What You Need to Know About “Wilderness Policy Review”

By Melissa Newell 2 weeks ago

In June, the Department of the Interior launched a review of five foundational policies that guide how wilderness and wilderness-quality lands are managed across the BLM, NPS, and USFWS. No specific changes were proposed, but rather the sweeping review was buried inside an announcement regarding climbing guidance. Under the guise of “removing unnecessary barriers,” the government is attempting to open the door to industrial development, resource extraction, unsustainable motorized use, and privatization. 

Specifically, the policies under review include: BLM Manuals 6320, 6330, and 6340; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Manual 610; and National Park Service Director Order 41. These manuals and director orders delineate the standards of protection for designated wilderness, wilderness study areas (WSAs), lands with wilderness characteristics (LWCs), and recommended wilderness. The review could affect: 

  • More than 91 million acres managed by the BLM; 
  • More than 70 million acres managed by the National Park Service; and 
  • More than 35 million acres administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The existing policies help to ensure that the ecological, cultural, scenic, and recreational resources of wilderness and wilderness-quality lands remain intact and available for future generations. There is no need for them to be “updated, clarified or revised to improve management” as the Department of the Interior is proposing.

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On August 4, a group of 16 staff and volunteers from the Western Slope Conservation Center, partnering with the US Forest Service–Paonia Ranger District, conducted some much-needed trail work in the West Elk Wilderness. Designated in 1964, the wilderness is a remote and undeveloped area in the West Elk Mountains east of Paonia. Known for its volcanic rock formations, its 176,431 acres (like all wilderness areas) are closed to motorized use and offer hundreds of miles of peace and solitude on trails open to hikers, backpackers, hunters and anglers, and equestrians. 

Federally designated wilderness is the highest level of land protection applied to public lands in the United States. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964, the Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System, protecting an initial 9.1 million acres of undeveloped federal land managed by the USFS. Today, more than 800 wilderness areas, totaling nearly 112 million acres coast-to-coast, are safeguarded by this monumental legislation that prohibits roads, motorized vehicles, mechanical transport like bicycles, and commercial development, ensuring that they remain places “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Wilderness and wilderness-quality lands are our wildest and most undeveloped remaining landscapes. They conserve healthy watersheds, intact habitat for fish and wildlife, and cultural and historical resources. They support biodiversity, provide landscape-scale connectivity, and contribute to broad ecosystem resilience. They help sustain the economies of surrounding communities that depend on recreation and tourism. Finally, they offer a place for self-reflection, solitude, and connection to nature in what can seem a perpetually busy world. 

Since the Wilderness Act passed, more than 150 additional federal laws have been passed adding numerous designations of wilderness to the system. These lands are now managed by three additional federal agencies: the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management.

What’s at Stake in Western Colorado

In total, there are nearly 200 million acres of federal public lands, managed by three agencies—BLM, NPS, and USFWS—that could be affected by wilderness policy changes. Under the purview of the NPS, these lands include potential wilderness, recommended wilderness, proposed wilderness, and eligible wilderness. Managed by the USFWS are proposed wilderness and WSAs. Most pertinent to our lives in western Colorado are those lands managed by the BLM: WSAs and LWCs. 

In 1976, the Federal Land Protection and Management Act (FLPMA) made the inventory and designation of WSAs and the identification of LWCs possible for the BLM. The BLM now manages 487 WSAs in the American West and Alaska totaling 11.6 million acres. Managed as part of the National Conservation Lands, each unit is made up of at least 5,000 acres of roadless public lands that are largely undeveloped and natural and provide outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. Once designated, WSAs must be kept wild under federal law until Congress decides to protect the area as a Wilderness area or “release” it. This means the area is off-limits to oil and gas leasing and motorized or mechanized uses.

You might have enjoyed the WSAs in western Colorado. They include:

  • Adobe Badlands: Located northwest of the city of Delta, the area is unique for its sparsely vegetated, badlands landscape with steeply sloping hills and clay canyons carved into eroding Mancos shale formations. The area is home to golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, elk, pronghorn antelope, and various other desert wildlife. It provides essential habitat linkage for big game during the winter months from high elevation areas such as Grand Mesa to the canyons of Dominguez Escalante National Conservation Area. Notable flora include low saltbush, desert trumpet, buckwheat, grasses, and the Uinta Basin hookless cactus.  
  • Camel Back: Located in a transition zone between two ecosystems—the Colorado Plateau Province and the Rocky Mountain Forest Province—the area, carved by perennial and intermittent streams, is characterized by deep canyons and extensive mesas. The area’s geologic structure is of mesozoic sandstones raised by the Uncompahgre Uplift, which created the Uncompahgre Plateau. The resulting amphitheatres, massive canyons, and talus slopes create remote, wild spaces remarkable for their opportunities for solitude.
  • Dolores River Canyon: Renowned for primitive and unconfined recreation, the area offers outstanding, rugged canyons punctuated by prominent, colorful ledges and massive cliffs. Hanging ferns and clear, cool pools of water can often be found in the numerous tributary canyons. Dating back more than 160 million years, the exposed geologic history displays rock from the Pennsylvanian Period to the Jurassic Period. 

Use this BLM map to view other WSAs, including: Sewamup, Dominguez, Palisade, and Little Book Cliffs.

LWCs are roadless areas that possess naturalness, solitude, and primitive recreation potential. They share similar conditions as designated wilderness or existing WSAs except that their management is derived from land use planning or project-level management decisions. LWC areas are administrative identifications made during routine planning and do not normally carry legal requirements that would prohibit their reduction (known as “statutory non-impairment mandates”) unless specifically applied in a land use plan. For this reason, they are even more vulnerable than wilderness areas: They are protected only by agency policy; no act of Congress is required to dissolve their inventory status.

This map from The Wilderness Society shows locations of LWCs in western Colorado. 

Take Action

Your comments are powerful and can influence the proposal. The comment period is open through Friday, August 14, and now is your opportunity to take action and request that no fundamental changes be made to existing agency wilderness policies and guidance. 

When writing your letter, here are a few tips: 

  • Make clear that you OPPOSE any policy revisions to Management of Wilderness Study Areas (BLM-2026-0069), Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (BLM-2026-0068), Management of Designated Wilderness Areas (BLM-2026-0067), Wilderness Stewardship (NPS-2026-0100), and Wilderness Administration and Resource Stewardship (FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-2575).
  • Encourage the Department of the Interior to continue to manage these lands according to their wilderness, natural, undeveloped, and backcountry character.
  • Customize your letter and make it personal. Say what you like to do in these areas, whether it be hiking, hunting, birding, camping, riding horseback, or something else. Agencies count identical comments as one and tend to weigh them less than unique comments. 
  • Name specific wilderness areas you have a connection with and why you believe protecting wildlands is important. 
  • Keep comments high level, not technical. The administration is seeking general feedback and has not proposed any specific revisions or changes for public review. Do not mention specific provisions to target.

Follow the links below to submit comments to each of the five policy reviews: 

Alternatively, here’s a sample letter from Act Now for Public Lands that can be used for all five comments: 

I am writing to express my strong opposition to any administrative rollbacks or weakening of wilderness and wild lands management resulting from the current wilderness policy reviews across the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. My comments pertain to the Management of Wilderness Study Areas (BLM-2026-0069), Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (BLM-2026-0068), Management of Designated Wilderness Areas (BLM-2026-0067), Wilderness Stewardship (NPS-2026-0100), and Wilderness Administration and Resource Stewardship (FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-2575). 

Our remaining wild lands and wilderness resources are vital to preserving ecological integrity, safeguarding sacred cultural resources, and offering unmatched opportunities for quiet recreation. Rather than diluting management standards, the Department of Interior should maintain protections for these irreplaceable public lands.

As a public lands advocate, I urge you to uphold robust wilderness management policies that prioritize long-term preservation over short-term exploitation. Weakening these foundational guidelines would threaten millions of pristine acres and compromise our shared natural legacy. Please ensure that any final policy directives continue to protect the enduring wild character of America’s public lands.

The process is complicated and designed to be confusing. If you have questions or would like to discuss your comments, please reach out to WSCC advocacy coordinator Melissa Newell, melissa@theconservationcenter.org.

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