scholarly journals The 1964 Wilderness Act, from “wilderness idea” to governmental oversight and protection of wilderness

Miranda ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Massip
Keyword(s):  
Wilderness Act

The Wilderness Idea

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marybeth Lorbiecki
Keyword(s):  
Rocky Shore ◽  
Aldo Leopold ◽  
Wilderness Act ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Waves ◽  
At Home ◽  
Wilderness Society

It was supposed to be a day of short, easy paddles and portages. But that is before the winds show up, gale force and pummeling wave after wave against us, determined to lock us down on the island. We pull our three canoes laden with children and camping gear along the edges of the rocky shore to try to find an easier launching point. The teens then take steering positions, as we throw our shoulders into our paddles and dig, over, and over into those icy blasts of heavy, strong-armed water. Any lapse sends the canoe back. One slip of weight, and we’ll tip, losing all our gear, and we’ll have to struggle to stay alive against hypothermia, even in August. We’re tired. We’re cold. And we’re swearing against the powers that push at us, testing us. But we’re alive and we know it. We feel it in our bones and spirit like never at home. And we’re so darned grateful to be here. This is the wilderness. No directions came with this country—the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) between Minnesota and Ontario. They could have been so easily lost. In the 1930s and 1940s, Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, and other lovers of the outdoors saw these granite-sheathed lakes for what they were—places of rugged beauty and unspoiled wild communities that once developed could not be recovered. They called a halt to unthinking “progress” for a chance to rest in what was and preserve it for the future. Leopold explained that “Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.” So if Leopold were here, what progress would he note on the wilderness front, where the waves of progress push so hard against the concept? First, he would have admired the persistence of his comrade Howard Zahniser from the Wilderness Society. How “Zahnie” patiently built partnerships over his ten years as secretary of the Society and then persevered for another nine crafting the Wilderness Act. He endured 65 drafts and all the associated lobbying of Congress.

Beyond the Wilderness Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
Michael Frome
Keyword(s):  
Wilderness Act

scholarly journals Black faces, black spaces: Rethinking African American underrepresentation in wildland spaces and outdoor recreation

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janae Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Outdoor Recreation ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Wilderness Management ◽  
Outdoor Spaces ◽  
Wilderness Act ◽  
Wilderness Areas ◽  
Wildlife Refuges ◽  
Diverse Groups

The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness 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”. It goes on to limit acceptable activities in designated wilderness areas to those associated with leisure, scenic viewing, education, and scientific inquiry. These precepts are the basis for federal wilderness management in national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, and lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. They are derived from the interests and values held by the early environmental movement's predominantly white middle and upper class patrons, and imposed on diverse groups who may not hold the same views. This study examined how the imposition of wilderness management at Congaree National Park greatly restricted local African Americans' traditional fishing practices and how fishers made meaning of their displacement. Participants' experience of alienation is a result of their perceptions of racial discrimination in the park's preferential treatment of white visitors. This study argues that African American presence in the Great Outdoors is erased both materially and symbolically by racial bias in the Wilderness Act, a general lack of attention to black outdoor spaces, and the use of white outdoor values and pursuits as the criterion for which to assess African American outdoor ethos.

Wilderness Act: Great Smoky Plan Debated

Science ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 153 (3731) ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
L. J. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Wilderness Act

Biodiversity: Lessons from the U.S. wilderness act

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-214
Author(s):  
R. McGreggor Cawley
Keyword(s):  
Wilderness Act ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Wilderness forever: Howard Zahniser and the path to the Wilderness Act

2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (08) ◽  
pp. 43-4651-43-4651
Keyword(s):  
Wilderness Act
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