National Parks and Wilderness Areas 339CanadaU.S.AMexicoAlaskaKevin Schafer/AlamyJames Schwabel/AlamyRich Reid /NG Image Collectionb. The Cabeza Prieta Wilderness,
Arizona’s largest wilderness area,
includes 325,000 hectares (803,000 acres)
of isolated desert landscapes.
c. The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida
is home to the 2.4-hectare (6-acre) Pelican Wilderness,
the smallest protected area in the NWPS.a. At more than 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million acres), the Wrangell–Saint Elias
Wilderness in Alaska is the nation’s largest designated wilderness area.
2009 President Barack Obama signed the Omnibus Pub-
lic Land Management Act of 2009, which designated 52
new U.S. wilderness areas and added almost 1 million
hectares (more than 2 million acres) to the NWPS, most
of it outside Alaska. Increasing the amount of federal
land designated as wilderness in the NWPS is opposed by
groups who operate businesses on public lands (such as
timber, mining, ranching, and energy companies) and by
their political representatives.ecological management. In this example, the only way to
preserve as much as possible of the original wilderness
may be to intentionally manipulate the white pine popu-
lation by breeding and planting fungus-resistant trees.
Large tracts of wilderness, most of it in Alaska, have
been added to the NWPS since passage of the Wilderness
Act in 1964. People who view wilderness as a nonrenew-
able resource support the designation of additional wil-
derness areas, particularly in the lower 48 states. In March
Diverse wilderness areas protected in the National Wilderness
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