Wilderness Study Areas

What is a Wilderenss Study Area?

With passage of the 1974 Federal Land Management Policy Act, all publicly owned lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management were inventoried for their wilderness character and potential for designation as federal Wilderness, a congressional designation to ensure a continuing legagcy of wild, untrammeled land for future generations. A Wilderness Study Area, or WSA, is an area of public land found to contain wilderness characteristics that deserve special magement consideration until acted upon by Congress - either designated as Wilderness or released from this conservative state.  

Basically, the WSAs across the American West contain the rest of the best - a litteral treasure trove of little-visited, often out-of-the-way public wildlands.

Here on the Eastside, we're lucky to have at least 15 WSA's to explore. Click the names below to see what's out there waiting to be explored.