Denver Law Review Volume 76 Issue 2 Symposium - Wilderness Act of 1964: Article 6 Reflections, Applications, and Predictions January 2021 Wilderness in Context Robert L. Glicksman George Cameron Coggins Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/dlr Recommended Citation Robert L. Glicksman & George Cameron Coggins, Wilderness in Context, 76 Denv. U. L. Rev. 383 (1998). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Denver Sturm College of Law at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Denver Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. WILDERNESS IN CONTEXT ROBERT L. GLICKSMAN* GEORGE CAMERON COGGINS** INTRODUCTION Wilderness is both a geophysical reality and a legally defined land category. As a matter of geography, wilderness is any place that has so far escaped human development.' Legally, wilderness consists of those places designated by Congress for preservation from such development, areas that we call "official wilderness areas." Other writers in this sym- posium discuss many aspects of wilderness designation and manage- ment. Our aims in this article are to cover some of this same territory by placing official wilderness in several contexts-historical, legal, and managerial. By doing so, we intend to demonstrate that a wider range of geographic wilderness is compatible with official wilderness and that the implementation of other federal land management statutes may provide a basis for resolving several key outstanding wilderness management questions. In retrospect, the creation of official wilderness was nearly inevita- ble.