Need for Change in Wilderness Management Planning

1. This document is contained within the Visitor Use Management Toolbox on Wilderness.net. Since other related resources found in this toolbox may be of interest, you can visit this toolbox by visiting the following URL: http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=toolboxes&sec=vum. All toolboxes are products of the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center.

2. Identifying the Need for Change and Desired Conditions

3. Basic Questions What do we want? What do we have?

4. What Drives the Need for Change? • Recent designation • Impacts of use • Recreation • Special provisions • Natural events • Weather • Fire • New agency policies • New activity on adjacent lands

5. What Drives the Need for Change? “The management challenge facing an agency is a direct function of the attributes of the classified areas.” (John Hendee).

6. What Drives the Need for Change? “The agency must manage as wilderness what it inherits through the allocation process.” (John Hendee)

7. What Drives the Need for Change? “If that process yields heavily impacted areas, with high levels of established or incompatible uses, providing "naturalness and solitude" will be more difficult.” (John Hendee).

8. Reasons to Plan for Change Agency personnel are told to do so, through legislation or policy “ . . . each agency administering any area designated as wilderness shall be responsible for preserving the wilderness character of the area . . .” Wilderness Act Section 4(b)

9. Reasons to Plan for Change To correct problems that have surfaced • lack of good planning in the past • changes in use patterns or public preferences • increased knowledge base • more aware of the consequences of our actions.

10. Reasons to Plan for Change We envision a future different from the present • acknowledge our current policies and actions will not get us to that future • an intervention strategy that is necessary to help us arrive at a set of desired conditions in the future

11. Need for Change Purpose • Identify problems or threats • Understand the problem • Agree on addressing now

12. Need for Change Sell the problem, not the solution

13. Need for Change Purpose • Focus planning effort • Develop clear issue/problem statements • Narrow the scope of analysis

14. Need for Change Process • Threats analysis • What is affecting wilderness character? • Avoid problem resolution at this stage • Developing the framework to guide evaluation • Why it is a problem • Who it affects

15. Need for Change Process • Which issues/problems can be dismissed? • Existing laws or policies can resolve the issue • Existing management direction provides adequate guidance to address the issue • Meets the intent of the Wilderness Act and agency policy • Clear measurable objectives • Integrated resource direction • Consistent direction across administrative boundaries

16. Need for Change Process • Which issues/problems can be dismissed? (continued) • Issue is outside the scope of the analysis • Issue is irrelevant to the decisions to be made • Issue is conjectural and not supported by existing scientific evidence

17. Need for Change Process • Which remaining issues or problems are most important? • Rarity – unique attributes/values • Responsiveness – management likely to greatly improve conditions • Intensity or magnitude of impact • Extent of impact • Duration of impact

18. Need for Change Process • What are the consequences of doing nothing? • Why problem needs to be addressed now

19. Need for Change Product • Problem statement – clear description of: • the problem • why it’s important • why it needs to be addressed now • what will happen if it’s not addressed • The decision to be made • WORKSHEET EXERCISE

20. Desired Conditions Where do you want to end up? Clear and specific statements of desired wilderness conditions tell you when you have arrived.

21. Desired Conditions Purpose • Define wilderness character for area

22. Wilderness Act of 1964 How does the WA describe wilderness character?

23. Wilderness Character “character” is “the combination of qualities or features that distinguishes one person, group or thing from another.” (American Heritage Dictionary 1992) Drawing on this definition, wilderness character might be described as the combination of biophysical, experiential, and symbolic ideals that distinguishes wilderness from other lands.

24. Wilderness Character is… • A primary administrative responsibility mandated by the Wilderness Act, but is not specifically defined in the Act. • The biophysical, experiential, and symbolic relationships and meanings that distinguish wilderness from all other lands. • Protected or diminished by stewardship decisions and actions. • In part, unique to each wilderness. (from draft USFS Framework to monitor wilderness character, June 2004)

25. Wilderness Character Wilderness areas administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness

26. Wilderness Character • contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape • an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man • where man himself is a visitor who does not remain

27. Wilderness Character • an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence • without permanent improvements or human habitation • protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions

28. Wilderness Character • (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable • (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation • (3) at least five thousand acres or of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition • (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value

29. Desired Wilderness Character • Untrammeled: degree of modern human manipulation • Undeveloped: degree of human improvements • Natural: ecological integrity, air/water quality • Solitude/primitive-unconfined recreation: degree of solitude,primitive and unconfined recreation, challenge, self-reliance…

30. Desired Conditions Purpose • Prevent management by default • Define what will be achieved in the future

31. Desired Conditions Process • Identify role of the Wilderness in regional or national context • Define strategic position for this Wilderness on spectrum of wildness • Develop descriptions of desired character

32. Desired Conditions Product • Description of desired character (strategic position)

33. Strategic Wilderness Position Middle Fork Tributaries Shenandoah Okefenokee Salmon Alseck Kenai Most Wild Least Wild Yacobi Togiak Bob Marshall Frank Church Boundary Waters Wisconsin Islands

34. Key Points • Tier to area purpose and significance • Prescriptive • Qualitative • Meaningful for area • Dynamic • Avoid incremental change

35. “If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them with a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it”L.B. Johnson