[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 97 (Wednesday, July 14, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S8110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        COMMEMORATING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WILDERNESS ACT

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, as founder of the Senate Wilderness 
Caucus, I introduced a Senate resolution to commemorate the 40th 
anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which was signed into law on 
September 3, 1964, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. I thank the 
following colleagues for their support as cosponsors: Senator Sununu, 
Senator Hagel, Senator Durbin, Senator Boxer, Senator McCain, Senator 
Murray, Senator Lugar, Senator Warner, Senator Chafee, Senator Snowe, 
and Senator Collins.
  The Wilderness Act became law seven years after the first wilderness 
bill was introduced by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. The 
final bill, sponsored by Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, passed 
the Senate by a vote of 73-12 on April 9, 1963, and passed the House of 
Representatives by a vote of 373-1 on July 30, 1964. The Wilderness Act 
of 1964 established a National Wilderness Preservation System ``to 
secure for the American people of present and future generations the 
benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.'' The law gives 
Congress the authority to designate wilderness areas, and directs the 
Federal land management agencies to review the lands under their 
responsibility for their wilderness potential.
  Under the Wilderness Act, wilderness is defined as ``an area of 
undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence 
which generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces 
of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable.'' 
The creation of a national wilderness system marked an innovation in 
the American conservation movement--wilderness would be a place where 
our ``management strategy'' would be to leave lands essentially 
undeveloped.
  The original Wilderness Act established 9.1 million acres of Forest 
Service land in 54 wilderness areas. Now, after passage of 102 pieces 
of legislation, the wilderness system is comprised of over 104 million 
acres in 625 wilderness areas, across 44 States, and administered by 
four Federal agencies: the Forest Service in the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture, and the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife 
Service, and the National Park Service in the Department of the 
Interior.
  As we in this body know well, the passage and enactment of the 
Wilderness Act was a remarkable accomplishment that required steady, 
bipartisan commitment, institutional support, and strong leadership. 
The U.S. Senate was instrumental in shaping this very important law, 
and this anniversary gives us the opportunity to recognize this role.
  As a Senator from Wisconsin, I feel a special bond with this issue. 
The concept of wilderness is inextricably linked with Wisconsin. 
Wisconsin has produced great wilderness thinkers and leaders in the 
wilderness movement such as Senator Gaylord Nelson and the writer and 
conservationist Aldo Leopold, whose A Sand County Almanac helped to 
galvanize the environmental movement. Also notable is Sierra Club 
founder John Muir, whose birthday is the day before Earth Day. 
Wisconsin also produced Sigurd Olson, one of the founders of the 
Wilderness Society.
  I am privileged to hold the Senate seat held by Gaylord Nelson, a man 
for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect. Though he is a 
well-known and widely respected former Senator and former two-term 
Governor of Wisconsin, and the founder of Earth Day, some may not be 
aware that he is currently devoting his time to the protection of 
wilderness by serving as a counselor to the Wilderness Society--an 
activity which is quite appropriate for someone who was also a co-
sponsor, along with former Senator Proxmire, of the bill that became 
the Wilderness Act.
  The testimony at congressional hearings and the discussion of the 
bill in the press of the day reveals Wisconsin's crucial role in the 
long and continuing American debate about our wild places, and in the 
development of the Wilderness Act. The names and ideas of John Muir, 
Sigurd Olson, and, especially, Aldo Leopold, appear time and time again 
in the legislative history.
  Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, chairman of what was then 
called the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, stated his 
support of the wilderness system was the direct result of discussions 
he had held almost 40 years before with Leopold, who was then in the 
Southwest with the Forest Service. It was Leopold who, while with the 
Forest Service, advocated the creation of a primitive area in the Gila 
National Forest in New Mexico in 1923. The Gila Primitive Area formally 
became part of the wilderness system when the Wilderness Act became 
law.
  In a statement in favor of the Wilderness Act in the New York Times, 
then-Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall discussed ecology and what 
he called ``a land ethic'' and referred to Leopold as the instigator of 
the modern wilderness movement. At a Senate hearing in 1961, David 
Brower of the Sierra Club went so far as to claim that ``no man who 
reads Leopold with an open mind will ever again, with a clear 
conscience, be able to step up and testify against the wilderness 
bill.'' For others, the ideas of Olson and Muir--particularly the idea 
that preserving wilderness is a way for us to better understand our 
country's history and the frontier experience--provided a justification 
for the wilderness system.
  In closing, I would like to remind colleagues of the words of Aldo 
Leopold in his 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac. He said, ``The 
outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not the 
television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. 
Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is 
known about it.'' We still have much to learn, but this anniversary of 
the Wilderness Act reminds us how far we have come and how the 
commitment to public lands that the Senate and the Congress 
demonstrated 40 years ago continues to benefit all Americans.

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