Wilderness Stewardship in America Today and What We Can Do to Improve It

T he authors of this article are recently retired wilderness professionals from universities or federal agencies. We were asked to share our observations about how wilderness stewardship is being managed in America today. We based our observations on our many years of combined professional wilderness career experience as managers, trainers, scientists, educators, and other careers. Combined, the authors have worked 308 years generally in natural resources and 236 years in wilderness specifically. All of us have had challenging management or research duties related to wilderness stewardship. For this article, wilderness refers specifically to the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). We as coauthors were invited to share our thoughts about wilderness management today because it was thought that our group would have some unique insights. With the years of experience in various positions in the federal agencies and affiliated universities, we hope that our combined experience lends credibility to our assessing the status of the NWPS. In the process of conceptualizing this article, a number of wilderness stewardship challenges were identified. Some examples of these challenges are briefly listed below. Of those identified by the coauthors, we selected five that we thought are the most significant overarching challenges. These five are subsequently described and our expert opinions on potential ways to address them are offered.