Wildlands
Big Wild Action Report #4, July 2005
with permission from Big Wild Advocates
As the new century unfolds, America faces a profound opportunity to be seized or lost, depending upon the collective size and generosity of our hearts; the last chance to save and restore a significant chunk of the dwindling American wilderness. The opportunity of the ages, it's fraught with dangers from foes who respond only to the promise of profits and to the perpetuation of empires. Since Congress enacted the 1964 Wilderness Act, creating a National Wilderness Preservation System, conservationists have worked to protect as designated Wilderness undeveloped public wildlands--generally known as Roadless Areas. National forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administered lands all include millions of acres of roadless areas that should be designated Wilderness by Congress. In many cases, these wildlands are under attack like never before. When Congress designates a public wildland as a Wilderness Area, it is generally protected from industrial development as a natural wild landscape. Roadbuilding, logging, resort development, new mining entry, new livestock allotments and motor vehicles are all outlawed in designated Wilderness. Today, attacks upon the wilderness concept reverberate. Bureaucrats create euphemisms such as "ecosystem management," "forest health," and other buzzwords designed to convince the gullible that roadless areas and related wildlands need more intensive management, not less. . . . NOW IS THE TIME FOR WILDLAND CONSERVATION TO RENEW AND REDOUBLE ITS COMMITMENT TO WILDERNESS! The America first experienced by Europeans was a teeming wilderness with an unbelievable profusion of life. Over sixty-million bison ... a couple hundred thousand griz ... giant elk herds across the plains and from coast to coast ... billions of passenger pigeons blackening the eastern sky ... billions of spawning salmon ... unbroken virgin forests and unplowed prairies ... living flood plains and deltas nourished by rich silt-laden floodwaters .... So great was the pre-Colombian American wilderness that folks today can only imagine the magic squandered in just a few generations. Yet relative to Europe and many other areas, America is lucky. Though depleted, a vestige of wilderness remains, harboring some of the magic, and containing the genetic seeds of a potentially wilder, healthier tomorrow. According to many of the world's foremost scientists, any effective strategy to maintain wild native life on Earth must include as a basic fundament saving unprotected roadless areas and restoring big wilderness.
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