What is Wilderness?

Setting aside the many cultural meanings of the term “wilderness,” the term “Wilderness”here refers to a particular designation of public lands set forth in the Wilderness Act of 1964, and augmented by the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975. The Wilderness Act describes wilderness as a place of certain scale where “in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape... the earth and it’s community of life are untrammeled by man.”
It adds further that areas of wilderness “generally appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable,” and as places with “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.”

The Eastern Wilderness Act adds that it is “in the national interest... to preserve such areas as an enduring resource of wilderness which shall be managed to promote and perpetuate the wilderness character of the land and its specific values of solitude, physical and mental challenge, scientific study, inspiration, and primitive recreation for the benefit of all of the American people of present and future generations.”

Missouri Wilderness
For more than a century, the once vast wilderness of the Missouri Ozarks has been split and fragmented, roaded, cut, or converted to pasture. Few areas of appreciable size remain that can rightfully claim the title “Wilderness.” In Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest, seven Wilderness Areas totaling 64,000 acres, or just 4.3% of all national forest lands in the state, are maintained for their unique, high quality, wild character. They are Bell Mountain, Rockpile Mountain, Hercules Glades, Paddy Creek, Piney Creek, Devil’s Backbone, and the Irish Wilderness. An eighth Wilderness Area, Mingo, is part of Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The protections afforded these areas from mining, logging, road building, and off-road vehicle use resulted from the hard work of a dedicated community of wilderness advocates, who, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, fought an uphill battle to permanently protect these exceptional areas under the Wilderness Act.

Today seven other outstanding potential Wilderness Areas, totaling about 50,000 acres, remain vulnerable. First identified for their unique qualities in the early days of the Wilderness movement, these seven areas (Spring Creek, Swan Creek, Big Spring, North Fork, Lower Rock Creek, Van East Mountain, and Smith Creek), are now the focus of a renewed effort. Despite attempts by the wilderness community to work with the Forest Service through the development of the new Mark Twain Forest Plan, the agency chose to leave these remaining areas open to a mix of logging, road building, dozer-line construction, and other impediments to their high quality wilderness character. With over 90% of the Mark Twain National Forest open to high-intensity management, resource extraction, and motorized use, it is time for Missouri’s remaining wilderness to be protected in perpetuity.

It is the overwhelming sentiment of Missouri Wilderness proponents, of those individuals who have sought and known these areas for their wilderness character, that they are appropriate for and deserving of inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Multiple Use
National Forests are intended to be managed for what is termed “multiple use,” meaning that forest management should allow for a variety of public benefits. However, some uses exclude others, some are vastly overemphasized, and others may unacceptably degrade our public forests.

Under the current Mark Twain National Forest management plan, nearly the entire forest (over 90%) is open to logging, with about 20,000 acres being logged each year. Nearly half of the forest is designated for an emphasis on even age management (clearcuts, for example), while the remainder may be subject to a variety of logging techniques.

Eighty-seven percent of the Mark Twain is open to motorized vehicles on the 4,604 miles of legal and maintained roads traversing the national forest. In addition, a significant network of “non-system” roads cross the forest, and contributes to trash dumping, arson, poaching, illegal drug manufacturing, vandalism, and other inappropriate activities. Rampant, illegal off-road vehicle use notwithstanding, with the high density of roads across the Mark Twain allowing for motorized use, it is often harder than it should be to find the quiet and solitude that many seek when going to the forest. Additionally, the high density of roads contributes to erosion and fragmentation of the forest, impacting both wildlife and aesthetic quality.

And most of the Forest is open to the possibility of lead mining - an exclusive land use if there ever was one.

Today just 4.3% of the Mark Twain is managed as Wilderness. The current proposal would raise this to a mere 7.4% of the Forest, while still leaving the vast majority of the Mark Twain open to the currently emphasized uses. And while Wilderness may exclude some of these other uses, it does not exclude people from the forest.

Scientific Value
Nearly all of Missouri’s forests have been logged in the past, and much of the native forest ecology of the pre-European Ozarks has clearly been disrupted. Many land managers, including those with the U.S. Forest Service, often argue that because native forest dynamics have been altered, our forests must be continually managed to survive and be in good health. But whether prescribing fire, clearcuts and other “regeneration” harvests, salvage logging, or a host of management tools to achieve a speculative “pre-colonial” condition, forest management is ultimately an experiment.

Wild forests, particularly those managed as Wilderness, give us a long-term, scientific “control,” and allow us an invaluable window into how nature proceeds on its own. How does native Ozark succession play out in the long-term after human disruption? Will new generations of oaks grow without logging? Could oak decline create healthier forests over time? These important questions and others simply cannot be answered without an ample land-base allowed to be wild, and over a lengthy period of time. Only Wilderness will grant this opportunity. Additionally, Wilderness assures the long-term presence of unfragmented, mature late-successional and old growth blocks of forest that are anything but secure elsewhere in Missouri. Such mature, roadless forests are important habitat for black bears, mountain lions, certain migratory birds, and other species.

Whatever one’s position on the appropriateness or efficacy of any particular management approach, the fact that more than 90% of national forest lands in Missouri are open to nearly all types of management makes it a conservative proposition to support a truly modest increase in Wilderness.

Recreation
Wilderness Areas offer opportunities for some of the highest quality, low impact outdoor recreation possible. Backpacking, hunting, floating, horse-back riding, and photography are all popular activities in Wilderness Areas. And while these activities are in many respects also available in non-Wilderness lands, the roadless, rugged, and often isolated nature of Wilderness Areas make for an experience unparalleled in other, more developed or heavily managed areas.

Human and Spiritual Value
Many spiritual traditions place a high value on wilderness. It allows a space where an individual can find true solitude, and to seek out communion with God, themselves, or the natural world itself. And wilderness reminds us what it means to be free. It is where we can be free from convenience. Free from being available. Free from the tyranny of straight lines, concrete, and asphalt, from judgement and expectation. It is a place where nature can be free - unfolding, unrestrained, uncultivated, wild. It is the context in which we humans became human, our bodies and minds arising from the long interplay of ancestors and environment that has been our evolutionary journey.

It has been argued that the idea of wilderness itself arises within cultures that have embraced a separation of human culture from wild nature. And while this is in some respects quite true, it has been regrettably used to devalue wilderness and to advocate for and excuse so much human intervention in nearly all natural systems. But the issue is not whether humans have or have not played a role in the natural environment throughout our history, but rather the nature of that role, of how we relate to the land and on what scale.

Human actions have profoundly affected the natural world, and the mysterious and fecund wild landscapes of the past are nearly all but a faded memory. Few places in Missouri remain that evoke the great wilderness of the past, and allow us to find ourselves in a place of truly wild character. What sanctuary we still find for this most human experience of wilderness deserves preservation.

(This essay is reprinted from the publication "Wilderness for Missouri," available through www.mowild.org)
More information on the Seven Areas and the Wilderness campaign can be found at www.mowild.org

Pictures of Lower Rock Creek can be seen in the GrassrootsOzark.net photo gallery here