Increasing levels of recreational use in wilderness, backcountry, and roadless areas has the potential to impact wildlife species, including those that depend on these protected areas for survival. Wildlife and wilderness managers will be more successful at reducing these impacts if they understand the potential impacts, factors affecting the magnitude of impacts, and available management strategies and implementation methods. In this reading list, we summarize over 230 books, articles, bibliographies, and Internet resources to provide managers with relevant research on backcountry recreation impacts on terrestrial wildlife amid the vast literature on this topic. The first section illustrates the importance of considering backcountry recreation impacts on wildlife, both for wildlife conservation and enhancement of wilderness visitor experiences. The second section reviews important concepts such as the types of impacts, methods for assessing them, and models for understanding these impacts. The third section provides an overview of field studies that documents recreation impacts on specific wildlife species and taxonomic groups. The fourth section contains information on management planning frameworks and specific techniques that may be useful for minimizing impacts of backcountry recreation to wildlife. The final section offers Internet resources and previous bibliographies related to the topic.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 designates wilderness areas as places where natural conditions prevail and humans leave landscapes untrammeled. Managers of wilderness and similarly protected areas have a mandate to maintain wildland fire as a natural ecological process. However, because fire suppression has dominated Federal land management for most of the past century, the natural role of fire has been lost from many wilderness areas. Managers now face the dilemma of how to restore fire to its natural role in wilderness areas affected by fire suppression and other anthropogenic influences while protecting wilderness character and air quality, and managing the risks associated with fire. This reading list summarizes more than 150 books, articles, and online resources that provide context for wilderness fire restoration and management. The first section provides background information on fire ecology, behavior, and effects that forms a foundation for managing fire in wilderness. The second section focuses more closely on wilderness and protected areas and emphasizes the restoration of fire to areas affected by fire suppression. The final section lists additional resources, such as Web sites and sample fire plans, useful in wilderness fire planning.

The 1964 Wilderness Act calls for "...an enduring resource of wilderness...for the use and enjoyment of the American people" and lists among the attributes of wilderness "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." These statements confirm experiential opportunities as one of the primary purposes of wilderness. Furthermore, by signing the act into law, Congress declared that wilderness experiences are so important they are worthy of protection by national legislation. Wilderness experiences have been credited with everything from personal psychological benefits to formation of the national character. Heavy or growing use levels at many wilderness areas are proof that the public increasingly values the opportunity to experience wilderness firsthand. In response to the fear that increasing use would threaten the experiential qualities of wilderness and wildlands, researchers with training in sociology, psychology, and anthropology began a focused program of outdoor recreation research in the 1960s. Although the initial focus was on determining objective visitor "carrying capacities" for protected areas, scientists soon found that the relationship between use numbers and wilderness visitor experiences is extremely complex. This research expanded to address the values that people hold for wilderness (including nonrecreation values), the types and dimensions of wilderness experiences, and factors that influence those experiences. Simultaneously, managers and scientists worked together to develop techniques and long-term planning frameworks to ensure that quality wilderness experiences continue to be available. Whereas early wilderness stewards had few resources other than instinct and personal experience to guide them, managers today have access to a significant body of literature related to defining, managing, and monitoring wilderness experiences. In fact, the volume of available information can be confusing or even overwhelming. This reading list gathers together and organizes a representative sample of this information in a way that we hope will be useful to both managers and researchers.