Valuing wildlands is complex. (1) In a philosophically oriented analysis, I distinguish seven meaning levels of value, individual preference, market price, individual good, social preference, social good, organismic, and ecosystemic, and itemize twelve types of value carried by wildlands, economic, life support, recreational, scientific, genetic diversity, aesthetic, cultural symbolization, historical, character building, therapeutic, religious, and intrinsic. (2) I criticize contingent valuation efforts to price these values. (3) I then propose an axiological model, which interrelates the multiple levels and types of value, and some principles for wildland management policy.About 2 percent of the contiguous U.S. is wilderness (1.2 percent designated; 1 percent under study); 98 percent is developed, farmed, grazed, timbered, designated for multiple use. Another 2 percent might be suitable for wilderness or semiwild status-cut-over forests that have reverted to wilderness or areas as yet little developed. Decisions are being made about how to value these relict wildlands. Since they are almost entirely public lands, these are political decisions; but they are also taking place in the midst of a philosophical reassessment, coupled with ecological concerns, about how humans should value nature. They are political decisions entwined with reforming world views.Since these are public land use decisions about wild nature, there is a tendency to think that the most useful principles and strategies are likely to be economic: that the nearest thing to an adequate theory of "resource use" is going to involve an estimate of benefits over costs in dollars; that wise use will be "efficient" use. Decisions ought to be democratic, since they are political and about public lands, but pitfalls in the democratic process are many. Those with political clout and savvy, those with concentrated high-order interests, a lot to gain or lose, outshout or outmanipulate the disorganized majority whose interests are diffuse and lowleveled. Organized small groups typically outact large latent groups; legislators react to pressure groups and defend their own interests. Agencies grow bureaucratic and sluggish; citizen preferences are difficult to register and aggregate; voters never have the options they prefer presented at the ballot box; and so on. One way
