Wild Issues
For over 35 years, Wilderness Watch has been the leading national organization whose sole focus is the preservation and proper stewardship of lands and rivers included in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Learn more about current Wilderness issues we’re working on.
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Protect the Desolation Canyon Wilderness and the wild Green River
In 2019, Congress designated the Desolation Canyon Wilderness and two Wild and Scenic segments on the Green River in Desolation/Gray Canyons. The Desolation Canyon and Turtle Canyon Wildernesses, surrounding Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs), and other adjoining roadless public and…
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Protect the Anaconda Pintler and Lee Metcalf Wildernesses
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to renew existing outfitter permits in the entire 3.4 million-acre Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest without any environmental analysis, maps indicating where many of the camps are, or disclosure of the impacts from these commercial…
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Grizzly bear killed over bait, legal action initiated
On June 10, the same day the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals thought it was too far-fetched that a grizzly bear could be killed over a black bear bait station, news broke that a hunter had just killed a threatened…
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Cruel wildlife killing practices returning to national preserves in Alaska
On July 3, the National Park Service (NPS) issued a final rule governing hunting on the 19 million acres of national preserves in Alaska, which includes over eight million acres of Wilderness. The NPS administers national preserves similar to…
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Keep livestock out of Wilderness in the Sonoran Desert National Monument
Wilderness Watch is supporting Alternative C, the No Grazing Alternative, in The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Sonoran Desert National Monument Livestock Grazing Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment/Environmental Assessment. This covers 252,460 acres of federal public land in Arizona,…
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Free Tule elk in the Philip Burton Wilderness
The National Park Service (NPS) is seeking public comment on the Tomales Point Area Plan Environmental Assessment at Point Reyes National Seashore. The NPS should allow rare Tule elk to roam free by removing the elk fence on Tomales Point within the…
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Georgia Governor rejects commercial spaceport threatening Cumberland Island Wilderness
A proposed commercial space launch site that would have been located less than five miles from the Cumberland Island National Seashore and Wilderness in southern Georgia has been scrapped by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. On May 13, 2024, Gov.…
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Poison has no place in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness
Wilderness Watch is working to stop yet another project that would poison a lake and a few miles of streams with rotenone, this time in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness in eastern Oregon. This rugged, high elevation Wilderness was one…
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Ambler Road one step closer to being stopped
On April 19, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its final supplemental environmental analysis for the Ambler Road project, a proposal by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) to build a 211-mile road across the south slope of…
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Wilderness Watch, allies challenge federal decision denying protection for western wolves
On April 8, Wilderness Watch and nine conservation groups filed a new lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to list western wolves under the Endangered Species Act—a failure that ignores obvious threats to gray…
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The National Park Service needs to protect the wild in the Everglades
Wilderness Watch is urging the National Park Service to develop a strong new Wilderness Stewardship Plan for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness in Everglades National Park in South Florida. Unfortunately, the agency seems headed down the wrong path with…
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Forest Service needs to let ANILCA cabins be phased out
When Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, there were numerous existing, privately built cabins on federal lands in Alaska, including lands ANILCA designated as Wilderness. Some of the cabins had been authorized under…
Photo: Desolation Wilderness, Utah by Bob Wick/BLM