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A record 581,000 travelers visited Big Bend National Park last year. Tourists are drawn to this prickly desert paradise in far West Texas for its majestic sunsets, spectacular hiking and camping, and remote location along the Rio Grande. Above all, visitors come seeking wilderness and solitude. To ensure that experience is preserved for future generations, a new advocacy group called Keep Big Bend Wild is pushing to give vast portions of the park the nation’s highest level of conservation protection: an official federal designation as a wilderness area. The designation would have virtually no impact on what travelers could do in the park or how outfitters operate there now, according to members of the group and the park’s superintendent, who supports the effort. But it would…

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