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Ansel Adams Wilderness, California by The Fun Chronicles

Wilderness ranger speaks out about February wave of firings, impacts to Wilderness

NOTE: In February, the Trump administration fired approximately 3,400 U.S. Forest Service employees and 1,000 National Park Service employees, including wilderness rangers and trail crew members across the country. Shortly after termination, some wilderness rangers reached out to Wilderness Watch to share their stories and concerns about the impact to Wilderness. The following essay was written…

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Desert bighorn lambs by James Marvin Phelps

The next 60 years: Elevating earth’s community of life

This fall, Wilderness Watch and other wilderness advocates gathered at the feet of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, in the trees and away from computer screens, to reflect on the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act and talk about where we might go in the years ahead. The conservation movement has excelled at Power Point presentations and Zoom meetings and cranking out 50-page legal briefs, but we’ve become really lousy at gathering around the campfire to tell stories, share food, and build our strength from the ground up. The campout was a welcome opportunity to reconnect.

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Katie in D.C.

Wilderness Watch goes to Washington

A week after the Wilderness Act’s 60th Anniversary on September 3, Wilderness Watch was on Capitol Hill educating members of Congress and their staffers about the importance of the Wilderness Act. While the U.S. House passed the Wilderness Act 374-1 and the U.S. Senate passed it 73-12, it’s clear that 60 years later the threats…

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Eagle cap Wilderness, Oregon by Leon Werdinger

Please, no diamonds for the Wilderness Act’s 60th anniversary

The 1964 Wilderness Act celebrates its 60th anniversary on September 3rd. Diamonds are a gift for a 60th wedding anniversary and presumably represent strength, but from a humanitarian lens diamonds have evolved to represent consumption and exploitation. This duality resonates with the 1964 Wilderness Act’s diamond anniversary and provides an opportunity to reflect on where we are now and what the National Wilderness Preservation System—Wilderness—faces moving forward.

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Yosemite Wilderness by René Voss

Is the National Park Service serious about Wilderness?

When one thinks of wild landscapes in the U.S., national park areas come quickly to mind. Yet, as we celebrate 60 years of the Wilderness Act this year, wild places in too many of even our most iconic parks have been left behind and left vulnerable. Deserving areas suitable for wilderness designation in parks from Acadia to Yellowstone and 13 areas in Alaska have not been protected under the Wilderness Act.

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Mountain bike by Eric Greenwood/USFS

Mountain bikers push to ride through Wilderness

The goal of the Wilderness Act, now celebrating its 60th birthday, was to set aside a small proportion of public land in America from human intrusion. Some places, the founders said, deserved to be free from motorized, mechanized and other intrusions to protect wildlife and wild lands. But now, a handful of mountain bikers have partnered with a senator from Utah to gut the Wilderness Act.

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Gros Ventre Wilderness, Wyoming by Howie Wolke

Wilderness at 60: A brief overview

On September 3, 1964, humanity’s unrelenting quest to tame, civilize, industrialize, and obliterate wild nature crashed into the Wilderness Act, signed into law by President Johnson on that momentous day. This visionary legislation—written primarily by the late Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society—created a federal policy to secure for the American people “an enduring resource of wilderness.” Under this law, Wilderness areas must remain “unimpaired” and be administered “for the preservation of their wilderness character.” Considering humanity’s history, this was a revolutionary moment.

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Wolf by Sam Parks

New Isle Royale wolves ironically diminish island’s wildness

A recent AP story about a new report on the “recovery” of wolves at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior quoted me as saying, “We have felt and still believe that the National Park Service should not have intervened and set up this artificial population of wolves.” Why this stick-in-the-mud quote from an organization that defends wolves and Wilderness across the country in an otherwise positive story about wolves thriving on Isle Royale?

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Sawtooth Wilderness, ID

The “Protecting America’s Rock Climbing Act” is still an imminent threat to Wilderness

I recently wrote an op-ed calling the proposed “Protecting America’s Rock Climbing Act” (PARC Act) an imminent threat to Wilderness. In response, members of the Access Fund, the group behind the bill, have been contacting individual publishers, pressuring them to pull the piece. They’ve (wrongly) called it misleading and “fake news,” and some have even resorted to publicly attacking the character of individual editors. Fortunately, to my knowledge, only one publication—Adventure Journal—has caved, and many climbers have contacted me privately thanking me for the piece

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BW Towboat

Wilderness Watch sues Forest Service for failure to control motorized towboats in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Wilderness Watch has recently sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal district court over the agency’s decades of failures to control commercial motorized towboats in the fabled Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in Minnesota as required. We are now awaiting the judge’s ruling on our motion for a preliminary injunction.

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