Orphaned Park Wilderness - Home

The Unfinished Wilderness Agenda of the National Park System
National park wilderness contains some of the most magnificent wild land in our nation or, for that matter, the world. NPS administers more wilderness than any other federal land-managing agency. The 44 million acres of designated park wilderness comprise more than half of all the lands within our park system and more than 40% of all federal lands within the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Despite this superlative profile, the Park Service has turned its back on its wilderness. The agency has failed to forward wilderness recommendations to the President, conduct legally-mandated wilderness assessments, prepare wilderness management plans, revise legally-insufficient wilderness assessments or take a myriad of other steps necessary to protect wilderness resources.

In an effort to return NPS wilderness to the gold standard for wilderness in America, PEER is launching a three-pronged campaign designed to –

1. Resuscitate Abandoned Wilderness Designations. The process of securing statutory protection for an enduring resource of park wilderness has stopped dead in its tracks. All told, long-pending or stalled wilderness proposals would increase park wilderness land by more than half, putting at least an additional 26 million acres under wilderness protection.

Look at the Ten Steps for Rescuing Orphaned Park Wilderness for the specific actions required to reverse all these abdications of wilderness stewardship.

2. Protect Existing Wilderness. Guided by employees on the scene, PEER is stepping up its interventions to halt wilderness violations committed or condoned by NPS managers. See the Protecting the Backcountry section.

3. Get the Big Picture. At present NPS devotes only two people full time to managing the national wilderness program. This is the least of any federal agency, even though NPS administers more wilderness acres than any other agency. In the 1970’s, NPS had an entire office devoted to wilderness. Consequently, NPS lacks a comprehensive overview of its wilderness needs. In its place, inertia and internal obstruction now constitute the agency wilderness posture.

There is new leadership at both NPS and its parent agency, the Interior Department, whom we hope to induce to go beyond the bare legal necessities – beyond what must be done to what should be done. Take Action by urging Interior Secretary Kempthorne to implement his wilderness responsibilities.