What is the Minimum Size a Wilderness Area Should Be?

[Nameless Range]

There are certain places in MT I think need greater protections, or at least an acknowledgement of their uniqueness as country and importance as habitat.

Over the years I've become obsessed with getting to know the Boulder Mountains.

In the Environmentalists Wet Dream, NREPA, two proposed wilderness exist within the range: The Electric Peak, and The Haystack.50,000 and 84,000 acres respectively. I am aware this will never happen.

Senator Tester's FJRA also proposes wilderness in the range, albeit one, in the form of the Electric Peak Wilderness. Which would only contain the south eastern slope of Electric Peak, and would be 4,900 acres in size.

In my opinion, 4,900 acres is a joke. New York's Central Park is just under 900.

I appreciate the protection and acknowledgement that it's needed and the permanence that comes with Wilderness. I've hunted smaller Wilderness Areas like the Welcome Creek, which you can hike from top to bottom in a few hours.

I understand a lot of FJRA and other Wilderness Bills are additions to existing Wilderness, but if a new isolated Wilderness Area is created, What do you think a reasonable minimum size should be? Or should we just take what we can get, and start looking at wilderness not as a place where you can take in large tracts of undeveloped country and roam, but rather as a placeholder for what will be small but permanent roadless areas?

Obviously, topography changes the nature of solitude, difficulty of traversing, etc. when it comes to large chunks of undeveloped land and what they can offer, but in my king-for-a-day world, my minimum would be 20,000 acres.

 

[1_pointer]

I'm not a fan of having any sort of size minimum or maximum as a qualifier for wilderness designation.

 

[Ben Long]

I think it depends on local conditions. Some of the Florida Keys are Wilderness, managed by USFWS, and are quite small, but remote, undeveloped and important habitat/saltwater flats, etc. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers supported the Copper-Salmon Wilderness in Oregon, which was small, but protected an entire upper watershed for salmon/steelhead. I'm not familiar with this location, so can't speak to it. Maybe others can?

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Pointer is correct that a min/max size is probably not the way to approach it. Many wilderness/roadless areas, and particularly those of small size, have a much greater influence on the human user experience than meaningful conservation. User experience is a value that a National Forest must consider when analyzing projects like this, because it does hold value.

Consider the size of Yellowstone Park, and yet most ecological processes at work there hold influence at a much larger scale--the GYE at a minimum. My point being we are not going to contain almost any major ecosystem function within a wilderness area, regardless of size. Protecting essential headwaters and specific island populations of plants or wildlife is another matter, and alone may warrant a wilderness designation for some clear purpose.

 

[dihardhunter]

^^^ 1_pointer^^^
Yes.

Leopold was a smart guy but he was adamant that only areas large enough to absorb 2 weeks' worth of a pack trip aided by horses. That's large. I say no restrictions on wilderness area. ANY legislation or property designated as wilderness is a positive. Last I checked, they ain't makin' no more land.

 

[LCH]

Our little Wilderness area here in southern Indiana is only about 12k acres. That would seem small by Western standards, but it's a huge chunk of land here in the midwest. If you limit the minimum area to a certain size, it makes it a heck of a lot tougher to designate roadless areas east of the Rockies.

 

[Nameless Range]

All very good points. The minimum I referred to would not be a good idea.

It does seem though, that Wilderness and Permanent-Roadless-Area(PRA), will essentially be the same thing if we ever move forward with creating more. At least in the proposals that have a snowball's chance in hell of ever coming to fruition.

Yes, a PRA is better than nothing. But I feel strongly that some country is unique enough both geologically and ecologically, that it is entirely unrepresented within our current Wilderness System. Electric Peak, Thunderbolt Mountain, and the Haystack fit this bill. If a Wilderness area here were large enough, it could provide a very important role in connectivity between the GYA and the Crown of the Continent. As this proposal sits right now, I could bisect the heart of this proposed Wilderness on foot in less than an hour.

The Boulder Mountains are one of the larger ranges in Montana at over 1800 sq miles. They carry the Continental Divide for over 40 miles. They are under appreciated as hell, and have nearly zero protection in terms of roadless areas. Despite the objections of radical groups, out of necessity, one of the few they do have will be roaded and logged shortly. In this specific example, I guess I feel the range deserves more.

 

[1_pointer]

Our little Wilderness area here in southern Indiana is only about 12k acres. That would seem small by Western standards, but it's a huge chunk of land here in the midwest. If you limit the minimum area to a certain size, it makes it a heck of a lot tougher to designate roadless areas east of the Rockies.

And in the areas west of the Rockies due to politics.