On Tuesday night, many of us enjoyed a screening of the agency’s new film, “America’s Wildest Refuge: Discovering the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” in the ornate old Orpheum Theater on State Street here in Madison. It is a marvelous film, highlighting the history and values of the Arctic Refuge in Alaska, and showing why this iconic place is indeed America’s wildest refuge.
The film also brought to my mind the rich legacy of Wilderness within the Refuge System. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stewards over 70 areas totaling nearly 21 million acres of designated Wilderness, about one-fifth of the entire National Wilderness Preservation System. The other three federal land management agencies (Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management) care for the remainder of the
Wilderness System.
As the film tonight indicated, much of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wilderness lands lie in Alaska. About 18.7 million acres of the agency’s 20.7 million Wilderness acres are found in Alaska; the bulk of the remaining 2 million acres in the Lower 48 can be found in Kofa, Cabeza Prieta, and Okefenokee Refuges. But even small Refuge Wildernesses, like the Agassiz Wilderness in my state of Minnesota, are special treasures of wildness.
It is my hope that, as the Refuges conduct wilderness inventories in developing CCPs in Alaska as well as the Lower 48, more lands will be recommended for Wilderness designation and that Congress will act favorably on these recommendations, so that the lands permanently protected and managed as Wilderness will increase within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, further increasing that shining legacy of truly wild untrammeled lands within the Refuges.
By Kevin Proescholdt
Izaak Walton League of America
Wilderness and Public Lands Director
