It’s a pleasure to be here to help celebrate this historic occasion.
Wilderness has been a big part of my life, both personally and professionally. One of the hats I have worn during my career was as director of the Forest Service’s national Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers program. Before becoming Associate Chief, I served as Regional Forester in the Pacific Northwest, where we managed almost 4.7 million acres of wilderness on the national forests. That’s an area about three times the size of Delaware.
This part of the country has an especially rich natural and cultural heritage. In fact, the Southern Appalachians are one of the most biologically diverse regions in the temperate world. Nearly 10,000 species are already known to exist here! Some are found here and nowhere else.
That’s one reason why we need wilderness areas in the Southern Appalachians—to protect this region’s rich natural and cultural heritage. I am proud to have been part of that in my career at the Forest Service, not only here in this region, but across the United States.
The Forest Service was founded in 1905, not long after the closing of the western frontier. Americans were growing more aware that our natural resources were limited—and that we were losing them. That’s partly why the first protected areas were set aside—the first national parks … the first wildlife refuges … and the first forest reserves, which later became the national forests.
The wildness of the American frontier was part of what we were protecting on the national forests. The young foresters who went to work for the Forest Service more than a century ago were keen on wilderness values. One of them was Aldo Leopold. In 1909, the young Aldo Leopold could still rejoice in experiencing, as he put it, “wild country to be in,” where “there were grizzlies in every major mountain mass.”
But Leopold saw the wildness vanishing before his eyes. The “blank spots on the map,” as he called them, were disappearing, even on the national forests. Leopold worked tirelessly to save one of the last remaining blank spots: the Gila River headwaters in New Mexico. His efforts paid off. In 1924, the Forest Service established the first wilderness area anywhere in the world, the Gila Wilderness on the Gila National Forest. This year, the Gila Wilderness is celebrating its 90th anniversary!
Leopold collaborated with Arthur Carhart, the Forest Service’s first landscape architect. In 1926, partly thanks to Carhart, another area was designated for special protection. Today, we know it as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on the Superior National Forest in Minnesota.
By the 1930s, the wilderness movement was thriving. But Forest Service regulations for wilderness areas remained relatively weak until 1939. That’s when Bob Marshall—yet another Forest Service employee—drafted much tougher regulations for protecting wilderness areas. Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold helped found the Wilderness Society.
By 1964, the Forest Service had set aside more than 14 million acres of wilderness areas, wild areas, and primitive areas. But there was something missing: a common standard of wilderness management. Also, because wilderness designations received only administrative protections, they could be reversed. Wilderness was far from secure.
In 1964, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, providing permanent protection for wilderness areas. The Wilderness Act says in a few eloquent words what wilderness is: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, Arthur Carhart, the drafters of the Wilderness Act—we are privileged today to enjoy the benefits of their foresight. Through the National Wilderness Preservation System, we built an interagency framework for wilderness management. Since 1964, the National Wilderness Preservation System has grown from 9 million acres to 110 million acres, an area larger than California.
Today, we have 792 wilderness areas in 44 states and Puerto Rico, ranging from the 6-acre Pelican Island Wilderness in northern Florida to the 9-million-acre Wrangell‒St. Elias Wilderness in Alaska. In Tennessee alone, we have 11 of these special places.
Americans value these special places for everything they get from them—clean air, clean water, and opportunities to get outdoors in truly natural settings. They also value wilderness for its biodiversity and wildlife habitat … for as a research baseline of truly healthy landscapes … and for its legacy value, part of what we are leaving for future generations.
Tonight, as we celebrate 50 years of wilderness, we are looking to the future. The future of wilderness lies in the hands of the citizens who care about them. Many of these citizens are Forest Service employees or other wilderness managers.
Many more are from our partners—from groups like Wild South … the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards … the Wilderness Society … the Sierra Club … the Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning … the Smokey Mountain Hiking Club … the Tennessee Wild Coalition the East Tennessee History Center … Cherokee Forest Voices and many more. Our partners help us put “boots on the ground” in protecting wilderness and in engaging the next generation in wilderness stewardship.
Wilderness faces special challenges, some of them involving visitor use, others involving invasive species, others involving competing land uses, still others involving climate change. The key to meeting the challenges is strong partnerships. Fortunately, we have many outstanding partners, who are well represented here tonight.
The future of wilderness belongs to you. America’s wilderness legacy is yours because our public lands belong to you. Ultimately, they are your birthright and your responsibility, the responsibility of every American to protect and preserve for future generations.
I am confident that you will continue to work with us, in the best tradition of those who came before … leaders and visionaries like Aldo Leopold, like the framers of the Wilderness Act ... I am confident that you will preserve our nation’s wilderness heritage, for the benefit of generations to come.