UPDATED | Groups Concerned Wilderness Study Areas In National Parks At Risk From Interior Department

Editor's note: This updates with reaction from Wild Cumberland.

Millions of National Park System acreage that retains wilderness characteristics and is preserved as such pending possible congressional designation as official wilderness could be at risk from the Interior Department's announced review of those lands, according to conservation groups.

Interior officials on Wednesday announced plans to evaluate whether existing wilderness study areas and other lands with wilderness characteristics across the federal landscape should be updated, clarified or revised. The agency says these efforts support its commitment to expanding access to outdoor recreation while ensuring public lands remain well managed, accessible and preserved for future generations. 

"Under President Trump’s leadership, Interior is focused on expanding outdoor recreation opportunities, removing unnecessary barriers to access and use and managing public lands in a way that benefits the American people," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in announcing the review.

According to Interior's release on the matter, the National Park Service is seeking public input on potential improvements to Director’s Order No. 41, Wilderness Stewardship. "The agency is interested in recommendations regarding whether updates, clarifications or revisions may be appropriate to improve wilderness management and ensure policies continue to support effective stewardship of wilderness areas across the National Park System," the release said.

Director's Order 41, which dates to the last century but which was updated in 2013 by then-National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, seeks to "provide accountability, consistency, and continuity in the National Park Service (NPS) wilderness stewardship program, and to guide service-wide efforts in meeting the requirements of the Wilderness Act."

Depending on Interior's goals, a re-evaluation of wilderness quality lands in the National Park System could have wide-ranging impacts, as official wilderness is off-limits to motorized vehicles (included ORVs) and boats and even mountain bikes. 

According to the National Park Service, "Congress specifically included the National Park Service in the Wilderness Act and directed the National Park Service to evaluate all its lands for suitability as wilderness. Lands evaluated and categorized as 'designated,' 'recommended,' 'proposed, 'suitable,' or 'study area' in the Wilderness Preservation System must be managed in such a way as to (1) not diminish their suitability as wilderness, and (2) apply the concepts of “minimum requirements” to all management decisions affecting those lands, regardless of the wilderness category. Some activities that are typically prohibited under the Wilderness Act are motorized or mechanized equipment use and the installation of structures.

In Yellowstone National Park, for example, 2,032,721 acres of the park's 2.2 million acres have been recommended for official wilderness designation. As such, those acres are managed as wilderness "to maintain their natural wilderness character so as not to preclude wilderness designation in the future."

At The Wilderness Society (TWS), officials said the goal of the wilderness review was unclear. "But there is reason to believe the 'potential improvements' they seek will represent another blow to America’s wildlands (an umbrella term sometimes used for public lands that are mostly untouched by development, including wilderness areas and inventoried roadless areas)," TWS said in a release Thursday. 

Bob Krumenaker, a former Park Service superintendent who played a role in wilderness management responsibilities at Shenandoah, Everglades, and Big Big Bend national parks, as well as at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, said Interior's move wasn't unexpected.

“We’ve long expected an assault on policies that have protected National Park System lands found, through public planning processes, to have wilderness qualities and therefore eligibility to be designated as wilderness by Congress," he said in an email Thursday. "By restraining any temptation to fragment these lands with new roads or structures, those policies preserve Congress’ prerogative to act, and have been upheld for decades by Republican and Democratic Administrations alike.

"Americans treasure the unique undeveloped lands in the backcountry of many of its national park system units for recreation and re-creation," added Krumenaker, who is chairman of Keep Big Bend Wild, an organization that longs to see official wilderness designated in Big Bend. "There is no problem here that needs fixing. Once again, we need to rise up to defend our public lands and recognize that we cannot take for granted that we will be able to leave them unimpaired as a legacy for future generations.”

Perhaps only a coincidence, but when Wild Cumberland, a nonprofit that advocates for wilderness at Cumberland Island National Seashore, recently requested the seashore's Baseline Wilderness Character Assessment, the Park Service responded with a fully redacted copy of the document. The request for the information came amid the seashore's recent proposals for managing visitors and commercial activities.

"This is a critical moment for the public to rally together and reinforce the importance of Wilderness to our current society and for future generations," said Jessica Howell-Edwards, Wild Cumberland's executive director.

At TWS, Abby Tinsley, the organization's senior vice president of conservation programs, said “Americans love our wild public lands, both for the wildlife habitat these places safeguard, and the freedom they provide us to hike, camp and otherwise enjoy the outdoors. Over the last 16 months, the administration has waged a war on wildlands that targets these places, and we have every reason to believe that this review is part of it. Their goal is to make it easier to push reckless development, drilling, mining and unchecked motorized activity on the tiny sliver of our wildest public lands that remains, including wilderness and wilderness study areas."