Yes, I've found that for me 'wilderness' was initially a tricky term to use in the UK.
As an explanation for anyone else reading: conservation in NZ and the UK are very different. In many areas of the UK, conservation consists partly of maintaining farming practices in the manner they've been practised in these places for hundreds (sometimes tens of hundreds) of years. Which, for a New Zealander, is totally bizarre. In New Zealand, there are gigantic swathes of somewhat-pristine forest (missing mostly birds, and some insects) we can look to as a model for conservation. Farmland and conservation are pretty much mutually exclusive.
So, in the UK you might use the term wilderness for a large, very lightly farmed, very lightly populated area. Where in NZ you mightn't use the term wilderness until you'd walked for half a day from civilisation.
As an explanation for anyone else reading: conservation in NZ and the UK are very different. In many areas of the UK, conservation consists partly of maintaining farming practices in the manner they've been practised in these places for hundreds (sometimes tens of hundreds) of years. Which, for a New Zealander, is totally bizarre. In New Zealand, there are gigantic swathes of somewhat-pristine forest (missing mostly birds, and some insects) we can look to as a model for conservation. Farmland and conservation are pretty much mutually exclusive.
So, in the UK you might use the term wilderness for a large, very lightly farmed, very lightly populated area. Where in NZ you mightn't use the term wilderness until you'd walked for half a day from civilisation.