For Immediate Release
February 13, 2025
Contact: Dave Gibson,
518-469-4081,
dgibson@adirondackwild.org
Announcing Wilderness Management: Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values, 5th Edition
The 5th edition of Wilderness Management: Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values will be published by Waveland Press later this month. The classic textbook contains the most comprehensive and updated information available about wilderness resources and their stewardship and protection. For ordering information, visit www.waveland.com.
The textbook’s editor, Chad Dawson, is a member of Adirondack Wild’s board of directors, and is familiar to many throughout the Adirondacks. Dr. Chad P. Dawson is professor emeritus of Recreation Resources Management and former chair of the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He has spent decades in the Adirondack Park interviewing recreationists, developing protocols, selecting indicators, describing impacts, and publishing the results of recreational preferences and management implications for the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Dr. Dawson edited the International Journal of Wilderness, co-edited the textbook’s earlier editions with John Hendee, and served a term on the NYS Adirondack Park Agency (2016-2020).
The 1st edition was published in 1978. For this 5th edition in 2025, and for the very first time, an Adirondack Park landscape is featured on the book’s front cover. The cover photograph taken by Ken Rimany is of Elk Lake with the High Peaks Wilderness area in the background (see attachment).
According to Waveland Press, “for 45 years, this classic textbook on wilderness management has served as the most comprehensive information available on the stewardship and protection of wilderness resources and values. The seventeen chapters outline the history, legislation, policies, planning, and stewardship carried out by the four federal land managing agencies—Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service—entrusted with stewardship and protection of the more than 110-million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System. The book also describes state managed wilderness systems, such as New York State’s in the Adirondack and Catskill Parks.
The text is written for wilderness and wildlands planners, managers, stewards, advocates, and educators. This revised fifth edition builds on the material of the first four editions and extensively updates chapters on: international wilderness; managing for appropriate wilderness conditions; wilderness ecosystems; fire in wilderness ecosystems; ecological impacts of wilderness recreation and their management; and wilderness visitor management. This textbook is an invaluable guide for resource managers, students, scientists, policy makers, and for wilderness advocates and visitors around the world.”
“We are happy to help Chad Dawson and Waveland Press publicize this important wilderness text to audiences in our Adirondack and Catskill regions,” said Adirondack Wild’s David Gibson. “The ‘forever wild’ Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve, protected by our state constitution’s Article XIV, inspired the author of the National Wilderness Preservation Act, Howard Zahniser. His wilderness legislation passed the Congress and was signed by President Johnson in 1964. Zahniser often stated that because of our Article XIV, New York State is where wilderness preservation began in the United States.”
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is a not for profit, membership organization devoted to the protection and stewardship of wilderness and other wild lands through advocacy and education. The organization protects wild lands from threats, holds officials accountable, and proposes policy reforms. More on the web at adirondackwild.org.