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.
On February 2, 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would not re-list gray wolves in the northern Rockies under the Endangered Species Act, finding them “not warranted” for federal protection.
Wilderness and wildlife are under relentless pressures at this moment in history, including from exploding demand for outdoor recreation. Unfortunately, right now some members of Congress are pushing a bill to allow permanent “fixed anchor” rock climbing in America’s National Wilderness Preservation System. The “Protecting America’s Rock Climbing Act” (H.R. 1380) might seem innocuous, but it has big consequences. It will weaken the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act and increase recreation pressures in our most protected places.
Wilderness Watch is concerned with a Forest Service proposal to renew existing outfitter permits in the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, and Great Bear Wildernesses in Northwestern Montana—which collectively comprise the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex—without disclosing which permits, their locations, or any associated information. This makes it impossible to provide meaningful public input.
Wilderness Watch started the new year by filing an amicus brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on January 2, 2024 to rein in Wildlife Services’ wanton killing of native wildlife in Nevada, including the potential for killing wildlife in Wilderness.
In Fall 2023, the Biden administration released a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road through Alaska’s Brooks Range and some of the wildest country on the continent. The road would facilitate huge mining operations that would benefit a private Canadian company at the expense of Wilderness and wildlife.
In late 2023, the Forest Service invited public input on the management of commercial, motorized towboat operations within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, as it considers amending the Forest Plan to address this issue. This public comment opportunity was an attempt by the agency to show it’s being responsive to its obligations to protect the Boundary Waters from excessive commercial motorboat use, so we urged our members and supporters to weigh in.
