The Future of Wilderness in America: Reflecting on the 60th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act

Six decades ago, as wild places were being lost rapidly, leaders of the Boone and Crockett Club helped envision a new system of wilderness, hallmarked by federal legislation to outline how this system ought to look.

Today, we benefit from their vision. Agency-delineated wilderness study areas and congressionally declared wilderness areas continue to provide incredible recreation opportunities away from the hustle and bustle of our modern, motorized life. However, times are changing.

Wildfires, disease outbreaks, and insect infestations blight some of the lands enclosed within the Wilderness System, but human intervention is largely restricted. It’s worth considering, as we reflect on the last 60 years and look ahead to the next, whether the rules that govern these areas may need to change to ensure that the wild lands held in this system continue to produce the multiplicative benefits that they always have.

These changes may be made with the addition of each new wilderness area; however, it is also entirely likely that a grander vision—one that reimagines the future of all designated wilderness—is necessary to maintain this system for the next 60 years. It has always been the role of the Boone and Crockett Club to facilitate such discussions, and it is perhaps time to continue this tradition on this issue. 

What is a Wilderness?

Today, more than 111 million acres of public land are held in the national Wilderness System in 757 distinct units. These places are each greater than 5,000 acres in size and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Forest Service (FS), the National Park Service (NPS), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

Congress directed these executive agencies to maintain the “wilderness character” of designated wilderness areas. According to the Wilderness Act, wilderness character consists of biophysical environments that are primarily free from modern human manipulation and impact, that these places facilitate personal experiences in natural environments relatively free from the encumbrances and signs of modern society, and that these places inspire human connection with nature.

Further, the Act describes “a wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his 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.”

However, it has become clear that despite our best intentions, some wilderness areas have indeed been trammeled. It is now up to us, as conservation-minded citizens of this country, to decide whether and how the law maintains these places.

21st Century Wilderness

In 2020, the Castle Fire tore through California’s Sierra Nevada range, which is home to some of the largest trees in the world. In the designated wilderness section of Sequoia National Park, many of the park’s iconic giant sequoias—some over 2,000 years old—were nearly entirely consumed. More than 10 percent of the species, which only grow in a few select groves across the Sierra, were lost during this single event.

A park manager stands among giant sequoias killed by the Castle Fire in the Board Camp Grove, Sequoia National Park.
NPS / Anthony Caprio

Land managers, faced with the devastation, proposed an extraordinary intervention: replanting sequoia seedlings using cones collected by a team of tree climbers. The idea is to ensure that future generations of these magnificent trees take root and restore the groves for the long term. But the proposal has sparked controversy, particularly from wilderness advocates. They argue that such efforts violate the very essence of the Wilderness Act, which was designed to keep areas "untrammeled."

These groups see replanting efforts as a slippery slope toward the manipulation of wilderness and fear that allowing such interventions will undermine the integrity of the law itself. However, others suggest that such manipulations are necessary—if not critical—to maintaining the integrity of the ecosystems meant to be served by wilderness protections.

In short, it is becoming clear that the biggest threats to some of our nation’s most treasured ecosystems are no longer those of development—but the threat of doing nothing to help these ecosystems adapt in the face of rapidly changing environmental conditions.

The Wilderness Act’s vision of untouched nature is becoming increasingly hard to reconcile with a world where human impacts are everywhere, even in the most remote areas.

Proponents of active management argue that many wilderness areas are no longer untouched ecosystems, and to leave them without intervention is to passively accept their destruction. Critics of this approach counter that such active management opens a Pandora’s box of manipulation that could lead to further ecological harm. They argue that even well-intentioned interventions like replanting could backfire, disrupting the natural regenerative processes and inadvertently creating a dependency on human involvement. Moreover, they fear that making exceptions to wilderness management principles could lead to more invasive forms of intervention becoming normalized.

Revisiting the Law

As we grapple with these questions, it's worth asking: What would the authors of the Wilderness Act think about today’s challenges? In 1964, our modern public land management challenges were far from the minds of the legislators. Their primary concern was halting the relentless push of development—dams, roads, and cities—that was encroaching on America’s last wild places. In many ways, they succeeded. Millions of acres of public land continue to provide ample wildlife habitat.

The drafters of the Act likely envisioned these protected areas as bastions of resilience in an increasingly industrialized world. Would they support replanting sequoias to increase resilience and buffer against extinction? Would they advocate for fire management in wilderness areas to reduce the risk of catastrophic blazes? Or might they adhere strictly to the principle that wilderness, no matter how damaged, should be left to recover on its own terms?

John P. Saylor, a House Republican from Pennsylvania, was a fan of conservation and environmental causes. He was a Boone and Crockett Club member and a Congressman for over 20 years. Saylor introduced a new and improved Wilderness Act in August 1963 that checked all the boxes for proponents and opponents. 

These are questions that land managers, conservationists, and lawmakers are now grappling with, and the answers are far from clear. What is clear is that the Wilderness Act will need to adapt—if not in its legal framework, then at least in its interpretation and application. While the law’s core tenets of non-intervention and preservation remain crucial, modern problems may force us to rethink what it means to protect wilderness in the 21st century.

Looking to the Future

As we look toward the next 60 years of wilderness, we must seek a balance between purity and pragmatism. Acknowledging that human influence is unavoidable, land managers may opt to adopt strategic interventions without abandoning the wilderness ideal altogether. For instance, some ecologists have proposed using controlled burns and selective thinning to reduce fire risk in vulnerable wilderness areas, while others suggest that planting more resilient plant species could help ecosystems adapt to changing conditions. Others have suggested that allowing recreation managers to maintain trails in wilderness areas using mechanized or motorized equipment would promote efficiency and cut costs. Further, some managers have taken steps to deploy these actions, albeit not without controversy. 

Wilderness areas are open to everyone as long as you're walking or riding a horse. Even bicyles are considered mechanized travel and off limits inside wilderness. 

However, any such actions would need to be undertaken with caution, guided by science, and with full recognition of the political, ecological, and philosophical risks involved. The goal should not be to "manage" wilderness in the traditional sense but to give it the best possible chance to endure in our rapidly evolving world. This approach might include proactive measures like the sequoia replanting project but should always prioritize the long-term health and integrity of the ecosystem over short-term human goals.
As we look to the future of wilderness in America, we stand at a crossroads. The Wilderness Act, one of the most visionary pieces of land conservation legislation in history, has protected vast swaths of land from development. But the challenge is no longer simply about keeping people out—it’s figuring out how to help wilderness survive in an era of ecological disruption.

The debate over local wilderness areas is just the beginning of a broader conversation about the future of wilderness in America. It forces us to confront difficult questions about human responsibility, the limits of intervention, and the evolving definition of what it means to be "wild." It will require bringing people together from across the spectrum of preservation, and conservation, and industry, to ensure natural resource policies in this country do justice by the people, the landscapes, and the wildlife they are meant to serve.
As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, we must also be willing to have these hard conversations, recognizing that the wilderness of tomorrow may look very different from the wilderness of 1964—but no less worthy of thoughtful conservation.

A Professional Member of the Boone and Crockett Club, Charlie Booher is a conservation lobbyist at Watershed Results LLC and holds degrees in wildlife biology, public policy, and natural resource conflict resolution from Michigan State University and the University of Montana.