A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the Apostle Islands

Epilogue | Reading Legible Landscapes

225 In November 2004, Congress designated nearly 80 percent of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore as the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness. The name of the new wilderness area recognized Nelson’s crucial role in the establishment of the lakeshore and the protection of the islands’ environments. Congress reiterated the preeminent ecological and recreational value of the islands—designation of wilderness is reserved for the nation’s most cherished environments. The challenge for the NPS became one of how to manage this landscape in a way that maximized its value as both a wild and historical landscape—as a storied wilderness. In 2001, NPS planners initiated a wilderness suitability study for Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The importance of outdoor recreation resurfaced in decisions about where to draw boundaries of the potential wilderness. NPS planners agreed not to consider wilderness designation on Lake Superior itself or near any of the public docks that provide access to the islands. The water between the islands lies outside of the boundaries of AINL; the State of Wisconsin still holds this jurisdiction. Although the NPS does own the surface water one-quarter mile from the island shorelines, planners decided that managing this narrow stretch of water as wilderness was not practical. NPS planners likened the docks to mainland parking lots and excluded them Epilogue Reading Legible Landscapes 226 Epilogue: Reading Legible Landscapes from consideration. These decisions reflected the history of the islands as a destination for outdoor recreation, whether people traveled there by motor, sail, or kayak.1 The demands of legibility, too, determined prospective boundaries. NPS administrators wanted clearly identified lines between wilderness and nonwilderness . AINL superintendent Bob Krumenaker explained that “boundaries had to be defensible both on the map and findable on the ground.” The lighthouses and their adjoining cultural landscapes, the administrative areas on several islands, and the interpretive fish camp on Manitou Island were excluded from wilderness study. The environmental impact statement explained that the fish camp “is a major visitor attraction, which under NPS policies should not be recommended for wilderness designation. The area is being managed to preserve human activities.” Planners also removed two important Sand Island sites from wilderness consideration: the Shaw/Hill farmstead and the West Bay Club. The Shaw/Hill site contained many historical structures, and the Anderson /Rice family maintained a lifetime lease on the property that would keep the site out of NPS control for several decades at least. As for the West Bay Club, the NPS declared it “clearly a sign of past human activity.” By excluding these areas from consideration, NPS officials gave the zoning decisions of the previous thirty years the force of law. They further specified which areas of the park would be valued for history and which for wilderness.2 The NPS study team conducted the wilderness suitability study in the shadow of ongoing servicewide debates about wilderness management. Park Service leaders recognized that their agency’s initial hesitance about the Wilderness Act had translated into years of apathy and poor leadership in wilderness management. The agency had failed to respond to challenges posed by issues like invasive species, changing fire regimes, and the management of cultural resources in wilderness. A series of high-profile task forces and management groups attempted to resolve these problems, publishing policy papers to help guide land managers. In 2002, the National Wilderness Steering Committee specifically addressed the place of cultural resources in designated wilderness areas: “A landscape can have hundreds of prehistoric and historic archeological sites on it and still appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature. Even a maintained historic structure could be substantially unnoticeable if it were surrounded by many acres of land that did not contain other structures.” Laws like the Wilderness Act and the National Historic Preserva- Epilogue: Reading Legible Landscapes 227 tion Act did not give priority to either natural or cultural resources. The NPS was obligated to meet the regulatory demands of both laws, simultaneously. The problem, the steering committee believed, lay in the way that individual managers had interpreted NPS policies: “[Not] all wilderness managers understand or appreciate cultural resource laws, policies, and values.”3 These concerns shaped the resulting three-year wilderness suitability study at AINL. Park planners identified four alternatives for wilderness designation. Alternative A recommended no wilderness whatsoever. Alternative B maximized wilderness by declaring 94 percent of the park’s land base as wilderness. Alternative C recommended that 80 percent...