The Wilderness Act Turned 60
This article first appeared in our Winter 2024 edition of Wild Works.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, originally passed in 1964. Inspired by this landmark law, Joy Caudill, Dottie Fox and Connie Harvey founded Wilderness Workshop three years later. Since day one, the Wilderness Act has been a critical tool in our toolbox to protect public lands.
The original Wilderness Act designated 70,000 acres in the heart of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area. That might have been the extent of our local wilderness had it not been for countless WW members, activists and donors who joined our founders to more than double this original acreage and designate the five additional wilderness areas ringing the Roaring Fork Valley.
Wilderness represents the gold standard in public land protection. These beloved areas play a crucial role in combating climate change, preserving biodiversity, providing world-class outdoor experiences and maintaining clean watersheds. Increasing pressures from development, recreation and climate change make wilderness more important today than it has ever been. With this imperative in mind, WW is pursuing three strategies to protect more wilderness: creating interim protections, designating new wilderness, and invigorating the wilderness movement.
The Wilderness Pipeline
Protecting a new wilderness area requires an act of Congress – no small feat. When achieving designated wilderness is not immediately feasible, we often work to put in place interim administrative protections. These protections are both intrinsically meaningful and ensure wilderness-quality lands remain eligible for future permanent protection. The community input and engagement with stakeholders needed to achieve interim protections also lay the groundwork for our advocacy to achieve full-fledged wilderness.
On Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, we advocate for the establishment of Wilderness Study Areas (WSA), Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWC), and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). On Forest Service lands, we work to protect Recommended Wilderness, Roadless Areas, and wildlife-friendly designations in Forest Plans. Each of these ‘flavors’ of administrative protections preserves ecological values, elevates conservation values and uses, and limits extractive uses for the benefit of people and wildlife alike.
One of the best recent examples of this ‘pipeline’ work is our advocacy on BLM management plans (see page 7), which now include new ACECs protecting unique ecological and geological lands and an expansion of the Castle Peak WSA in Eagle County, the BLM’s first in over two decades!
Creating New Wilderness
For years, we have been integral in developing and lobbying for the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act. This bill would permanently protect nearly 400,000 acres of spectacular public lands across Colorado. Central to the bill’s conservation benefit are 71,000 acres of new wilderness stretching across the Continental Divide in the Tenmile and Gore Ranges and the high-country surrounding Summit County and through the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado. The years of stakeholder outreach, community input and detailed mapping and policy work created an amazingly broad coalition of stakeholders ranging from ranchers to mountain bikers. The list of supporters includes bi-partisan elected officials at all levels of government. Championed by Senator Bennet and Congressman Neguse, the CORE Act passed the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with bipartisan support last December and has passed the House four times.
Just this past September, Senator Michael Bennet introduced the Gunnison Outdoor Resource Protection Act – aka the GORP Act – in the U.S. Senate. The GORP Act is the largest public lands bill to be introduced in Colorado in over three decades.
The GORP Act’s range of land protections is as diverse as its supporters and includes protection for 122,902 acres of new wilderness as part of the bill’s overall 730,000 acres of land protections.
While centered in Gunnison County, Wilderness Workshop recognized the opportunity presented by the GORP Act to protect additional lands and worked with stakeholders and local governments to build support and draft maps for three new wilderness additions in the Roaring Fork Watershed: Star Peak, Ashcroft, and Treasure Mountain (see the map above).
The Treasure Mountain Addition to the Raggeds Wilderness Area occupies several enormous steep cirques and bowls above the Crystal River and serves as an important wildlife linkage. The Star Peak Wilderness Area borders the Friend’s and Lindley Huts, and offers backcountry hunting in the summer and backcountry skiing in the winter. The Ashcroft Addition fills in an old gap in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness and would protect aspen groves, unique geologic formations and the scenic backdrop to Ashcroft.
When the political stars align, the deep support from a diverse array of supporters means the CORE and GORP Acts will remain at the top of the list of public land bills anywhere in the country.
The GORP Act includes about 730,000 acres of land protections. Above, in purple, are the new wilderness additions we worked hard to get included in the Roaring Fork watershed.
Reinvigorating the Movement
Because designating wilderness is no easy task, we recently co-founded the National Wilderness Coalition (NWC)—a group of over 25 organizations across the country. The coalition works to reinvigorate a diverse and powerful wilderness movement to build power in D.C. with the goal of passing more wilderness bills.
As part of the NWC, this September, WW staff went to D.C. to advocate for wilderness as a key tool for protecting biodiversity and wildlands, helping ecosystems adapt to climate change and reconnecting people with nature. We met with members of Congress and agency staff, gained insights from wilderness movement leaders, and celebrated congressional champions like Colorado’s own Senator Michael Bennet and Representatives Diana DeGette and Joe Neguse.
Alongside its tremendous conservation value, we recognize the Wilderness Act isn’t perfect. The wilderness movement lacks diversity and has failed to meaningfully engage Indigenous tribes, which left out important voices and considerations as wilderness was advocated for and protected. The NWC was formed in part to remedy these problems by including all voices and perspectives in the national wilderness discussion. We can build power and expand the benefit and idea of wilderness for an even more effective and inclusive next 60 years of wilderness advocacy.
In light of the 2024 election, wilderness advocacy is more important than ever. The durability of designated wilderness makes it even more relevant in the face of foreseeable attacks on public lands. Along with our community of advocates, we will continue to protect new wilderness areas and defend those already established.
