Wilderness, Explained
Wilderness is the most iconic type of public land out there, but it also has the most rules. We break down all that you need to know.
Updated:
Mar 31, 2025Table of contents
History of Wilderness
In the middle of the 20th Century, the United States entered a new era of environmental awakening. Understanding why requires zooming back in time. As the country entered an era of prosperity following World War I, some began to see that that affluence came at a cost. A group of passionate outdoorsmen—including names still familiar today like conservationists Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall—founded The Wilderness Society. They saw the toll that industries like mining and logging were taking on the natural world and the immense value in the high, jagged, sublime wild places that hadn’t yet been paved or civilized.
The Wilderness Society began to advocate for wild places, but as the years marched on, we kept on developing highways and dams. Cars proliferated and suburbs sprouted like tracts of wooden wildflowers. Still, The Wilderness Society and other concerned groups of outdoorspeople kept advocating for protections for the places they saw as in dire need of protection. By the 1950s, a northeasterner by the name of Howard Zahniser was at the helm of the organization. “We have a profound, a fundamental need for areas of wilderness,” he wrote. “This need is for areas of the earth within which we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment—areas of wild nature in which we sense ourselves to be, what in fact I believe we are, dependent members of an interdependent community of living creatures that together derive their existence from the Sun.” In 1956, he drafted the very first version of the Wilderness Act.
The years-long battle that ensued was intense. Industries like logging and mining, along with the communities who relied on them for jobs were convinced that protecting the environment would restrict opportunities for economic development. Others worried that creating large protected areas represented excessive government intervention that took away authority from individual states. But Zahniser threw himself into the cause. He had a tailor custom-make a massive trench coat with oversized pockets in which he could keep all the books, wilderness leaflets, and other information he needed to sell the idea of a national system of wilderness protected from undue human influence. He campaigned hard; he barely slept and his health declined.
Finally, After eight years of Congressional arguing and 66 rewrites, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law in 1964. The act represented a pivotal moment in America’s history: The act set into place the legal infrastructure to protect the most remote, undeveloped, and wild areas in the country. In roughly the decade that followed, the environmental awakening that produced the act burgeoned. Nearly all of the country’s landmark environmental laws were passed, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Initially, the Wilderness Act established only a little more than nine million acres of wilderness across the country. Under the new law, wilderness areas would be managed far differently than any of America’s other existing kinds of public land. In fact, it’s worth quoting the law at length here:
Today, about 14 percent of all federal public land in the U.S. is designated as wilderness, bringing the total to more than 111 million acres. Four agencies manage these wilderness areas: The National Park Service (40%), the U.S. Forest Service (33%), the Fish and Wildlife Service (19%), and the Bureau of Land Management (~9%). Collectively, these agencies oversee more than 800 individual wilderness areas across 44 states.
What Makes Wilderness Different Than Other Public Land?
Wilderness has the strongest protections of any land type. If you ask any passerby on the street what type of public land is the wildest and most protected, they’d likely say, “national parks.” However, compared to wilderness areas, national parks are in lots of ways quite tame. There are roads meant to guide visitors to carefully curated experiences. Old Faithful is a short walk from the parking lot. There are often traffic jams at the bottom of El Cap.
In wilderness, there are trails and primitive campsites, but that’s about it. We dive more into the do’s and don’t’s below, but in general, it’s fair to think of wilderness like this: If you want to go somewhere, you have to do so on foot or on horse. There are trails, but lots of the most idyllic destinations require careful navigation, route-finding, and sometimes off-trail shenanigans. With limited exceptions, industries like logging and grazing depend on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management land outside of wilderness to persist.
Wilderness, in short, demands hard work. It is majestic, beautiful, humbling, and sometimes frightening. So how is wilderness defined? Typical of government, there’s a very precise, bureaucratic definition. Wilderness must have “wilderness character.” That sounds like something you can feel more than carefully define, but the Wilderness Act did its darndest to give it precision.
First, wilderness must be “untrammeled.” According to the Wilderness Act, “A wilderness… is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and who does not remain.” But what does that mean? The “untrammeled” requirement has sparked countless arguments and controversies over what kind and how much human impact is allowed in wilderness. For instance, the law allows hiking, but what about chemically treating an invasive weed that’s spreading in a wilderness area? Or managing a wildfire burning at a wilderness boundary? Or planting endemic whitebark pine trees crucial to the ecosystem, but genetically modifying them to resist blister rust, a disease that’s ravaging conifer populations all over the Northern Rockies? If there’s a lesson in these land management conundrums it’s that human influence rarely respects the boundaries we’ve created for it.
The second quality of wilderness character is “natural,” a term just as sticky and subjective as “untrammeled.” According to the Wilderness Act, a wilderness area should retain its “primeval character and influence” and be a place where “the imprint of man’s work is substantially unnoticeable.” Managing agencies generally interpret this to mean that wilderness ecosystems should be largely free from the effects of modern civilization. This means no fast food joints, no buildings, and no roads of any kind. Still, in practice, this standard can be tricky to uphold. What about re-seeding trees after a wildfire? Or culling populations of non-native fish to re-establish dwindling native populations? Both of these actions can inspire heated debates among policymakers and the public, revealing how complicated our notions of wilderness really are.
A third quality of wilderness is “undeveloped.” This is perhaps the most straightforward quality to define, stipulating that a wilderness area should be free from modern human occupation and without developments such as roads or structures. Fourth, according to the law, wilderness must provide opportunities for solitude and unconfined recreation. It goes without saying that these two mandates can sometimes conflict with one another, particularly as more and more recreationists flock to wilderness areas. Finally, the Wilderness Act’s fifth criteria is a catch-all category of “other features,” including things such as special geologic areas, opportunities for education or science, or other unique traits an individual wilderness area might possess. This is where agencies can get creative and tailor management plans to the needs of specific areas.
Ultimately, these characteristics helped lawmakers carve out more than 100 million acres of wilderness all over the country. These landscapes are among the most spectacular in the country. They range from the grizzly-laden peaks of Montana’s Bob Marshall to Washington’s spectacular Alpine Lakes to the marsh and swampland of Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness Area. No two are exactly alike save for the characteristics above, and all face different challenges managing both use and changing ecosystems.
Wilderness Do’s and Don’ts
Maintaining the character of wilderness areas means certain activities aren’t allowed. But don’t worry, you’ll still find plenty to do—hiking and camping, for instance, are among the most popular activities. Many wilderness areas have at least some developed trails for recreation, but the majority of these areas are only accessible off-trail. Some wilderness areas have designated campsites, but these are primitive at best, so don’t expect RV hookups or fancy bathrooms.
For the artistically inclined, wilderness areas are inspiring places to paint, write, and practice photography. And for those who prefer a faster pace, trail running is an increasingly popular way for visitors to enjoy the wilderness. Rock climbing is also allowed in wilderness areas, and was recently protected thanks to the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act, which Congress passed in December 2024.
Horses and other pack animals such as mules or goats are allowed in wilderness areas, and because these areas are often vast and have limited access, packing is a great way to cover more ground and reach parts of the wilderness that are furthest from roads or trailheads. Just remember: Avoid grazing your animals in sensitive, high-elevation vegetation, and make sure that any feed packed into the wilderness is certified weed-free to prevent the spread of invasive plants.
Hunting and fishing are also permitted in wilderness areas. As usual, it's important to check the policies and regulations for the specific wilderness, which are set by the state, not the federal agencies who manage the wilderness area. The use of game carts, trail cameras, and drones is not allowed in the wilderness. Other types of foraging, such as picking huckleberries or mushrooms, are also at the discretion of individual wilderness areas and agencies.
While there are many activities allowed within wilderness areas, there are some notable exclusions. Perhaps most controversial in the eyes of recreationists is the rule against any form of mechanized transport, which includes mountain bikes, which we’ll delve into further later in this piece.
Also on the prohibited list in wilderness are motorboats, road-building of any kind, the use of drones, competitive events such as running races, landing an aircraft, and building permanent or temporary structures. Despite this somewhat lengthy list, there are exceptions to many of these rules. For example, many areas were designated as wilderness after permanent structures had already been built. In some cases these structures are preserved as historical or cultural resources within a wilderness; in others, they are privately owned inholdings that can be found within a surrounding wilderness. There is a special provision within the Wilderness Act allowing grazing in wilderness areas. Special-use permits for commercial enterprises, such as guiding and hunting outfitting, are also issued by individual agencies.
Creating New Wilderness Areas
There are more than 100 million acres of wilderness across the country, but how do we add more land to the system? On paper, creating new wilderness areas seems relatively straightforward, but the reality is anything but. There are four steps to the procedure: Recommendation, congressional action, presidential signature, and designation. Anyone from individual citizens to federal land management agencies can recommend an area for wilderness designation, but before Congress takes action to pass legislation, these areas are classified as Proposed/Recommended Wilderness, or as Wilderness Study Areas.
Lands that are labeled as Proposed or Recommended Wilderness are places that have been identified as desirable for wilderness designation. For example, the Scotchman Peaks roadless area, which runs along the Montana/Idaho border, includes a roughly 64,000-acre tract of public land managed by the Idaho Panhandle and Kootenai National Forest that’s been recommended as wilderness since 1987. That recommendation has been highly contested. Opponents, such as members of the Facebook Group “Keep Scotchman Peak Open to the Public,” worry that a wilderness designation would increase restrictions on the area for the public. In 2018, residents of nearby Bonner County voted against a non-binding advisory proposal to classify 13,000 acres of Scotchman Peaks as federal wilderness. While this vote didn’t change how the Forest Service manages the land, it was a strong signal of public opposition and has effectively left the area’s wilderness designation in limbo.
A Wilderness Study Area differs slightly from Proposed or Recommended Wilderness. These are places that Congress has assigned for further study but are managed in the same way as federally designated wilderness. These classifications can be controversial. Take Montana’s Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area, a 155,000-acre swathe of land adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. Recently, a coalition of local conservation groups, individuals, and users like mountain bikers introduced a proposal known as the Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act that would give the land stronger protections. The act would designate 124,000 acres of the area as wilderness, but opponents argue that those protections aren’t strong enough and that it leaves tens of thousands of acres of the original Wilderness Study Area open to mechanized transportation like off-roading and mountain biking.
New wilderness designations have tapered off substantially since the Wilderness Act passed. Much of the county’s large, intact landscapes have either already been protected or else been developed enough to make them ineligible for wilderness protections. And with an increasingly polarized Congress, new wilderness designations are even harder to pass, since protections at that level almost always come at the expense of at least some industry and economic development. Still, new wilderness does occasionally make it through the legislative cycle. In 2023, more than 100,000 acres in Churchill County, Nevada were designated as wilderness, hidden in the weeds of a massive National Defense Reauthorization Act.
Increased Use: A Central Challenge to Wilderness Management
Pressure on all types of public land is increasing as demand for outdoor recreation continues to grow. In 2022, more than half of the U.S. population participated in outdoor recreation—a record 168.1 million people. A survey from the U.S. Forest Service estimated that visits to wilderness areas managed by the agency were just shy of 13 million in 2022, up from 9 million pre-pandemic. While this is not inherently a bad thing, increased visitation to wilderness areas puts more strain on the landscape through impacts like trail erosion, increased waste and trash, and negative effects on wildlife. For land managers, this poses yet another challenge: How to maintain the wilderness characteristics of an area where more and more people are visiting.
Not only is traffic in wilderness areas increasing, but the “typical” wilderness visit is changing, too. Visitors now spend less time on average per trip in the wilderness. For instance, previously an overnight backpacking trip was the most common type of wilderness visit, whereas today it’s a day trip. In response to these changes, land management agencies are facing difficult decisions about how best to balance their mandate of maintaining a wilderness area's “primeval character,” while also providing opportunities for “primitive and unconfined recreation.” Often this comes down to a choice between restricting access through some kind of permit system or dealing with the environmental degradation that accompanies increasing use. Neither option is particularly ideal.
Permit systems have quickly become the most common solution to this conundrum. In 2023, according to the Forest Service, the agency managed 35 wilderness areas in which some type of permit was required. These included permits for overnight use, boats, and climbing, as well as self-issue permits for day use. The U.S. Forest Service manages more than 36 million acres of wilderness, broken into 448 individual areas. While camping permits in popular wilderness areas have become fairly standard for rationing access, limiting daytime access through permits is much less common. But that may be changing.
Take, for example, the Central Cascades Wilderness areas in Oregon. In response to skyrocketing visitor numbers, the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests implemented a requirement for limited day-use permits at 19 of the 79 trailheads in the region, available through Recreation.gov. Other well-loved wilderness areas are starting to follow suit. In October of 2023, the Uncompahgre National Forest in Colorado unveiled a plan to begin requiring permits in 2025 for hikers visiting the popular Blue Lakes, located in the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness Area.
While wilderness managers are moving to restrict visitation in some areas, at the same time, we’re seeing a growing movement to make the wilderness accessible to more diverse types of people—a trend we’re also seeing in outdoor recreation. Lauren Redmore, a social scientist at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, calls this the “overuse diversity paradox.” On the one hand, there’s a push to enable and support visitors who are less likely to have had these types of wilderness experiences, including women and ethnic minorities. On the other hand, there’s a need to prevent places like the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness Area from being “loved to death.” Expanding access and making wilderness areas more welcoming and inclusive is important. So too is stewarding the land in such a way that everyone can continue to enjoy the “wilderness experience.” As Redmore points out, there is no win-win solution when it comes to resolving this paradox.
What is the Future of Wilderness?
Wilderness is changing along with our ecosystems. So are our ideas around wilderness. These changes require reconciling our collective histories around these lands, and our present role.
One important example of our changing conception of wilderness requires rewinding back to the very idea of wilderness in the first place. This so-called "untrammelled land, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” is an idea that marginalizes and sidelines the Indigenous history of so many areas we call wilderness, many argue. Archeological and scientific records show that many of these landscapes were never devoid of human presence. Rather, Indigenous people shaped ecosystems and landscapes for millennia. The land they depended on was violently, forcibly separated from them.
Ideas are shifting about the role of humans in wilderness. To what extent can we truly exclude human impact in an era of climate change and pollution that doesn’t stop at land boundaries? “Untramelled,” to many, is taking on new meaning. It’s a contested idea that is beginning to shift. Indigenous peoples are reclaiming history, ceremony, and spirituality on land all over the country, including through formal co-stewardship and co-management agreements.
These shifting ideas are seeping into recreation as well. Mountain biking is perhaps the best example here. The Wilderness Act bans any form of “mechanized transport” in wilderness areas. This sounds likek cars and motorcycles. But in 1984, just as mountain biking was taking off, the Forest Service decided that bikes counted as mechanized transport and barred them from the wilderness. Other land management agencies quickly followed their lead. Since then, pro-mountain bike groups like the Sustainable Trails Coalition have spearheaded numerous (unsuccessful) legislative efforts to allow mountain biking in wilderness areas. To many, bikes are less impactful than horses—and even some hikers.
Mountain bikers aren’t the only recreation group wanting access to the wilderness. Recently, climbers have had their own fight over access. Due to the increasing popularity of the sport, the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service released a draft on climbing management guidance in the fall of 2023 that took a more hands-on approach, requiring each wilderness area to develop a climbing management plan. The most controversial tidbit in the proposal was the prohibition of permanent anchors—both installing new ones or even fixing old ones—which many climbers argued are critical for safety without detracting from wilderness character. In December 2024, the fight was resolved when Congress passed the EXPLORE Act, which included the Protecting America’s Rock Climbing (PARC) Act. The new legislation requires the secretary of the interior to issue national guidance on managing climbing in wilderness areas and crucially, ensures that fixed anchors are allowed.
As more people frequent wilderness areas, these zones are feeling the effects of climate change—from the encroachment of the boreal forest into tundra ecosystems in Alaska’s Noatak Wilderness to the decline of trout due to warming streams in the Shenandoah Wilderness. Despite the Wilderness Act’s intention to protect wilderness areas from human impact, not even the most remote wildernesses are immune from the impacts of human-caused climate change.
Moving forward, it’s clear that like all of our public lands, wilderness areas, the agencies who manage them, and the people who visit them, are confronting a lot of change Whether it’s pressure from a growing number of visitors and recreationists, a changing climate, or commercialization, the National Wilderness Preservation System (which includes all of the country’s more than 111 million acres of designated wilderness) faces an urgent question: How can we balance the need for preservation with the demands of our changing world?
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