The National Park Service in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service has prepared a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on a plan to translocate grizzlies into the rugged North Cascades in Washington. The Forest Service is a cooperating agency, though it appears that agency’s input in the DEIS is minimal. Wilderness Watch is urging the Park Service to consider natural recovery options for the grizzly population.

 

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In October 2019, Wilderness Watch, Grand Canyon Chapter Sierra Club, Friends of the Sonoran Desert, and Cyndi Tuell Consulting submitted a formal Objection on another proposal to use helicopters to capture and collar wildlife in Wildernesses. In this case, Arizona Game and Fish Department has proposed up to 150 helicopter landings in the Four Peaks, Hellsgate, Mazatzal, Salt River Canyon, and Superstition Wildernesses to capture and collar bighorn sheep.

 

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The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) has dropped its proposal to use helicopters to net-gun capture and collar mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Mt. Timpanogos, Lone Peak, and Twin Peak Wildernesses in the Wasatch Mountains. Wilderness Watch and other groups had filed an objection to the proposal, which was antithetical to Wilderness in numerous ways.

 

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Wilderness Watch and co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit on August 7, 2019 to stop the Trump Administration's latest attempt to build a road through the Izembek Wilderness. Our lawsuit challenges the Agreement Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed in July 2019 with King Cove Corporation for a land swap of federal public lands needed to build an 11-mile-long road through the heart of the fabled Izembek Wilderness and National Wildlife Refgue in Alaska. Read more...

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Wilderness Watch is concerned about a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposal to significantly increase commercial use and allow commercial filming in the new Organ Mountains and Broad Canyon Wildernesses (and several Wilderness Study Areas) in New Mexico. Commercial filming is prohibited in Wilderness. Read more...

On June 4, Wilderness Watch and two co-plaintiff organizations filed a motion for preliminary injunction against the US Forest Service for secretly approving an unprecedented plan to allow chainsaws for clearing trails throughout the Weminuche and South San Juan Wildernesses in Colorado. A week later, we learned that the Forest Service had withdrawn its decision.

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