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.

Wilderness Watch is urging the Forest Service (FS) to reject a proposal from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) to use helicopters to capture and collar mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Mt. Timpanogos, Lone Peak, and Twin Peak Wildernesses in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah.
 
The proposal is antithetical to Wilderness in numerous ways.

Wilderness Watch is urging the U.S. Forest Service to end permanent, artificial firelines inside the Ventana Wilderness and allow the Wilderness to restore its wilderness character. The 237,000-acre Ventana Wilderness straddles the Santa Lucia Mountains south of the Monterey Peninsula in the Big Sur country of southern California. All but 720 acres lie in the Los Padres National Forest and are managed by the Forest Service. Originally designated as Wilderness in 1969, Congress has added more…

In January, Wilderness Watch formally objected to the Forest Service’s (FS) draft decision on the Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range. This project, which includes flying supersonic military aircraft at low altitudes, would negatively impact five Wildernesses in Washington state: the Colonel Bob Wilderness, the Olympic Wilderness, the Washington Islands Wilderness, the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness, and the Pasayten Wilderness.

In a major victory for Wilderness and wildlife, federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill has just ruled that the Forest Service’s approval of Idaho Fish and Game’s helicopter-assisted elk-collaring project in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (FC-RONRW) was unlawful, that Idaho Fish and Game illegally collared four wolves, and that Idaho Fish and Game must destroy data gathered from the illegally placed elk and wolf collars.

Wilderness Watch is opposing a drastic tree-clearing project proposed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) potentially across 47,000 acres of Wilderness in the Big Jacks, Little Jacks, North Fork Owyhee, Owyhee River, and Pole Creek Wildernesses in the Owyhee Canyonlands region in Idaho.

In January, Wilderness Watch formally objected to the Forest Service’s (FS) draft decision on the Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range. This project, which includes flying supersonic military aircraft at low altitudes, would negatively impact five Wildernesses in Washington state: the Colonel Bob Wilderness, the Olympic Wilderness, the Washington Islands Wilderness, the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness, and the Pasayten Wilderness.

Wilderness Watch is asking the National Park Service to allow natural processes to determine the outcome of the breach in the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness in New York. In December 2016, WW submitted comments supporting the No-Action Alternative (Alternative 2) in the Park Service’s Draft Fire Island Wilderness breach Management Plan and Draft EIS (DEIS).

Wilderness Watch has told the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) it needs to drop its plan to significantly manipulate or trammel the Mount Trumbull and Mount Logan Wildernesses in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona as part of its Uinkaret Mountains Landscape Restoration Project. The Bureau of Land Management is planning prescribed burns within the two Wildernesses. Wilderness Watch supports allowing lightning-caused fire to play its natural role in Wilderness, but there is…