About Wilderness Areas Online

Wilderness provides so much more than a place to camp or fish or hunt. Wilderness clears our air and filters our water. Wilderness provides essential habitat for wildlife, including endangered species. And wilderness is a natural retreat from the stress of our everyday lives.

So What Is Wilderness?
When we talk about Wilderness, we're referring to a legal definition laid out in the Wilderness Act of 1964.  In short, Wilderness is designated by Congress on federal public lands -- National Parks, Forests, and Wildlife Refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands -- and is the highest form of protection for federal lands.  No roads or permanent structures are allowed in Wilderness, nor activities like logging, mining, or most vehicular traffic.

Since passage of the Wilderness Act, more than 107 million acres of public lands have been designated as Wilderness, less than five percent of the entire United States. But as much as 200 million additional acres of federal public lands may be suitable for Wilderness, and so we and others continue the fight to win Wilderness designation for those lands -- because once an area falls victim to roads or other destructive activity, that land is no longer eligible for Wilderness designation.