“Non-degradation of wilderness fundamentally should guide stewardship activities.”
— Pinchot Panel for Conservation: Ensuring the Stewardship of the National Wilderness Preservation System, 2001

The nondegradation principle applies to more than biophysical conditions in Wilderness; it is the essential key to protecting endangered experiences, experiences of a special quality and nature that are at risk of disappearing from our modern world.

The nondegradation principle is based on the mandate in Sec. 4(b) of the Wilderness Act to preserve Wilderness character in each area of the NWPS. It is Wilderness character that must not be allowed to degrade or diminish.

"Except as otherwise provided in this Act, each agency administering any area designated as wilderness 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)

Congress can designate any federal land as wilderness, yet once designated, the stewardship of that area must not allow its wilderness character to diminish below the quality and amount that it possessed on the day it was designated. The concept of nondegradation applies to all aspects of Wilderness character, both its tangible and intangible components. Though all four managing agencies have adopted the nondegradation principle in their policies, few areas in the System currently meet that standard.

A policy of nondegradation can not be achieved without engaging the cause of degradation, as well as its effects. To this end, management intent is critical – does the intent of an action affirm our role as respectful guests and stewards of Wilderness? Or does it simply reinforce the “primacy” of our uses and benefits, our convenience and expediency?

When the intent of a management action is to achieve a goal that is unnecessary or unrelated to protecting an area as Wilderness, then wilderness character is often compromised in the process. Some examples are the manipulation of wildlife to favor game species; use of motorized equipment to construct and clear trails for visitor convenience; scientific research that involves modifying the Wilderness or using inappropriate equipment in Wilderness; and restoring or replacing old buildings (often with use of motorized equipment) rather than allowing them to naturally decay away.

“This is the challenge of wilderness management, preserving what is unseen and unmeasurable… Zahniser’s words suggest that chief among our criteria should be the purpose of the action, the spirit in which it is carried out, and the effect it will have on our way of thinking…. As the criteria we choose shapes the character of wilderness, so it shapes our character as stewards.”
— U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy, January 2001

Monitoring Wilderness character is important to achieving an effective policy of nondegradation. It is likely that without a comprehensive monitoring protocol, the amount and quality of Wilderness character remaining today will continue to dwindle and decline. Yet monitoring poses a number of difficult challenges and dilemmas because many attributes of Wilderness character are not easily quantified or perhaps even defined. In this way, Wilderness character is like many other complex concepts, like love for example. In Aldo Leopold’s words, Wilderness character is comprised of “values as yet uncaptured by language.”

A significant concern is that any effort to monitor an area’s Wilderness character will be limited to only those components that humans currently know how to measure. The risk is that both managers and the public might then ignore the value and importance of preserving the many intangible qualities that contribute significantly to an area’s Wilderness character. These unmeasurable qualities are critical to preserving the very meaning of Wilderness.