Recreation: How does wilderness impact recreational opportunities?
Wilderness offers outstanding opportunities for a wide range of recreational pursuits including hunting, backpacking, trail running, horse packing, rock climbing, fishing, hiking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, birdwatching, rafting and kayaking. Recognizing this, the BLM's Wilderness Study Policy gives greater importance to identifying potential wilderness in close proximity to population centers.
Although wilderness is closed to motorized and mechanized vehicles, including mountain bikes, passage of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal, together with designated wilderness, will affect less than 20 percent of Colorado's BLM lands. Most of the remaining 6.4 million acres of these lands will remain open to the range of non-wilderness uses.
Economy: How does wilderness impact Colorado's economy?
Research shows that wilderness has a positive effect on local economies, and that counties with wilderness have higher total income, employment, and per capita income growth rates. Wilderness provides communities with an advantage over non-wilderness communities by attracting new wealth and business because of the quality of life wilderness offers employees. One study found that employment in wilderness counties grew 65% faster than in non-wilderness counties. Click here for more information on how wilderness benefits Colorado's economy.
People want clean air and open spaces when considering where to live, and wilderness draws recreationists and tourists as well as new residents. In a survey sponsored by the National Science Foundation, of 2,670 people who live in counties with wilderness, 53% cited wilderness as an important reason why they located there, and 45% mentioned wilderness as their reason for staying.
Emergency Response: How does wilderness effect emergency response, such as fire fighting?
The Wilderness Act gives land agencies broad discretion when responding to emergency or other critical situations.
[Such] measures can be taken as may be necessary in the control of fire, insects, and diseases, subject to such conditions as the Secretary [of Interior] deems desirable. (Wilderness Act, Section 4(d)(1))
When necessary to protect life or property, emergency response – such as search and rescue – can use motorized and mechanized vehicles and equipment. Prescribed burning, as a management tool, and firefighting are also allowable in wilderness. Committee report language accompanying the 1978 Endangered American Wilderness Act (PL 95-237), further clarifies Congress's intent with regard to fire control in designated wilderness areas. The House report to accompany that bill (House Report #95-540) states:
Fire, Insects, and Disease
Section 4(d)(1) of the Wilderness Act permits any measures necessary to control fire, insect outbreaks, and disease in wilderness areas. This includes the use of mechanized equipment, the building of fire roads, fire towers, fire breaks or fire pre-suppression facilities where necessary and other techniques for fire control. In short, anything necessary for the protection of public health or safety is clearly permissible.
Access: Does wilderness only benefit the young, fit, and able few who can visit these places on foot?
Thousands of Coloradans enjoy wild lands on a regular basis, by horseback, for quick day hikes, and on extended backcountry trips. Wilderness areas contribute to a balance of uses on public lands and provide popular destinations to people of wide-ranging age and ability. Although mechanized equipment is prohibited in wilderness, the Americans' with Disabilities Act specifically allows for the use of wheelchairs (see ADA Sect. 507: Federal Wilderness Areas). Even with passage of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal, nearly 80% of Colorado's BLM lands will remain open to the full range of non-wilderness uses, including responsible motorized access.
Multiple Use: According to federal law, public lands are supposed to be managed for "Multiple Use." Doesn't wilderness violate this principle?
The Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960 notes that, "the establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness are consistent with the purposes and provisions of this Act" (see MUSYA, Sect. 2). In fact, wilderness is not a "use" but a management designation supporting many uses and values. Uses for wilderness include: wildlife habitat, scenic viewing, hiking, backpacking, boating, camping, hunting and fishing. Values which wilderness supports include: clean air and water, genetic diversity, cultural resource protection, open space, and healthy, inexpensive, family-oriented recreation.
Water: How does wilderness impact existing water rights?
Water rights in Colorado are administered under state law, in state water court, under the general principle of "first in time, first in right." Any water right reserved for the wilderness would come later in priority to existing rights. Many of these areas are "headwaters" and so water rights are simply not an issue, and in most other areas all available water is already adjudicated. Wilderness, through prohibiting new industrial developments and restricting motorized use, helps protect Colorado's water quality.
Inholdings: How does wilderness affect private and state land?
Where federal wilderness lands surround private or state lands, landowners retain the right to access:
[W]here state-owned or privately owned land is completely surrounded by…wilderness, such…owner shall be given rights as may be necessary to assure adequate access…or the…land shall be exchanged for federally owned land in the same state of approximately equal value… (Wilderness Act, Section 5 (a) )
Although some wilderness proposals include a "checkerboard" of land ownerships and much existing wilderness includes state-owned or private lands, about 98% of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal is federal public lands.
Wildlife & Wilderness Management: How does wilderness impact the management of wildlife?
Wildlife is managed by state agencies, such as the Colorado Division of Wildlife, and these agencies are allowed reasonable access, with motorized vehicles if necessary, to fulfill management objectives. Through restricting public motorized access, wilderness helps protect secure important wildlife habitat. Proposed wilderness in Colorado includes substantial portions of critical big game winter range, habitat for sensitive and endangered species, and important wildlife migration corridors.
Grazing: How does wilderness designation affect current grazing in an area?
Grazing is allowable in designated wilderness, with grazing continuing in the "same manner and degree" as it did prior to designation. New developments and uses are not considered a "grandfathered" use, but current developments such as stock ponds and fences can be maintained by whatever methods were in use prior to designation, including with the use of mechanized equipment and motorized vehicles when necessary.
There shall be no curtailment of grazing in wilderness areas simply because an area is, or has been designated as wilderness, nor should wilderness designations be used as an excuse by administrators to slowly 'phase out' grazing… It is anticipated that the numbers of livestock permitted to graze in wilderness would remain at approximately the same levels existing at the time the area enters the wilderness system… The maintenance of supporting facilities, existing in an area prior to its classification as wilderness (including fences, line cabins, water wells and lines, stock tanks, etc.), is permissible in wilderness. Where practical alternatives do not exist, maintenance or other activities may be accomplished through the occasional use of motorized equipment. (House Report 96-17 on the Colorado Wilderness Act, U.S. Congress: 1980)
Minerals & Leasing: How does wilderness impact resource industries like natural gas?
The majority of public lands with high natural gas potential will remain open to development even with passage of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal. Although no new gas leases would be allowed once an area is designated as wilderness (or while it is managed as a wilderness study area), according to the Wilderness Act, existing leases (valid existing rights or VERs) can be developed in wilderness or wilderness study areas:
Subject to valid rights…existing (at the time of wilderness designation), the minerals in the lands designated…as wilderness areas are withdrawn from all forms of appropriation under the mining laws and from all laws pertaining to mineral leasing and all amendments thereto. (Section 4(d)(3))
Even with lands closed to new leases, wilderness protection has not significantly impeded gas production. On Colorado BLM lands, gas production has increased 555% since 1976, when about 10% of agency lands were first put off-limits to new development as wilderness study areas.
Roads, Ways and Trails: Wilderness is supposed to be "roadless," but some places have existing vehicle routes. If I can drive my jeep there, can it be "roadless"?
The term "road" when applied to wilderness is a specific legal term based on the clear intent of Congress, as specified during discussion and passage of the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). Accordingly, BLM uses the following road definition derived from the House Report accompanying FLPMA:
The word 'roadless' refers to the absence of roads which have been improved and maintained by mechanical means to insure relatively regular and continuous use. A way maintained solely by the passage of vehicles does not constitute a road. (Report 94-1163, page 17, May 15, 1976)
Further clarification is provided by minutes from a House Public Lands Subcommittee session, where the above report language was discussed:
Rep. Steiger: "Mr. Chairman, if I may, and I would confine this to the report, but I would like to spell out, which I gather was never done in the Wilderness Act, what we are talking about when we talk about a road. I think the accepted deal in the Forest Service is that it is a graveled and graded road and that sort of thing. As far as I am concerned, I think we are talking about a road that is in any way maintained and improved, a dirt road improved by grading, or the placing of culverts, or by the making of bar ditches and that sort of thing. I don't think we mean jeep trails and that sort of thing, and there is a difference" (House Public Lands Subcommittee Markup Session of Sept. 22, 1975, pp. 329-332).
The road definition in the House report was clearly intended to delineate which vehicle routes would disqualify wilderness study areas and which would not. Furthermore, it is clear that Congress intended that vehicle routes that do not meet this definition of road should not exclude an area from wilderness consideration, for protection as a wilderness study area, or for designation as wilderness.
Release: What happens to proposed areas that are not designated as wilderness?
Congress routinely preserves its authority to designate wilderness in the future. BLM's authority to create and manage wilderness study areas to protect an area's wilderness suitability derives from federal law, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, passed in 1976. FLPMA notes:
During the period of review of such areas and until Congress has determined otherwise, the Secretary [of Interior] shall continue to manage such lands according to his authority under this Act and other applicable law in a manner so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation as wilderness… (FLPMA Sect. 603(c))
For Congress to require that an area never be considered again for wilderness not only hampers its own future authority, something a legislative body will seldom do, but also denies future generations the ability to fully participate in public land use decisions.
