Help us meet the challenges ahead

Your support makes all of our Wilderness defense work possible ‌

Porcupine caribou herd in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by frostnip via Flickr.

The Trump administration and Congress are working every day to eviscerate wilderness protections that have been in place for decades—by undermining our public land laws, eliminating regulations, stifling public involvement, and blocking access to the courts.

On just one day in October, the administration:

• Approved a land exchange for a road to cut through the heart of the world-renowned, wildlife-rich Izembek Wilderness in Alaska.

• Opened the iconic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.

• Gave a green light to the proposed 212-mile-long Ambler Mining Road that will be bulldozed across the southern flank of Alaska’s Brooks Range.

These actions threaten native wildlife like caribou, salmon, and grizzly bears, along with wild rivers, millions of acres of Wilderness, and a way-of-life for Indigenous communities.

In these unprecedented times, Wilderness Watch is meeting the challenge.

On November 12, we responded to the Izembek land exchange by suing the Interior Department and King Cove Corporation in federal District Court. And we’ll continue to fight for the Arctic Refuge, for Gates of the Arctic, and for all other wild places.

Our mission is to protect America’s National Wilderness Preservation System forever, and with your help we’ll do just that!

Please make a special donation today so that we can continue to fight for Wilderness. We rely on people like you for nearly all of our funding, and this is the most critical time in that regard. So please be as generous as you can!

You may have heard that Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is back at it again, using public concerns about border security as a smokescreen to unravel the Wilderness Act. His “Border Lands Conservation Act” would amend the Wilderness Act to give the Department of Homeland Security free rein to build roads, drive motor vehicles, land aircraft, build fences and walls, and install video surveillance systems and motion sensors in any Wilderness in the country. The bill also encourages logging, chaining, and other heavy-handed management tools to “reduce fuels” or create fuel breaks near the borders, including in Wilderness. Thousands of you have heeded our recent call to action, urging your senators to oppose the bill—and for that we are grateful.

In late October, Wilderness Watch scored another landmark legal victory when a federal judge overturned the Forest Service’s plan to poison miles of streams and numerous lakes in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness upstream of Yellowstone National Park so the State of Montana could then stock these naturally fishless waters with trout. The Forest Service called it “restoration,” but the judge saw it for what it was—an attempt by fish and wildlife managers to transform Wilderness into something more to their liking.

In this era, when so many managers want to substitute their preferences and prejudices for the wild rhythm nature has honed over millions of years, our victory is a wake-up call.

There’s more:

• We’ve filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service over its approval to build a road through the Lusk Creek Wilderness in Illinois.

• We’re in court to rein in unregulated motorized commercial towboat use in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

• We’re challenging a proposal to log, burn, and plant seedlings—essentially turning Wilderness into tree plantations—in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California.

• We’re defending our court victory that limited trapping and snaring to protect both wolves and grizzly bears in Wildernesses in Idaho.

But we can’t be content with playing defense. To that end, we’re continuing to:

• Build support for measures that strengthen protections for Wilderness, like our campaign to reduce and eventually eliminate harmful livestock grazing in Wilderness, and to protect wolves, grizzlies, bighorn sheep, and other wildlife that deserve the security Wilderness should provide.

• Promote the need for a new agency to oversee the Wilderness System. Without a systematic change to how Wilderness is administered, Wilderness will continue to suffer.

We need to be as bold as our predecessors who had the vision and courage to establish the wilderness legacy we enjoy today. Politics change, and when they do we’ll be ready.

Your support makes all of our work possible. Thank you for helping us meet the challenges ahead in defense of America’s National Wilderness Preservation System.

Canaan Mountain Wilderness, Utah by BLM.