A backpacker enjoys the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness / NPS
This summer, a group of conservation and environmental justice organizations came together to announce the formation of a new National Wilderness Coalition (NWC). The coalition’s goal is simple: advance the cause of wilderness preservation in Congress. They’re hoping to latch onto bipartisan support for public lands and conservation to drive support among voters and advocates.
The formation of the NWC comes at key moment in U.S. public lands policy.
People are flocking to national parks, forests, and BLM lands nationwide. According to the non-proft group Outdoor Alliance, visitation to public lands has steadily increased over the past 15 years. Even after a post-Covid spike in public lands recreation, the numbers continue to climb.
For 2023, the National Park Service reported a 4% increase in park visits over 2022 (over 325 million visits), with 20 parks setting all-time highs in visitation records. The USFS reported roughly 13 million visits to designated wilderness areas in 2022, an increase of more than 4 million visits compared with 2018.
What’s more, a 2024 survey conducted for the Indianapolis Zoological Society showed that 87% of respondents feel a presidential candidate’s commitment to conservation is important. That stat includes 82% of Republicans, a figure that’s grown by 14% since 2020.
The NWC is coming together just as the popularity of public lands, and an awareness of the importance of conservation is exploding.
Kenai Fjords Wilderness / NPS
NWC’s mission, when it comes to policy, is to support legislation that strengthens protection for existing wilderness areas and expands them when possible, and to use wilderness conservation as a tool to “address the ongoing degradation of wildlands, climate change, biodiversity loss, and the lack of access to nature,” according to a statement from the NWC.
The NWC feels that supporting legislators who are committed to wilderness preservation and diversifying the voices advocating for wilderness is crucial.
“There is a need for more congressional support for wilderness among senators and Congressional representatives across the country,” said Travis Hammill of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a member of the NWC. “These lands belong to all Americans and they should be represented in discussions as to the fate of these landscapes. This is especially true for States like Utah, where politicians are out of touch with their constituents when it comes to public land issues, and are hostile to the idea of land conservation.”
“Most coalition members would agree that both (expansion of wilderness areas and exploring different ways to manage designated wilderness areas) are necessary,” said Amanda Newman, Coalition Coordinator for the NWC.
Newman says the MWC has a five-year plan to “diversify the wilderness movement and build political power.”
“Specifically, we know that the wilderness movement has failed to meaningfully engage Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations. It is our hope that together we can advance solutions that involve shared governance, co-stewardship, co-management, and the protection of cultural landscapes consistent with the Wilderness Act.”
More than 80 percent of National Park Service lands are managed as wilderness, and the NWC is hoping to both expand that number and to ensure wilderness designations stay that way.
“Park lands can also tie together adjacent undeveloped lands. For example, we supported wilderness for Zion National Park as part of the Washington County lands legislation enacted in 2009. Park boundaries are drawn along political lines, fracturing landscape. In the case of Zion, NPS wilderness tied together adjacent landscapes on BLM land.”
“National parks may face fewer threats than lands managed by other agencies,” Hammill says. “But they are still faced with challenges to their natural landscapes.”
