One of the central mandates of the 1964 Wilderness Act is that "each agency administering any area designated as wilderness shall be responsible for preserving the wilderness character of the area." Although wilderness comprises about 20 percent of National Forest System lands (over 35 million acres), the agency lacks a way to evaluate progress in fulfilling this mandate. This document, developed by the Forest Service Wilderness Monitoring Committee, lays the conceptual foundation for a national assessment of how wilderness character is changing over time.

The natural world has been "humanized": even areas thought to be wilderness bear the marks of human impact. But this human impact is not simply physical. At the emergence of the environmental movement, the focus was on human effects on "nature." More recently, however, the complexity of the term "nature" has led to fruitful debates and the recognition of how human individuals and cultures interpret their environments. This book furthers the dialogue on religion, ethics, and the environment by exploring three interrelated concepts: to recreate, to replace, and to restore. Through interdisciplinary dialogue the authors illuminate certain unique dimensions at the crossroads between finding value, creating value, and reflecting on one's place in the world. Each of these terms has diverse religious, ethical, and scientific connotations. Each converges on the ways in which humans both think about and act upon their surroundings. And each radically questions the damaging conceptual divisions between nature and culture, human and environment, and scientific explanation and religious/ethical understanding. This book self-consciously reflects on the intersections of environmental philosophy, environmental theology, and religion and ecology, stressing the importance of how place interprets us and how we interpret place. In addition to its contribution to environmental philosophy, this work is a unique volume in its serious engagement with theology and religious studies on the issues of ecological restoration and the meaning of place.

Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense of wilderness: how we conceptualise it, experience it, interact with, and imagine it. Drawing upon key theorists, philosophers, and researchers who have contributed important knowledge to the topic, this title argues for a relational and process based notion of the term and understands it as a keystone for the examination of issues from conservation to more-than-human relations. The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes. Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.