"In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States...leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness." — Wilderness Act, 1964

Legal Definition
What Makes Wilderness Unique?

Congressional designation as Wilderness provides an area with the highest level of statutory land protection available in the United States. Wilderness lands come in many forms: glaciated peaks, swamps, pristine beaches, eastern forests, prairie and sweeping desert. These areas harbor our most sensitive and endangered species, supply clean air and water, and provide outstanding opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation found nowhere else. Only Congress can designate or undesignate federal lands as Wilderness. Currently, there are over 106 million acres in 662 wilderness areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS).

Legal Definition

The statutory definition of Wilderness is found in Section 2(c) of the Wilderness Act:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Congress intended that Wilderness remain in contrast to modern civilization, its technologies, conventions, and contrivances. Congress also intended that Wilderness remain untrammeled, meaning free of intentional human manipulation. In Wilderness, the forces of nature and natural processes would be allowed to unfold without intentional human interference. In this definition, Congress defines not only qualities of Wilderness but also provides statutory direction for how humans interact with Wilderness, and what our relationship will be with these places. In Wilderness, Congress clearly intended that humans will not dominate or develop the landscape, and will not control natural processes.

The second sentence in Section 2(c) expands the definition of Wilderness:

"An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

This sentence recognizes that areas designated as Wilderness may have some limited signs of past human influence and uses, but nonetheless the clear direction in the first sentence of Section 2(c) makes it clear that, once designated, human influence will be restrained so that the earth and its community of life will remain untrammeled from that point forward, and signs of past human dominance will fade over time.

What makes Wilderness unique?

Wilderness is more than just physical landscape and essential habitat. Wilderness also has significant symbolic value as a special place set apart where we interact differently than we do with any other landscape. Like a national memorial or a cathedral, the attitudes and behaviors that we bring to these special places set apart are different from how we may behave in our routine daily lives. In untrammeled Wilderness we have opportunities to experience natural processes unfolding and evolving in accord with nature’s rules and timeframe, not our own. There is almost no where else on the planet today where this experience is still available. In wilderness we expect to find native wildlife species present at naturally occurring population levels. The psychological values of wilderness spring from the opportunity to experience the special solace of solitude from civilization. Wilderness can nurture psychological values of reflection and knowledge that we are part of a larger community of life.

Wilderness Act author Howard Zahniser believed that modern humans deeply need Wilderness because of the spiritual value that comes from recognizing ourselves not as masters but as members of a larger community of life. Zahniser believed this sense of membership and belonging is ancient and deeply nourishing to the human spirit.

To experience Wilderness is "to know a profound humility, to recognize one’s littleness, to sense dependence and interdependence, indebtedness, and responsibility."
— Howard Zahniser

"It is my fear that if we allow the freedom of the hills and the last of the wilderness to be taken from us, then the very idea of freedom may die with it."
– Edward Abbey

"Wilderness itself is the basis of all our civilization. I wonder if we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness the right to live on?" — Margaret Murie

"For me, and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness.
– Bob Marshall

"Wilderness, above all its definitions, purposes and uses, is sacred space, with sacred power, the heart of a moral world." — Michael Frome

"The more civilized man becomes, the more he needs and craves a great background of forest wildness, to which he may return like a contrite prodigal from the husks of an artificial life." — Ellen Burns Sherman

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free.
— Aldo Leopold

"If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.... This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future." — Terry Tempest Williams

"The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons….It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past."
— Sigurd Olson

"Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fired and vitalized by the regular contact with outdoor growths -- animals, trees, sun warmth, and free skies -- or it will dwindle and pale."
— Walt Whitman