Wilderness

The History of Wilderness Protection

Wilderness protection and environmentalism in the United States are divided into three different phases or generations. The first generation, occurring at the turn of the 20th century, included components of wilderness preservation and conservation, while the second and third generations were marked by global environmentalism and resource conservation. The U.S. government first established the Department of the [Page 2229]Interior in 1849 to manage land, natural resources, and wildlife conservation. Although forestry management faced setbacks during the Civil War, it regained a close alliance with American industry after the war, sustaining resources for logging and mining businesses. Several decades later, to strengthen wilderness protection efforts, Congress enacted the General Revision Act of 1891, later renamed the Forest Reserve Act. This Act founded the Forest Service inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture and gave the president unilateral power to conserve wilderness through designating forest reserves. Conservationist Gifford Pinchot pioneered the creation of the Forest Service, emphasizing the importance of resource management in economic development and forestry. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt created the first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island in Florida, to protect the 5-acre mangrove island as the last rookery of brown pelicans on the east coast of Florida.

Throughout the early years of wilderness policy development, American preservationists, who valued wilderness for its own sake, sought absolute protection of the land. Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond offered a radical critique of civilization's destruction of nature in the mid-1800s. At the turn of the century, John Muir encouraged Theodore Roosevelt to establish Yosemite Park, arguing that nature was man's connection to God. Aldo Leopold's reflections in Sand County Almanac contributed to the emergence of the ecology movement and the concept of the farmer as conservationist.

Congress also demonstrated an interest in preservation, establishing the first national park in 1870, later to be renamed Yellowstone, and opened Sequoia National Park in 1890. The U.S. National Park Service was created in 1916 to oversee the increasing number of national parks, landmarks, and historic sites. In 1924, Aldo Leopold gained protection for the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico in obtaining its designation as the first official U.S. wilderness area.

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