How The Wildlands Were Protected: The Wilderness Act At 45
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September 2, 2009
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Thursday is the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act, a law that protects more than 100 million acres of pristine American wild lands. Ed Zahniser, who works for the National Park Service, is the youngest of four children of the late Howard Zahniser, an environmental activist at mid-century and the principal author of the legislation.
Among the lands protected by the Wilderness Act are the Dolly Sods and Cranberry Wilderness Areas in West Virginia.
Getting the law passed wasn't easy. Ed Zahniser says his father Howard wrote most of it, but had to lobby for more than eight years to get it though Congress. He says he remembers going with his dad to visit members of Congress on the weekends, back before most of them started flying home on Fridays.
"They often were working in their offices, particularly on Saturday mornings, unprotected by staff. So we often would go in and leaflet them."
Zahniser says President John F. Kennedy finally closed the deal late in 1963.
"Kennedy talked to Representative Wayne Aspinall just two or three days before Kennedy went to Dallas, and made a deal with him about the bill."
Aspinall was a long-time Democratic Congressman from Colorado, particularly involved with resource and water issues, who was generally strongly pro-development.
The younger Zahniser says his father didn't live to see it signed by President Lyndon Johnson either, dying of a heart failure in the spring of 1964.
Zahniser says his father never resorted to personal attacks and never took setbacks personally, but he also never took "no" for an answer. The elder Zahniser's journal includes a story of loading the car for a trip when someone came walking down the street.
"He recruited them as a member of the Wilderness Society, right on the street while he was packing the trunk of the car."
When it went into effect the Wilderness Act protected nine million acres. Now it protects 109 million acres of wild lands.