There are more than 100 million acres of designated wilderness in the United States, but there are also many places outside of protected Wilderness Areas that share many of their attributes. A new map shows where they are.
The advocacy group the Wilderness Society released the online, interactive map at the end of September, the month the Wilderness Act was signed in 1964. Using data on land use, distance from roads, light pollution, population density and other attributes, the tool lets users see the wildest areas from the national down to the county level.
Explaining the idea of the map, Travis Belote, the group’s senior science director, pointed to a quote from Howard Zahniser, the society’s former director and key proponent of the Act.
“He said, ‘We must remember always that the essential quality of wilderness is its wildness,’” Belote said. “So this idea that wilderness is a place, but wildness is a quality. Wildness is a quality of land that we can find relatively anywhere.”
The map allows users to see the wildest 30% of land at the national, state and county level. Using that feature, Belote showed that even near major cities like Chicago, relatively wild places can be found.
At a national scale, the most untrammeled areas are unsurprisingly concentrated in the American West. But even here, Belote says the map can help residents appreciate that areas that seem unexceptional are more wild than they realize.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
