Wilderness, Motorized Rafts, and the Grand Canyon

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The Wilderness Act also directed the Secretary of the Interior to review all roadless areas of five thousand contiguous acres or more in the national parks and, within ten years, to report to the President on the suitability of each area for possible preservation as wilderness. In the Grand Canyon Enlargement Act of 1975, which provided for the further protection of the Grand Canyon and doubled the size of the Park, Congress modified the deadline for wilderness suitability review by the Executive Branch first set forth in the Wilderness Act in 1964. The 1975 Act specifically required the Secretary of the Interior to report to the President, within two years, his or her recommendation on the suitability or non-suitability of any area within Grand Canyon National Park for potential wilderness designation.

In 1980, Grand Canyon National Park produced a proposed wilderness recommendation, in which the agency (but not the Secretary of the Interior or the President) recommended that almost the entire backcountry area of the Park—approximately 1,000,000 acres—with the exception of the cross canyon corridor hiking trails be designated as wilderness by Congress. This recommendation included the Colorado River corridor, consisting of approximately 12,190 acres (or 1% of the total area) as “potential wilderness,” pending the elimination of motorized rafts from the river, which had been proposed by the Park as part of its then on-going river management planning process.

The “potential wilderness” designation, only if enacted into law by Congress, would mean that motorized use eventually would be eliminated and, once eliminated, the river corridor would become part of the Wilderness Preservation System automatically without any further action by Congress. (In 1993, the Park updated the 1980 recommendation, largely to reflect the acquisition of federal title to various lands within the Park’s boundaries.) The Park’s proposed recommendation, never formally transmitted to the Secretary of the Interior, together with the Park’s attempt to eliminate motorized river trips through the river management planning process that was ongoing in the late 1970’s, created substantial controversy.

Congress responded to the agency’s proposal by passing an amendment offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to the 1981 Department of the Interior appropriations bill that prevented the National Park Service from moving forward with its proposed phase-out of motorized river trips. In response, the National Park Service implemented a Colorado River Management Plan and subsequently issued river running concession contracts that continue to require motorized trips on the river. So was born the dichotomy involving the agency’s proposed wilderness recommendation that attempts to classify the river corridor as “potential wilderness” (with an assumed eventual phase-out of motorized trips) and the agency’s requirement that the Park’s river concessioners continue to provide motorized river trips. It remains to this day.

Since 1981, no Secretary of the Interior or President has ever officially received or forwarded on a formal recommendation on the suitability or non-suitability of any areas within Grand Canyon National Park for possible inclusion into the Wilderness Preservation System. Congress has yet to consider whether or not any areas within the Grand Canyon should be designated as wilderness.

Absent further congressional action, the Wilderness Act does not require the termination of motorized use on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The question is whether the National Park Service, as a matter of agency policy, should manage Grand Canyon National Park and its Colorado River corridor in such a manner as to not impair its suitability for possible inclusion into the Wilderness Preservation System at some future point.

National Park Service has determined that the removal of motorized watercraft is not required either by the Wilderness Act nor current agency policies or guidelines. This is because the National Park Service has determined that such use is not diminishing the river corridor’s future suitability for potential inclusion into the National Wilderness Preservation System. Motorized use is transitory in nature and does not harm or negatively impact the resource. If such use did impair the area’s suitability for wilderness designation, after five decades of such use, certainly the Colorado River corridor within the Park would no longer be suitable for possible wilderness designation. Yet wilderness advocates maintain that the Colorado River corridor within the Grand Canyon does remain suitable for possible inclusion. If this is true, it can only be so because motorized use has not diminished the river corridor’s wilderness character.
 
 
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