Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Areas
Aleutian Islands Wilderness
This wilderness area wilderness area
Wilderness areas are places untamed by humans. The Wilderness Act of 1964 allows Congress to designate wilderness areas for protection to ensure that America's pristine wild lands will not disappear. Wilderness areas can be part of national wildlife refuges, national parks, national forests or public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Learn more about wilderness area was established in 1980 and encompasses 1,300,000 acres and includes the peaks of 57 submarine volcanoes (27 of which are considered active) rising from near sea level to more than 9,000 feet (learn more).
The Bering Sea Wilderness was established in 1980. At 81,340 acres, this Wilderness Area encompasses St. Matthew Island, Hall Island, and Pinnacle Island and is part of the larger Bering Sea unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (learn more).
Bogoslof Wilderness
This incredibly active volcanic 175 acre island north of Unalaska/Dutch Harbor provides habitat for thousands of seabirds and marine mammals. It was established as a Wilderness Area in 1970 (learn more).
Chamisso Wilderness
This Wilderness Area was established 1975. At 455 acres, Chamisso Wilderness is comprised of Chamisso and Puffin Island in the Northwest Arctic (learn more)
Forrester Island Wilderness
During the day, you'll ask yourself how more than one million birds of 13 species could be nesting here. But at night vast populations of Leach's storm petrels, fork-tailed petrels, Cassin's auklets, and rhinoceros auklets leave their underground burrows to feed in the ocean around the isolated islands of Forrester, Lowrie, and Petrel. This Wilderness Area was established in 1970 and encompasses 2,832 acres (learn more).
Hazy Islands Wilderness
Far offshore in the Gulf of Alaska, beaten by wind and wave, Big Hazy Island and her four smaller sisters stick out of the frigid sea, providing predator-free nesting areas for large populations of common murres, pigeon guillemots, glaucous-winged gulls, horned puffins, and tufted puffins. Brandt's cormorants nest here, one of only two islands they inhabit in Alaska. This Wilderness area is 32 acres and was established in 1970 (learn more).
St. Lazaria Wilderness
Rising no more than 180 feet above the surging ocean at the entrance to Sitka Sound, Saint Lazaria has two low summits, forested with mature Sitka spruce, which are connected by a bare saddle that is washed by waves at high tide. Cliffs topped with lush grasses fall to the sea. This 65 acre Wilderness Area was established in 1970 (learn more).
Semidi Wilderness
Aghiluk Island alone, the largest of the Semidis, is home to more than half a million birds. About 370,000 horned puffins nest in the Semidis along with almost all of the unit's northern fulmars and jaegers, and one million-plus murres. Ancient murrelets and parakeet auklets are among the other species found here. Semidi Islands Wilderness Area is not great in land mass but includes approximately one-quarter million acres of surrounding seabed. It was established as a Wilderness Area in 1980 (read more).
Simeonof Wilderness
One of 30 named islands in the Shumagin Group, Simeonof Island was first established as a refuge for sea otters in 1958. Protected "lands" include the water, shoals, and kelp beds within a mile of the island. For more information about this 25,855 acre wilderness visit wilderness.net
Tuxedni Wilderness
Established 1970, most of the 5,556 Wilderness Area lies on Chisik Island (tiny, six-acre Duck Island is a rocky dot with almost no vegetation). Chisik slopes upward out of Cook Inlet from sandy beaches on the southern end to 400-foot cliffs on the northern end (learn more)
Unimak Wilderness
Huge Unimak Island, which gives this Wilderness its name, extends west from the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. The 910,000 island is within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge but managed by Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. It was established as a Wilderness Area in 1980 (learn more).