When an area is designated as a Wilderness, that requires a certain style of management that might or might not be appropriate for the area and is very hard to change. More flexible management options are often a good thing, and there are lots of options for managing federal lands (NRAs, NCAs, etc) that don’t come with the strict rules of a Wilderness but are still pretty limited in what they allow.

Non-Wilderness designations do mean having to place more trust in the people on the ground and the agencies involved. You might or might not think that’s appropriate. But what OC and the article both say is that we have to make those decisions with the mindset that “no management” isn’t the default or best option, and often people hear the word “wilderness” and assume that it is.