Resources for Managers

Our highest priority is producing science needed by agencies that manage the National Wilderness Stewardship System and the organizations that support wilderness in America. We are informed about the needs of wilderness agency leaders and managers through interaction with them as well as through the Wilderness Managers Survey (2014) and the goals and priorities described in 2020 Vision: Wilderness Stewardship Priorities of America’s National Wilderness Preservation System. We welcome more input on issues you want us to investigate. Please visit the link to Need Research? and fill out the form there to help us stay current on important issues the Leopold Institute should be addressing. 

Just as important as conducting the research needed to protect and preserve wilderness is getting our findings into the hands of managers. Here we provide summaries of our research and monitoring projects in Science Highlights.

We have developed two presentations that wilderness managers, staff, and teachers can use. One presentation describes why science is important to managers and the second provides an overview of the challenges managers face when deciding to allow research to be conducted on wilderness areas. Included here are three short movies about various wilderness topics our scientists and partners address – climate change, fire, and recreation. We also produced one general movie on the topic of why wilderness science is important.

Additionally, we include here a paper written by wilderness stewardship leaders from all four agencies titled Wilderness Stewardship in America Today and What We can do to Improve It (published in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of Forestry) highlighting the most important challenges facing our federal wilderness lands and managers.