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Wild Issues

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia

Great news for the Okefenokee Wilderness and National Wildlife Refuge

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has finalized a decision to expand the acquisition boundary of the 407,000-acre Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Georgia by 22,000 acres. This means the agency can now negotiate to purchase lands within the expanded boundary to be added to the refuge, which protects one of the world’s…

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Grizzly bears by Sam Parks

Grizzly bears need Endangered Species Act protection

On January 8, 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected petitions from the states of Montana and Wyoming to strip grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies of their important federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections. Unfortunately, on January 15, 2025, the agency also proposed to shrink the area in which grizzlies are protected and…

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Mount Webster, New Hampshire by ScenicNH Photography LLC

Taking steps to protect the Presidential Range-Dry River Wilderness

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to amend its Forest Plan for the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF) to relocate part of the Webster Cliff Trail in the Presidential Range-Dry River Wilderness in New Hampshire. The WMNF has trailless zones within its six Wilderness areas, and the current Forest Plan requires wilderness trails to be…

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Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, Montana

Cabinet Mountains Wilderness threatened by one of the world’s largest proposed copper and silver mines

Wilderness Watch is urging the Forest Service to protect the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwest Montana by rejecting the latest mine proposal by HECLA Mining. Conservationists have long worked to protect this Wilderness from one of the world’s largest proposed copper and silver mines—the Rock Creek Mine. While the Rock Creek Mine is temporarily on…

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Flathead Wild and Scenic River, Montana

Habitat protection on the Flathead can’t wait

Wilderness Watch is urging the Forest Service to strengthen protections for the 219-mile Flathead Wild and Scenic River System as the agency considers new regulations and increased recreation monitoring. In warm months, the Flathead is flooded with anglers and floaters, many with guides and outfitters. Roughly 87 river miles run through the gorges and valleys…

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Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Burning proposed for the Boundary Waters

Wilderness Watch is urging the U.S. Forest Service to drop its massive manipulation project that would set fire to as many as 84,000 acres of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in Minnesota. The misguided Fernberg Corridor Landscape Management Project has no place in Wilderness and would violate the mandate of the 1964 Wilderness…

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Lusk Creek

Lusk Creek—Wilderness or ORV playground?

Wilderness Watch and Heartwood are pushing back against a U.S. Forest Service (FS) plan to reconstruct, and in places construct, a road in the Lusk Creek Wilderness in Illinois. At issue is access across Wilderness to 87 acres of private land that borders the eastern side of the Wilderness, which only a handful of owners…

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Izembek NWR by Kristine Sowl/USFWS

Izembek Wilderness threatened yet again

A few days after the November 2024 elections, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland proposed a land exchange to facilitate the construction of an 11-mile road through the protected tundra and wetlands of the world-renowned Izembek Wilderness and National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. If built, the road would be catastrophic for the critters that live there and…

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Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia

Expand Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a good proposal that would expand the 438,000-acre Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia by 22,000 acres. The proposed expansion includes lands currently held by Twin Pines Minerals. Twin Pines Minerals is seeking permits to open a proposed 8,000-acre titanium and zirconium strip mine on the Okefenokee’s…

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Wildernesses across two national forests threatened with burning and cutting

The U.S. Forest Service has announced a massive burning project for the Sequoia and Sierra National Forests in California that covers 2.4 million acres—including all Wildernesses on these two national forests—over 842,000 acres total. some of America’s most loved Wilderness areas are at stake, including the Ansel Adams, Dinkey Lakes, John Muir, Kaiser, Kiavah, Monarch, South Sierra, Dome Land, Jennie Lakes, and Golden Trout Wildernesses.

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Coyote by Sam Parks

Stop government killing of native predators in Wilderness

Housed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is a taxpayer-funded program called “Wildlife Services,” which, in spite of its name, does not serve wildlife. Instead, it’s the federal government’s multimillion-dollar program that kills tens of thousands of native animals annually, much of it at the request of the livestock…

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Soda Mountain Wilderness

Let nature shape the Soda Mountain Wilderness

Wilderness Watch is urging the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to drop its plan for cutting and thinning trees in the Soda Mountain Wilderness in Oregon and instead protect the area’s wilderness character. The BLM’s Draft Resource Management Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument violates both the letter and spirit…

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