“The purpose of the Wilderness Act is to preserve the wilderness character of the areas to be included in the wilderness system, not to establish any particular use.”
— Howard Zahniser, 1962

The Wilderness Act of 1964 was positive and proactive legislation. It intended that Wilderness would have meaning, that it would be protected for something, not simply be a place where certain activities such as logging do not occur. The preservation of Wilderness character is essential to the continued existence of Wilderness in America. It is what shapes our interactions and relationship with these places in ways that are different from how we approach any other landscape. The interaction between Wilderness character and our human character is what makes Wilderness unique from any other landscape. If Wilderness character is lost, there will be no Wilderness for future generations to know and enjoy.

Despite its statutory importance, the concept of Wilderness character is not defined in the Wilderness Act, although the Act refers to it repeatedly. Section 4(b) of the Act explicitly mandates that managing agencies “shall be responsible for preserving the Wilderness character of the area and shall so administer such area for such other purposes for which it may have been established as also to preserve its wilderness character.”(emphasis added)

Despite this clear legal directive, for decades none of the federal land management agencies attempted to define it. This changed in 2001 when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service released a draft wilderness stewardship policy containing a lengthy description of this core concept. The description was grounded on scholarly research into the writings and congressional testimony of the Wilderness Act’s chief author, Howard Zahniser, and other major wilderness visionaries including Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold, whose vision contributed to passage of the Wilderness Act.

“(A)t its core, wilderness character, like personal character, is much more than a physical condition… The character of wilderness is an unseen presence capable of refocusing our perception of nature and our relationship to it. It is that quality that lifts our connection to a landscape from the utilitarian, commodity orientation that dominates the major part of our relationship with nature to the symbolic realm serving other human needs.”

Historical records clearly demonstrate that Wilderness Act visionaries believed that wilderness character consists of both tangible, physical components as well as intangible, psychological and spiritual components. Many tangible components have intangible values as well.

Some tangible components of Wilderness character include the presence of native wildlife at naturally occurring population levels; lack of human structures, roads, motor vehicles or mechanized equipment, lack of crowding or large groups; few or no human “improvements for visitor convenience such as highly engineered and over-developed trails, developed campsites, signs, or bridges, and little or no sign of biophysical damage caused by visitor use, such as trampled or denuded ground, tree limbs cut for camp use, or habituated or displaced wildlife.

Some intangible components of Wilderness character include solitude; immediacy; opportunities for reflection; freedom; risk, adventure, and mystery; places where safety is a personal responsibility; untrammeled, wild and self-willed, where natural processes occur without intentional human interference; uncommodified, not for sale and commercial-free; opportunities for full self-reliance; opportunities for humans to experience our connection to the larger community of life; places that forever remain in contrast to modern civilization, its technologies, and contrivances.

Thinking in terms of Wilderness character is an extremely beneficial way of viewing all visitor use and management actions in wilderness. This concept refocuses our attention away from simply viewing wilderness as an amalgam of various biophysical resources and visitor experiences, to recognizing the relationship between these things and the overall Wilderness character of these special places. The concept enables us to view seemingly disparate management issues, proposals, and potential threats within the singular context of how well these will protect or diminish elements of Wilderness character.

“We must recognize that the criteria we use in wilderness cannot be limited to whether an action or technology will disturb wildlife, squish plants, or leave a scar. They may be inappropriate here for the same reason they would be inappropriate in the National Cathedral or the Viet Nam Memorial… because they are at variance with the symbolism of a place set apart.”
— U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy, 2001