Letter from the President
William H. Meadows
These next weeks and months are richly significant for The Wilderness Society and for Americans who treasure their wildest public lands. We are about to mark the 70th anniversary of The Wilderness Society while we wrap up the 40th anniversary celebration of the Wilderness Act.
The first of these contributed mightily to the second. Both offer hope for us at a time when conservation of wild lands and wildlife seems to face a precipitous uphill path.
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William H. Meadows. Photo by Tom Barron.
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In October of 1934, a group of men sat alongside a road in the mountains of Tennessee, my home state. The topic of energetic discussion was a plan for a new conservation organization. In January of the next year, the plan was complete, the name chosen: The Wilderness Society. Its avowed purpose was to keep “safe from invasion…that extremely minor fraction of outdoor America which yet remains free from mechanical sights, sounds and smells.”
By the mid-50s, it became clear to the leaders of The Wilderness Society and other groups that nothing short of a formal, legal framework would achieve that goal on a lasting basis. That framework was the Wilderness Act. After years of hard work, congressional debate and, yes, some compromises, it became law on Sept. 3, 1964.
The Wilderness Act did two things: It created a National Wilderness Preservation System and made an initial deposit into that system of just over nine million acres.
Today the system embraces 105 million acres. And we believe that there is at least that much more that deserves the enduring protection of the Wilderness Act.
It is heartening to note that our wilderness system has grown steadily, in good times and in bad. Even in what seemed the darkest years for conservation, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation adding nearly ten million acres to the system. Today, when our public lands are under assault as never before, not even in the Reagan years, legislation pends before Congress that could add important wilderness areas in Nevada, Washington, Puerto Rico, Virginia, California, and elsewhere.
The Wilderness Society’s founders taught us hope, perseverance, and the might of a transcendent cause. Those strengths sustained them through the years-long struggle to pass the Wilderness Act. They sustain us today as we watch a steady succession of assaults on our roadless and other wild areas, our wildlife, our clean air and water.
In the 50th anniversary issue of Wilderness magazine, Editor T.H. Watkins wrote: “While we celebrate, it is good to be reminded that we are encamped today on an old battleground, and very likely will be there again. As will our adversaries.”
I hope that 70 years hence, our great-grandchildren will celebrate a National Wilderness Preservation System that is twice the size of today’s or even more. Your continuing support, your steadfast confidence in our work, your love of wild places—these give us heart, and fuel our march toward that day.
