As Wyoming Republicans lead the charge to roll back some federal public lands protections, a law that protects access to “solitude” and staves off development will likely remain in place.
The product of a legal strategy crafted in the Tetons, the Wilderness Act of 1964 foresaw a future where public lands faced challenges from many angles, but especially the executive branch.
Under the second Trump administration, efforts to rescind more contemporary protections, like the “Roadless Rule,” have resurfaced with support from Wyoming’s top officials. Ending the Clinton-era policy could expand roads or timber harvest up to the boundaries of the state’s 3 million acres of federally designated wilderness. Advocates drafted the unique piece of legislation that became the Wilderness Act from a ranch cabin tucked away in Grand Teton National Park. The law mandates access to public land “untrammeled by man.”
“It’s a forever protection by the law of Congress,” said Linda Merigliano, the recently retired program director for the Bridger-Teton National Forest. “It’s not something that’s going to be easy to erase.”
In contrast, the long-embattled “Roadless Rule” was signed by President Bill Clinton in 2001, so it only takes a president to undo it. That process can bypass congressional channels, making it less durable than wilderness protections. In mid-August, the Trump administration proposed its full rescission, citing Gov. Mark Gordon’s support for its rollback.
The public submitted nearly 400,000 comments on the proposal by the Oct. 6 deadline. An analysis from the Center for Western Priorities shows 99% of comments opposed the administration’s plan.
An intentional strategy
When the ranch cabin’s owner, Olaus Murie, headed the Wilderness Society in the 1950s, he recommended that a Washington lobbyist draft legislation that would take conservationists off the defense and outlive similar challenges.
“One of the things that they did not want to do was create another bureaucracy,” said Carmie Cook during a recent daily on-site tour as a ranch docent.
The intention was to create a legal definition for wilderness, while adding a new layer of protections that wouldn’t be easily overturned every four years, when a new president took office, Cook said. The act specifically states that only Congress can designate wilderness areas. The act specifically took concern with the impact unbridled growth and “mechanization” might have on the amount of land left in “natural condition.” It banned all roads, motorized and wheel-based transport and buildings in federally designated areas.
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said when he signed the act.
Eight years and 66 drafts later, the act penned by environmentalist activist Howard Zahniser would become law, now one of the heartier pieces of legislation to come out of the country’s conservation movement. It’s since conserved 111 million acres of land already existing in what Cook called the “federal portfolio.”
Zahniser spent months drafting the act from the Murie Ranch, on what some might consider the most famous front porch in the Tetons.
“This property, this house became the epicenter for wilderness preservation,” said Cook, who works for Teton Science Schools, which manages the ranch.
Cook paused after showing visitors an underground trapdoor cellar that functioned as a refrigerator. He turned on a tape of an unreleased John Denver song, written to recognize Olaus and his wife Mardy Murie’s efforts that launched the country’s modern conservation movement.
While Olaus, a wildlife biologist, wouldn’t live to see the act signed into law, Mardy would. Picking up where her husband left off, her advocacy drew at least three presidents, multiple senators, college environmentalists, writers and other movers of the conservation world to the famed park ranch.
The Sound of ‘Solitude’
Public access to solitude is written into the Wilderness Act.
National parks often promote access, while wilderness areas are often managed to limit crowds.
Where one might see a social media-fueled frenzy at Delta Lake in Grand Teton, land managers keep the road rough to limit traffic into the nearby Gros Ventre Wilderness, according to Merigliano.
“Some people feel like solitude truly means not seeing a single person when you’re out there,” said Peggie dePasquale, a former ranger for the Gros Ventre Wilderness. “Within wilderness, we manage for a broad spectrum of solitude.”
It’s an effort that limits the “sounds and sights of civilization,” dePasquale said.
But keeping it this way requires data.
No longer at the Forest Service, dePasquale now runs a citizen science monitoring program for the Wyoming Wilderness Association.
Volunteers spend 100 cumulative days across three wilderness areas — the Jedediah Smith, Gros Ventre and Teton — tallying the number of hikers, group size and distance from wilderness boundaries. The Forest Service uses those numbers to inform its land management decisions, which play a role in visitor experience and trail usage.
Wyoming officials initiate new era
These days, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman is spearheading a new chapter while keeping Wyoming at the center of public lands policy.
The state’s sole House representative doesn’t believe her stance is against the goals of conservation. Hageman argues her policies make for better forest management.
Ending the “Roadless Rule” won’t “result in roads magically appearing throughout the Forest Service system,” Hageman said in an email. She refutes her critics’ claims that restoring local control instead will spur a surge in road construction or industrial projects.
“I’ve been a strong advocate for making sure that we’re protecting and properly managing these resources for years,” Hageman told KHOL in August. “And also for providing the monetary and economic resources that they need to provide our visitors and hikers the access that they want and that we all enjoy here in Wyoming.”
Hageman argues that allowing for more roads and timber harvest makes for a healthier forest and helps fight wildfires, though many scientists dispute the claim.
Hageman’s stance put her at odds with many of today’s leaders at the Wilderness Society, a group she chastised for running what she called a “smear campaign” against her.
Though Hageman has helped steer a national challenge against public lands protections, the Trump administration could likely overturn the “Roadless Rule” before her bill makes it through Congress.
