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EcoWild Program
Additional Info:
Working Group |
Criteria for Ecological Wilderness
An Ecological Approach to the Selection, Design, Prioritization,
Management, and Restoration of Wilderness Areas
Introduction
The Rewilding Institute’s EcoWild Program brings wilderness
conservationists together with conservation biologists to develop
and promote guidelines for Wilderness Area selection, design, and
management based on research from conservation biology.
The National Wilderness Preservation System established in the
United States by the 1964 Wilderness Act is the highest level of
protection for federal lands. Over 106 million acres in more than
600 areas are protected as Wilderness Areas on National Forests,
National Park System units, National Wildlife Refuges, and Bureau of
Land Management lands in over 40 states. Wilderness Areas are
protected from road building, motorized and mechanized vehicles and
equipment, commercial logging, and other activities destructive to
the wild. They are open to a wide variety of recreational uses,
including hiking, canoeing, camping, nature study, hunting, and
fishing.
Wilderness Areas also protect wild Nature—“self-willed land” or
self-regulating ecosystems. The Wilderness Act describes Wilderness
Areas as “areas where the land and its community of life are
untrammeled by man.” However, in a practical way, recreational and
aesthetic values have predominated in the selection and design of
Wilderness Areas.
In 1980, Michael Soulè and Bruce Wilcox recognized that protected
areas were the most important tool for conservation. The new science
of conservation biology, which they helped launch, charged itself
with developing the principles and practices to make protected
areas, including Wilderness Areas, more effective in protecting all
of biological diversity and helping to stop the extinction crisis.
Guidelines for Protected Area
Design
 All
else being equal:
A. A single large protected area is better than a single small
protected area.
B. A single large protected area is better than several small
protected areas of the same total acreage.
C. The presence of large native carnivores is better than their
absence.
D. Intact habitat is better than artificially fragmented and
disturbed habitat.
E. Connected protected areas are better than separated protected
areas.
Michael Soulè, APA Journal, Summer 1991
Ecological Guidelines for
Wilderness Area Design
Rounded Wilderness Area boundaries are best because they minimize
edge effects, provide more interior core area for sensitive species,
and if left undisturbed can act as bulwarks against the invasion of
exotic species.
It is better to bring separated Wilderness Area boundaries down
to the dividing road; even better is to close the road and make one
contiguous Wilderness Area.
Cherrystem roads and developments effectively reduce the size of
interior habitat in Wilderness Areas. It is better to keep them as
short as possible; best to eliminate them.
It is best to connect nearby Wilderness Areas with wildlife
movement linkages than to leave them isolated.
A major project for The Rewilding Institute is to develop
science-based, practical guidelines for the selection, design,
prioritization, management, and restoration of Wilderness Areas in
the United States--and comparable areas elsewhere--so that they
better protect the diversity of life. A working group of Rewilding
Institute fellows, including conservation biologists and leaders in
citizen groups such as the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Arizona
Wilderness Coalition, and
The Wilderness Society’s Wilderness Support Center, are preparing
such guidelines. They are also working on a strategy to promote the
guidelines to conservation groups and government land-managing
agencies. As these guidelines are developed, they will be showcased
on this site.
Dave Foreman’s new book, Rewilding
North America, discusses an ecological approach to Wilderness
Areas in depth.
Click Here to see The Rewilding
Institute Criteria for Ecological Wilderness
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