Twenty-five years ago this week, Congress acted to preserve a sample of wilderness in the western North Dakota badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It is an anniversary worth celebrating.
As our nation was settled, the conquest of wilderness was viewed as good. Settlers transformed much of America's wild landscape into ranches, farms, and towns. Pioneering wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold observed that "wilderness is the very stuff America is made of."
Leopold's meaning was that, even as our forebears reshaped most of the wilderness, that same process also shaped in us as a people those frontier characteristics that Americans cherish to this day: hardy self-reliance, a fierce independence, a deep love of the land. It would be valuable, Leopold and others came to believe, to preserve some samples of the original land that helped form our national experience and character.
For generations it seemed that such samples of wilderness could preserve themselves, for there were still blank expanses on the map. Steadily, the wilderness lands that remain in federal ownership have dwindled. With foresight, Congress enacted the Wilderness Act 40 years ago next Sept. 3, providing the means "to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness."
Today, some 106 million acres have been preserved as wilderness on federally-owned land in 44 states. But 95 percent of all protected wilderness lies further west and in Alaska -- just one-tenth of one percent of the land in North Dakota has been protected in this way, and none on the National Grasslands.
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In a 1999 poll, North Dakotans were reminded that while wilderness areas contain no roads or development, they are open to activities such as established livestock grazing, hiking, horseback riding, and -- outside of national parks -- true wilderness-quality hunting.
A remarkable 87 percent favored the idea. Sixty-one percent supported designating a third or more of the 265,000 acres of National Grasslands in North Dakota as wilderness, contrasted with the small minority of 14 percent who favored less than a third or none.
Talking about wilderness in ranching country raises the issue of grazing. Back in 1964, members of Congress who wrote the Wilderness Act plainly stated that established grazing "shall be permitted to continue." As the bill was passing the House of Representatives, Republican Rep. Don L. Short from western North Dakota told his colleagues "the president of the American National Cattlemen's Association happens to be a next-door neighbor of mine from North Dakota and I know that the livestock people have no reservation about this bill."
It was an act of Congress signed on Nov. 10, 1978, that designated 30,000 acres of wilderness within Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Wilderness areas such as this are of growing value. In a world becoming more densely populated, more completely mechanized, more noisy and complex, wilderness areas are not only preserves of nature, but sanctuaries for people. Think of wilderness as the environment of silence -- wild havens beyond the end of the road and the whine of engines.
We save such places for many reasons. They are laboratories and classrooms where both young and old can learn about the intricate workings of the natural world. They provide clean water and wildlife habitats. And they are places of escape for those who would walk, ride horseback, hunt or fish, or simply go and sit.
Nor should we overlook the real economic value of wilderness areas. One important use of wilderness areas is by those who explore them from the roadside, as wild scenery calling up visions of the original West. In a recent poll for the state's Tourism Division, Midwesterners were asked what draws them as tourists to North Dakota. The second highest experience cited, after Lakes/Rivers, was "Wilderness Areas."
In the final analysis, the greatest value of wilderness lies in the future. We preserve these samples of wilderness as the duty of our generation to generations unborn.
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Schooled by his lessons in the natural classroom of the Dakota badlands, Teddy Roosevelt urged Americans to conserve resources not merely for people now alive, but for "the number within the womb of time, compared to which, those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations."
Schafer of Mandan, a lifelong North Dakotan, is conservation organizer for the Dacotah Chapter of the Sierra Club. Scott, an authority on the history of wilderness preservation, is policy director of Campaign for America's Wilderness. More information on the Wilderness Act and its 40th anniversary can be found at www.wildernessforever.org .
