The National Forests and the Campaign for Wilderness Legislation

T he. Wilderness Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964, is a landmark in conservation history. The act provided statutory protection for more than 9 million acres of recreational wilderness and charged three federal agencies-the U. S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service-with the enormous task of reviewing potential wilderness areas in their jurisdictions. Confrontations between preservationists and commercial interests commanded the lion's share of public attention during the dramatic eight-year congressional battle that resulted in the Wilderness Act. However, the federal agencies that were to assume responsibility for implementing the new national wilderness preservation system also played a crucial part in shaping the bill's history. Long before the legislative battle for wilderness began, the Forest Service had designated more than seventy areas within the western national forests for special wilderness management. As the federal agency with the largest percentage of potential wilderness in its jurisdiction, the Forest Service played a key role in forging the federal response to pressure for wilderness management. Moreover, the agency carried a broad multiple-use mandate, and its growing commitment to wilderness was subject to strong and varied interest-group pressures. Unlike the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose priorities were closely linked to traditional nonutilitarian preservation concepts, the Forest Service was involved in profound and controversial reassessments of its forest management philosophy throughout the various stages of the wilderness movement. Thus, the history of the Wilderness Act is largely a history of national forest wilderness politics.