The articles and books listed here are a distillation of hundreds of possible entries that could have been included. They were selected by students, professors, on the ground fire practitioners, and federal researchers as excellent jumping off points for fire managers who want to become more knowledgeable about fire and the social sciences and more mindful about how human beings interconnect to make sense of the fire environment. vi Our philosophy of reading-why professionals in all walks of forest fire management can sharpen their leadership abilities through reading-parallels the "Professional Reading Program" described by the Wildland Fire Leadership Program at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho: "This reading] is not busy work; this is not drudgery. These readings will provoke reflection, discussion, and debate. The selected titles have been chosen for their intrinsic excitement as well as their content. Many of the books will be hard to put down. Let this be your roadmap to an enjoyable and rewarding reading program" (Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program 2005).

The Wilderness Act of 1964 established a National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) "to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness." The Act states that wilderness areas shall be administered "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness." Moreover, it is the responsibility of each agency that administers wilderness to preserve each area's "wilderness character." Since 1964, more than 100 pieces of legislation have created an NWPS of over 100 million acres, in well over 600 individual wildernesses, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS); and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service (FS). To provide for the use and enjoyment of these areas, while preserving their wilderness character, it is important for management agencies to monitor wilderness recreation visitors and the impacts they cause. Some people state that the Wilderness Act mandates that recreation impacts not be allowed to increase following wilderness designation (Worf 2001). Ideally, baseline conditions should be inventoried at the time each area is designated as wilderness and added to the NWPS, and then periodically monitored in the future to assess trends in conditions and the efficacy of existing recreation management programs. Such data will become increasingly valuable to future attempts to evaluate trends in the wilderness character of each area in the NWPS. Although baseline recreation conditions have been inventoried in many wildernesses, such data are lacking in many others. Moreover, the distribution of wildernesses with baseline recreation data is not equitable across the nation or the four agencies that manage wilderness. This report is an assessment of Wilderness Visitors and Recreation Impacts: Baseline Data Available for Twentieth Century Conditions David N. Cole Vita Wright the status of baseline recreation monitoring data for all wildernesses in the NWPS at the end of the twentieth century. It documents the proportion of the NWPS that has baseline data on recreation visitors and impacts, which wildernesses have this data, and where they are located. It identifies the types of data that have been collected, the types of sampling designs that have been employed, and how and where data have been stored. This compilation should help researchers identify wildernesses where trends can be assessed and help wilderness managers identify other managers who might be contacted about how to initiate and implement new studies. The data listed in this report are all we will ever have to gain perspective on the condition of designated wilderness in the twentieth century regarding recreation visitors and impacts. Because managers and the interested public, in future decades and centuries, will want to know what these places were like, these data will become increasingly valuable. Although some of the data are published in reports or have been carefully archived, most are stored on paper files in ranger offices, where they are vulnerable to loss. We strongly encourage agency personnel to recognize the future value of this data and invest in archiving it in such a manner that its perpetuation is ensured. These data could be the basis for valuable assessments of recreation and impact trends across the NWPS. This report begins with an overview of the status of recreation-related monitoring across the NWPS. Three types of studies are surveyed: those that provide (1) campsite impact data, (2) trail impact data, and (3) information about visitor characteristics.

The 1964 Wilderness Act calls for ..".an enduring resource of wilderness...for the use and enjoyment of the American people" and lists among the attributes of wilderness "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." These statements confirm experiential opportunities as one of the primary purposes of wilderness. Furthermore, by signing the act into law, Congress declared that wilderness experiences are so important they are worthy of protection by national legislation. Wilderness experiences have been credited with everything from personal psychological benefits to formation of the national character. Heavy or growing use levels at many wilderness areas are proof that the public increasingly values the opportunity to experience wilderness firsthand. In response to the fear that increasing use would threaten the experiential qualities of wilderness and wildlands, researchers with training in sociology, psychology, and anthropology began a focused program of outdoor recreation research in the 1960s. Although the initial focus was on determining objective visitor "carrying capacities" for protected areas, scientists soon found that the relationship between use numbers and wilderness visitor experiences is extremely complex. This research expanded to address the values that people hold for wilderness (including nonrecreation values), the types and dimensions of wilderness experiences, and factors that influence those experiences. Simultaneously, managers and scientists worked together to develop techniques and long-term planning frameworks to ensure that quality wilderness experiences continue to be available. Whereas early wilderness stewards had few resources other than instinct and personal experience to guide them, managers today have access to a significant body of literature related to defining, managing, and monitoring wilderness experiences. In fact, the volume of available information can be confusing or even overwhelming. This reading list gathers together and organizes a representative sample of this information in a way that we hope will be useful to both managers and researchers.

Invasive, nonnative plants are recognized as a significant and growing threat to natural ecosystems worldwide. Invasive plants disrupt natural conditions by changing the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of the areas they invade. This often leads to changes in communities of native species, shifts in ecological interactions, alteration of large scale ecosystem processes, and ultimately, a reduction in native biodiversity. Although wilderness areas are widely valued for their native flora and fauna and intact natural processes, these core aspects of wilderness are susceptible to, and increasingly threatened by, nonnative plant invasions. Most wilderness areas contain at least some invasive plants. In many wildernesses, invasive plants are already altering natural conditions. In addition to preventing new invasions and mapping and monitoring existing invasions, wilderness and other natural area managers are now faced with the complex problem of deciding how, when, and where to control such invasions. Controlling invasions in wilderness settings can be controversial, especially in Congressionally designated wilderness. The Wilderness Act of 1964 Public Law 88 577] states that wilderness should be "protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions." However, the Act also mandates that wilderness be "untrammeled," or unmanipulated. Based on this language, wilderness areas historically have been managed in ways that minimize intentional human intervention. The increasing spread and impacts of invasive, nonnative plants, along with the fact that most known control efforts are intentionally manipulative, and that invasions in the absence of control will continue to decrease the naturalness of wilderness ecosystems, are leading to new challenges and conflicts in how to manage for and preserve natural conditions. Federal policy mandates that agency management decisions consider the best available science. This requires managers to be aware of current research regarding the ecology of invasive plants as well as available management options. Gathering the background information needed to properly manage invasive plants can be a formidable task. This is a large and rapidly expanding field, and the sheer volume of research and the number of disparate literature sources in which it is published can be overwhelming. To facilitate an understanding of this topic, and ultimately the ability to make informed management decisions, we have compiled an annotated reading list that covers those aspects of invasive plant ecology and management most relevant to wilderness and other areas managed for their ecological values. Our intent is to (1) promote an improved understanding of the ecology and impacts of invasive plants, (2) to familiarize managers with current literature on various management approaches, and (3) to facilitate access to relevant references.

The passage of the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program legislation in 1996 marked the beginning of recreation fee programs targeted for users of Federally designated wilderness in the United States. This legislation has different implications for wilderness management than for other recreation programs because wilderness as a recreation resource has unique management policies and directives that may affect whether and how to implement recreation user fees. Wilderness managers implementing fee programs are faced with a variety of decisions including whether to use fees, how to collect fees, set prices, spend revenue, and respond to potential negative visitor reactions to new fees, and how wilderness experiences may change as a result of fees. Research shows there have been both positive and negative responses to recreation fees. This reading list includes references relevant to planning for and monitoring the effects of wilderness fee programs.

Humans have long maintained a complex and dynamic relationship with wildland fire. While native North Americans utilized fire for hundreds of years to promote growth of certain plants, facilitate hunting, and clear travel corridors (Williams 1994), during most of the 20th century fire on U.S. public lands was viewed as dangerous and destructive. For decades, Federal agencies have worked to suppress and minimize wildland fire on public lands, including wilderness and other similarly protected areas (Parsons and Landres 1998). To protect scenery and natural features, for example, early National Park managers worked to save these areas from destruction by fire (Parsons and Botti 1996). Yet ecological research gradually revealed that fire plays a more complex role in ecosystems than we previously believed (Christensen 1988). Although it is true that fire changes landscapes, many of these changes help to maintain mosaics of vegetation, recycle nutrients, and conserve biological diversity (Kilgore 1986). Additionally, anthropological research has shown that humans have not always had an adversarial relationship with fire, and that in fact, fire played an important role in the hunting and gathering systems of many Native American tribes (Lewis 1985). In light of this understanding, fire management on U.S. Federal lands has changed. Rather than attempt to suppress all fires, managers now work to minimize the risks associated with fire while allowing fire to play a more natural role in maintaining ecological processes and communities (NPS and others 1998). Permitting a natural role for fire is particularly appropriate for wilderness and protected areas with the mandate to maintain natural conditions; however, restoring fire to ecosystems after decades of fire suppression poses many challenges (Parsons 2000). In many areas, the structure and composition of plant communities has changed in response to fire suppression. In the absence of fires, woody fuels tend to accumulate in forests, which in turn can increase their susceptibility to intense fires (Arno and others 2000). Additionally, due to population growth and development, many wilderness areas and National Parks now border homes or communities, increasing the risks associated with escaped fires. Restoring fire to wilderness and protected areas requires management that integrates ecological and social knowledge, taking into account the effects of various management options on plant, animal, and human communities. The literature collected here represents a small subset of this vast literature, selected for its relevance to the issue of wilderness fire restoration and management. As a broad overview of the literature on wilderness fire, this reading list does not offer sufficient information on which to base fire management plans. Specific plans for restoring and managing fire in wilderness will require site-specific knowledge, because ecosystems are varied and complex. An understanding of local plant communities, their effects on fire behavior, and their responses to fire will be of central importance, as will information on animal distributions, behavior and habitat requirements, patterns of natural and human disturbance, jurisdictional boundaries, social and recreational values, and risks to life and property. Nonetheless, the structure of this reading list, and the papers we have cited and annotated, should provide readers with a conceptual framework for applying wilderness fire research to management. Furthermore, the reading list can help readers to identify the types of local and regional knowledge needed to manage fire in wilderness in accordance with the purposes set forth in the Wilderness Act and similar legislation designed to protect the values of naturalness and wildness on public lands.

The large increase in outdoor recreation activity over the last 50 years has been recognized as a potentially serious threat to North American wildlife populations. Threats to wildlife in wilderness are a concern to backcountry recreationists as well as the American public. The protection of wildlife habitat and endangered species was one of the most highly valued benefits of wilderness according to a telephone survey of approximately 1,900 people in the United States (Cordell and others 1998). Many backcountry recreation users cite the opportunity to view wildlife as an important part of their wilderness experience. Threats to wildlife in wilderness are also a concern for wildlife preservation. Wilderness often provides a refuge for wildlife amid a matrix of more intensively developed lands, and is especially valuable for wide-ranging species that are sensitive to human disturbance and those that depend on special habitats found predominantly in wilderness (Hendee and Mattson 2002). Impacts of recreation on wildlife include increased energetic demands during critical periods of the year, loss of habitat through avoidance of areas of human activity, exposure to predators while avoiding humans, and loss of habitat through changes in vegetation resulting from recreation activities (Knight and Gutzwiller 1995). If widespread, cumulative impacts on individuals of a species may ultimately affect local and regional populations. Changes in species' populations may affect wildlife communities, especially if the impacted species have strong interactions with other species. The management of wilderness recreation impacts on wildlife in designated wilderness is complicated by the potentially conflicting mandates of The Wilderness Act of 1964 Public Law 88-577]. The Act mandates the preservation of natural conditions in wilderness while requiring managers to provide opportunities for primitive recreation. However, when recreation affects wildlife species, populations, or communities, it can hinder the preservation of natural conditions. To address the dual mandates, appropriate wilderness recreational activities must not only be provided, but must be managed to minimize their impacts on wildlife, and more broadly, to wilderness ecosystems. Wilderness managers can use direct approaches such as restricting visitor numbers, activities, or access in some areas. In backcountry areas outside of designated wilderness, manipulating wildlife and wildlife habitat may be appropriate. Indirect approaches may also be used, such as visitor education and the careful location and design of trails, trailheads, and adjacent roads and campgrounds. We have compiled this annotated list of references to help wildlife, wilderness, and recreation managers better understand backcountry recreation impacts on wildlife and be informed of the variety of management tools available for minimizing impacts. Managing recreation impacts on wildlife is an interdisciplinary issue, with management decisions affecting both wildlife and visitors. We have designed this reading list to cross disciplinary boundaries. The reading list includes literature from the wildlife discipline, such as papers needed to understand impacts on wildlife, as well as literature from the recreation discipline that is needed to understand recreation management techniques. We suggest the expansion of future research to include other animal species that may be important to local ecosystems and/or have restricted ranges that overlap extensively with areas of high recreational use. Finally, previous studies on wildlife responses to primitive recreational activities have focused mainly on hiking. Managers would benefit from additional research on activities such as horseback riding, rock climbing, cross-country skiing, and kayaking in marine coastal areas.