Bitterroot Range, Montana
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
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National Landscape Conservation System

Wilderness Areas

The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for 182 Wilderness Areas with 7.4 million acres in 10 Western States (4 percent of BLM's total acreage in the coterminous United States). Wilderness areas are special places where the earth and its community of life are essentially undisturbed. They retain a primeval character, without permanent improvements and generally appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature.
 
In 1964, Congress established the National Wilderness Preservation System and designated the first Wilderness Areas in passing the Wilderness Act. The uniquely American idea of wilderness has become an increasingly significant tool to ensure long-term protection of natural landscapes. Wilderness protects the habitat of numerous wildlife species and serves as a biodiversity bank for many species of plants and animals. Wilderness is also a source of clean water. It has long been used for science and education as well as for higher education purposes, providing sites for field trips, study areas for student research, and serving as a source of instructional examples. Recreation is another obvious appeal of wilderness, and wilderness areas are seeing steadily increasing use from people who wish to experience freedom from the Nation’s fast-paced industrialized society.

Wilderness

Wilderness Study Areas

The Bureau of Land Management manages more than 600 Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) containing nearly 14.1 million acres located in the Western States and Alaska. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 directed the Bureau to inventory and study its roadless areas for wilderness characteristics. To be designated as a Wilderness Study Area, an area had to have the following characteristics:

  • Size - roadless areas of at least 5,000 acres of public lands or of a manageable size;
  • Naturalness - generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces
    of nature;
  • Opportunities - provides outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and
    unconfined types of recreation.

In addition, Wilderness Study Areas often have special qualities such as ecological, geological, educational, historical, scientific and scenic values.

The congressionally directed inventory and study of BLM's roadless areas received extensive public input and participation. By November 1980, the BLM had completed field inventories and designated about 25 million acres of WSAs. Since 1980, Congress has reviewed some of these areas and has designated some as wilderness and released others for non-wilderness uses. Until Congress makes a final determination on a WSA, the BLM manages these areas to preserve their suitability for designation as wilderness.

   
Last updated: 09-03-2008