Open data
The tables behind this site, free for any use without permission or attribution. A link back helps other people find the source. Each file regenerates with the nightly pipeline that rebuilds the pages, so it is never older than what you read here. Data refreshed September 17, 2026.
One row per national wildlife refuge, wilderness area, national forest or grassland, and BLM national monument or national conservation area in the United States. Each row carries the managing agency, the states the boundary touches, acreage, the designation year where the source records one, a point inside the boundary, the official page and the Wikipedia article where one matched, the count of federal campgrounds nearby, the count of Forest Service recreation sites inside, and a ground brightness reading.
Columns: slug, type, name, designation, agency, states, acres, designated, lat, lon, official_url, official_url_verified, wikipedia_url, campgrounds_within_10mi, campgrounds_inside, usfs_rec_sites, lp
One point feature per entity in the table above, at the same point inside the boundary. Properties are slug, type, name, agency, states, acres and the page path on this site. Use it to put every refuge, wilderness area, forest and BLM unit on a map without the full boundaries.
Columns: slug, type, name, agency, states, acres, url
Provenance and cadence
The boundaries come from four public ArcGIS services. Refuges are the Fish and Wildlife Service refuge boundary layer, filtered to the National Wildlife Refuge type. Wilderness areas are the Wilderness Connect layer maintained by the University of Montana with the four wilderness agencies. National forests are the Forest Service administrative boundary layer in its Enterprise Data Warehouse. BLM units are the National Conservation Lands monuments and conservation areas layer. The full method is on the methodology page.
Acreage for wilderness areas and forests is the figure the agency publishes with the boundary. Acreage for refuges and BLM units is the geodesic area of the polygon as served, which can differ from the agency’s official figure where a boundary includes water, easements or inholdings. States are computed from the boundary except for wilderness areas, where the Wilderness Connect field is used.
A GitHub Actions job refreshes the underlying data nightly and republishes these files. The snapshot date changes when the data does. Corrections and questions can be raised at github.com/kirkwood-justin/site4/issues.
Suggested citation: "Wilderness Atlas open data (September 17, 2026 snapshot), derived from FWS, Forest Service, BLM and Wilderness Connect boundary data, wildernessatlas.com/data/."