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Red Castle and Lower Red Castle Lake in the High Uintas Wilderness Area in Utah. Photo by Cordell Andersen. Courtesy of wilderness.net. PART 4 Threats to Wild Lands 112 | Part 4 Zahniser’s efforts to work toward the establishment of a national wilderness system in the early and middle 1950s was constantly pushed back by new threats to national parks and monuments, Forest Service primitive areas, and other public lands containing wild areas. He outlined the major kinds of threats in an address that he delivered at the Midcentury Conference on Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, in December 1953. OUR WILDERNESS THREATS Our wilderness areas, here and there, and thus eventually everywhere, are in danger of being taken away from us for other uses. They also are in danger, here and there, and thus eventually everywhere, of being destroyed as wilderness by overuse, misuse, and even by various measures for their supposed protection. Our expansive civilization is such that only those areas which are deliberately set aside as wilderness can be expected to persist as wilderness. Wilderness thus exists in the midst of influences that would destroy it. Recognition of the value of wilderness is, however, also an aspect of our culture. It is the conviction of conservationists that a program of wilderness preservation has been undertaken while it is still possible to preserve a system of wilderness areas without depriving this or succeeding generations of essential commodities or denying them adequate opportunities for outdoor recreation with conveniences. Thus, we start a consideration of threats to wilderness with an understanding that wilderness preservation is consistent with our civilization and that it is reasonable to expect success in the program we have undertaken . We are not fighting a rearguard action simply to delay the destruction of wilderness. We are rather carrying forward a program that we expect will endure in perpetuity. This is a high ideal, based on a reverence for the life community to which we belong, based on a regard for the health of our own minds and bodies and our esthetic or spiritual natures, and based on a concern for the welfare of generations of the future. It is an ideal shared by many people in many ways. . . . It is an ideal that is in dual jeopardy—threatened because the areas in which it finds its reality are coveted for other uses and threatened because those who use and protect it as wilderness are so often and Threats to Wild Lands | 113 so subtly tempted to modify it as wilderness—and thus destroy the quality that characterizes it, that distinguishes it from other outdoor recreation areas. The jeopardy is the deeper because the areas of wilderness that have now survived our civilization are so limited. For one thing, the areas of wilderness that remain, including those that have already been set aside for preservation, are still in demand for the commodities that can be taken from them. Less than a year ago we resolved a controversy regarding the Gila wilderness area in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico that arose primarily from a proposal to remove a large part of the area from wilderness protection so that its great ponderosa pine forest could be managed for timber. The rain forests in the superb wilderness of Olympic National Park in the State of Washington are still being demanded by the lumber interests and their supporters. Similar threats are latent in many places and probably will be until the preservation of wilderness becomes so firmly established as public policy that individuals and groups will not consider challenging it, and until the sustained provision of adequate supplies of the commodities is assured by wise conservation practices in the nonwilderness areas that remain available for exploitation. Grazing by domestic livestock is a commodity use that is a threat to wilderness areas in the national forests, where it should be excluded as soon as this can be equitably accomplished—just as it now is excluded in national parks. Grazing existed as a permitted use in national forest areas before they were set aside as wilderness and has continued partly because it has been expedient to avoid opposition to the wilderness program. Yet it should be excluded from wilderness not only because of the effects on vegetation and soil wherever there is intensive grazing within the usually high-country regions of such areas but also because of the competition with wildlife and with the pack animals involved in recreational use...

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