RARE I

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RARE I II, Eastern Endangered Wilderness
Acts, Alaskan Wilderness
Course Website
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Wilderness Act of 1964

• 9 million acres instant wilderness
• Forest Service
• review 34 primitive areas
• may review contiguous area
• Nat Park and Fish Wildlife Serv
• review roadless areas lt 5,000 acres
• review all roadless islands

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• Deal with turning points
• USFS did the heavy lifting
• set up task force
• task is professional
• took purist approach
• belief Congress so intended
• minimize impact on other uses

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Technical
Value Choice
Technical
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Assumed environmental groups would support purist
approach Yes for management No for adding new
areas
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San Rafael Primitive Area

• USFS proposed 110,000-acre wilderness (when
  primitive area was only 75,000
• Environmental groups wanted 5 more contiguous
  areas added
• USFS then recommended 143,000 acres
• Hang-up over 2,200-acre fire-break

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Lessons learned

• Wilderness designation will be political, not
  professional or administrative
• Areas contiguous to primitive areas will be
  reviewed.

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Gore Range-Eagles Nest Primitive Area

• East Meadow Creek Area
• Had bug road and proposed timber sale
• Vail citizens
• Sued, but obstacles
• sovereign immunity
• standing

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Lessons learned

• Interest groups can sue.
• Again, contiguous areas will be considered.

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RARE (RARE I)

• USFS wanted to stay in control
• Inventoried 1,449 areas (56 milion acres with
  wilderness potential
• Only 2 in East, one in Puerto Rico
• Draft EIS proposed 235 WSAs
• gt 50,000 comments submitted

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• Added deleted to give 275 WSAs
• Criteria
• public sentiment
• potential wilderness quality
• cost effectiveness
• overall judgment (recommendations of decision
  makers)

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RARE immediately challenged

• too fast
• too subjective
• too few areas in East
• USFS proposed Wildwood Heritage System (later
  Wild areas)
• USFS then proposed 16 eastern wildernesses and
  another 37 study areas

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wild. fill gap? . devel.
some other People
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Eastern Wilderness Act

• Senate increased number of areas to 19
• Private lands could be condemned
• Wilderness and WSAs withdrawn from mineral entry
• Written consent from Congressional
  Representatives in affected Districts

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Giving representatives control

• reduced instant wilderneses from 19 to 15
• set a precedent for eventual State wilderness
  acts

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USFS continued to be purist

• despite Eastern Wilderness Act
• rejected areas within sight and sound of Salt
  Lake City, Abuquerque, Tucson
• Environmental groups proposed another bill
• Carter administrations ideology helped
• Passed Endangered American Wilderness Act (1978)

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Ideology ( its values) like glasses We look
through them without really looking at them
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RARE II

• RARE I considered too subjective
• USFS judging as well as assessing
• Hoped RARE II would qualify as EIS
• RARE II recommended 3,000 areas (62 million
  acres)
• Recommended 15 million acres, with 5 million on
  Tongas National Forest

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California v. Bergland

• Trinity County Board of Supervisors wanted half
  of 48,000 roadless acres as wilderness, vs. 4
  percent proposed
• USFS claimed to serve larger picture
• Huey Johnson sued, and won
• RARE II not sufficient as EIS statement
• EIS before any area released

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Huey Johnson, Secretary of Resources for
California. Earlier had founded Trust for
Public Land.
Won the UN Sasakawa envi-ronmental prize
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Ideological Shift Ronal Regan elected
as President, 1980
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• Selected John Crowell as Secretary of interior
• General Counsel, Louisiana Pacific
• Crowell directed reevaluation of all RARE II
  areas (meaning EIS for each)
• Everyone felt boxed in

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Congress to the rescue

• Passed Statewide bills(Washington in 1984 and
  1988)
• Included a sufficiency clause in each
• Things began to move
• but politic turned out more important than
  technical input

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• NPS and FWS
• 5,000-acres roadless
• all roadless islands
• much slower than USFS
• BLM
• Study authority in 1976
• Secretary Watt scaled back, lost suit

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Alaska - Sewards folly, 1867
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Statehood - 1958

• allowed to select 104 million acres
• Native Alaskans overlooked

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• Supreme Court muddied everything
• Secretary Udall froze all further claims
• ANCSA passed in 1971 - allowed major withdrawals,
  transfer to Native Alaskans

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President Carter used Antiquities Act.
Withdrew 56 million acres for 17 new national
monuments.

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His Secretary of Interior began creating 40
million acres of new National Wildlife Refuges
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ANILCA

• 1980
• 104 million acres of national parks, national
  wildlife refuges, other conservation areas
• 56 million of this into NWPS
• Suddenly NPS was largest wilderness landlord

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• Exceptions in Alaska
• subsistence hunting for native Alaskans

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