Proceedings of a symposium held at the Northwest Scientific Association Forty-Third Annual Meeting, Salem, Oregon, March, 1970, are presented. The symposium indicated that mutual understanding by educators, scientists, land managers, and politicians must be developed on the definition of naturalness, present and future use and management of natural areas, and needs and opportunities of the future. The major paper by Richard Falknor, "The Broad Perspective: Congress and the Environment--Some Modest Proposals for the 1970's," deals with broad concerns of environmental quality; natural areas are particularly important in providing benchmarks for judging whether changes wrought by man on the environment are for better or for worse. Other topics relating to natural areas cover scientific values, the conservation ethic, environmental expansion, international aspects, natural plant communities, use and management by educational institutions, educational values to school children, recreational use and management, mineral needs versus wild land preservation, role of the private sector, programs of professional societies, natural area programs of the Bureau of Land Management, and management in North Cascades National Park. (BL)