Why isn 107 million acres of wilderness enough?
Sounds like a lot of land? That’s less than five percent of the total U.S. land base, and when you factor out Alaskan wilderness, it’s just two percent of the land base of the lower 48 states. Our plan for the 21st century is to see many more acres of federal public land added to the National Wilderness Preservation System. That’s not radical. It’s visionary. Additional Resources • About Wilderness • Wilderness Quotes • Wilderness Act • Managing Wilderness • Wilderness Eonomics • Wilderness Timeline You may have noticed our wilderness areas are getting crowded. Recreation use of wilderness has increased more than six-fold since the passage of the Wilderness Act, according to an article in the International Journal of Wilderness. And, as our population continues to expand, wilderness will get more use. But recreation use is not the only, or necessarily the best, reason to protect Wilderness. Wilderness protection preserves our options for the future, by protecting wildlife habitat and e
