Maintaining wildlife naturalness in wilderness

Abstract: Naturalness and wildness. The keys to what is most valuable about wilderness are directly threatened by recent U.S. Forest Service (USE) wildl’fI e and wilderness management policy changes with respect to stocking non-native fish species in wilderness waters and the introduction of non-native wildlife to wilderness lands. A S SNOW DRIFTED THROUGH THE SKY on the edgeof the High Uintas Wilderness in 1989, Tom Lyon, noted naturalist, longtime wilderness advocate, and professor of English at Utah State University, spoke these words at the fifth anniversary of the Utah Wilderness Act: We suddenly realize that the world has nothing more precise, more worth saving, more worth fighting for, than the song of one hermit thrush, or the quick appearance and flowing disappearance of one marten, or the way the sunlight looks on the deep brown velvet of a moose’s rack. These things are alive to us now, and uncannily potent in their wildness, because our wildness is coming alive. One of the great powers, one of the great gifts, of wild countr