Abstract The National Wilderness Preservation System in the United States provides the greatest level of protection for the ecological and social values of lands held in trust for future generations. Although designated wilderness is the cornerstone of the US conservation portfolio, designation alone doesn't assure the protection of these areas, which are degraded by threats both inside and external to the area. This paper describes new methods for quantifying the location and cumulative magnitude of threats to wilderness, allowing agency managers and the public to evaluate whether the legal mandate from the 1964 Wilderness Act to “preserve wilderness character” is being upheld. These new methods have also been used in developing wilderness stewardship plans and analyzing the potential effects of proposed projects that would degrade wilderness character. The methods described here were developed and tested in seven wildernesses in a variety of ecological, geographic, and administrative settings, and are directly applicable to evaluating threats and improving the management of all 110 million acres of designated wilderness in the United States, as well as all areas that are increasingly recognized internationally as wilderness.

中文翻译：

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在国家荒野保护系统中映射对荒野特征的威胁

摘要 美国的国家荒野保护系统为子孙后代托管的土地的生态和社会价值提供了最大程度的保护。尽管指定的荒野是美国保护组合的基石，但仅凭指定并不能确保保护这些地区，这些地区因该地区内外的威胁而退化。本文描述了量化荒野威胁的位置和累积程度的新方法，使机构管理人员和公众能够评估 1964 年荒野法案中关于“保护荒野特征”的法律授权是否得到维护。这些新方法还被用于制定荒野管理计划和分析可能降低荒野特征的拟议项目的潜在影响。这里描述的方法是在各种生态、地理和行政环境中的七个荒野中开发和测试的，可直接适用于评估威胁和改善美国所有 1.1 亿英亩指定荒野的管理，以及所有在国际上越来越被认为是荒野的地区。