What is wilderness? Congress has now designated more than 106 million acres of federal public lands as wilderness: 44 million of these acres are in 47 parks and total 53 percent of National Park System lands. Additional national park areas are managed as “recommended” or proposed wilderness until Congress acts on their status.
http://wilderness.nps.gov/faqnew.cfm
Much of the dark green overlaps with federally designated wilderness, as defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964: an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain..
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2014/03/25/wilderness-area-state-national-forest/6861737/
These are some of the things wilderness can do for us. That is the reason we need to put into effect, for its preservation, some other principle than the principles of exploitation or “usefulness” or even recreation.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/why-we-need-wilderness-zmaz04aszsel
Consequently, our initial cutoff point for wilderness status is much higher than any that exist in the protected-area focused legal definitions, i.e., a minimum of 10,000 km², or 1 million ha. This is larger than what remains in many hotspots and much larger than anything that exists in current wilderness legislation.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/9686397698.html
In Western Australia, a Wilderness Area is an area that has a wilderness quality rating of 12 or greater and meets a minimum size threshold of 8,000 hectares in temperate areas or 20,000 hectares in arid and tropical areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness
America the wild: Where to find untouched wilderness. The lower 48 states are a huge swath of territory, spanning over 3.1 million square miles from coast to coast. But even across this seemingly limitless expanse, very little land is untouched by civilization.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2014/03/25/wilderness-area-state-national-forest/6861737/
We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in 10 years set foot in it.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/why-we-need-wilderness-zmaz04aszsel
So will the wilderness as a genetic reserve, a scientific yardstick by which we may measure the world in its natural balance against the world in its man-made imbalance. What I want to speak for is not so much the wilderness uses, valuable as those are, but the wilderness idea, which is a resource in itself.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/why-we-need-wilderness-zmaz04aszsel
Across 600 pages and in 500 photographs, Wilderness presents the gorgeous beauty and incredible biological diversity of earth's last wildernesses. This web feature has a list of the thirty-seven wilderness areas identified by Conservation International and a short excerpt on their criteria for naming an area a wilderness.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/9686397698.html
There are currently more than 750 such areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System comprising over 109 million acres -- roughly 5% of the United States by area. Need a refresher from the other 95%? The Active Times picked 10 wild places in the lower 48 states that are truly wild.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2014/03/25/wilderness-area-state-national-forest/6861737/
how much of us is wilderness
5% of U.S. is wilderness.