On September 15, 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew a controversial water-diversion pipeline project in the Red Rock Lakes Wilderness in southwestern Montana following a lawsuit by Wilderness Watch, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Gallatin Wildlife Association, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection.
Wilderness Watch supported two recent moves by the Biden administration to stop a massive underground and open-pit copper-nickel sulfide-ore mine—some of the most toxic mining on the planet—in the watershed of the fabled Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northeastern Minnesota. In January 2022, the administration canceled two mining leases for the proposed Twin Metals mine, and in January 2023, the administration issued a 20-year moratorium on sulfide-ore mining on national forest land surrounding the Wilderness.
Due to pressure from Wilderness Watch, Western Watersheds Project, and other groups, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has decided to scrap a water development project in the Paiute Wilderness in northwest Arizona. This project, whose purpose was to facilitate cattle grazing, would have added significant structures in the Paiute Wilderness and would have disrupted a natural spring and riparian area.
Thanks to comments from our members and supporters, the Forest Service (FS) has issued a draft Environmental Assessment that excludes Wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas, recommended Wilderness, and roadless areas from its Region 5 Post Disturbance Hazardous Tree Management Project. This project could have included more than a dozen Wildernesses within the sprawling project area across 10 National Forests in California.
On November 13, 2020, a federal court ruled in favor of protecting brown bears in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) and Wilderness in Alaska. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge includes approximately 2 million acres of important wildlife habitat and more than 1.3 million acres of Wilderness.
On January 13, 2022, an administrative law judge blocked a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decision that would have allowed for up to triple the amount of cattle grazing on public lands in part of the wild and remote Owyhee Canyonlands region of southwestern Idaho, including in Wilderness. Wilderness Watch and Western Watersheds Project challenged BLM’s grazing decision in the Department of Interior’s Office of Hearings and Appeals, and the judge issued a stay as the legal challenge continues.
On July 22, 2021, Wilderness Watch and allies filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Montana asking for a preliminary injunction and/or temporary restraining order to halt the State of Montana’s North Fork Blackfoot Westslope Cutthroat Trout Project—a massive stream poisoning and fish stocking project in the Scapegoat Wilderness
Due to public pressure, the U.S. Air Force in January 2021 dropped its proposal for up to 10,000 F-16 fighter jet “sorties” a year over America’s (and the world’s) first Wilderness—the Gila—and seven other Wildernesses in southern New Mexico—the Aldo Leopold, Apache Kid, Withington, Bosque del Apache, Sierra de las Uvas, Broad Canyon, and Robledo Wildernesses. The area’s wild character would have no doubt been harmed by the invasion and noise of these countless military overflights.
