Talking About Wilderness

Abstract:     
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the National Wilderness Preservation system, which, as Gregory Applet points out, has grown "beyond the wildest dreams of the early wilderness advocates" is how rarely it enters into our national conversation about the environment. There are no more than a handful of court cases about wilderness and wilderness preservation. While much ink has been spilt in Congress about specific wilderness areas in specific states, these debates now rarely examine the core assumptions of the wilderness system. They tend, instead, to revolve around specific resource issues, most commonly water and mining and roads, and questions of how much wilderness we should designate.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 12

Accepted Paper Series