In 1969 Hunter was offered a position on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society. In 1976 she was made president and later executive director. She was the first female to head a national environmental organization. In 1972, Hunter was nominated by Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton to sit on the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission where she articulated the environmentalists' viewpoint. She worked with the Commission until it dissolved in 1980 with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act.