National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wilderness Lost
About this episode
The episode discusses the risks to wilderness areas in the U.S. and the slow legislative process for their protection.
Across the United States, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, there are about 112 million acres of officially designated wilderness. That amounts to about 5 percent of the country's land mass. It might appear to be even smaller when you consider that more than half of those 112 million acres protected as wilderness are in Alaska. To say that wilderness is at risk from the human imprint isn't hyperbole. While there are millions of acres of proposed, recommended, and potential wilderness across the country, Congress acts extremely slowly on these matters. Indeed, it was back in 1989 when America's Red Rock Wilderness Act was first proposed in Congress to protect 8 million acres in Utah as official wilderness. The clock continues to tick on that proposal. Without official designation as wilderness, lands can be impacted by motorized and mechanized activities, from logging and mining and energy development to off-road-vehicle recreation. But the threats to both unofficial and official wilderness might be growing, as the Trump administration has called for a review of wilderness management on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and even the…
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