Abstract
This Wilderness Character Monitoring Technical Guide provides a national framework and detailed protocols to monitor trends in wilderness character within the Forest Service. This document updates and completely replaces the former technical guide that was published in 2009. The approach described in this document is consistent with the interagency wilderness character monitoring strategy used by the other wilderness managing agencies and was endorsed in 2015 by the Federal Interagency Wilderness Policy Council. This technical guide incorporates a wide variety of the best available scientific information to yield a coherent understanding of how wilderness character is changing over time. This monitoring is designed to be nationally consistent across every designated wilderness administered by the Forest Service while allowing for additional local monitoring as necessary to meet wilderness-specific needs. Implementing this monitoring does not guarantee the preservation of wilderness character; rather, it informs and helps improve wilderness stewardship by ensuring that Forest Service line officers and managers are accountable to the central mandate of the Wilderness Act - to preserve the wilderness character of every wilderness for present and future generations.
Keywords
Wilderness Act,
wilderness character,
monitoring,
wilderness stewardship,
untrammeled,
natural,
undeveloped,
solitude,
primitive recreation,
unconfined recreation,
other features of value
Citation
Landres, Peter; Boutcher, Steve; Mejicano, Elizabeth, Sandeno, Eric .tech. eds. 2020. Wilderness character monitoring technical guide. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-406. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 364 p.
