Each year by the millions they come from throughout the United States and around the world to visit these public lands, pursuing various experiences. Millions of hunters and fishers, hikers and backpackers, picnickers and sightseers enjoy the public lands. For scientists and researchers they are invaluable, huge, open-air laboratories. They contain many natural resources and provide for a great variety of personal and commercial uses. They expand our physical, emotional, and spiritual horizons and help maximize personal freedom.
Public lands are many things to many people.
Public lands are much more than all this, however. Western public land encompasses 418 million acres of Nature, of largely untransformed natural being. And though continued existence is not guaranteed to all on this Earth, the opportunity to pursue natural existence without undue human interference should be. The environment itself has the right to exist in a healthy, natural state, for its own sake, regardless of any human considerations. For many people, the intrinsic value of Nature is something intuitively sensed yet rarely discussed.