Keeping it wild 2: An updated interagency strategy to monitor trends in wilderness character across the National Wilderness Preservation System

Abstract

Keeping It Wild 2 is an interagency strategy to monitor trends in selected attributes of wilderness character based on lessons learned from 15 years of developing and implementing wilderness character monitoring across the National Wilderness Preservation System. This document updates and replaces Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy for Monitoring Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres and others 2008), and provides a foundation for agencies to develop a nationally consistent approach to implement this monitoring. This monitoring strategy addresses two questions: How do stewardship activities affect attributes of wilderness character? How are attributes selected as integral to wilderness character changing over time within a wilderness, within an agency, and across the National Wilderness Preservation System? The primary audiences for the information from this monitoring are agency staff who manage wilderness day-today , and regional and national staff who develop wilderness policy and assess its effectiveness. The results of this monitoring will provide these staff some of the key data they need to improve wilderness stewardship and wilderness policy. Keeping It Wild 2 is designed to be nationally consistent across the four wilderness managing agencies and locally relevant, to be cost-effective, and to facilitate communication across the many resource programs that are responsible for preserving wilderness character. Implementing this monitoring strategy does not guarantee the preservation of wilderness character, but it informs and improves wilderness stewardship, and ensures managers are accountable to the central mandate of the 1964 Wilderness Act-to preserve wilderness character.

Manipulating the wild: a survey of restoration and management interventions in U.S. wilderness

“…For this study, we use the term "management intervention" to refer to management actions above a minimum threshold of scale and scope that impact wilderness character (e.g., more than simply restoring a campsite; Landres et al 2015). Management interventions are defined as an intentional manipulation, or trammeling: an action that purposefully alters, hinders, restricts, controls, or manipulates "the earth and its community of life" (16 U.S.C.…”

“…§ 1131-1136) to preserve wilderness character, which is composed of five unique qualities, two of which have relevance Author contributions: all authors conceived of the design and methodology; LL conducted the research and wrote the manuscript; all authors contributed to the analysis and edited the manuscript. to this study: natural and untrammeled (Landres et al 2015). The National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) consists of 801 wilderness units managed by four federal agencies: The National Park Service (NPS) manages 61 units, U.S.…”

“…Some wildernesses are managed by multiple agencies. Ecological restoration may be contentious in wilderness because, although restoration is important for biodiversity and resource conservation, restoration constitutes a purposeful management manipulation, thereby degrading the untrammeled quality of wilderness character (Cole 2000;Hobbs et al 2009;Long & Biber 2014;Landres et al 2015).…”

Protected area stewardship in the Anthropocene: integrating science, law, and ethics to evaluate proposals for ecological restoration in wilderness

“…A variety of other ecological interventions not related to restoration but strongly affecting species and ecosystems also occur in wilderness, such as reducing predator populations for protecting livestock (Sain Jones ), creating water impoundments or diversions for irrigation (Nickas ), and introducing nonindigenous game species for sport fishing and hunting (Carter ). While focusing on ecological restoration in this article, the issues we discuss and the evaluation framework we present are directly applicable to all ecological interventions that intentionally alter any components or processes of an area (Landres et al ).…”

Mapping wilderness character in the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area

“…At its enactment, 54 legislated wilderness areas were created, colloquially referred to as 'big W Wilderness' (as opposed to other land not legislatively designated, referred to as 'small w wilderness'). Today, the US National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) is comprised of 796 Wilderness areas (Landres et al, 2015 Preservation System, which outlined a strategy for inter-agency cooperation to assess whether wilderness character is being preserved (Landres et al, 2008).…”