The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a new rule on “biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health” for America’s national wildlife refuge system. The rule could have a far-reaching impact on the refuge system, which includes nearly 21 million acres of Wilderness.
Wilderness Watch is opposing a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) plan to manipulate habitat in the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Montana, 32,350 acres of which is the Red Rock Lakes Wilderness. The USFWS released an Environmental Assessment (EA) and Minimum Requirements Analysis Framework for notching beaver dams in Red Rock Creek, some of which runs through the Wilderness.
The U.S. Navy has proposed the creation of new military airspaces for jet training exercises in Washington State. Unfortunately, the airspaces would overlap with two Wildernesses—the Pasayten and Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wildernesses—and threaten to destroy the solitude and silence found there.
The Okefenokee Wilderness, part of one of the world’s largest still intact blackwater swamp ecosystems and important habitat for native wildlife such as black bears, American alligators, and red-cockaded woodpeckers, is once again threatened by a titanium and zirconium mine at the doorstep of its namesake national wildlife refuge (NWR). The 354,000-acre Okefenokee Wilderness in southern Georgia makes up almost 90 percent of the Okefenokee NWR and is one of the largest Wilderness areas in the East.