Should Active Restoration be Allowed in Designated Wilderness Areas, or Should We Let Nature Take its Course?
- Fernando Moreno-Castillo
- Feb 9
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 19
The National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) is a network of lands managed on the federal level that is critical for maintaining wild lands in the United States. In 1964, Congress created The Wilderness Act to designate wilderness areas in the United States under its authority (CRS 2022). It defines wilderness as both "untrammeled by man" (uncontrolled or unrestrained) and "protected and managed to preserve its natural conditions" (here, let's consider natural as Indigenous or native). This is important from the lens of ecological restoration because many of these lands contain systems that can be used as reference sites when restoring other ecosystems. A reference site is defined as a natural or minimally disturbed ecosystem that serves as a benchmark for guiding and evaluating restoration efforts. These sites provide a model for species composition, structure, function, and ecological processes that a restoration project aims to replicate. As of July 2022, 803 wilderness areas totaling about 112 million acres exist (CRS 2022).
The four agencies tasked with managing the lands included within the wilderness network are the U.S. National Park Service (USNPS), the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (USBLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Each agency manages different lands based on the conservation mandate assigned. Therefore, this designation awards the highest level of land protection in the United States. Though recreational activities are permitted, the goal is to have minimal human impact. Thus, maintaining a balance between human visitation and conservation can prove challenging, even if no motorized vehicles, roads, or permanent buildings are allowed.
The National Park Service (NPS) includes in its mission to preserve natural and cultural resources while providing for public enjoyment. From a management perspective, this is accomplished by maintaining high ecological and historical integrity levels, emphasizing non-motorized recreation, and minimal human impact. The Service employs a strict policy of limiting alterations, ensuring that visitor activities do not conflict with the character of the wilderness.
The mandate of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is to manage public lands for multiple uses, including watershed protection, resource management, and recreation. Under USFS management, wilderness protections restrict mechanized transport and commercial activities within designated areas while balancing conservation practices with traditional uses such as hiking and horseback riding on multi-use lands. The FS employs adaptive management strategies to reconcile wilderness values with other forest service mandates.
The mission of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is to manage its vast tracts of public land network for a mixture of uses such as grazing, recreation, and conservation. It oversees large and often remote wilderness areas with policies that, like the other agencies, focus on minimizing human impact. The Bureau must apply the Wilderness Act's standards to ensure that permitted activities do not compromise the wilderness experience. It, too, must rely on adaptive management practices to best manage the public lands under its jurisdiction.
Lastly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conserves the various ecosystems in our public lands and the species that inhabit them. The Service approaches natural resource management by prioritizing ecological integrity and habitat preservation in wilderness areas by using management techniques that protect wildlife while allowing for minimal, non-intrusive human use
The title of this article poses two actionable items for designated wilderness areas: to allow some sort of ecological restoration or to leave these spaces to their own devices altogether. In general, we shouldn't consider this in terms of absolutes since neither approach should be the sole course of action, and we may need to consider the question on a case-by-case basis. The argument for leaving such areas unmanaged assumes that wild landscapes today exist in isolation, free from the effect of anthropogenic effects (Robin 2014), something that we can agree is not the case. A good example is the effects of climatological forces driven by a rising change in global climate and how changes in one ecosystem can ripple through and be felt in other systems throughout the globe. Climate change alone will touch every acre of this earth, an unyielding empiric fact that we have collectively decided does not warrant adequate actionable change in our priorities. Consequently, because anthropogenic activities are also permitted in many of these lands, restorative efforts are justified in many cases despite the mandate of the Act precisely because they will not be unaffected by our actions.
Here, I would also emphasize the need to say that strict non-intervention approaches could lead to the collapse of fragile ecosystems and the significant loss of biodiversity. While wilderness areas are certainly protected from land conversion, they also most certainly suffer from the effects of non-point-source influences. Therefore, a measured, science-based intervention can sometimes help ecosystems adapt to new realities while preserving key wilderness values. This approach is best described by the Minimum Requirement Exception, which allows for minimum human intervention when necessary while leaving the wilderness as undisturbed as possible (Buono 2011).
One essential aspect often forgotten when considering the scientific debate prompted by this question is that the Act did not consider the perspective of Indigenous people in the landscape before the European invasion since First Nations should be regarded as an integrated aspect of it. For millennia (Robin 2014), humans had been shaping the landscape in a manner easily arguable as sustainable before the arrival of Europeans, my people, in the American continent. In many cases, we tend to default to those pre-settling landscapes as a reference image of what it means for a site to be pristine. Robin also argues that this tenet alone dismantles the mandate of leaving a wilderness area completely untouched by humans.
I would add that the Indigenous perspective dramatically differed from the European perspective in how European settlers viewed and interpreted natural landscapes. I am thinking of Manifest Destiny here, and I add that European settlers viewed nature as a hostile, threatening force to dominate, tame, and "organize," essentially exhorting dominance and ownership over it, a concept that was alien to most, if not all, of the Indigenous groups. This contrasts with Indigenous worldviews of deep connection to the land from the perspective of being just another species in the ecosystem that views nature as habitat which sustains and protects us when it is in equilibrium.
When I studied US History in my first year of college, my professor Dr. Sicko explained that Protestant pilgrims had several religious-based biases (okay, maybe the bias part is my addition) that made them view nature as chaotic, corrupted, sin-ridden, and in need of being "civilized" by human intervention to reshape it under their Christian values; such was the Puritan perspective. They also considered wilderness as divine providence, and their arrival in it a godly design which gave them the mandate to conquer it as proof of faith and utilize it to build a prosperous society. In my humble opinion, today, we may substitute divine providence with unlimited economic growth that prioritizes stakeholders' return on investment over habitat degradation and climate change, and we can see that not much has changed in how we view and treat the natural world.
What needs to change here is how we envision the landscape and our role as simply another animal species within it, thereby departing from an Anthropocentric exceptionalism mentality that has driven us to restore ecosystems in the first place. It would also not hurt shifting from a strictly utilitarian management mentality towards our natural resources and consider our own long-term survival. Perhaps then might we understand the real role of nature, our habitat without which our species will surely be in peril.
This must be carefully considered in this philosophical debate when deciding how to answer the question in the title. Even within my field of wildlife biology, I often struggle with how, throughout the many courses I have taken to obtain my degree, the common theme seems that natural resources must be managed and mainly conserved through a utilitarian approach prioritizing economic value to us humans and for the ecosystem services it provides us. This is, of course, often true, and there are aspects of it that I readily assume since I understand that not everyone sees nature for its intrinsic value and that, as a wildlife professional, I must clearly understand and acknowledge the different values from the various stakeholder groups when addressing them, strategizing management plans or when recommending conservation policy-making.
However, we would do well to incorporate ancient Indigenous tenets of ecological conservation into our scientific approach, and to understand that humans are and should be, part of the landscape. What about conserving nature solely for its intrinsic value? Would we have a healthier relationship with the natural world if we viewed nature, its ecosystems, plants, animals and rivers as all interconnected relatives with which we share a bond with? Wouldn't it be then harder to kill them? Would we think twice when making the choice of what ecosystem goes down so our buildings can go up, or which and how many species must pay our price of progress? How much would we give back to nature when we took from it if we applied the ancient Native American sense of reciprocity?
I recently read in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, a great book by Potawatomi professor Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, about a scientist who, in exploring a new site for a scientific study hired an indigenous guide to lead him. The botanist, surprised at the deep knowledge of the plants the guide exhibited complimented him, to which the guide replied: "yes, I have learned the name of all the bushes, but I have yet to learn their songs". As scientist we learn all the aspects and mechanics of the natural world. We memorize their Latin names, down to family, orders, genus and species. But, are we listening to their songs, what they have to teach us, what we can learn from and live by? Yes, I am well aware that what I just asked is sacrilegious within my scientific community and breaks all tenets of objectivity, impartiality and detachment from personal biases.
But, I know from a few sociology courses, that homo sapiens is an inherently biased species. Sociologists argue that bias can be challenged and, perhaps even unlearned through education, exposure to diverse perspectives, and structural changes in society. However, we are unlike to achieve total neutrality; everyone is shaped by social forces beyond their control. What we can do, I have learned, is become aware of our biases so that we can be less blindsided by them as we navigate life, or science.
As wildlife biologists, are we really completely free from bias through our training and studies? Or, are we really going to pretend not to be able to apply the scientific method and put our hypotheses to the test empirically while simultaneously acknowledging our emotions about nature, whatever those may be, and that these may not necessarily be mutually exclusive?
Imagine a wildlife biologist like a painter as they observe a wilderness scene. They admire the landscape before them not from the utilitarian value but for its inherent right to exist; a living masterpiece of interconnected life. They feel inspired by watching the wolf move through the trees, or the hawk gliding through unseen currents. So, they study the ecosystem deeper, analyzing it through their art. Yet, they do not paint with assumption or emotion. Instead, they carefully sketch each creature as they truly are, not as they wish them to be. They document the wolf’s movements with precision, not just admiration and they measure the hawk’s wingspan as they marvel at its effortless flight. Can we wildlife biologists be this painter, who remains unbiased while loving nature intrinsically—mesmerized by nature’s beauty and worth but ensuing that their brush never adds color where there is none, nor omits truths that must to be told?
Lastly, we should ponder upon ancient Indigenous philosophies like those considering the next seven generations, a long-held principle in many Indigenous cultures—like the Iroquois—which teaches that our decisions today should benefit not only our generation but those yet to come. Applying this philosophy to wilderness management combined with a scientific and adaptive management approach as an active, long-term vision seems intuitive. Luckily, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a field experiencing increased visibility and acceptance in scientific and general audiences. I would have liked it if my Bachelor of Sciences in Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation Sciences had offered (actually required) at least one course on TEK as a core requirement, but that is a story for another time.
"Wopíla tȟáŋka ečhíčhiya yelo" -- I express deep gratitude.
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