The Conservation of Wilderness...
Our wilderness problem starts with our population. In 35 years there probably will be twice as many people on earth as there are today. There will be more than twice as many in some areas such as the Pacific West, where living conditions are ideal. A quickly rising population will be accompanied by shorter work weeks and more leisure time. This requires intense planning for the recreational needs of the oncoming generation.                                                   

We must design our wilderness blueprint with the needs of 2000 A.D. in mind.                                                                                   

Multiple use is the standard that governs the U. S. Forest Service in its administration of public lands and a standard that is now being extended to lands that are under the Bureau of Land Management. A piece of land paved for highway use is dedicated to one single use, not multiple uses. An area set aside as wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964 does not bar trails, although it does bar roads.
            Wilderness use covers a variety of multiple uses - refuges for elk and goats, hiking and horseback travel, fishing, watershed protection and the maintenance of the biotic community in complete ecological balance. These values cannot be preserved if logging, highways, hot dog stands and motels take over.
            Wooded areas can be logged, and campgrounds for autoists can be built on those sites, those tracts serving these two multiple uses. But the wilderness advocates do not want those two uses or highway use to preempt every section of land. We want some of the original America left in its primitive condition so that one hundred years from now a lad can walk the hills in the manner of Daniel Boone and see what God has wrought.
            There are dollar values in our mountains to be exploited. But a tree is measurable not only by its board feet or its cellulose content, but by its beauty. the wildlife it shelters, the biotic community it nourishes, and the watershed protection it gives.
            There are spiritual values in the mountains that highway engineers, real-estate promoters, chambers of commerce and editorial writers often overlook. The Psalmist said, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
            Those values disappear once our alpine meadows are converted into Swiss alpine resort areas, when the roar of traffic fills the ridges, when man's last refuge (except the ocean) is converted to commercial uses.
            In other words, multiple use means more than logging trucks and highways and the exploitation of dollar values.
            We need wilderness sanctuaries for a full life. We should ask those from crowded New England and the crowded Adirondacks to advise us on the preservation of our other areas. For they have felt, more than the rest of us, the impact of the population explosion on wilderness. We should also ask our apartment-born people for leadership in these conservation causes. For they often appreciate more than others the value of open space.

William O. Douglas
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1939-1975), former chairman of of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1937-1939), and ardent conservationist, William Orville Douglas was one of the most controversial public figures in American history. Originally written as liner notes for Pete Seeger's 1966 album, God Bless The Grass.