Talk:National Wilderness Preservation System

Recommended Wilderness Areas
Perhaps there should be mention of the fact that, according to NPS policy, any areas that are recommended for Wilderness Preservation Status must be treated as Wilderness until congress votes Yes or No on the recommendation.

"The National Park Service will take no action that would diminish the wilderness eligibility of an area possessing wilderness characteristics until the legislative process of wilderness designation has been completed. Until that time, management decisions will be made in expectation of eventual wilderness designation. This policy also applies to potential wilderness, requiring it to be managed as wilderness to the extent that existing nonconforming conditions allow." Section 6.3.1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.85.222.157 (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Expanding Introduction
You did an excellent job expanding on the intro of the article. I thought you made it very informative without over doing it by keeping it short and to the point. You added a lot of very interesting things under the history, such as The Great Swamp in New Jersey being the first designated wilderness refuge in the US and that the Elkhorn Ridge Wilderness is the newest one to be protected by this act. The “Leave No Trace” policy was a great thing to add because I don’t think many people would have even considered some of those rules as helping preserve the areas. You did a great job stating which states had the highest number of preserves, but when it was based on acreage it changed the list. I thought that was interesting. Adding all of the laws and policies was also very informative. You greatly improved the page overall by covering a lot of topics and expanding on others. Jenniferdanielle418 (talk) 17:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Bold text

Bicycles in the wilderness
The Wilderness Act actually does NOT prohibit bicycling in Wilderness Areas, though bicycling is usually not allowed by regional managers. This is the finding of a recent extensive report as discussed below:
 * Original report, Ted Stroll (PDF)
 * Wilderness Act Does Not Ban Mountain Biking - New West Network, and especially the author of the reports' response to commenters.

I am interested in other Wikipedians thoughts on how to handle this in this article, as the article currently states rather bluntly "In general, the law prohibits logging, mining, roads, mechanized vehicles (including bicycles), and other forms of development." -the dharma bum 21:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * My understanding of the wilderness act is that is does not allow bicycles on wilderness lands. The links you provided show that this is being contested, but not that the law has been changed. My experience with the National Park Service leads me to believe that indeed, no moutain bikes or any bicycles were allowed in designated wilderness zones. It may be that some regions do permit it, but the law written in 1964 forbid such activity. I also quickly saw that one of the links claims that other mechanical equipment is allowed in wilderness...the only time I can thing that this is the case is to deal with forest fires and their aftermath, or if there is a search and rescue underway. I'm not saying that the land management agencies don't themselves violate the law, just that it is a fineable offense to ride bikes in wilderness zones...how stringently it is enforced is the big question.--MONGO 01:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * MONGO, thanks for the response. After rereading all the documents, I would say that issue hasn't changed and I don't think any wilderness area effectively allows mountain biking either. It's probably worth keeping an eye on. - the dharma bum 19:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I am not opposed to mountain bikes there as they allow horses and either one is likely to be ridden off trail. But I do think that the law is pretty specific to bicycles as a form of "motorized transport". The fight between the mountain biking enthusiasts and the environmentalists is oftentimes a strange struggle, as on almost every other point, mountain bikers would be environmentalists for the most part. Happy editing!--MONGO 01:32, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Expansion of wilderness areas in California
Should the California Wilderness Act of 1984 and the most recent expansion, the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act be added to this article? or is that too state-specific? Marcia Wright (talk) 00:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction in article
This page is in contradiction with this website in reference to the largest wilderness area in the continental US: http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=fastfacts&error=404 I'm new to wikipedia and don't know what the procedure is on this... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.91.144.12 (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Global programs
Hello, I am a GGC student who is interested in updating and providing additional information to this page. I have included a section on Global Initiatives and plan to add some more info pertaining to US state specific programs. ESmith3 (talk) 11:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for helping to expand Wikipedia! This article is about the U.S. wilderness system only. The international info belongs at the existing article IUCN. I'll move the material over there. —hike395 (talk) 15:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hey Hike395! Thanks so much for helping me out with the page. I am still trying to get an idea of how this page could be better structured. Originally I was asked to add some global stuff to the page, but your point is well taken and I figured it would be odd on that page. That being said, what are your thoughts on how the page could be better improved? I could possibly put in a history section on the structure of the system and maybe include a bulleted list of the Acts that make up the system, with descriptions of them. ??? What are your thoughts?
 * Thanks again for helping me out. This is the first time I have actually edited a wiki. :)—ESmith3 (talk) 11:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * A history section could be good -- do you have good sources? One way to determine what is missing in an article is to see what topics are covered in reliable sources, and then fill in topics that are not in the article.


 * When I run across long bulleted lists in articles, I tend to split them out into separate articles, to make the main article easier to read. See, for example, List of legislation governing the United States Forest Service, which I split out of United States Forest Service. I think it is much better to expand articles with descriptive prose. See WP:EMBED. —hike395 (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Lack of specific site information.
Hello I am a Georgia Gwinnett College student interested in editing this article. I noticed a lack of sub information regarding the actual sites outlined by the legislation and would like to add a section with more links to the actual wilderness sites themselves. There is a wiki page listing the links to the actual sites which would be a helpful link to highlight on this page, but specific notable examples and a brief fact/history section for each could allow this page to grow to more then a source for the law that designated them. If this seems too specific then please let me know, i am new to wiki editing and have much to learn. Also as this is a work in progress i will revisit the talk page with additional ideas that come across in my research for this topic. jonathandemart (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC).


 * This article is about the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System. Each sites is typically covered by a separate Wikipedia article.
 * It is unclear which kind of links you might mean: wikilinks: links within Wikipedia, or external links: URLs to web content not on Wikimedia.
 * If you mean the former, an article like List of National Wilderness Preservation System sites would be useful to list every site and link to existing Wikipedia articles. A corresponding article pair would be Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and List of Oregon state parks.
 * If you mean the latter, a link to help a reader get started researching further is fine, but to link a bunch of offsite pages runs afoul of WP:LINKFARM, WP:DIRECTORY, and WP:EL. —EncMstr (talk) 22:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There already is an list article titled List of U.S. Wilderness Areas. That article could be expanded (e.g., with areas, establishment dates, and managing agencies for each wilderness), but I would not start a whole new article. —hike395 (talk) 23:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with List of U.S. Wilderness Areas. It is the proper detailed article. I initially misunderstood what National Wilderness Preservation System is about. (I assumed it was a different class of protected land.) —EncMstr (talk) 03:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hey Jonathan! I am also at GGC and plan to work on this article. Could we discuss how we might split this up? I was considering a history, timeline (of sorts), that is better structured and easier to read. Also, more state specific information of initiatives on preserving these areas. I also wonder if some information on how much money goes to fund these preserved areas and who the money comes from.?? What are your thoughts? I am happy to work with you. I think having all of us working on it will make it even better. ESmith3 (talk) 22:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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