Wilderness Act

Hart notes that "it was the purpose of [the Wilderness Act] to turn the wilderness concept from a squishy abstraction into something very specific, a land classification with legal meaning and 'teeth,'" and he observes: A "wilderness area," says the law, is "an area of federal land that appears primarily to have been influenced by the forces of nature" and that has been designated for preservation, within precisely surveyed boundaries, by an Act of Congress. According to Hart, "[t]he National Wilderness Preservation System is now up to some 110 million acres; California has 15 million acres-about 15 percent of the state, second only to Alaska."