In launching his America’s Great Outdoors Initiative in April, President Obama said that “even in times of crisis, we’re called to take the long view to preserve our national heritage — because in doing so we fulfill one of the responsibilities that falls to all of us as Americans, and as inhabitants of this same small planet.”
The President set as his first goal for the initiative “to reconnect Americans, especially children, to America's rivers and waterways, landscapes of national significance, ranches, farms and forests, great parks, and coasts and beaches.”
Through listening sessions around the country and a special website to receive public comments, the initiative is collecting the ideas of ordinary Americans about how to accomplish this goal.
One important way to reconnect Americans — especially families with children — with nature is to encourage them to visit the wilderness areas on our federal lands. Fulfilling this goal for all the generations of the future must include protecting more wilderness areas — the wildest parts of our national forests, parks, and other public lands — using the proven strength of the Wilderness Act.
Take Action: We urge you to visit the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative website to learn more. Then register and submit your own ideas in support of preserving more wilderness areas (click “Post My Idea”). Please include some of these points in your comments:
- Note that one of the main topics on which public comment is being sought is “Federal Government Role — How can the federal government be a more effective partner in helping to achieve conservation, recreation or reconnecting people to the outdoors?”
- Please ask for Presidential leadership on wilderness issues because protecting wild places is so important for clean water supplies for cities and towns, for clean air sources to combat respiratory disease, for opportunities for outdoor recreation, and for children to know wild nature.
- Please ask that President Obama renew long-missing Presidential leadership for protecting more wilderness areas by issuing an Executive Order stating his intent to submit wilderness recommendations to Congress, and directing the Forest Service and other federal agencies to correct their policies concerning wilderness to conform to long-standing congressional criteria and practices.
- In your comments, please write about any specific places on our federal lands you want to see protected as wilderness.