Summary

Description

The Wilderness Act of 1964 mandated the preservation of wilderness character. The NWRS has 18 of designated wilderness, comprising 21 million acres. After over 40 years there is still a lack of consistent inventory and monitoring of wilderness as well as the ability to measure how it is affected by stewardship. To ensure the last remaining wilderness is not lost, monitoring can maintain the preservation and true wild nature of these areas for present and future generations. Monitoring provides an assessment of the trends of wilderness character to develop refuge wilderness stewardship. This also provides the ability to evaluate impacts of proposed actions on wilderness character and allows defensible stewardship decisions. By preserving wilderness character, the USFWS demonstrates leadership in wilderness stewardship across the National Wilderness Preservation System. This is the backend data file for the Great Swamp Wilderness Character Monitoring Application. User interface and lookup databases are required for use see reference code 5725.