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Wild Issues

Nellie Juan College Fiord Wilderness

WW Urges Forest Service to Protect Nation’s Largest WSA

Wilderness Watch has been urging the Forest Service to protect and improve the wilderness character of the largest Wilderness Study Area (WSA) in the country—the nearly million-acre Nellie Juan-College Fiord WSA in Alaska.

 

The Congressionally-designated Nellie Juan-College Fiord WSA on the Chugach National Forest in Alaska’s western Prince William Sound is an ecological and scenic treasure of ancient rainforest, wild salmon, remote islands, and stunning mountains and glaciers.

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Lake Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness

WW Concerned About Sonic Weapons Blasting in Wildernesses

Wilderness Watch has been concerned about a U.S. Navy plan to blast the Olympic Peninsula with sonic weapons, including within five Wildernesses: Olympic (Olympic National Park), Colonel Bob, Washington Islands, Lake Chelan-Sawtooth, and the Pasayten. The Navy’s Environmental Assessment fails to discuss the impacts to these Wildernesses. Additionally, we believe flight paths outside the project…

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Red Rock Lakes Wilderness

WW Stops Commercial Logging in Red Rock Lakes Wilderness

In August 2015, Wilderness Watch convinced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to cancel plans for a commercial logging operation in the Red Rock Lakes Wilderness in Montana. The project had been planned as part of a larger fuels reduction effort at the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, located in the Centennial Valley…

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Denali Wilderness

WW Urges Park Service to Keep Denali Wild

In October 2015, Wilderness Watch submitted scoping comments on a proposed trail planning process for Denali National Park & Preserve in Alaska, most of the which is either designated Wilderness or suitable for designation. We disagree with the Park Service’s rationale for abandoning its “no formal trails policy” and urge the Park Service to instead…

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Los Vidrios-The illegal road

Los Vidrios—The illegal road

In 2015, a local Wilderness Watch member, Fred Goodsell, sounded the alarm that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had designated an illegal vehicle route as an “administrative road” through the Cabeza-Prieta Wilderness in southwest Arizona. The route, known as Los Vidrios, was reportedly created for and used as a smuggling route for many…

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Olympics Building Before

Another Building Boom in the Olympics

One would be hard-pressed to identify too many things more clearly antithetical to Wilderness than man-made buildings. As defined by the Wilderness Act, “[a] wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is […] an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,…

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Frank Church-River No Return Wilderness, Idaho

WW Challenges Unprecedented Helicopter Invasion to Capture and Collar Elk in the River of No Return Wilderness

On January 7, 2016, Wilderness Watch, joined by Friends of the Clearwater and Western Watersheds Project, filed a complaint in federal court to stop the Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game from conducting a major helicopter-supported elk capturing and collaring project in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (FC-RORNW) in central Idaho. The FC-RONRW…

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Emigrant Wilderness California horse pack

Wilderness Watch Sues for Use Monitoring Info in Emigrant Wilderness

Wilderness Watch’s Central Sierra Chapter has long been concerned with the Forest Service’s (FS) unwillingness to take action to protect the Emigrant Wilderness in the High Sierra from overuse and abuse, to meet the standards in its forest plan, or to meet legal requirements in administering its commercial packstation permits. In order to test these…

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