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A societal decision to protect over 9 million acres of land and water for its wilderness character in the early 1960s reflected US wealth in natural resources, pride in the nation's cultural history and our commitment to the well-being of future generations to both experience wild nature and enjoy benefits flowing from these natural ecosystems. There is no question that our relationship with wilderness has changed. Individually it is probably quite easy to examine differences in the role wilderness plays in the quality of our lives today compared to some previous time. But how the role of wilderness protection has changed for society is more difficult to describe. In only a few places do we have data across multiple decades that would allow us to even examine how users or their use may have changed over time. At the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota we are fortunate to have multiple studies that can give us some 40 years of insight into how some aspects of use have changed there. For example, an analysis of results of visitor studies at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in 1969, 1991 and 2007 reveal some big differences in who is out there today, most notably the presence of a much older, more experienced and better educated user population, almost exclusively white and predominantly male. It is time to decide whether the best thing for wilderness and or society is to try to restore historic patterns of use (to include younger people, the less wealthy and lower educated) in greater numbers, to try to identify new markets within growing underrepresented populations, or adapt our perception of wilderness stewardship to better include planning for emerging social values of a new generation with other indicators of well-being. A growing population with greater dependence on ecosystem services provided by protected nature could lead to wilderness protection becoming an important quantitative and qualitative element of quality of life indices in the very near future.

The application of scientifically rigorous public engagement approaches is lacking. In this context, we present a "social vulnerability protocol" which has now been applied in several broad-scale planning efforts. The protocol aims to understand the multitude of relationships that people have with public land through a prioritization of ecosystem services and a selection of relevant drivers of change. The protocol is analytically rigorous and readily interpretable, and is clearly tied to the planning objectives of knowledge co-production, tradeoff analysis, and understanding how various threats may impact social well-being. In the context of the Gila National Forest Plan revision, comparisons between the perspectives of the public and those of the local land management agency show a diversity of stakeholder values and human-nature relationships. We believe this approach contributes to more inclusive decision-making, strengthens public understanding of the complexities involved, and builds trust through transparent and explicit acknowledgement of diverse perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]