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The Wilderness Process
The GMUG’s 2024 revised forest plan includes 22 areas encompassing 67,568 acres as recommended wilderness, including additions to the West Elk, Raggeds, Fossil Ridge, La Garita, Uncompahgre, Mt. Sneffels, and Lizard Head Congressionally designated wilderness areas.
During the plan revision process, the Forest Service must identify lands that may be suitable for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) and determine whether to recommend any areas for wilderness designation. Only Congress can designate areas as wilderness, but plan revision plays an important role in which lands are considered. Per the GMUG’s revised plan, these 22 areas will be managed for their wilderness characteristics in the interim.
The GMUG initiated the four-part Wilderness process in January 2018 and over the following six years completed a wilderness inventory, evaluation, analysis, and final recommendations. Each of the draft and final products and stages of public participation are included below.
Public comments submitted in 2018 for the preliminary inventory and evaluation phases can be found in the Wilderness Reading Room. Comments submitted on the 2021 draft Plan and objections to the 2023 draft Record of Decision pertaining to the Wilderness analysis are available in the main Forest Plan Reading Room.
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Process |
Description |
Helpful Resources |
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Inventory |
This first, very inclusive inventory step identifies a broad sweep of lands that are generally unroaded, relatively undeveloped, and either adjacent to existing wilderness or at least 5,000 acres in size. While the GMUG has a lot of areas that qualify for the Inventory, being included in this initial map does not mean that an area will be managed in any special way. It's the first filter in a series of steps. The initial Inventory was published on January 8th, 2018. Based on your input, 95,000 additional acres were included in the Inventory to be evaluated in the next step. |
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Evaluation |
In the second step, the planning team must evaluate the characteristics of each inventoried area with feedback from the public. Some areas will undoubtedly have low wilderness characteristics, and others will have high wilderness characteristics. Areas with high wilderness characteristics are not necessarily included as recommended wilderness. After incorporating public input on the January 2018 Draft Evaluation Criteria, and then public input on the August 2018 Draft Evaluation Report, the Revised Evaluation Report was published in March 2019. |
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Preliminary Analysis |
For the third stage, the GMUG published a preliminary wilderness analysis in Appendix 6 of Volume II of the Draft EIS. The preliminary analysis identifies 1) areas included as recommended wilderness, and 2) inventoried areas not included in one or more alternatives. Draft recommendations for the Draft Forest Plan alternatives are described in Chapter 2 of Volume I of the Draft EIS. Effects of the management of any areas as recommended as wilderness are also analyzed in Volume I of the Draft EIS. |
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Final Pre-Objections Analysis and Draft Decision Recommendation |
The final pre-objections wilderness analysis is contained in Chapter 3 of the 2023 final EIS, Volume 1, Part II, Designated and Special Areas, Recommended Wilderness (MA 1.2). The final recommendations per alternative are specified in chapter 2 of the same, and the preferred alternative and rationale is outlined in the draft Record of Decision. |
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Final Recommendations in Final Decision |
The June 2024 final Record of Decision includes 67,568 acres of recommended wilderness. The final, post-objections wilderness analysis is contained in Chapter 3 of the 2024 post-objections FEIS, Volume 1, Part II, Designated and Special Areas, Recommended Wilderness (MA 1.2). |