The problem with the new preserves was they were governed solely by an administrative designation, which had no legal recourse if someone changed or violated it. All the designations could be wiped out if a new administration or staff took over. As a result, logging, mining, roads and grazing slowly chipped at these prototype wilderness lands. When the Wilderness Act finally passed by Congress in the 1960s only 9 million of the original 14 million acres qualified as wilderness. Even back in the 1930s activists felt an urgency to protect pristine land from human development.
"The universe of the wilderness, all over the United States, is vanishing with appalling rapidity. It is melting away like some last snow bank on some south-facing mountainside during a hot afternoon in June. It is disappearing while most of those who care more for it than anything else in the world are trying desperately to rally and save it," wrote Robert Marshall wrote in a 1937 Nature Magazine article.
In the early 30s Bob Marshall was the chief forester of the Office of Indian Affairs. This position gave him the political connection to lobby the wilderness concept to the executive branch. He knew the lands could not be managed by the political fancies of the current administration. "Wilderness areas obviously require a continuing policy. Under the present system a single unsympathetic administration could at any time wipe out our remaining primitive expanses. In order to escape the whims of politics, which might make the president of the American Automobile Association the next Secretary of the Interior and Henry Ford the next Secretary of Agriculture, the areas selected by the Wilderness Planning Board should be set aside by an Act of Congress, just as National Parks are today set aside. This would give them as close an approximation to permanence as could be realized in a world of shifting desires," Marshall wrote to Franklin Roosevelt's Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes.
Marshall realized he needed more support to force the issue into a movement. So in 1935 he founded the Wilderness Society with Leopold and other notable environmentalists like Olaus and Mardy Murie. The group gave momentum to the movement, which aimed at legislatively protecting public lands from human intrusion. Just four years after the group's formation Marshall passed away leaving the group to find new blood to carry on the campaign. Howard Zahniser was able to pick up where the movement had left off.
"Let's make a concerted effort for a positive program that will establish an enduring system of areas where we can be at peace and not forever feel that the wilderness is a battleground," Zahniser said.
As the executive director of the Wilderness Society, Zahniser teamed up with the Society's Director, Olaus Murie, to begin conceptualizing the first wilderness bill. Zahniser came up with the first draft in the mid-1950s and lobbied for almost eight years before Congress approved the law.
"With the enactment of this measure we shall cease to be in any sense a rearguard delaying 'inevitable' destruction of all wilderness, but shall become a new vanguard with reasonable hopes that some areas of wilderness will be preserved in perpetuity," Zahniser testified in 1963 to the U.S. Senate.
Finally on September 3, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law. Congress ratified the legislation "to establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the permanent good of the whole people, and for other purposes."
The new law would "assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness."
Federal public lands would finally have the legislative protection from development and extractive industries. Congress now had the right to keep pristine land as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
The law also grandfathered in over 9 million acres of wilderness in the Forest Service System. The Act allowed Congress to create wilderness in National Parks, National Forests and on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Refuges. Remarkably, lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management were not covered when the bill was passed in the 1960s.
"There was not the same interest in recreating in the desert; more arid areas were being used primarily for extractive purposes for cattle ranching and mineral development and basically you didn't have the same public outcry for protection of these types of lands at that point in time. In other words most of the focus was on forested, scenic types of landscape and not desert landscapes," explained Bob Keiter, director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah.
It was not until 1976 that Congress passed the Federal Land Policy Management Act, which gave Congress the authority to establish wilderness on BLM lands. The bill also called the agency to inventory its land to determine what areas would qualify as wilderness.
After the BLM's inventory, Utah environmentalists decided to conduct their own survey of BLM lands. They found the initial inventory ignored thousands of acres of wilderness. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, in conjunction with the Utah Wilderness Coalition found an additional 2.5 million acres to add to the wilderness tallies. This forced the BLM to go back into the field and re-inventory. Again, the BLM agreed with the numbers. This extra acreage has not yet been designated as WSAs and is currently undergoing a public process to determine if they should receive the interim protection.
In the early 90s, Utah environmentalists were still not satisfied with the acreage, so they decided to conduct a more comprehensive study of BLM public lands.
"When they first did this work there was a small community; they didn't have the resources to look at everything and they just looked at the stuff they knew about and so as a result, deserving areas got left out," explained Scott Groene, director of the National BLM Wilderness Campaign.
Based on the new survey, environmentalists now believe that 9.1 million acres actually qualify as wilderness in the state of Utah. They have now turned to Congress to determine whether their new numbers are legitimate. Activists are lobbying in Washington for America's Redrock Wilderness Act; so far 165 Representatives in the House and 15 Senators have agreed to sponsor the bill. Keiter believes some sort of negotiations between all interested parties will have to happen before any legislation is passed.
"It is fundamentally a political decision. So, what SUWA and the other organizations have done is to raise the stakes in the political negotiations over what lands and how much acreage ought to receive a wilderness designation on Utah's BLM public lands," Keiter said.
Activists say they will work on the issue until they are satisfied with the legislation.
"We have an obligation to see that all this gets protected and in the meantime you need to spend a lot of time seeing that it doesn't get destroyed," said Groene.
There is another wilderness movement on the burner in Utah; this one deals with Forest Service land. There are still thousands of acres of Forest Service land that could be eligible for the pristine designation. This will probably be the next chapter in the wilderness debate.
In 1984, over 700,000 acres were designated as wilderness in Utah. Most of the land was in high elevation areas, mostly in the High Uintas. But after surveying and studying Forest Service lands, one environmental group has found that these rock and ice areas are not to adequately protecting wildlife.
"We know now that the vast majority of critters need that low elevation for where they live and rear their young," explained Boggs, "The animals do go up high in the summertime when the weather is hot, but they can't live there year round, so it's really important that we get some low elevation habitat protection for them and not for us," said Denise Boggs, the executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress.
The UEC has almost completed a survey of roadless areas in Utah's six National Forests. When the survey is completed, the group plans to incorporate the information into a comprehensive statewide forest wilderness bill. They estimate been 2 and 3 million acres of these roadless areas will qualify as wilderness.
"Wilderness has to be roadless, but roadless doesn't necessarily have to be wilderness. A roadless area may not have roads, but it may have a lot of old logging and grazing impacts that would preclude it from being considered pristine enough to be wilderness," said Boggs.
The protection of these low elevation forests may be critical for protecting species and their ecosystems.
"The failure to do that runs the risk of additional listings under the Endangered Species Act," said Keiter, "As soon as that happens you bring the regulatory power of the federal government on public lands and potentially private lands; so there is a built-in incentive given the rigorous protection under the Endangered Species Act to get ahead of the curve and protect species and their habitat." Keiter said.
The stakes are slowly rising to keep lands in Utah away from the clutches of development and other destructive forces. But as this debate drags on with no real end in sight, it may be best to listen to the advice of Mardy Murie who battled to keep lands in the West and in Alaska wild:
"One year after a particularly arduous meeting, we took the members of the governing council of the Wilderness Society to Jenny Lake Lodge. We danced. A balance of cheerful incidents is good for people. If we allow ourselves to become discouraged we lose our power and momentum. That is what I would say to you in the midst of these difficult times. If you are going to that place of intent to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the wild lands in Utah, you have to know how to dance."
I think she may be onto something.