Columnists

The Wilderness Act at 50

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. As a conservation photographer and writer, I can think of few laws that are more worthy of celebration.

The Wilderness Act is based on one of the noblest ideas humanity has ever conjured: that our wild lands have value in and of themselves, that they are not simply commodities to be cut up and sold by human beings.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law on Sept. 3, 1964, he stated: "If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."

Thanks to Johnson, the 1964 Congress and a history of wilderness thinkers and advocates, we have those glimpses in the 750-plus wilderness areas now protected under the act. We need wild places, as Wallace Stegner said, for "our sanity as creatures." But have we forgotten that?

Since 2005 and the Real ID Act, Congress has stripped the wilderness areas on the U.S.-Mexico border of environmental protections. Despite the presence of endangered species and imperiled ecosystems, and despite ample evidence that border walls and militarization do not stop human migration, the Senate immigration reform bill, passed last year, would expand that environmental waiver.

Wilderness areas offer hope for the wildlife species that inhabit them of a future to live out their lives in this great ecosystem of Earth. Our pact with wilderness will determine the future of those species--and ours.

Editorial on 08/30/2014

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