BECAUSE OF THE foresight of early conservationists and public officials like President Theodore Roosevelt who valued forests, rivers, and wildlife, hundreds of millions of acres in the United States have been set aside in national wildlife refuges, parks, forests, and grasslands, never to be bulldozed for housing or paved for parking lots.

Within these federal lands, 104 million acres are in the National Wilderness Preservation System, protected against logging, road building, and other activities that would disrupt the pristine wild. But federal wilderness lands, two-thirds of which lie in remote regions of Alaska, amount to less than 5 percent of the United States. In fact, most of the public lands are managed not just as reservations for nature but for recreation, fishing, lumbering, grazing of livestock, and other uses.

Mining, grazing, military activities, hiking, and dirt biking are just some...