The Arctic Refuge gained a reprieve on 1/20/20 when President Biden issued an executive order placing a temporary moratorium on federal government activities aimed at implementing the Trump Administration’s oil and gas leasing program on the Coastal Plain.

Read more...

On January 14, 2021, Wilderness Watch and Western Watersheds Project filed a complaint in federal court challenging a Forest Service plan for commercial livestock grazing on more than a quarter million acres of public land in Arizona and New Mexico, including tens of thousands of acres of the Gila and Blue Range Wildernesses, two congressionally designated Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs), and the Blue Range Primitive Area. Read more...

Wilderness Watch is urging the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to drop its ill-conceived proposal to spread herbicides across and burn up to 1.3 million acres of public lands in Arizona, including tens of thousands of acres in six Wildernesses—Aravaipa Canyon, Dos Cabezas Mountains, Fishhooks, North Santa Teresa, Peloncillo Mountains, and Redfield Canyon.

Read more...

The Forest Service (FS) is proposing to burn up to 1.7-plus million acres of the Targhee National Forest in Wyoming via the approval of a Categorical Exclusion (CE), meaning without proper environmental analysis or public input. The FS’s plan would impact the Palisades Wilderness Study Area (WSA), plus Recommended Wilderness and Inventoried Roadless Areas.

Read more...

On November 13, 2020, a federal court ruled in favor of protecting brown bears in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) and Wilderness in Alaska. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge includes approximately 2 million acres of important wildlife habitat and more than 1.3 million acres of Wilderness.

Read more...