Wilderness Act
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| Long title | An Act to establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the permanent good of the whole people, and for other purposes. |
|---|---|
| Nicknames | Wilderness Act of 1964 |
| Enacted by | the 88th United States Congress |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 88–577 |
| Statutes at Large | 78 Stat. 890 |
| Codification | |
| Titles amended | 16 U.S.C.: Conservation |
| U.S.C. sections created | 16 U.S.C. ch. 23 § 1131 et seq. |
| Legislative history | |
The Wilderness Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–577) was written by Howard Zahniser of The Wilderness Society. It created the legal definition of wilderness in the United States, and protected 9.1 million acres (36,000 km²) of federal land. The result of a long effort to protect federal wilderness and to create a formal mechanism for designating wilderness, the Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964 after over sixty drafts and eight years of work.
The Wilderness Act is well known for its succinct and poetic definition of wilderness:
“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized 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.”
When Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964, it created the National Wilderness Preservation System. The initial statutory wilderness areas, designated in the Act, comprised 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²) of national forest wilderness areas in the United States of America previously protected by administrative orders. The current amount of areas designated by the NWPS as wilderness totals 757 areas encompassing 109.5 million acres of federally owned land in 44 states and Puerto Rico (5% of the land in the United States).
Today, the Wilderness System comprises over 109 million acres (443,000 km²) involving federal lands administered by four agencies:
Wilderness Act land is chosen from existing federal land and by determining which areas are considered to have the following criteria:
Additionally, areas considered as Wilderness should have no enterprises within them or any motorized travel (e.g.; vehicles, motorcycles).
When Congress designates each wilderness area, it includes a very specific boundary line—in statutory law. Once a wilderness area has been added to the system, its protection and boundary can only be altered by another act of Congress.
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