The Wilderness Society

The Wilderness Society
Basic facts
Location:	Washington, D.C.
Type:	501(c)(3)
Affiliation:	Nonpartisan
Top official:	Tracy Stone-Manning, President
Founder(s):	Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and Robert Sterling Yard
Year founded:	1935
Website:	Official website

The Wilderness Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that was founded in 1935 by Bob Marshall, the chief of recreation and lands for the U.S. Forest Service; Aldo Leopold, a wildlife ecologist; and Robert Sterling Yard, a publicist for the U.S. National Park Service. The organization’s mission is “uniting people to protect America's wild places.” Howard Zahniser, who served as The Wilderness Society's executive secretary and later as its executive director, played a leading role in writing and helping pass the Wilderness Act in Congress in 1964.

The Wilderness Society advocates for policies designating federal lands as federally protected wilderness areas and national monuments, which are areas preserved primarily for conservation similar to national parks. The group's website says: "Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the effort to permanently protect nearly 112 million acres of wilderness in 44 states. We have been at the forefront of nearly every major public lands victory."

The organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The organization has regional offices in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, California, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Washington, and Wyoming.

Background

The Wilderness Society was founded in 1935 by a group of eight individuals with the purpose of conserving America's wildest places. This group included individuals who worked for the U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. The group's website highlighted the 1953 formation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska as its first successful campaign.

Leadership

As of July 2025, the following individuals held leadership positions at The Wilderness Society:

• Tracy Stone-Manning, President
• David Seabrook, Chief Operating Officer
• Diane Webb, Vice President & General Counsel
• Mary O'Connor, Vice President, Giving & Impact
• Nicole Layman, Vice President, Conservation & Communities
• Chase Huntley, Vice President, Federal Policy
• Lulu Gephart, Vice President, External Affairs

Work and activities

The Wilderness Society's website said: "Since 1935, we've been protecting wilderness and inspiring Americans to care for our wild places. The Wilderness Society has led the charge to protect 111 million acres of wilderness since our founding and we've directly contributed to the passage of almost every major conservation law while fighting hard against attempts to undermine them. We're humbled by how much work is still left to do, but incredibly proud of our tradition."

Legislative and policy work

Wilderness Act (1964)

See also: Wilderness Act

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota was one of the first wilderness areas established by the Wilderness Act.

The Wilderness Society played a role in passing the Wilderness Act in Congress in 1964. Howard Zahniser, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee and Wilderness Society member, drafted the first version of the Wilderness Act in 1956. The legislation's stated purpose was to conserve some of the remaining wilderness areas in the United States that were not already federally protected. U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.) and U.S. Rep. John Saylor (R-Pa.) first introduced the legislation in 1956.

A version of the Wilderness Act passed in the U.S. Senate in 1961, but the legislation faced opposition from the timber, mining, and grazing industries that had a political ally in U.S. Rep. Wayne Aspinall (D-Colo.), the chairman of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. According to Mark Harvey, a professor of history at North Dakota State University, Aspinall, who represented the Western Slope in Colorado, was supportive of agricultural and energy groups and critical of environmental groups, which he viewed as uncompromising. Aspinall used his chairmanship to block the legislation, and the bill died in committee in 1962. Though the Senate passed another version of the Wilderness Act in 1963, it died in the same House committee. "Aspinall was able to block the bill, that is keep it from going to the floor of the House for a vote for really two years," according to Harvey.

Although The Wilderness Society and other supporters backed the 1963 Senate version of the bill as written, they concluded that the bill would not pass without revisions. As a result, conservation groups compromised with industry groups to get the bill passed. Industry groups requested that grazing and prospecting continue in wilderness areas (grazing and prospecting in wilderness areas have since been prohibited). In exchange for these compromises, the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee allowed the legislation to go to the House floor for debate. The House passed the Wilderness Act in 1964 with a single "No" vote in the House. The Senate previously passed the final bill in 1963 by a vote of 73-12. President Lyndon Johnson (D) signed the bill into law on September 3, 1964.

The Wilderness Act legally defined “wilderness” as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The law defined “an area of wilderness” as “an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.” The Wilderness Act originally set aside 9.1 million acres of federal land in 13 states as protected wilderness and established the National Wilderness Preservation System, a federal program for the preservation and protection of wilderness areas. The bill left the management of this land to four federal agencies: the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In 1964, when the Wilderness Act was passed, the 9.1 million acres of wilderness represented 1.3 percent of all land owned by the federal government. As of September 2015, federally protected wilderness areas totaled 109.1 million acres—a 110 percent increase since 1964. Federally protected wilderness areas represented 17 percent of all land owned by the federal government and 4.8 percent of all land in the United States as of September 2015.

Notable endorsements

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Finances

The following is a breakdown of The Wilderness Society's revenues and expenses from 2011 to 2023. The information comes from ProPublica

The Wilderness Society financial data 2011-2023

Year	Revenue	Expenses
2011	$24.9 million	$33.2 million
2012	$24.9 million	$31.4 million
2013	$38.5 million	$27.5 million
2014	$31.4 million	$26.7 million
2015	$27.3 million	$28.1 million
2016	$31.2 million	$28.7 million
2017	$30.0 million	$31.0 million
2018	$42.8 million	$33.1 million
2019	$35.0 million	$34.6 million
2020	$39.5 million	$33.9 million
2021	$42.0 million	$35.2 million
2022	$62.6 million	$42.8 million
2023	$39.2 million	$47.4 million

See also

• What is an influencer?
• Wilderness Act

External links

• The Wilderness Society official website
• The Wilderness Society on Facebook
• The Wilderness Society on Threads
• The Wilderness Society on Instagram
• The Wilderness Society on LinkedIn