Wilderness Act passed (1964)

President Lyndon B. Johnson held a White House Rose Garden ceremony on September 3, 1964, signing into law the Wilderness Act.  The Wilderness Act created the system that legally preserves our wildest lands from development of any kind.

Various kinds of “wilderness” areas had been created during the first half of the 20th Century, but they were a random assortment of lands embedded in the administrative structures of other federal land management agencies.  The Wilderness Society, led by its long-time Executive Director, Howard Zahniser, thought that something more organized and permanent was needed.  Zahniser said, “Let us be done with a wilderness preservation program made up of a sequence of overlapping emergencies, threats, and defense campaigns.” Instead, in 1956, Zahniser drafted a bill that would define, designate and protect wilderness areas in a formal and systematic way.

His original bill went nowhere, but Zahniser was not to be defeated.  Over the next eight years, he wrote 66 drafts of the bill and guided its journey through 18 congressional hearings.  By 1964, the bill was getting close to passage.  The Senate had passed the bill during several previous years, but it always died in the House of Representatives.  There, powerful lobbies for logging, grazing and mining interests always fought against the bill, fearing the permanent loss of access to vast areas of federal lands.  Finally, to secure support, the bill was re-written to allow grazing and prospecting in wilderness (those allowances have since been eliminated).  The bill passed the Senate 73 to 12 and the House 373 to 1.  At the signing of the law, President Johnson said the following:

“This is a very happy and historic occasion for all who love the great American outdoors, and that, needless to say, includes me. The two bills that I am signing this morning are in the highest tradition of our heritage as conservators as well as users of America’s bountiful natural endowments….In this century, Americans have wisely and have courageously kept a faithful trust to the conservation of our natural resources and beauty…. So it is with a great deal of pride and pleasure and hope for the future that we enact into law today by signing these bills some of the most far-reaching conservation measures that a farsighted nation has ever coped with.”

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Wilderness Act in the White House Rose Garden, September 3, 1964.

(The other conservation bill signed by President Johnson that day was the Land and Water Conservation Fund bill).

The Wilderness Act accomplished several things.  First, it defined wilderness 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.”  The definition included details about the kinds of lands that can be designated as wilderness (size, level of previous modification and others). Second, it created the National Wilderness Preservation System to coordinate the oversight of wilderness areas that lie within the four main land management agencies of the U.S. government.  Third, it immediately placed 9.1 million acres into “wilderness” designation and ordered the study of many more areas to be included.

Saint Mary’s Wilderness, Virginia (photo by Antepenultimate)

Today, the United States has about 110 million acres of designated federal wilderness, distributed over 700 individual sites.  Most wilderness lies within the National Park Service (44 million acres), followed by the Forest Service (36 million acres), the Fish and Wildlife Service (21 million acres) and the Bureau of Land Management (9 million acres).  All but six states have some land in designated wilderness areas.  President Obama signed a law in 2009 that added 2 million acres to the wilderness system, but no further additions have occurred since then.

References:

Geiling, Natasha.  How the Wilderness Act Was Passed.  Smithsonian.com.  Available at:  https://wilderness.smithsonian.com/history/.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

Johnson, Lyndon B.  1964.  Remarks Upon Signing the Wilderness Bill and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Bill.”  September 3, 1964.  Available at:  http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26481.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

The Wilderness Society.  Wilderness Act.  Available at:  http://wilderness.org/article/wilderness-act.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

Wilderness Connect.  The Wilderness Act of 1964.  Available at:  http://www.wilderness.net/nwps/legisact.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

Wilderness Watch.  The National Wilderness Preservation System.  Available at:  https://wildernesswatch.org/the-national-wilderness-preservation-system.  Accessed September 1, 2017.

This Month in Conservation

January 1
NEPA Enacted (1970)
January 2
Bob Marshall Born (1901)
January 3
Canaveral National Seashore Created (1975)
January 4
The Real James Bond Born (1900)
January 5
National Bird Day
January 6
Wild Kingdom First Airs (1963)
January 7
Gerald Durrell Born (1925)
January 7
Albert Bierstadt, American landscape painter, born (1830)
January 8
Alfred Russel Wallace Born (1823)
January 9
Muir Woods National Monument Created (1908)
January 10
National Houseplant Appreciation Day
January 11
Aldo Leopold Born (1887)
January 12
National Trust of England Established (1895)
January 13
MaVynee Betsch, the Beach Lady, Born (1935)
January 14
Martin Holdgate, British Conservationist, Born (1931)
January 15
British Museum Opened (1759)
January 16
Dian Fossey Born (1932)
January 17
Benjamin Franklin, America’s First Environmentalist, Born (1706)
January 18
White Sands National Monument Created (1933)
January 19
Yul Choi, Korean Environmentalist, Born (1949)
January 19
Acadia National Park Established (1929)
January 20
Penguin Appreciation Day
January 21
The Wilderness Society Founded (1935)
January 22
Iraq Sabotages Kuwaiti Oil Fields (1991)
January 23
Sweden Bans CFCs in Aerosols (1978)
January 24
Baden-Powell Publishes “Scouting for Boys” (1908)
January 25
Badlands National Park Established (1939)
January 26
Benjamin Franklin Disses the Bald Eagle (1784)
January 27
National Geographic Society Incorporated (1888)
January 28
Bermuda Petrel, Thought Extinct for 300 Years, Re-discovered (1951)
January 29
Edward Abbey, author of “Desert Solitaire,” Born (1927)
January 30
England Claims Antarctica (1820)
January 31
Stewart Udall, Secretary of Interior, Born (1920)
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