This process was known as the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation
(RARE, or later, RARE I). The process developed significant opposition by environmental
groups and by public lands users, and was challenged in federal court. Results of RARE I were tabled
by the courts for lack of uniform criteria for evaluation of lands and other procedural
problems, and a second review started in 1977, known as RARE II, involving more than 60 million
acres (240,000 km2) of wildland under federal jurisdiction. RARE II was completed in
1979. Controversy, and lack of support from the Reagan administration starting in 1981, largely
sidelined a formal, national wilderness assessment. Congress has designated several wilderness
areas since 1981, sometimes using data acquired through the RARE processes. The National
Wilderness Preservation System grew out of recommendations of a Kennedy-administration
Presidential Commission, the Outdoor Recreational Resources Review Commission (ORRRC)[1]
chaired by Laurence S. Rockefeller, whose 1962
report suggested legislation to protect recreational resources in a "national system of wild and scenic rivers," a national
wilderness system, a national trails system, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, and recreation areas
administered by then-existing public lands agencies beyond National Parks and National
Monuments (both of which are administered in the Department of the Interior by the National
Parks Administration). Much of the wildland was sagebrush, not particularly pretty to look at,
but useful for grazing, off-road vehicle use, and other development. Some advocates urged that,
instead of designating more federal wilderness protection, some or much of the land be granted
to states or private parties. These advocates took on phrase "Sagebrush Rebellion" to
describe their opposition.
Sagebrush, page 2