Wilderness Society

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Wilderness Society

This national conservation organization focuses on protecting national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, seashores, and recreation areas and lands administered by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which total almost one million mi² (2.6 million km²). The Society has played a leading role on many environmental issues in the last half of the century involving public lands, including protecting 84 million acres (34 million ha) of land as wilderness areas since 1964.

The Society was founded in 1935 by naturalist Aldo Leopold and other conservationists, in part to formulate and promote a land ethic , a conviction that land is a precious resource "to be cherished and used wisely as an inheritance." One of the Society's proudest accomplishments was the passage of the landmark Wilderness Act (1964), which recognized for the first time that the nation's wild areas had a value and integrity that was worthy of protection and should remain places where "man is a visitor who does not remain."

The Society has played an important role in other major legislative victories, including passage of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968); the National Trails System Act (1968); the National Forest Management Act (1976); the Omnibus Parks Act (1978); the Alaska National Interest Conservation Land Act (1980); the Land and Water Conservation Fund Reauthorization (1989); and the Tongass Timber Reform Act (1990).

The Society's agenda for the future is to prevent oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ; to double the size of the National Wilderness System by 2015; to eliminate national forest timber sales that lose money for the government; and to expand the number of wild and scenic rivers.

One of the group's major projects is to save the last remaining old-growth forests in the Pacific northwest area of the United States, some 90% or more of which have already been cut. These ancient forests, found in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, harbor some of the world's oldest and largest trees, as well as such endangered species as the northern spotted owl . Some of these trees, such as the western hemlock, Douglas fir, cedar, and Sitka spruce, were alive when the Magna Carta was signed over 700 years ago; some now tower 250 ft (76 m) in the air. These forests are home to over 200 species of wildlife. A single tree can harbor over 100 different species of plants, and a stand of trees can provide habitat for over 1,500 species of invertebrates. The Society is fighting plans by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the logging , often by clear-cutting ,of most of the remaining ancient forest. The Society estimates that these forests are being cut at a rate of 170 acres (69 ha) a day—the equivalent of 129 football fields every 24 hours.

The Wilderness Society stresses professionalism and has a full-time staff of over 130 people, including ecologists, biologists, foresters, resource managers, lawyers, and economists. Its main activities consist of public education on the need to protect public lands; testifying before Congress and meeting with legislators and their staff, as well as with federal agency officials, on issues concerning public lands; mobilizing citizens across the nation on conservation campaigns; and sponsoring workshops, conferences, and seminars on conservation issues. The Society publishes a quarterly magazine, Wilderness, as well as a variety of brochures, fact sheets, press releases, and member alerts warning of impending environmental threats.

[Lewis G. Regenstein ]