PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #49: Restoration of Public Lands.
Presiding: D. Gordon
Wednesday, August 7. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Mohave Meeting Room, TCC.

Information needs for restoring natural conditions and protecting wildness in designated wilderness.

LANDRES, PETER^*,1, MILLER, CAROL¹, PARSONS, DAVID¹, ¹ Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, MT

ABSTRACT- Designated wilderness, covering nearly 43 million hectares of public land, suffers from many past and current ecological insults. For many of these impacts, actions can be taken to restore natural ecological conditions, but wilderness managers and conservationists are questioning whether these restoration actions should be taken. By legislative mandate, designated wilderness is managed both for its naturalness and as an area free from intentional human control and manipulation, i.e., its wildness. In some situations, restoring natural conditions requires intense and long-tem manipulation, directly compromising the mandate to protect and preserve wildness. The impacts from fire exclusion, for example, pose a unique dilemma: should fuels be manipulated to restore a more natural fire regime, should wildness be compromised to restore naturalness? This presentation will examine the origin and potential consequences of this dilemma, and offer a structured framework of ecological, social, and ethical information needs for making conscientious decisions about restoring natural conditions in wilderness.

KEY WORDS: wilderness, restoration, wildness, naturalness