Keeping Wilderness WILD!
Read Wilderness Watch’s blog.
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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…
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Conflating recreation with conservation is not Wilderness preservation
In the final hours of the 118th Congress, the Senate took up and passed the EXPLORE Act, which former President Biden signed into law on January 6. Some of our members reached out, confused after seeing other conservation nonprofits…
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Wilderness Watch protests BLM’s proposed tree cutting in the Soda Mountain Wilderness
With a long-standing drought throughout the American West, exacerbated by climate change, some wilderness managers have come under pressure to try to prevent future wildfires in Wilderness from burning, or from burning so hotly…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
Photo: Joseph Battell Wilderness, Vermont by Dawn Serra