Congress designated or included wilderness within 52 areas of the national park system by twenty-one separate statutes, enacted between 1970 and 2009. The wording of each statute varies but every statute, except for five, requires a written legal description and a map of wilderness be submitted to Congress.
While the National Park Service has substantially complied with this statutory mandate for many parks containing wilderness, the law remains unfulfilled in several parks. As a result, wilderness in these parks is deprived of the security afforded by clearly defined boundaries.
- Look at a catalog of NPS Wilderness Maps & Legal Descriptions;
