Wayne N. Aspinall - Wilderness Act of 1964

Wilderness Act of 1964

One of the first comprehensive pieces of environmental legislation during the era faced a lengthy battle in Congress between Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and western conservationist politicians like Aspinall. When the Wilderness bill first came to the House in 1961, Aspinall employed various stall tactics to never allow the popular bill out of the Interior Committee. He continued this through 1962 and into ’63, earning him the wrath of the country’s environmentalists, preservationist politicians, and a large amount of the public.

However, in November 1963 Aspinall made a deal with John Kennedy. Aspinall greatly desired a public land review commission (see below), while one of Kennedy’s primary goals was the passage of the Wilderness Act. Aspinall agreed to release the bill in exchange for the administration’s cooperation with the land commission. (Also, Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 created an ethos in Washington that essentially made Kennedy a martyr. Lyndon Johnson took up and pushed through many of his legislative goals because of public empathy.)

Before Aspinall let the Wilderness Act of 1964 pass, he dropped the original request of 55 million acres (220,000 km²) of protected wilderness to only 9.1 million acres (37,000 km²). He also inserted a clause, called the “1984 clause,” that allowed mining interests to still have access to many of these areas until December 31, 1983. Despite these concessions, the House passed it 373-1 and Lyndon Johnson signed it in September. The act also refused to turn over exclusive power to the executive branch, keeping some power in Congress for public land oversight. Ironically, the National Wildlife Federation named Aspinall their “Conservationist of the Year” in 1964 for his role in the eventual passage of the bill.