recipe for stewardship. In a society of fractured relationships and discordant debates, the same qualities defined our best and most lasting hope for learning to live in community with each other.
Contact: Chris Wood
Modified:
6/16/99