A Primitive Area is a land designation previously used by the
United States Forest Service
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...
. Although there are still lands with this title, most are now known as wilderness areas.
The Forest Service began this new designation in 1929 with the L-20 regulations.
The L-20 regulations defined three types of areas: Natural Area, Experimental Forest and Range, and Primitive Area. The L-20 section on Primitive Area read, "to maintain primitive conditions of transportation, subsistence, habitation, and environment to the fullest degree compatible with their highest public use." as stated by M. Rupert Cutler, in a briefing before the Subcommittee on Public Lands of the
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
U.S. House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
on July 24. 1979.
The US Forest Service, along with preservationist
Bob Marshall, continued to add acreage to the fledgling wilderness system.
arshall'stotal acreage recommendation to the Forest Service for
primitive classification was almost three times more than the Service
was willing or able to set aside. Areas in which the Park Service had
shown a special interest, however, were almost all formally classified
as primitive areas—even those under in the West which
were not of special interest to Marshall.
Stricter regulations for these new protected areas began in 1939 from Bob Marshall's efforts. This resulted in the "U-Regulations" as they came to be known.
The U-Regulations superseded the L-20 Regulations and created two types of areas. Regulation U-1 created Wilderness Areas (over 100,000 acres). Regulation U-2 created
Wild Areas (5,000 to 100,000 acres). The U Regulations prohibited mechanized access, timber harvesting and road construction in the wilderness and wild areas.
The U-Regulations replaced the term primitive area with
wilderness area
Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...
and
wild area
Wild, wild, wilds or wild may refer to:
Common meanings
* Wild animal
* Wilderness, a wild natural environment
* Wildness, the quality of being wild or untamed
Art, media and entertainment Film and television
* ''Wild'' (2014 film), a 2014 ...
and were used by the Forest Service until the passage of the federal
Wilderness Act
The Wilderness Act of 1964 () was written by Howard Zahniser of The Wilderness Society. It created the legal definition of wilderness in the United States, and protected 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²) of federal land. The result of a lon ...
of 1964.
Forest History Society
The Forest History Society is an American non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of forest and conservation history."Forest History Society." Echo Project. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. http://echo.gmu. ...
page on the U-Regulations.
The Wilderness Act gave federal protection to these US Forest Service administrative areas and created the National Wilderness Preservation System
The National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) of the United States protects federally managed wilderness areas designated for preservation in their natural condition. Activity on formally designated wilderness areas is coordinated by the Na ...
.
Footnotes
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Protected areas of the United States