Wilderness Watch filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on January 18, 2023. We're challenging the agency's years-long withholding of documents covering livestock grazing activities in Wilderness areas. Government transparency is vital to the policy and advocacy work of our organization, and it's guaranteed by law. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), agencies like the BLM are required to hand over documents and other materials in their possession regarding their work.

During the Trump years, Wilderness Watch learned that BLM was communicating with members of Congress about how apparently the authorization of motorized vehicle use to support livestock grazing in Wilderness was common: "examples abound," one of the agency's leaders said. At Wilderness Watch, we need to see documentation of these apparently abundant examples in order to ensure that the BLM is following the law and in order to work toward good policy when it comes to dealing with grazing operators. So in 2019, we sent the agency a request under FOIA to turn over these agency records.

After some initial correspondence about our request for files, BLM went totally silent. We’ve tried repeatedly over the past couple of years to get in touch with BLM about releasing these records as they are required to by law. But BLM won't respond at all, not even to update us on whether they are processing the request. The lawsuit Wilderness Watch filed last Wednesday will force the agency to account for its legal transparency failures to a federal judge and will help us receive BLM's documents that are essential to our work and that we have a right to review.

At Wilderness Watch, we play an important role in protecting Wilderness, which includes reviewing policies and on-the-ground activities, and communicating with federal agencies about their management. We're troubled when our work to safeguard Wilderness is sidetracked by agency refusals to even follow basic transparency laws like FOIA. But Wilderness Watch will continue fighting to achieve our mission!

• Read our complaint