Wilderness Preservation Act

On September 3, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law, creating a wilderness system of 9 million acres set aside from development and providing a mechanism for additional acreage to be set aside. The Wilderness Act marked an important moment in the environmental movement. No longer fighting defensive campaigns to protect wilderness, environmentalists had won a landmark victory to protect wilderness for posterity. Since 1964, more than 90 million acres have been added to the wilderness system.

The wilderness had always been controversial in the United States. On one side of the debate stood those who believed wilderness served as a much needed psychological counterbalance to industrial civilization. On the other side stood those who understood American greatness in economic terms and considered it foolish to lock up valuable resources. These two groups came into confrontation in the early 1950s as the federal government considered a plan to develop water and power resources in the West, including the proposed Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument. The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, and other environmental groups opposed the development on the grounds that the land should remain protected for its unique natural qualities and should not be developed. Environmentalists waged an aggressive and effective grassroots campaign to protect the national monument. In 1956, the Echo Park Dam was removed from the Colorado River Storage Project.

After the battle over Echo Park, Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society proposed that environmentalists take the offensive and offer a legislative plan to permanently protect wilderness. Zahniser was convinced that public opinion favored the cause of the environmentalists. He drew up a bill that would place all wild lands and primitive areas in a special wilderness system protected from development and provide a means to add land from national parks, monuments, and other federally protected lands and Indian reservations. The initial bill would have placed scores of millions of acres into the wilderness system. He solicited opinions from numerous individuals both in and out of government. Zahniser envisioned that additions to the system would be suggested and approved by a board made up of environmental organizations and government agencies.

In 1956, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Representative John Saylor, a Republican from Pennsylvania, introduced the Wilderness Bill. By May 1964, the bill had been rewritten 66 times, and more than 6,000 pages of testimony had been collected in congressional committees. Strongest opposition had come from western mining, grazing, and timber interests. It took President Johnson's open support and a great many compromises to get the final bill enacted into law. Under the final provisions, far less acreage was included in the system, some exceptions were made for use, and an act of Congress was required to add more land to the wilderness system. While pleased that they were able to gain protection for wilderness, environmentalists were somewhat disappointed with how much compromise they had to make in their quest to get the landmark bill through Congress.