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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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50 years after Wilderness Act: still much to discover

Robin Johnson breaks camp in the Sierra-Nevada Range at Donahue Pass during his 2012 trek to log 2,661-miles on the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. (Frank Johnson)
Robin Johnson breaks camp in the Sierra-Nevada Range at Donahue Pass during his 2012 trek to log 2,661-miles on the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. (Frank Johnson)

PUBLIC LANDS -- Celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act of 1964 is full of eye-opening insights.

QUIZ:

The Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexico border through California, Oregon and Washington to the Canada border passes through how many official wilderness areas?

  • Three
  • Nine
  • 12
  • 48

The answer is at the end of this post.

Meanwhile, most people associate wilderness areas with national forests.  But the Forest Service isn't the only federal agency that manages officials wilderness, which can be in national parks as well as lands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the  U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM manages 245 million acres in the U.S., primarily in the West (in addition to administering 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate). Of that land, 27 million acres are managed as national conservation lands including National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, Wilderness Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Wild and Scenic RiversNational Scenic and Historic Trails, and Conservation Lands of the California Desert. 

BLM manages 8.7 million acres in 221 units as wilderness, with no roads and no motorized vehicles or mechanized equipment allowed.

Check out the video below featuring BLM staffers explaining the basic question:  "What's Wilderness?" See more videos of young BLM staffers exploring Utah wilderness here

Answer: 48.



Rich Landers
Rich Landers joined The Spokesman-Review in 1977. He is the Outdoors editor for the Sports Department writing and photographing stories about hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, conservation, nature and wildlife and related topics.

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