Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that supports “current and former public employees who seek a higher standard of environmental ethics and scientific integrity within their agencies,” lists 17 “orphaned” areas in the National Park System that it says should gain wilderness designation.
They range geographically from Arches National Park, where a 1978 recommendation urged designation of nearly 70,000 acres, and Dinosaur National Monument, where more than 210,000 acres was recommended to Congress in 1978 for wilderness designation, to landscapes in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and Assateague Island National Seashore. Also on the list are Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Crater Lake, and Great Smoky Mountains national parks.